Margot's War

by Ty Knoy

  “The daughter, Mrs. Margolis? Is this Camille or Cynthia?”

  “Camille. You know the family then?”

  “I’m rather sure I had the girls in a ski class out in Colorado, when they were about twelve and ten.”

  “Really? That’s been a while.”

  “The names are right. I haven’t seen those girls since, so I didn’t know Camille’s married names. Well, yes I did, actually, but I have it mixed up which girl is Camille. I think it was their mother I met—some weeks later. I never saw her and the girls together, so I guess I’m not sure the woman I met later is the same woman who’s here. She and I met sort of by accident.” Nick took a deep breath and went on to say that the father brought the girls out to the ski class, so he hadn’t seen the mother.

  The receptionist nodded, glanced at her desk, and brought her eyes back to Nick’s.

  He went on. “Maybe she was sleeping in that morning. They weren’t staying at the Big Lodge. I know that because the girls had vouchers for the class from one of the smaller lodges.”

  “You have a long memory, Mr. Rohloffsen.”

  “It wasn’t exactly an accident. Not a skiing accident. Maybe a celestial accident. I’m not positively sure the woman I met later is the mother of those girls, so I may be looking for the wrong person. I first stopped in South Bend yesterday, and then I came on down here.”

  The receptionist waited a moment, and when Nick didn’t start up again, she said, “Camille brought Mrs. Kendall down here from South Bend to live with her a couple of years ago, but then she moved over here in the spring. Camille said the move was mutually agreed: tension in the home, with the son-in-law perhaps—that sort of thing. Camille really makes no secret of that, so there’s no reason I shouldn’t tell you.”

  “She very much has her own ideas, then,” Nick said.

  “I don’t know her well, but from what Camille has said, it seems that’s about it.”

  “Mrs. Kendall, if she is the person I’m thinking of, had strong ideas of what she wanted, and she was willing to act on them. Perhaps at least that hasn’t changed. Maybe her daughter, Camille, has strong ideas of her own.”

  “You may have put your finger on it. I’m going off on my errands now. I must get them done.”

  “Okay.”

  “You wait here. We’ll help you get this sorted out.” She went behind the glass, picked up a folder, and went off toward the elevator, waving as she went by.

  Left by himself, Nick set to worrying whether this Camille, affable as she had been as a child, might have grown up to be a Bible-thumping busybody who, as guardian, would seek to police his visit with her mother. Mrs. Kendall was a widow and had been for four or five years—Nick knew that for sure—and those years would have been plenty of time for this daughter to anoint herself as matriarch, or at least to attempt it. Also, she might be shocked, even outraged, by what she might now infer about what had gone on in the distant past. Yet Nick thought about how Camille had lived all of her adult life in that university town and, in all likelihood, had soaked up the liberal mien everywhere around her. Not many Bible thumpers here, Nick supposed. At least not until you get a hundred yards or so outside the city limits.

  Camille had just the one sister. No brothers. Usually in such families, one girl is the mother’s confidant, and the other is left out of old secrets. Nick wondered, Is it going to turn out that Camille is the confidant who already knows or the nonconfidant who now may see something she has never seen before?

  If Katherine Anne still had even a tenth of her old willpower, Nick was sure she would simply order her daughter away and see him alone. When he had started his journey the day before, he hadn’t foreseen the daughter complication. He nodded off, imagining it would all turn out the way he hoped.

  When Nick awakened, the dining room had emptied of people except for a table of cards and another of backgammon. Out across the lawn, he saw a police car stopped near his car. Three other cars were in the lot by then, so he thought the police weren’t interested in his car. But he had second thoughts. Maybe his mother had called in a missing person report. He was never good at lying to her, but then, if he had merely changed his mind about where he was going, he hadn’t really lied to her.

  But that seemed unlikely. Since she had never heard of Katherine Anne Kendall, she couldn’t possibly have figured out where he was, and she wouldn’t have known how to find Katherine Anne even if she had heard of her. Even if she had somehow divined it, the police up there wouldn’t broadcast such a notice all the way across two states.

