by Ty Knoy
“What?” Nick said. “Would she do that?”
Mr. Rohloffsen laughed. “Well, he is one of the rich Rohloffsens. But hopefully we’ll never know.”
Nick guessed that this was the day for his father and him to shock each other. Or maybe his father was just showing him that two could play the game. Or maybe he was acknowledging that Nick had become an adult and was granting him status.
Mr. Rohloffsen went on. “Victor, of course, was at the music camp when your mother and I met. He was already in love with her, though he was only eleven and she was seventeen when I came. They were far and away the two best pianists, and they played two piano pieces and four-hand pieces together, hip to hip on the same bench.”
“I can see it,” Nick said.
“Molly should have known better, really. But Victor was her only son, and she herself has only sisters. I guess she didn’t understand what she was doing to him.”
“Wasn’t his dad there?”
“Art never did have any sense about such things. He couldn’t have helped Victor if he’d wanted to. Molly was in charge.”
Nick didn’t understand that, so he paused and then said, “It must have been really tough for him. The love of his life, probably the only girl he would ever truly love, and then some big lummox comes”—Nick punched his father on the shoulder—“and sweeps her away. And he can only watch.”
Nick couldn’t say he even knew Victor, but in that moment, his heart ached for him. “Do you think there’s more than one true romance ever for anyone? A ‘when you find her, never let her go’ sort of thing. But you were eleven, a hundred pounds, and your rival was two fifty.”
“I felt bad for him. I really did. And I was two thirty at the time. In fact, I still feel bad for him. She was a great catch for me. It was Darwinian selection—brawn over brains.” He put his fists up near his ears and pumped up and down like he was lifting weights.
“And that girl he didn’t marry, what happened to her?”
“I don’t know. I never saw her again after Mackinac Island. I do know that Victor and she went over to the music camp that summer and that she worked there for at least part of that summer. But I never heard her mentioned again.”
Nick thought a moment, then said, “Victor got another look at Mom there at the Grand Hotel. She was—what?—twenty-seven by then, and looking even better than at seventeen. She probably knocked that young girl out of the box. Women look better and better as they get older, don’t they? At least they do to me.”
“Mostly they do, up to a point. But some never stop getting better; your mother is going to be like that. And this doll you have here with you today looks like she’ll hold up well.”
“Do you think Victor was using that girl? Attempting to make Mom jealous or something? Was that what it was all about?”
Mr. Rohloffsen shrugged. “He never said.”
“Was he trying to get her to leave you? Do you remember the girl’s name?”
“I don’t. She sure could play. Victor must have looked all over France, Belgium, and Switzerland before he found her. He threw her over, of course. I’m not sure she even finished in music camp that summer. She spoke very good English with an American accent, not a Brit accent, so she must have studied over here. Maybe she said the hell with it and married someone.”
“And had children and lived happily ever after.”
“Probably. But I don’t know about the happily ever after part. Maybe she ever after secretly carried a torch for Victor or for her thwarted career or for both. Molly may have kept track of her. I know Molly and your mother talked about it, so maybe your mother knows.”
CHAPTER 7
A FEW DAYS after driving Gayle to meet his parents, Nick asked her if she could go out west with his family to ski. “You could go home for Christmas, then come out on the twenty-sixth or twenty-seventh and go back on the first or second of January.” His plan was to stay on in Colorado for a few days in January before reporting to Fort Leonard Wood.
“I’d love to,” Gayle said. “But my grandparents are coming over for the holidays.”
“Keep it in mind, will you, please? I’d very much like to spend my last days as a civilian with you.”
The Friday after Thanksgiving, Nick drove his mother’s car to the home of Gayle’s parents in Petoskey.
Mrs. Maarling was pallid. She still wore the wig Gayle had described, and it all was grimmer than Nick had imagined. She didn’t particularly resemble Gayle, but an image of Gayle without hair came into his mind, and he was unable to shake it off right away.
