Margot's War

by Ty Knoy

  “Pictures at an Exhibition?”

  “Yes.

  Larry started the car.

  “You want to hear the rest about the Millers, don’t you?”

  “Yes. Had he come here—with his wife—to see if he would divorce her and marry your mother?”

  “That wasn’t it at all. When Adele—that’s Mrs. Miller’s first name—and I went downstairs, she told me she and my mother had been close friends, both in high school and then in college in Iowa City,” Camille began. “Mother was Kappa Kappa Gamma, and Adele pledged the next year. She said that when they were in high school, they were dating the Miller brothers, she with John and Mother with David. They had even talked about being in each other’s weddings.

  “But then, when they were back home in the summer of 1944, Mother dropped out of Iowa and never went back.” Camille said that Adele and her mother never saw each other again, and even though her mother was home for Christmas that winter, they never even talked on the phone. “She said my grandmother was very worried about her, that she was just skin and bones, and that her clothes didn’t fit anymore—so much so that it was hopeless to try to take them in.

  “It was wartime, and despite the national thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit, gasoline rationing, and tire rationing and all of that, my grandfather and grandmother drove her back to Indiana and bought her new clothes, such as they could find. Store shelves were rather empty late in the war.

  “Adele also told me something about Mother that I hadn’t known. Mother never told me much of anything about herself. I guess she didn’t want Cindy and me to know when we were growing up that she had ever loved anyone other than our father.”

  “David Miller?” Nick asked.

  “You’d think my grandmother might have told us. What Adele said was that on a nice Sunday afternoon when they were in high school, she, my mother, John Miller, who later became her husband, and David Miller all were all in the music room.”

  Nick nodded.

  “You saw it in the photo,” Camille said. “In fact, you were in the room many years later, you said.”

  “Yes.”

  “They were still dressed in their church clothes, Mother was playing, and they all were singing and planning to go into town for a picture show. Then, Adele said, ‘Your grandfather came in from the main part of the house, interrupted our song, and told us that Pearl Harbor was being bombed.’”

  A shiver ran down Nick’s spine. “I see,” he said.

  “They didn’t go to the movie that day. They all huddled around the console radio in the living room for the rest of the afternoon and listened and listened. Both Miller boys went into the service the next year, John into the navy right out of high school and David into the army after a year in college.”

  “So what happened?” Nick asked, sure he already knew.

  “This is the account of it that I got from Adele last spring, who got it from my grandmother. Mother never spoke a word about it. While she was at the university in Iowa City, she and David were writing letters, and she knew he was in England. When the invasion began, she and everyone else in the Kappa house, like everyone else all over the nation—all over the world, really—crowded around radios, day and night. She called David’s parents now and then, but there was no word to them about him being in either England or France. Letters had stopped. The school term ended, and back home, Mother stayed by the big radio in the family room. Adele said she and Mother still were spending time together then. There were high casualty reports along with news of successes from France, but there still had been no word from David.

  “One day, late in June, my mother and grandmother heard a car come up into the farm’s driveway.”

  “Through the kitchen window, they saw the Miller boys’ parents get out of their car and start to walk toward the house.”

  “Umm,” Nick said.

  “This is it,” Larry said from the front seat as he stopped the car for a light in the city.

  Camille went on. “They could have just called out to the farm, you know, but they didn’t do that. They both came in person. My mother saw them too from the big window in the living room. She knew instantly, even as she saw them getting out of the car, even before they came onto the porch, before they came to the screen door.”

  Nick took a deep breath. Larry didn’t look back.

  “She didn’t scream, didn’t cry or bawl, but just froze. Later, my grandmother would say that at that moment, Katherine Anne became a different person; after that, she didn’t know her anymore.”

  “She turned into an adult,” Nick said as Larry guided the car into the long drive to the porte cochère.

  Larry, stopped the car in front of the door, turned to look back, and when Camille didn’t say anything, said, “I guess you could call it that. That’s one way of looking at it.”