  Nick wondered if the receptionist had called the police to report that a person had come in and was acting strange. Clearly, the receptionist had called Mrs. Gordon, the manager, and maybe Mrs. Gordon had called the police. Or maybe police routinely drove around, making notes on the licenses of out-of-state cars. But that didn’t seem likely, because there would be too many out-of-state cars in and around so large a university.

  Nick finished the orange juice, which had become warm. The sunbeam had moved onto it and onto him, but he felt okay. He had stopped perspiring. His blazer was on the chair next to him. He wondered if he looked okay. The bridge and board game players, some of them with walkers and canes, came out of the dining room and went by, on down the hall, without looking his way. Nick heard the bell as an elevator opened for them.

  “You had a nice nap,” the woman behind the glass said. “Would you like more juice? A roll? The kitchen is closed now, but I can get you something. There’s still coffee. There’s always coffee.”

  “No, thank you. Your errands got themselves done, did they?”

  “No, they did not. I got them done.”

  Nick laughed, perhaps for the first time that day. “Sorry, that’s what I meant.”

  “Thank you for staying here. Mrs. Gordon should be in before long.”

  “Could you point me to the men’s room, please?”

  CHAPTER 2

  NICK SPLASHED WATER on his face and combed his hair.

  Back in the hall, he saw two policemen coming in and heard them exchanging greetings with the receptionist, whom they addressed as Priscilla. She introduced them as Bill and Bill, and introduced Nick as Mr. Rohloffsen, explaining his relationship to Victor, the conductor-composer.

  “I thought all of you guys would be out directing traffic this morning,” Nick said as he shook their hands.

  “Not just yet,” the bigger man said. His nametag read, “Sgt. William F. Gordon,” and Nick noted that was the same last name as the manager who was on her way in. The sergeant was the much bigger of the two, and also much older.

  “Nice day for it,” Nick said.

  “Better if we could be in our undershirts.”

  “Or on motorcycle duty?”

  “I never did. Bill has,” the sergeant said, pointing toward his younger companion with his thumb.

  “They’d have us park the bikes beside the road while we stood out on the asphalt in leathers,” the younger Bill said.

  The men removed their sunglasses and folded them into shirt pockets.

  “Come on over and have some coffee with us,” the sergeant said. “Since Victor Rohloffsen is so well remembered around here, that makes you sort of a celebrity.”

  Nick heard not a casual invitation to have coffee but a semi-command. He had always prided himself in taking problems head-on, but he wondered if fatigue and nerves had diminished his form. As usual, he got out in front on the small talk, asking, “You played football here, didn’t you, sir?”

  The sergeant smiled. “Yes, I was out there. Some of those days were hotter than this one. And I was working a lot harder then, so I can’t complain about today. I never had heatstroke though. I wasn’t maimed, either in the body or the head. And I did graduate!”

  “You have the bearing of an educated man,” Nick said, wondering why, in that case
and at his age, the sergeant hadn’t become more than a sergeant.

  “The NFL never called, and I didn’t try to walk on at any of the camps. I went into the marines and then came back here and got into the police department.”

  “In Vietnam, then?”

  “Yes. Sixty-eight, sixty-nine.”

  “I was there also,” Nick said. “Sixty-two, sixty-three. Army for me. I was just finishing up when President Kennedy was killed.”

  “I was in an algebra class—high school algebra—that afternoon. Only about a dozen of you in Vietnam then?” the sergeant laughed. “Were they still calling you advisers?”

  “Hardly,” Nick laughed. “And there were quite a few more than a dozen of us. You know, ‘I saw you play! Offensive left tackle.’ The game was up in Michigan, not down here. For quite a few years, my wife and I never missed a game at home, but I was down here only once before, when I came to a game down here as a student—following the team, I mean, not as a member of the team.”

  “In the old stadium then,” the sergeant said. “Still plenty of seats today if you want to see the new stadium. It’s only about a mile from here.”

