Under the Same Blue Sky (35 page)

“Yes, David. It’s very good.”

“You’re crying, Numa.”

“Because I’m happy. Now close your eyes.” I sang him “Muss Ich Denn” as my father once sang to me. Curled around Bucephalus, he was soon asleep. I stayed a long time in his room, looking out his window, thinking of my father, of the night views outside my dusty bedroom window in Pittsburgh, and maple trees outside my house in Galway.

I
N THE EARLY
days of January, I took a train to Newark’s Red Cross office, where a round-faced clerk whose smile never faltered confirmed that all British and American prisoners had been released and accounted for.

“Could someone reported missing be with other Allied prisoners?”

“That’s highly unlikely.”

“I see.”

Back home, I went to the meadow. Rain had melted the last snow and made the dark earth spongy. I sat with my father’s spirit.
Well then,
Hazel,
he would have said.
What now?
Buds were still tight on the copper beech. By the time they unfurled, I promised myself, I must know my path forward. From the distance came thuds on the soft ground, as David and Lilli burst into the meadow. “Tante Anna said to find Hazel,” David panted. I held David close, grateful for the compact body and easy cheer. “She said when I’m big, I’ll go to school.”

“Yes, you’ll go to school.”

“Were you a teacher?”

“Yes I was.” He asked about the marble marker. “My father’s buried there.”

“He died in the war?”

“Yes, in a way.”

“You’re sad?”

“Yes, I’m sad about my father and about someone else lost in the war.”

“I have to go. Tante Anna might be looking for me.” He scampered away with Lilli.

Who would be looking for
me
? Daily I felt more extraneous. My mother was full of plans for her bakery, testing new recipes at night and learning to keep accounts. Everyone predicted the success of Renner’s Bake Shop. Dogwood was becoming her town more than it ever was mine.

Georg, too, had plunged into work. Since our return from Prussia, the haze of sadness that once surrounded him lifted more each day, as if the loss of his family had eased the weight of their rejection. Peace burst open the fine art market. Having seen the treasures of Europe,
Americans wanted them. Old families were eager to sell dusty antiques for ready cash. European ports were busy again; rail lines and roads were being rebuilt. Suddenly, moving art across the ocean seemed ridiculously easy. In weekly trips to New York, Georg met collectors and dealers, particularly a certain Anthony. Always before, I’d opened and sorted our business correspondence, but letters to and from Anthony were handled by Georg himself. There was work in Dogwood, too. The town council had approved our design for the monument, giving us a major project to oversee.

All of this should have been exciting, but the work that once entranced me was becoming tedious. I was easily distracted and made mistakes. Embarrassed by my lapses, I tried to do better, reworking dull offering letters, rechecking inventory lists, and dutifully reading texts on rare book collecting. In oblique references to the months after Friedrich’s death, I gathered Georg’s point: One must go on.

I might easily have been reading about Paris in those weeks, studying French, or writing to Georg’s contacts who might ease my way there. But day after day, I did none of this. Instead, I returned to sketching. While David scribbled or built elaborate towers, I drew his face in many angles. I drew other children. I drew woodlands and waterfalls. I drew scenes from a place where my work had been cut short, where in a realm of four walls filled with young people, I’d known a brief joy.

A
LICE
’
S
C
HRISTMAS CARD
mentioned only herself and her parents, not the baby brother born last year. “We’re very sad,” she’d said. She hoped I’d visit soon; there was “something” to show me.

In early March, as the copper beech buds began to swell, I requested a few days leave to see friends in Galway. Georg agreed, tactfully not querying my purposes. My mother and Anna would keep David. On the way to the station, I told him once again that I’d be back soon,
before he knew it, but as I walked down the platform, a shriek ripped the air. I turned to see small legs churning toward me, straw hair flying. “Don’t leave, Numa! Take me!”

“I can’t. I have to go alone.”

My mother reached us, breathing hard. “Come, David. Your Numa will be back.”

“Maybe she won’t,” he wailed. Passengers were boarding.

