Under the Same Blue Sky (22 page)

CHAPTER 13

A Million Tins

I
want to visit you,” my mother wrote, “and I’m sure your father does as well, but he keeps saying: ‘We’ll go later.’ Or: ‘It’s too far away. I can’t leave the store.’ Can you help?” Twenty years ago, my father left Heidelberg for America. Now a train trip across Pennsylvania overwhelmed him. The baron gave me leave to get my parents and bring them east to Dogwood. Tom drove me to the train station with Lilli sitting primly between us. I was about to board when she cut through the passengers and shepherded me back to the car.

“What’s wrong?”

“She knew we forgot something.” He leaned close and kissed me. “Isn’t she clever? You better go now. There’s your whistle.” I hurried to a seat by the window in time to see Tom waving, beaming, and Lilli wagging her tail. My cheeks burned.

“Is that a
wolf
?” a passenger demanded.

“No, it’s a dog, a German shepherd.”

“Krauts and wolf-dogs: perfect fit.” He snapped open his newspaper. I took out a history of famous book collectors and we passed the next hours in silence, broken near Harrisburg when my companion
observed: “If Woodrow Wilson thinks he’ll sail through the election and keep us out of war, he has another think coming. We need a fighting president.”

“The election will be close.”

“Close as a cat’s whisker.”

Full dark had come when I reached Pittsburgh. The station’s bustle of Americans, businessmen, wailing children, and porters’ shouts of “Stand clear! Stand clear!” brought a comforting anonymity. Nobody whispered as they did in Dogwood: “She works for that Kraut at the castle.”

My father greeted me warmly and then edged back to his tins, drawn like a drunkard to his drink. My mother brought me to the front room. “I’ve packed and paid the bills. He still hasn’t given Frank the store keys. Yesterday, I said: ‘Remember, Johannes, we’re leaving tomorrow.’ He just went back to his tins. That sound is making me crazy. Hazel, do you really think a vacation will help?”

“It will. There are no munitions plants in Dogwood. He’ll breathe clean air and nobody will talk about war.” She gripped my arm, trying to believe over the hammer’s tap, tap, tap.

I brought Frank the keys. He was a good man, taking time to understand customers’ problems and needs in any language, miming, drawing, or recruiting others to help with translations, just as my father had always done. The caramel jar was still there by my old stool. Frank’s wife was “expecting,” he admitted shyly. Soon another child would be looking for “the best and sweetest” candy.

“Congratulations.”

“Thank you, Hazel. And a good rest is just the thing for Mr. Renner.”

“He’s been—”

“Preoccupied.”

“Yes, I know.”

With my father’s indifferent assent we offered Frank a raise for the two weeks he’d run the store and a bonus if profits rose. In the morning, Frank brought down my parents’ heavy suitcase and then left us to open the store.

“Hazel’s arranged everything. We’ll relax and have a wonderful time. Isn’t that right?” my mother prodded.

“Katarina, I never gave you a proper vacation.”
Katarina
. He’d actually used her given name in front of me. Was this an oversight, or had I passed out of childhood and become an adult in his eyes? So soon? Because I’d grown, or because now he needed me more?

“What’s in the suitcase, pal? Grenades?” the huffing taxi driver demanded.

“Books,” I said sharply. “Can you get us to the ten thirty eastbound?”

“Sure, lady.”

An hour later, the city’s stain was far behind. My father read his
Volksblatt
inside the
Pittsburgh Post
and then slept. My mother steadily quizzed me about Dogwood, the castle, its people and kitchen, Lilli, and “that Tom you write about.”

As we left Pennsylvania, my father sat up, dazed as a child awaking in a new place. “Katarina, remember Gunter, the one-eyed baker?”

“In Heidelberg?”

“Yes, of course. Do you think he’s safe?”

“Of course. They wouldn’t draft a one-eyed man.” She stroked his hand.

He peered out at the rolling fields. “New Jersey looks like home—before.”

Tom met us at the station. They fell silent at the first glimpse of Mein Königsberg’s looming bulk. “It
is
a castle,” my mother said finally. “Just like you wrote. Just like you remembered.”

My father asked only: “Hazel, are you happy here?”