  “I don’t have time—at least I hope I don’t have time,” Nick said. “I hope to be doing something else this afternoon.” He was immediately sorry he had said that with the enthusiasm that had slipped into it, but the sergeant didn’t take it up.

  “I was up in Ann Arbor twice,” the sergeant said. “You must have seen me the second time, when I was a senior. I was on the field for most of the plays then.”

  “After the army, I married and eventually joined Rohloffsen Brass Corporation.”

  “Easy for you to get in, I’d guess, since your name is Rohloffsen.”

  “My father was CEO. Not right then, but later on. He played for Michigan before the war. He was about your size. That was big back in those days, or so I’ve heard.”

  The sergeant was six feet tall and, Nick estimated, about two hundred forty pounds. Nick also was six feet but well under two hundred pounds.

  They got coffees and sat. “Maybe your father played with Gerald Ford?” the sergeant suggested.

  “No, he was four years younger. I mean my father was younger. He said he had the locker that was once Gerald Ford’s locker, but he only said that after Mr. Ford became president, so he probably just made it up. He was a big joker.”

  “Well, that’s what police call an okay whopper—a whopper that can’t be checked out. If you’re going to tell a whopper, it should be something that can’t be checked out. So, what brings you here, Mr. Rohloffsen?”

  “Just a nostalgia trip,” Nick said. “My wife died two months ago—two months ago today, in fact. I’m sort of at loose ends.”

  “I’m sorry,” the sergeant said.

  Nick could tell that he meant it, that he actually felt something, and he wondered if maybe the sergeant was also a widower. He glanced expectantly at the younger Bill.

  “Sorry for your loss,” the younger Bill said.

  “Thanks.” Nick turned back to the sergeant and said, “I’m just visiting old haunts and old friends.”

  Back came the question, “So, if you’ve only been here once before, why do you call this an old haunt?”

  “You’re right.” Nick nodded with a quick smile. “A careless use of ‘old haunt.’ No stolen reports on my car, no missing person report, I guess?”

  “No. No outstanding warrants either. Nothing like that.” The sergeant smiled, affirming Nick’s supposition that his car number had been run on the police computer. “Priscilla there was worried about you, so now I’ve become responsible for you—Bill and I, that is.” He gestured toward his partner. “We don’t want you crashing into a ditch or something because we didn’t take this seriously.”

  “I appreciate that. I’m not much of a drinker. Gayle and I—that’s my late wife—drank only when we were in each other’s presence. It was a pledge we made even before we were married. Now that she’s gone, I’m free of the pledge, I guess, but I still haven’t drunk much.” Nick’s drink at the piano bar the night before had been his first since Gayle’s death.

  “That’s quite a pledge. Did you stick with it?”

  “I did,” Nick said, “and I believe she did also.”

  “Alcohol does put a lot of people into ditches, but there are other reasons. Stress, for instance, like from the loss of a spouse—especially a spouse who looks out for you.”

  “Not having to look out for her—that’s making me jittery. You’d think it would be liberating, but it isn’t. It’s disconcerting, not liberating. Strange, isn’t it?”

  The sergeant nodded. “By the way, Priscilla didn’t call us, in case you’re wondering. We come by here every other morning or so for the coffee, but we’re seldom called here.”

  The thought came into Nick’s mind that since Priscilla had called Mrs. Gordon, Mrs. Gordon could have called the police, or maybe Mrs. Gordon called Camille Margolis and she and/or Mrs. Margolis had called police, and therefore the sergeant’s statement that Priscilla hadn’t called was probably true.

  “You have a right to be depressed,” the sergeant went on. “Who wouldn’t be, with what you’re going through. Isn’t two months a little soon for you to be out traveling around?”

  “Victorians definitely would have disapproved,” Nick said. “My mother would disapprove, but I didn’t tell her what I was up to. A year would have been better form, but at my age—” His voice trailed off.

  “Were you and Mrs. Rohloffsen married a long time?”