“Suppose we visit Pastor Birke and see the big church organ? And then we’ll go for ice cream.” David slowly loosened his frantic grip. From the train, I waved until his face shrank to a pinprick, marveling that he’d grown so huge in my life. Was it wrong to leave him even for a few days after all he’d endured of uncertainty and loss? But I had to go back to the place where so many had trusted me and lost. I had to know if this trust could be recovered.

CHAPTER 22

We’re Not the Same

I
walked into Galway from the station in an afternoon of teasing March warmth. There had been blizzards far into April, Jim Burnett once told me, but for now melting snow was peeling back white covers from the earth. Three years had passed since I’d lived here. “You’d be surprised at the changes,” Jim said in his last letter. Those who once could barely find Europe on a map now could pinpoint the sites of great battles: Verdun, Gaza, Kemmelberg, Flanders, and the Isonzo River.

I went first to the grocery store, where a tall young girl was helping Jim stock the shelves. Could this possibly be Alice? They turned at the doorbell’s tinkle. “Hazel!” Cans of tomato sauce clattered to the floor. Jim called for Ellen. Alice noted every particular of my bobbed hair and the new tunic suit that Georg had brought back from New York. We all admired how Alice had grown. “She had just two small fits last year,” Ellen said happily.

“Tell me about David,” Alice demanded and I did. But when I asked if influenza had come to Galway, the smiles drained away.

“The ’flu took our little Freddy,” said Jim. They told the story together, each managing a few words.

“We held him the whole time. He was never alone.”

“He got a fever on Sunday and died on Tuesday.”

“Doc Bentley said even the best city doctors couldn’t help him.”

“The fever broke Monday and we hoped—”

“And then it came back, and we knew—”

“It was so terrible to hear him breathe.”

“None of us got it, just him.”

“He tried to smile, remember? Even when he was sick.”

“Hazel, I thought, if you were here, perhaps you could have—”

“Now Ellen, we’ve talked about this,” said Jim. “How could she help? This influenza wasn’t any ordinary ache or pain. Remember how fast it got Emma Grant?”

“Emma from my school?” Emma, with the wide eyes and thick black braids? “Judge Ashton too, and Henry McFee.” Poor Henry, so worried about his aches. In the end, they didn’t matter. The judge’s vigor and bluster hadn’t saved him. “What about Susanna? The judge returned my letters so I stopped writing.”

They looked at each other. “He was like that. After he died, Mrs. Ashton sold the house and went to live with her sister in Arizona. She said the dry air would help Susanna. You can write to her now.”

“And Agnes McFee?”

“She’s staying. She got work in the new cheese factory. It does her good to be busy.” Jim looked over the neatly stocked shelves. “After we lost Freddy, it was like we were dead ourselves. But we had to keep the store open. People have to eat. So at least part of the day, we weren’t thinking about him. And it helps that we weren’t the only family touched. Do you want to see the cemetery?”

I’d seen enough of cemeteries, bodies, and fields of the dead, but I
went. Alice stayed behind. “We expect you for dinner,” said Ellen. “And you’re staying with us in our spare room.”

Before the war, a small yard beside the church had sufficed for Galway. In the months I lived there, only two new graves were dug. Now the cemetery was half again as large, studded with tree stumps. “We didn’t have time to pull them,” Jim said. Crosses marked soldiers whose bodies lay in Europe. Those who died of influenza still had wooden slabs; headstone cutters were months behind.

“We couldn’t even get enough coffins. Pittsburgh took the whole supply for miles around. I made a little box for Freddy. We washed and dressed him ourselves. And we put him in the box. And then we closed the box. I couldn’t bear to nail it shut. Reverend Collins helped us bury him in a hole we’d dug ourselves. We filled the hole together. It was the hardest thing we’ve ever done.”

I let him be and walked past the crosses, recognizing names of my students’ fathers and older brothers. Then I stopped at a wooden marker.

C
HARLES
R
OBERT
D
AVIS
J
ULY
28, 1901–N
OVEMBER
4, 1918

Charlie must have enlisted when he turned eighteen, been quickly trained, and sent over to die seven days before the armistice. He tested me with a toad on the first day of school but stood by me when the town turned against Ben and called me a witch. Charlie, who adored Susanna and was good to Alice for her sake. Charlie who kept our schoolhouse warm.