I glanced at Tom. “Yes, I am. Very happy.” My father smiled.

Anna had prepared a light supper: sausage and potato soup, cheeses and ham, pickles and dark bread. Lilli performed her many tricks, delighting my parents. The warm soup filled us. Tom told jokes. My father relaxed enough to describe an addled customer who had confused his hardware store with a bakery, demanding hot buns. Anna said she’d prepare
Schäufele
the next day, a tender pork shoulder my mother loved. As we toasted my parents’ visit, I thought yes, it was good to bring them here.

Within days, Anna and my mother were like sisters, four hands in the kitchen, ending each other’s sentences, their faces twinned in the steam of cooking pots. Both had pleasant singing voices, harmonizing with cheerful ease. I’d never seen my mother smile so easily or move so lightly. She must have been lonely in our walk-up flat, I realized with a guilty start. Cleaning, shopping, cooking, and mending for one man and one daughter, how could this have been enough for her?

She and Anna challenged each other’s recipes, creating ever more tender strudels and sweetbreads, fragrant stews, cabbage rolls, and Prussian meatballs that made the baron sigh. “Try this,” one or the other would urge as we passed the kitchen. Usually so grim, Tilda beamed when sent home with packages of golden potato pancakes like crispy little suns. The baron said smells wafting from the kitchen would tempt any hermit. He even took some meals with us in the small wood-paneled dining room that he and Friedrich once used. “This could be a Heidelberg tavern,” my father said. “You never want to leave.”

My mother beamed. “He’s happy,” she whispered to me. “Look at his face. And he’s not talking about
over there.
” At the end of the first week, she won first prize at the school fund-raiser with her
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte,
labeled in English as “Black Cherry Cake.”

“It’s really German,” another contestant grumbled. But Mrs.
McClellan drew me aside: “If your mother lived here, I’d hire her in a minute for my bakery. Good is good and folks want good.”

My father quickly found his way to Tom’s workshop, put on an old apron and began sweeping, ordering, and sharpening tools. The next day, he was helping to build shipping crates and marvelously repaired a small chest. A week later, the baron asked if he would consider staying longer to work with Tom.

“We actually don’t have to go back right now,” my mother said. “The store’s doing well. And he’s doing better, don’t you think, Hazel?”

“Yes, I think so. I heard him whistling this morning. Remember how he used to whistle?”

“Yes. It was good to come here, just like you said.” Of course it was. Every sign showed that my father enjoyed working with Tom, the dinners in company, and comforting distance from war talk. Sometimes he even played card games with us in the evening instead of slipping off to his tins.

We made easy arrangements with Frank to manage the store for another month, send us weekly accounts by special delivery, and take his agreed salary. His expanded section of “kitchen gadgets” was drawing more customers. In fact, it was my mother who managed their correspondence. “Good idea,” my father would say, or “If that’s what Frank thinks.”

“It’s strange,” I told Tom.

“But everyone’s happy this way.” We were walking into town on a cold Saturday afternoon. Our breath puffed. Bundled against wind, we walked close together, shoulders touching. I dared bring up a subject he’d always avoided: “Tom, you know my family now. Could you tell me about yours?” Our steps echoed in the brittle air. “Do you mind my asking?”

“No. It’s just hard to talk about it. I wanted to tell you when it was time. Perhaps this is the time.” He looked down, as if drawing strength
from the frozen pavement. “I came over with my parents from England when I was two. We ended up in Newark. My mother died soon after of pneumonia. Then it was just my father and me. He was a handyman. We had to keep moving when he drank up our rent money. We’d come home and find everything we owned on the street.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I hated that. And I hated him for letting it happen. But on good days he let me tag along on jobs and hand him tools, count nails, and sand wood. He made blocks for me and I built things. But evenings when he drank, I had to wait for him in our rooms.”

“Were you afraid?”

Years blew away from Tom’s face and I saw him in those rooms, a small child alone. “Yes, I was afraid and cold and hungry and wondering if he
would
come back. If our room had a window on the street, I’d watch men I imagined were fathers going home to their children. I wanted to be them or sometimes just not to be at all. When I was six, he didn’t come back one night. And then he didn’t come back the next day. I finished all the food and went looking for him. A man at a tavern said he’d gone west. Someone had told him there was good work in California. He was drunk.”

