Margot's War

by Ty Knoy

  At the end of the term in April, sabers still rattled along the Iron Curtain. Nick went home to work on a core line in one of the Rohloffsen foundries, but he also kept his eyes and ears on news reports for word that the invasion of Western Europe was underway, that bridges over the Rhine were being blown up.

  A friend who had been on his high school football team—one who had not gone to college—was in the same plant as Nick, in a union job down on the pouring line. He had married and had a child, so he was exempt. Another former teammate—Nick had bumped into him at the band shell on a Sunday—had volunteered for the draft right out of high school, had been in the army and was back out, all in two years. He had been posted in West Germany most of the time and had seen war fever close up, or so he said. “Looking the Reds in the eye” was the way he put it. “We would have kicked their butts.”

  Nick went to his draft board office only to find that no volunteer spots were open just then; war fever had filled all the spots through November. He signed up as a volunteer for January, thinking he would get in another term at school in the meantime.

  No sooner had he done so than the Communists began building the Berlin Wall. “If they’re building a wall, they’re going to stay behind it,” Nick’s father told him.

  Everyone seemed to agree, and the war fever broke.

  Nick left his January commitment to the army in place, sure he could undo it later in the fall if he wished, and enrolled for the fall term at university.

  CHAPTER 5

  ON A PROFESSOR’S alphabetical seating chart, Nick found he was placed next to “Maarling,” who turned out to be a blond girl he didn’t remember seeing in his first two years in college.

  “No Ns, Os, Ps, or Qs apparently,” he said as he sidled past her knees on the first day of class.

  Miss Maarling glanced up. “And only one M,” she said, looking back down at her syllabus. “Also apparently,” she added without looking back up.

  Taciturnity, rare in Occidental females, together with an acerbic disdain for small-talk, were qualities Nick admired in himself, so he supposed he should admire them in others. Miss Maarling had a nice scent—Shalimar, he learned later—and she looked like she didn’t belong. Her silk blouse with long sleeves and tunic collar, along with wool skirt and nylons, gave the appearance not of a coed, but of a receptionist in a high-end law office.

  At the end of the lecture that day, as Miss Maarling rose, she asked—she probably thought it would be weird not to, Nick supposed—if he was related to Victor Rohloffsen, the conductor-composer, who had by then become well-known. As her face came up in front of his, Nick was surprised at how tall she was. He gave his stock answer: yes, Victor was his father’s third cousin, and he had seen him directing on two occasions, both times as guest conductor at Orchestra Hall in Chicago, but he hardly knew him. “His parents’ house, at least one of their houses, is near our house,” Nick said. “Just down the beach. But he was gone from home, out into world, by the time I had started to grow up.”

  Miss Gayle Maarling was wearing flats—probably Capezios, the brand favored by his sister—but even so, her nose was barely lower than his. He estimated the pupils of her eyes were only about an inch lower than his and that if she were in heels, she would be the taller.

  It occurred to him that he would have to wear cowboy boots the rest of his life.

  He asked Gayle if they could study together. He truly did find it beneficial to study with classmates.

  “I don’t date,” she said flatly.

  “I didn’t ask you for a date,” he said, without verbalizing the thought, You snippy little bitch—or rather, in her case, You snippy tall bitch. “We could shorten our study time or get more out of the course by working together, talking it over outside the classroom, since we won’t have any chance to talk it over during class time.”

  A few nights later, as they left the Michigan Union with books in arms, they met a coed on the steps. Gayle and she spoke briefly in a foreign language—Dutch, as it turned out. Nick was introduced: the young woman was a graduate student from Rotterdam. After pleasantries, they went on their ways.

  “My parents are naturalized citizens,” Gayle said. “They have always spoken Dutch at home. They wanted my sister and me to be fluent, and we are. My real name, by the way, is Geertruida. Geertruida Margarethe, actually. One name for each grandmother.” She spelled them. “I’ve always been called Gayle, however. Even at home.”

  “Better than Gertie, isn’t it?” Nick said. He hadn’t followed the spellings. “No brothers?”

  “No.”

  Nick told her he had a sister, Elaine, two years older.

  A few nights later, on a Sunday, since the residence halls didn’t serve meals on Sunday nights, Gayle and he went to an Italian restaurant. Earlier that day, for the first time since going off to college, he had gone to a church service during which he had heard Gayle sing. She’d had a solo part. “You sound much different when you’re singing than when you’re talking,” he said as they were seated.

  Gayle seemed unsure if Nick had meant it as a compliment, but what she said next made an impression. “Don’t jump to any conclusion about my religiosity. I’m a paid soloist, and furthermore—you probably already know this—performers are never who they seem to be. But, of course, you have the advantage—or disadvantage—of knowing the real me, not just the stage me.”

  Nick wasn’t at all sure that he knew either, but he shrugged and asked something to the effect of “Most soloists are paid, aren’t they?”

  “Yes. Also, I’m paying my half of the check.”

  Nick managed a poor imitation of his father’s counter-assault tactic, which always included a feature or a presumed characteristic of the target. “So you’re an atheist—an incorruptible atheist?”