  “Forty-one years. Actually, we were married twice, about two months apart, without even getting a divorce in between.” Nick had never told that to any other person, and—he assumed—neither had Gayle. Now that she was gone, he had been, before that moment, the only person left who knew. He could have taken the secret to his grave. What is it about being in front of policemen that makes people blurt things out? Nick mused. “Neither wedding was in this state.”

  “Then I’ll let the other states worry about it.” He turned to his partner. “Bill, would you please go out to the car and call in. Tell them everything here is okay and that we’re ready to go.”

  The younger Bill left.

  “Priscilla is concerned, that’s all,” the sergeant said with a shrug. “Listen, Mr. Rohloffsen.” He leaned closer to Nick and began talking in a lower tone, seemingly switching himself out of police mode and once again into social mode. “There are a lot of crazy women in this town.”

  “Oh?” Nick said as he wondered what he meant. He leaned in, glancing around over his shoulders. “Just call me Nick,” he said in a whisper.

  “I don’t mean the coeds, Nick. That goes without saying. I mean the older women, those about my age on up to about your age. How old are you, anyway?”

  Nick was sure that the sergeant, having run his plate number, couldn’t possibly not know his date of birth. He glanced at Priscilla at her desk out past the archway. She was the only woman Nick had met that morning who was in the age category the sergeant had started talking about.

  “So, these are all post-war women?” Nick said. “I’m from the prewar generation. I was born on the day before the attack on Pearl Harbor, the evening of Saturday, December 6, 1941, just as Admiral Nagumo was up there in the dark, a hundred ninety miles north of Honolulu, getting ready to bring his carriers’ bows into the wind.”

  “So you made the prewar generation by a single day. I’m a boomer, as they call us,” Big Bill said. “My father got home from Europe in early forty-five, married my mother, and I was born in late forty-five, after the war was over. So I’m a really early boomer.”

  “Ahead of the crowd. Your father was wounded, I take it.”

  “Frostbite in his feet. No bullet holes. The Battle of the Bulge. It was the first and last action he saw. The war was over for him.” />
  “Believe it or not, Bill, I remember the Battle of the Bulge. I was only three, but I’m absolutely sure of it. My parents and my sister and I—she’s older—were all at a Christmastime gathering at a neighbor’s house. My father and two other men in uniforms were around the tree. My head came up to about their knees, and they were talking about men out of ammunition, fighting with bayonets in deep snow and bitter cold as brass buttons and buckles shone and flickered in my eyes. My mother apparently overheard. She swished by and swept me into the kitchen with other mothers and other children and put a cookie in my mouth. Years later, I inferred Christmas 1944 and Battle of the Bulge.

  “My father never went overseas. He wanted to fly planes, as my grandfather had in the first war, but they put him in a captain’s uniform and ordered him to continue in the Rohloffsen plants, making ammunition casings. Maybe your father was shooting bullets from casings made by my father.”

  “Maybe the very bullets they were running out of.”

  “What was it you were saying about the women around here?”

  The sergeant again lowered his voice. “Well, not so much the women who grew up here, but a lot are from the East—New York or around there, East Coast—or Chicago. You know, they came here to go to school and never left, or came here with a husband who was getting on the faculty. They’re nothing like my mother. Nothing like your mother either, I’m sure. I take it your mother is still living?”

  “Yes.” Nick smiled. “I still lie to her occasionally, but nothing she can check out.”

  “These women here today—they want to run things,” the sergeant went on. “Take over everything. It’s like they don’t know who it was that won the war and saved their bacon. German women would have a right to feel that way I suppose, because their men lost their bacon—”

  “Twice!” Nick broke in, laughing lightly.

  “Yes, twice. But American women shouldn’t be that way.” The sergeant took a deep breath. “Yeah, well, I’ve never been to Germany, so I don’t know.”

  “We have a couple of plants in Europe, so I’ve spent time there. To me, German women seem about the same as the ones here. I mean, in the ways you’re talking about. I never thought about it in the way you’re thinking. They’re pretty free, I’d say, but from what I’ve read they were pretty free between the wars also. I wonder how they were before World War I, another generation back.”