Jim was at my side. “Hazel, let me show you something good. We wanted to surprise you if you ever came back to Galway.” Threading past the wooden crosses, we reached a polished headstone.

B
ENJAMIN
F
RANKLIN
R
OBINSON
M
ARCH
19, 1878—J
ANUARY
11, 1916
1
ST
V
OLUNTEER
C
AVALRY
T
HE
R
OUGH
R
IDERS
R
EST IN
P
EACE

My eyes filled. They’d done this for Crazy Ben. “Hunters found his body soon after you left. A lot of folks felt bad about what happened. Susanna spoke up for him when the judge wasn’t around. The ladies started saying how respectful he always was and how harmless.”

“That’s true.”

“Someone donated a coffin. I wrote to the army. It turns out that Ben really was one of Teddy Roosevelt’s Rough Riders, just like he claimed. We put a collection jar in the store and got enough for this headstone.”

“What did the judge say?”

“Nothing. He never talked about that night and never said a word about the grave. In fact, he didn’t talk much at all after—what happened.”

Walking back, I asked about the school. They’d had several teachers since I left; the current one was homesick and wanted to leave. Jim took my arm as a Model T came splashing through the mud. “Hazel, Galway’s changed, first with the war, and then influenza. It’s like we grew up. Folks want their children to know more about the world outside this town. They want a good teacher. Do you think you’d ever come back?”

Amazing how words can stroke like velvet on the soul. Still, there was so much unfinished. “Teaching here wasn’t the problem, Jim, at least not at first. It was my house, what people said about it and me, how they needed more than I could do. Whatever touch I had, I don’t
have it anymore. It wasn’t even enough when I was here. I couldn’t help Susanna, and I couldn’t save Ben. I couldn’t even help my own father.”

“Hazel, nobody expects any magic. You have a touch with children. That’s enough for us.”

“Let me think about it. There’s David, too.”

“He’s very welcome here. Your old house got—”

“Torn down.”

“Yes, but there’s another near the school that the town rents out. It’s a nice little place with two bedrooms, electricity, and even a telephone. No strange stories. Will you think about it?”

“Yes.” I had dinner with the Burnetts and showed Alice how to wind her hair in the loose chignon that was fashionable now. In the morning I walked out to the remains of my blue house, and then to the cottage that might be mine. North windows would give good light. The porch looked out on broad fields and woods where David could play. Not Paris, and certainly not a castle, but perhaps a place of peace.

I
WENT BACK
to Dogwood the next day. My mother had just signed a loan from Georg for the shop beside the bakery. She’d pay him back with her monthly checks from Frank. Despite Anna’s protests, she was adamant about moving into town. “I’m used to living over a store. We’ll still see each other; you’ll come have coffee with me.”

“Everything’s changing,” Anna grumbled, but added mysteriously, “but some changes are good. Come.” She drew me to the great stairway and pointed up, toward Georg’s library.

I listened closely. “He’s
laughing
?”

“I bet you never heard that sound before.” I hadn’t. “His friend Anthony is visiting from New York. We might be having parties soon.”

“Then you’ll need bread,” my mother noted. “And cakes and pies.
See? I’ll
have
to live over the store. Hazel, go up and meet Anthony. You’ll like him.”

I did like him. Anthony Lamberti was tall and lanky with a long nose and scooped cheeks. Nobody would call him handsome. In fact, the craggy face was nearly comical beside Georg’s beauty, but he had a warm, rolling voice and the kindest brown eyes. Under his hands, the grand piano that had been silent for so long rolled out old ragtime tunes and new jazz. Lilli howled in chorus. David clambered on the piano bench to watch the running fingers, transfixed.

The sight of his pleasure shook my resolve. How could I take the child from here, or from Anna and my mother, who both adored him? And yet my place in Dogwood was shrinking. Anthony and Georg were already deep in plans to catch the booming rare-book trade. They didn’t need me. Every sign pointed me west. Even beyond the matter of work, to stay here was to wait for Tom, when every voice of reason announced that he’d never return.

The next morning, I took David to the gazebo and described Galway while he rubbed and tossed Bucephalus, giving no sign of listening. When I stopped, he asked: “What if we don’t like it there?”