  After another moment, Camille said, “She went into a piano-playing frenzy, never listened to the radio again, canceled her fall enrollment at Iowa, and enrolled in school over here. The last time she had seen David was in Iowa City and, Grandmother said, she vowed never to go back there.”

  CHAPTER 22

  NICK GOT OUT of the car and went around to open the door for Camille. He and she went in together as Larry drove the car away.

  The retirement center’s piano had been moved from the lounge to the dining hall, and another woman had replaced Priscilla at the reception desk. A few dozen chairs had been arranged in semicircles around the piano at one end of the dining hall.

  Nick picked up a flyer from a stack on a music stand.

  Memorial Concert

  3:30 p.m., Saturday, October 8

  Katherine Anne Kendall

  Aug. 29, 1925—Oct. 7, 2011

  Pictures at an Exhibition

  Modest Mussorgsky

  Helen Brown, piano faculty, pianist

  “Mother arranged all this,” Camille said. “All I had to do was call the pianist.”

  “You’ve heard this more than a few dozen times,” Nick said.

  “Yes. But not in forty years.”

  “I’ve heard it only twice. Once in Colorado, when your mother played it there under the stars, and then in Ann Arbor, several years later. Gayle and I took my mother over to hear an Italian pianist in Hill Auditorium, but he had become ill, and a pianist born in Russia filled in. He chose to play Pictures. That was quite a surprise for me, considering it was the only other live performance of it that I’d ever heard.”

  “Did you tell Gayle?”

  “I think so. She had, after all, heard your mother playing Chopin through the phone I had hung on the fence, so she knew what had gone on next door.”

  “Some of it, anyway,” Camille said. “Excuse me, I see our pianist is here, and there are some others I need to talk to.”

  “Sure.”

  Camille walked away to the piano. Larry came in, and he and Nick sat in the lounge. “No sports bar in here is there?” Nick asked.

  “Afraid not.”

  “Do things start on time here? Ann Arbor is a funny place, insofar as time is concerned. They have a thing there they call ‘Ann Arbor time.’ Scheduled events all start ten minutes after the published time.”

  Larry laughed. “So the whole town is conditioned to it, and everyone just sees it as the norm.” Then he said, “I have to go be with Cammy.”

  Nick took a seat in the back row of chairs in the dining room. The chairs were mostly taken, several by people with walkers or canes. On the far side, Nick saw Big Bill, the police sergeant, in civilian clothes, sitting with Lille Gordon, but he didn’t catch either of their eyes.

  Katherine Anne’s memorial concert began on time. Camille stood, announced the program, and said that Mrs. Kendall had been a wonderful loving mother and that she loved her deeply. Without anecdote or further adieu, she introduced the piani
st and announced the music.

  During the “Second Promenade,” Nick’s daughter, heavy with child but in high heels nonetheless, and Alan Maarten appeared in the hallway. They took programs off the stand and looked around. Nick caught their eyes and waved them to chairs he was holding next to his own. He kissed his daughter on the cheek as she sat and reached across her lap and silently shook hands with Alan.

  “Thanks for coming,” Nick wrote on his program and then handed it to them.

  The music ended twenty or so minutes later to polite applause, and when the clapping had subsided, Nick’s daughter pointed to her program. “Who is Katherine Anne Kendall, Dad? What are you doing down here?”

  Alan, looking at Nick over her shoulder, smiled crookedly.

  “Mrs. Kendall was an acquaintance of Victor’s,” Nick said. “This is where Victor was an undergraduate, you know.”

  “I see.”

  “Mrs. Kendall knew him. I met her in ninety forty-six, when I was five, on Mackinac Island. I was hoping to talk to her today.”

  Across the room, Camille broke away from the condolences and came over.

  “This is Katherine Kendall’s daughter, Mrs. Margolis,” Nick said, “and Mrs. Margolis, I’d like you to meet my daughter, Mrs. Clarkson, and my friend, Alan Maarten.”