However, Mrs. Maarling proved to be cheerful, even energetic. She had a charming accent with a singsong cadence, and Nick himself became cheerful. She began looking well to him, as apparently she did to Gayle, to Gayle’s sister, and to the sister’s husband. The sister and the husband were in from Chicago for the holiday.
Dr. Maarling, however, was dour.
The six of them went for dinner at the lodge at Boyne Mountain Ski Resort a few miles south. The season had begun that very weekend, and the lodge was packed, as Nick, who had skied there on Thanksgiving weekends twice before, had been sure it would be. A dinner reservation had been made, but they had to wait nonetheless, and he grumbled to Gayle as to why that particular place had been chosen.
“Sentimentality,” she said. “My request. And anyway, every restaurant between here and the Straits is full tonight, so it might as well be this one.”
They had a view of Sno-Cats under the floodlights, towing groomers up and down the slopes. And though it was snowing naturally, snow cannons were shooting up under the lights. Nick had skied Boyne Mountain dozens of times, and so had Gayle and her sister. It was possible that he and Gayle—and also her sister, for that matter—had ridden lift chairs together, but they didn’t remember ever seeing each other. Goggles lessen the likelihood of remembering faces, Gayle suggested.
Dr. and Mrs. Maarling weren’t skiers, but there was an ice rink at Boyne Mountain just outside the window where they now sat. Mrs. Maarling told Nick that when the girls were young, she and her husband would skate while they skied. Outside the glass, past the rink, was a steaming, open-air swimming pool.
The mother and her daughters watched the swimmers and skaters as Dr. Maarling, the son-in-law, and Nick talked. Dr. Maarling asked about Nick’s famous relative, offering at the same time that his parents had seen Victor as guest conductor at Het Concertgebouw in Amsterdam.
Nick went through his litany of how seldom he had seen Victor and how little he knew of him. “His mother lives down the beach from us. She and my mother are good friends.”
“Gayle told us,” Mrs. Maarling said. “She said your parents’ house is lovely.”
“It was once owned by a Chicago gangster,” Nick said. “One of Capone’s men.” He was hoping for Gayle to join in, but she and her sister were looking at the pool and the shadowy frolickers in the steam and snowflakes. So he went on. “Victor grew up there—up to a point, I should say. He was off to boarding school in the East before I was born.”
The doctor nodded and lit a cigarette.
“My father knows Victor rather well,” Nick added. “He is one of the rich Rohloffsens, of course.”
Dr. Maarling, who had continued to nod, cocked his head and drew a breath, as if he intended to ask something. Then, without pause, he exhaled and brought his head back straight, as if he had changed his mind. But then, just as Nick was about to say something, he asked, “That’s the third time you’ve talked about rich Rohloffsens and poor Rohloffsens”—he looked at his watch—”in the three or four hours you’ve been here. What is that all about?” He smiled broadly, waited, then put the cigarette to his lips.
Nick laughed. He had learned long ago, and Dr. Maarling apparently had also, that one can ask anything of anyone as long as it’s done with a smile. “I thought you were a radiolog
ist,” Nick said.
“I am, but I don’t have to be Sigmund Freud to wonder what’s going on,” he replied in his clipped, clinical way. His English was not as smooth as Mrs. Maarling’s, but it was precise.
Nick imagined that Gayle’s father had a rotten bedside manner. His son-in-law, who was sitting with him and Nick, said nothing, but maintained a bemused smile. Then it occurred to Nick that radiologists are never at bedsides.
The son-in-law seemed to enjoy his father-in-law. He and Gayle’s sister, married the summer before, lived in Chicago and were visiting for the weekend.
“I guess I picked those phrases up from my father,” Nick said. “It’s a long story.” A moment later, he added, “I think I’ll make a point of dropping it.”
“A good idea,” the radiologist said, nodding and smiling again. “It was nice of you to ask Gayle to Colorado for the holidays,” he went on. “She’s never skied in the mountains out west, and it would have been a nice opportunity, but her grandparents are coming over, as I believe she told you.”