  Gayle took the intrusion in stride. “Atheist? That remains to be seen. As for incorruptible, I haven’t been seriously tempted.”

  Nick nodded. “A fork in the road for you then. If you yield to temptation—become a fallen angel, so to speak—do you go all the way on to hard-core atheism, or do you go to God—back to the fork and then back to God, if the road is still open—to ask forgiveness? Don’t answer that. Too early to know, I’m sure, and also none of my business. And anyway, the road is always open, or so we’re told. And I know what the real problem is: those pikers aren’t paying you enough.”

  Gayle, not given much to laughter, definitely smiled. “That can’t be it. I don’t need the money. All I need is the practice in front of audiences. You are very smooth, in an appropriately pious sort of way. Do you know that?”

  “Just an act,” Nick said. “Somewhat like your act, but only the world as a stage for me. A little adoration—or even a lot of adoration—can’t hurt. Dollars don’t say everything, per se. They buy candy, but beyond that, they are symbols of approval. The whole thing is”—he threw his hands up—“dollars are just implements of praise, and they aren’t praising you enough.”

  She laughed then. “That has to be it,” she said. “But church-grade sopranos are a dime a dozen.”

  “You are very modest,” Nick said, sure that exactly the opposite was true. “You’re several notches up from church-grade, and anyway, church-grade in this town is several steps up from church-grade out in the hinterlands.” He paused. “So why did your parents immigrate?”

  “My father was recruited to a hospital here by an uncle who already was here a couple of years before the occupation. ‘Good thing for us,’ my father likes to say. When the Germans came, they imposed their national health care on us. Then they left—or rather, the Canadians pushed them out—but the national health care stayed.”

  “I didn’t know that,” Nick said.

  “You see? You don’t know everything after all.”

  He liked that. “But you were born here, were you not?” Nick asked as plates of spaghetti—his w
ith meatballs, hers with just sauce—were placed before them.

  “Yes. Here. My sister was also. I know I say us, as if I were there—as if we were there. But, well, I suppose we have dual citizenship, or could have it if we asked. So I have always felt that the jackboots were on my neck too.”

  “Vicariously oppressed? Oppression from across the sea.”

  “My parents certainly felt that, and that is what my sister and I absorbed from them as our eyes and ears first opened up to the world.”

  On the Sundays after that, Nick began taking a gym bag to the church with deli sandwiches and a bottle of Sauvignon Blanc—Gayle’s request. After the second service, they went to a park, sat on a bench, and had their picnic, which was perfectly illegal, both civilly and ecclesiastically.

  On the second or third such picnic—a cool, drizzly fall day—he told her about his commitment to the army without telling her that he was sure he could get out of it. And he added that he wouldn’t be back for the term beginning in January. He also went over his patriotic inspirations of spring and summer, and added, “Now the urge has evaporated.” He went on to say that the only place now with anything resembling a shooting war was a place called Vietnam.

  Nick was about to tell Gayle that he was just kidding and that he could get out of it, when she dropped the umbrella, put her hands on his cheeks, and firmly kissed him on the mouth, the first time their lips had met. “I was scared silly last spring, and all summer!” she said. “I salute you!” She leaned back and raised her hand to her brow. “All four of my grandparents and my aunts and uncles and cousins, were inside the Occupation when I was a little girl. I never met any of my family until I was six. I salute you. You will keep it from happening again. I’ll write letters to you. And anyway, I have things to do, and from that distance you’ll be less able to distract me. Also, wherever you are, it will be impossible for you to get me into bed.”

  He kissed her, running his tongue between her lip and her teeth. “I’m not gone yet, Gayle,” he said.

  Then she surprised him again. She broke into sobs.

  Just as he was jumping to the wrong conclusions—that her tears were for his prospective two-year absence or her impending loss of virginity—she said, “My mother has cancer.” Then, quicker than he could get his arm around her again, she also said, “I’d like you to meet her before you go.”

  “I’d like that.”

  “She doesn’t look bad.”

  They sat, heads together under the umbrella, feet back under the bench.

  “Where does it stand?” he asked.

  “No one ever knows, of course. Her doctors only talk about odds and probabilities, but they say she could live for many years. Her hair came out in March, but it has grown back, almost two inches now. She wears a wig, but I think she can stop soon. At first, she was saying she wanted to go back to the Netherlands to die, but she’s stopped saying that.”

  Nick heaved a sigh. “In remission, then?”

  “Maybe—definitely. But for how long? That is the question.”

  “At least a mental uptick, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, at least that. Hang on with me for a minute. I’m getting control of myself again.” A moment later, she said, “I’m sorry I blurted that out, Nick. I don’t know why I did. I didn’t intend to. You must think I’m crazy—that I’m trying to manipulate you, but I’m not. I swear I’m not.”

  But of course that was exactly what she was doing, Nick realized, albeit not until a few years later.

  “My parents are both very healthy, but I can imagine how you feel,” Nick said.

  Gayle’s tongue had become loose, and he wondered if she’d had more than her share of the wine. “Is your mother at home?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then she gets out and about? Drives herself around?”

  “Yes.”