“So he just left you?” I pictured the six-year-olds in Galway, their open faces, delicious laughter, warm hands, and eager hearts. A man could walk away from one of these?

“Yes, just like that. I decided to go find him. I was six, remember. I had no idea where California was. So I went to the station and slipped into the first train I saw, which actually was headed east. The conductor put me off at Dogwood. He said the stationmaster would call my parents. But there was nobody to call, so I just walked out to Main Street, sat on the curb, and waited, I’m not sure for what. Then I started crying. ” I slipped a gloved hand into Tom’s.

“Anna saw me there, brought me to the castle, filled me up with meatballs, gave me a warm bed, and sang me to sleep. I felt like I’d walked into a fairy tale.”

“I can imagine.”

“She and the baron made inquiries, but of course nothing came of that. There was talk of an orphanage, but somehow Anna convinced the baron to let me stay, go to school, and do little jobs to be useful. I was happy to sleep in the same room every night, have plenty to eat, and be with people who cared about me. I learned about gardening and carpentry from Kurt and Emil. Anna was good to me, and the baron was always fair.”

“You never heard from your father?”

“No. But as Anna said, there was no way he could have known where I was. He wasn’t much of a father anyway. So that’s why, when Margit was—like she was, I felt so close to you. When you went away, Anna said I couldn’t write because you had a new family and had to forget about us.”

“As if you were all just my dream. Or I was yours.”

“Yes.” Arms linked, I felt his skin through layers of our clothing as close as when he’d plucked me from the apple tree.

“So we’re both orphans,” he said. “Yes. Or were. Now we’ve got each other.” Words fell away. We simply walked, pressed together, north to the edge of town, west toward the lumberyard, and then back to the castle, completely forgetting our errand for Anna. Three times now, my life had shuddered from its path, spun, and reshaped itself. The first time was on the stairs when I learned the secret of my birth, and then when my hand on paint brought healing. Now the words “we’ve got each other” erased the path before me. I’d thought of Dogwood as a way station, a place to find myself and then leave, not the place to fix my life. Yet even here, war was bearing down on us like a
train, scooping up young men and taking them away, erasing every private plan.

“Don’t go, Tom, please don’t go.”

Of course he knew my meaning. “America’s still neutral. Let’s not worry now. We have this time together.”

He was right.
Think only of now
. From the long gravel road to the castle, I saw a light in the workshop.
Think about my father
. “Tom, when you work together, does he talk to you about the war?”

“No. He talks about what we’re doing. He says we need a better lathe.”

“Does he tell you how he’s feeling?”

“Does he tell me how he’s
feeling
?” Tom’s astonishment made me laugh.

“I guess men don’t do that.”

“Not much, no. Not like your mother and Anna. He likes having you close by, though.”

“He says that?”

“Well, not exactly. But he looks better after your walks. You’re good medicine for him. Or for anybody. You have the magic touch.”

“Tom, don’t say that. You don’t know what happened before I came here.”

“Tell me.”

Yes, I’d have to. Suppose he didn’t believe me or found me tainted by the story? But he’d trusted me. I’d have to trust him. “Let’s sit in the gazebo.” Wind whistled through the lattice frame in the gathering dark. I began. “Before I came here, I taught in a one-room schoolhouse in a Pennsylvania town called Galway.”

“Yes, we know.”

“But there’s more.” I told him about the “scary house” that I wanted blue, my night visitor, the tremors and first astounding healings, the
lines of seekers, followed by disappointments and accusations. I described Ben and his voices, how Susanna was taken, and how Ben was killed. That I left town just before being sent away. “I don’t understand what happened or why some were healed and others weren’t, why my power came and why it left. Poor Ben was killed when he only meant to help. It was so strange, and then so terrible. They called me a witch. Do you want that in your life?”

“I’m so sorry, Hazel.” He took my hands in his, sheltering as a bird’s nest. “You did good in Galway and some took it badly. Terrible things happened that weren’t your fault. It’s strange, that’s for sure. But you know—” That familiar, crooked, perfect smile broke over his face. “If this touch never comes back, if you’re just ordinary Hazel forever, that’s wonderful enough for me.”