“She did explain. Are these your parents that are coming, Dr. Maarling, or Mrs. Maarling’s?”
“Hers.”
“What is their last name?”
“Van der Meulen. They’re going on to Florida from here for the rest of the winter.”
“Are they from Amsterdam?” Nick asked, even though he already knew the answer.
“No, Leeuwarden.”
“I had it arranged for Gayle to stay with Victor’s aunt and her husband,” Nick went on. “Out on the edge of town. Their house is in the mouth of a box canyon, about a mile out. Victor’s house is up on the canyon wall, high above. He’s never there in the winter, of course.
“I see,” Dr. Maarling said, nodding.
“My parents’ condo is only three bedrooms, and my sister and her husband are coming, so there’s no extra room.”
Another nod from Dr. Maarling.
“There’s a grand piano at Victor’s aunt’s house—her name is Maureen—and sometimes my mother goes over there and plays. She could meet Victor’s mother and aunt, who worked on the La Bohème arias.”
Nick’s parents had taken an apartment at the resort in 1950, but ten years later the managers needed to add a chairlift, and the loading station needed to go right where the apartments stood. The tenants were offered new A-frames just up the hill, near Arthur and Molly’s house. That same summer, Victor built his house across the valley at the ten-thousand-foot level, virtually the same level as the top of the new lift. The house shone in the sun by day and in the moonlight by night. From anywhere in the valley or on the slopes, all eyes went to it.
“It all would have been very nice,” Dr. Maarling said.
Nick told Dr. Maarling and his son-in-law that he was going to stay in Colorado past the holiday and then report from there for basic training on January 6. “I understand I should get a leave then,” he said. “I can see Gayle then,” he added. “If the timing works, I might even see her doing Mimi. I’m sure you and Mrs. Maarling will be there, so maybe I’ll see you again too.”
“That would be nice,” the radiologist said.
“I’ll be all bright and shiny in my nice, crisp new uniform with my hair cut short by then.”
“Gayle’s kind of a ‘yeah-rah soldier boy’ type of girl,” the son-in-law said, speaking for the first time in a while. “You’re a lucky guy.” He shot a glance toward his wife. “Be sure and have your uniform tailored, Nick.”
“Oh?”
“Shops in Waynesville.”
“I see.”
“A good many crazy women, too, so be on your guard.”
Both Gayle and her sister, who had seemed not to be listening, turned their heads.
“Or so I’ve heard,” the brother-in-law added.
“We might have put her with Molly and Arthur themselves, but several of Molly’s relatives are coming over from Europe,” Nick said to Dr. Maarling.
CHAPTER 8
ON THE SUNDAY after that Thanksgiving, as Nick and Gayle drove back down together, she told him that a change of heart within her family was pending, that a phone call was being made to the Netherlands, and that she might yet be able to join him in Colorado.
After dropping Gayle off at her dormitory, Nick left the car at the rail station parking lot. A man from the factories was to come on the train and pick it up the next morning.
Three days later in their classroom, Gayle came to Nick’s desk on the way in and said, “My grandparents are arriving on the twenty-second. I’ll have three days with them, so if the invitation is still open, I’m being allowed to come to Colorado.”
On that twenty-sixth day of December, Nick, who had already been at the ski resort for a few days, rode down in the shuttle to Stapleton Airport and rode back up with Gayle and her skis.
They skied together in the mornings, and Nick skied again in the afternoons while Gayle and his mother went over to Maureen’s to practice La Bohème songs. Molly, though she had company, also had Gayle over, and they worked together on her piano.
On one of the nights, Maureen had Nick and Gayle over for dinner, and as Maureen and Eduardo retired, Maureen winked at Nick and told him to stay as long as he liked.
He and Gayle didn’t go together into the spare bedroom. But for the rest of their lives, they would remember pausing hand in hand in front of the door and looking into each other’s eyes. “Which of us,” they asked each other over the years, “tugged the other away?”