  “Sounds like she has a very good chance, doesn’t it?” They sat that way for several minutes. Nick watched for an empty cab, but none came by. “Some might say my army thing is an attempt to manipulate you.”

  “You just said you signed up before you met me.”

  The rain was increasing. Despite the umbrella, water ran down Nick’s hair and inside his shirt collar. “Yes, it was in August. But I’m sure that, subconsciously, I anticipated you. The government, or maybe it’s God, is manipulating me to you and you to me, trying to get us to make more babies so as to have a continuous supply of Christian soldiers to march off to war.” Nick wondered if he’d had more than his share of the wine at that point. He stood, pulled Gayle up, and put the lunch wrappers and the bottle into a trash can. “Are you singing this afternoon?”

  “Just a practice, at six.”

  The music school was a distance off from her dormitory, and he urged her to stay in. She said she would.

  “I’d like for you to take a hot shower,” he said. “A very hot shower, and wrap up for the rest of the afternoon,” he said.

  “How will I eat?”

  “I’ll bring you a pastrami sandwich. Send it up to your room.”

  “I’ll be okay. I’m not wet inside. I’m just cold right now.”

  “I’m sorry. This was a dumb thing to do.”

  “Are you wet?” she asked.

  “My socks are. Clever of you to wear boots. Did you have them under the robe?”

  “Of course not. I have flats in my pockets.”

  “You don’t have a tub in the dorm, do you?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “What I’d really like to do is take you down to a hotel in Detroit and put you in a big tub of hot water.”

  “You don’t have a car.”

  “I may have enough for a cab—at least enough to get down there. Then we’d have to wait for the banks to open in the morning to get enough to pay off the room and the room service for dinner, for breakfast, and—”

  “And the champagne.”

  “And for a marriage license. Secret, of course, but just in case you become pregnant.”

  “It would be a breach of our agreement. A major distraction. A major breach. We might not make it to class tomorrow. Also, the dorm counselor would write me up.”

  “Maybe for two or three days.”

  “And I would not get an abortion, so you would be stuck with me.”

  “Have you ever ridden a horse?”

  “What? No. Why? Does that cause miscarriages?”

  “Only if you fall off, I suppose. I never have either, except for a pony at the county fair once. Can you hold the umbrella a moment?” Out in the rain alone, Nick passed the gym bag from one hand to the other as he slid out of both his slicker and his blazer, rolled them up together, and let the rain fall on his button-down Oxford shirt. He let the bag fall to the sidewalk, and while Gayle watched speechlessly, he took off his tie and peeled off the Oxford and put them into the bag also. “I’m hot. Cooling myself down,” he said. “It’ll help me keep our agreement.” He took the umbrella from her and held it over her head.

  “I don’t like this,” she said. “You could catch pneumonia.”

  “No cabs. I’ll take a hot shower. Right now, I need a cold shower.”

  “I should take you to Detroit and put you into a tub of hot water,” Gayle said with a giggle.

  Nick and Gayle did not go to Detroit that night. He knew, however, that something had broken loose inside him, but he didn’t tell Gayle then—or ever. He wanted her to believe forever that what she had just seen of him was the real Nicholas Rohloffsen and that he had never been any different. Soon after, he himself came to believe it was true.

  The next morning, on the way to their class, Nick and Gayle promised each other they wouldn’t get in bed together until after he was back from the army, and in class that day, they would sit like statues with their eyes always on the professor. Nick thought they had pu
lled it off, but at the end of the class, the professor motioned to them to come up to the lectern. “I don’t know if you two are going to pass my tests unless you sit apart. You’re also distracting the others. May I put you in this seat over here, Mr. Rohloffsen?” he said, pointing to a spot on the seating chart that was for a desk across the room.

  Nick agreed, and the change on the chart was made.

  “You could just get married,” the professor said. “That’s a sure cure for these transitory infatuations.”

  Nick laughed and thanked him for the suggestion. “We almost did yesterday, but we didn’t have cab fare.”

  “I can make you a loan,” the professor said. “But not until Friday. Let me know Wednesday.”

  A new phrase entered Nick and Gayle’s private lexicon that day. Forever after, they referred to their relationship as “our transitory infatuation.”

  CHAPTER 6

  A COUPLE OF Saturdays later, Nick borrowed a Studebaker from a senior to take Gayle home to meet his parents. (Underclassmen weren’t allowed to keep cars on campus.) He had told her that his mother was, or least could have been, a world-class accompanist and asked Gayle to bring along music she was working on, assuring her his mother could help. “Also,” Nick said, “I want them to hear how good you really are.”

  Gayle sat quietly—nervously, it seemed to Nick—with a folder of music in her lap as they drove along I-94 under a sunny sky. They were driving west, so the sun was on his side of the car. They stopped once at a rest area where he took off his coat and put it in the back seat. Both went inside, and they got on the road again. Nick wondered what they were getting themselves into, and he presumed Gayle was wondering the same thing. Neither proposed that they turn back.

  “I grew up with my ears filled with piano music,” Nick said as he drove. “It began before I was born. During her pregnancies, Mom had dreams of a career as a touring concert player, and she was keeping in shape, expanding her repertoire.”