  “My first name is Camille, and I believe I spoke to you—briefly—on the phone this afternoon, Mr. Maarten,” she said with a wry smile for Al as she extended her hand to him and to Nick’s daughter. “And I’m sorry, Mrs. Clarkson. We use first names here and I didn’t catch yours.”

  Nick grimaced.

  “Margot. Margot Clarkson.”

  Camille, without a gasp and in perfect tempo, said, “What a nice name.” She glanced down at Margot’s stomach and back. “Your father said you are due very soon. It is so awful about your mother, that she couldn’t be here for you.”

  “Yes,” Margot said. “It is hard. I’m sorry about your mother.”

  “It was unexpected. She seemed perfectly all right yesterday afternoon. This must have been a hard trip for you.”

  “I flew to Indianapolis. Mr. Maarten met me there.”

  “My first grandchild,” Nick said. “I’m afraid we must get Margot back home, close to her doctor and her husband. Say goodbye to Larry for me, please, and thank you, Camille, for your hospitality. And thank Larry, too, for putting up with all of this.”

  “I saw your car out there,” Al said. “I can bring it around.”

  Nick handed the keys and Al started away, but Nick chased after him a couple of steps and said quietly, “There are a pair of women’s shoes on the front seat. Bring them in without letting Margot see and give them to Camille. Tell her they belonged to her mother. She’ll understand.”

  “Okay,” Al said. He went out the door and Nick went back to Margot and Camille.

  “There are refreshments now if you can stay a little longer.”

  “Thank you so much, Camille, but I believe we should head back north,’ Nick said. “We’re just in the way here. I’ve been in your way all day. Thanks again for everything.”

  “You are very welcome, Mr. Rohloffsen. Nice seeing you again after all these years.” She gave Nick a quick embrace and a peck on the cheek.

  Nick held her arm as she stepped back. “Forgive me for asking, but what are to become of your mother’s ashes?”

  Camille paused.

  Nick let go of her arm. “Back to South Bend? Back to Iowa?”

  “No. Neither,” Camille said. “I just opened up my orders while we were back at the house.” She drew a deep breath. “I’m to take her ashes to France, wait for a rainy day, and then sprinkle them into the grass over David Miller’s grave, in the American Cemetery at Colleville-sur-Mer, Normandy.”

  Nick’s knees felt as if they would buckle. He stayed steady, or so he thought, but Camille and Margot both took his arms.

  “I didn’t know anything about any of this until Adele Miller told me last spring,” Camille said.

  After a silent moment, Nick asked, “Did your father know?”

  “I doubt it,” Camille said. “Believe it or not, I really don’t think they ever told each other much about themselves.”

  “When are you going?”

  “Probably the end of the week.”

  “Will you call me, Camille, when it is done? I just need to know when everything is, well, back in its proper place.”

  “Okay, I will,” she said. “Could you excuse me now? I do need to talk to some people over there.”

  Nick and Margot met Al, holding his hand behind his back, at the door. “Never mind that,” Nick said to him. “Just put them under the seat. It was a dumb idea anyway.”

  At the car, Nick opened the front door for Margot as he said to Al, “Would you please drive for a while. I’m into some serious sleep deprivation right now.”

  Margot sat in and then looked up at her father. “Are you going to tell me any more about all this, Daddy?” she asked.

  “I’ll explain later, sweetheart, if I can, but you were born too late to understand. Maybe I was, too.” He closed the door.

  Nick and Al nodded to each other. Nick shook his head.

  “The only thing I don’t understand,” Al said, “is how did she know you were going to be in that house next door?”

  “She couldn’t have,” Nick said. “I was the only thing in that whole thing that was random.”

  -END-

  Thanks to the following for reads, suggestions, inspirations:

  Adrienne, Hope, Kirby, Sam, Mel, Wayne, Sonja, Allan, Kate, Bruce, and Jonathon.

  And to the memory of Bill Wilson.