“You tugged me away,” Gayle had said. “I was ready.”
Instead they went outside onto the pool deck to look at the stars, the moon, and Victor’s house, three or four switchbacks above, virtually straight up. Plumes of steam rose from Eduardo and Maureen’s pool, from the pool across the fence at the house next door, and from most of the houses above. No lights burned in Victor’s house, but it glowed in the moonlight.
Nick had come to Maureen’s house, about a mile from the village, on a snowmobile he had borrowed, and Gayle suggested that they ride up and have a closer look at Victor’s house. Nick considered it for a moment, but then could think of nothing to tell her but the truth. “I don’t have enough confidence, especially at night. That road is steep and probably has icy patches.”
“I want to see it,” Gayle protested.
“We’d be in less danger if we just went into the spare bedroom together,” Nick said. He was sure Gayle had had too much wine, and he was sure he had also, but not so much that he had lost his mind. “It’s a good thing I’m not blotto. If I were, I might do it. Let’s go into town.”
They stood a moment, with Gayle putting on a pout. Nick said, “I don’t want to get him up to ask, but maybe tomorrow we could borrow Eduardo’s Jeep and drive up there. It’s four-wheel drive with chains on the wheels.”
They drove the snowmobile back into the village, entirely on level road along the river—or so it was called. In Nick’s mind, it was a trout stream, not a river.
In the big lounge in the main lodge, with its big fireplace open on all sides, Nick and Gayle had glasses of wine, met up with those who skied by day and drank by night, and also with some who only drank day and night. Nick knew many from Christmases past; some of them were cousins, and he and Gayle worked their way around the room.
Around midnight, the snowmobile found its way back to the Maureen-Eduardo house, with both Nick and Gayle aboard.
The next morning, Maureen found them not in the bed in the spare bedroom but fully clothed, asleep in each other’s arms in front of the fireplace on one of her sofas, her calico cat curled up with them. She didn’t rouse them.
Nick was already awake but pretended not to be. The phone rang, and he inferred that it was his mother asking if Gayle and he were there. Nick heard Maureen explaining how she had found them and whispered that the bed was still made up from th
e day before.
That afternoon, Gayle didn’t feel like singing. Neither she nor Nick felt like skiing either. But late in the afternoon, just before the lifts shut down, they put on their skis and went up together to the high lift station, under a bright-blue sky and in breathless cold air. It was clear all the way out to the high plains, where darkness was gathering. They were above the tree line, looking down into the pines.
Nick breathed deeply, anticipating the important moment that was just ahead for him. He asked Gayle to come with him into the coffee bar before they started down. They undid their bindings and went in.
After a few moments of sitting silently, between one sip and another, Gayle said, “I do some stupid things when I’m with you.”
Nick nodded. “Well, at least we can be sure you’re not pregnant. And we didn’t fall off the cliff trying to get up to Victor’s house. Do you think you’ll be ready to get married—when I get back from the army, I mean?”
“I’m inclined to think so. But what if I’ve become a success?”
“You probably will. Then I won’t have to ask my dad for a job. I’ll just live off you and smoke big cigars at cast parties and the afterglow things.”
Gayle laughed. “I’d have to get my tubes tied. We couldn’t afford for me to miss a season, especially if I’ve only made the chorus.”
Nick and Gayle were whispering by then. Though it still was daylight, the sun was going down behind the mountains. They and the barmaid were the only ones left. “Well, think about it,” he said. “I haven’t done anything stupid yet today, and you probably haven’t either, have you?”
“No.”
“So we’ve stopped. Let’s keep it that way. In three more days we’ll be apart, so for a while at least, that problem will take care of itself.”
“I have an idea,” Gayle said.
“My parents’ condo is out. I don’t want Maureen and Eduardo’s bedroom, and the lodge rooms are sold out,” Nick said. “We’d have to take the shuttle down to Denver.”
