When We Meet Again

by Kristin Harmel

  “How did you know we even existed?” I asked. “Did you see my grandmother’s picture in my column a few months ago?”

  She smiled slightly. “That was startling, I admit. But I knew who you were before that, Emily.”

  “How?”

  She got up and crossed the room, sitting beside me on the couch. She touched my face gently and looked into my eyes, and I wondered what she was thinking, what she was trying to see. “You know, I hated your grandmother.” The words were weighted, bogged down in something inescapable. “I hated how, even in death, she had stolen Ralph from me and continued to steal him every day. I thought she was to blame for making him the sad, withdrawn man he was. But in fact, as it turned out, the opposite was true.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Something changed,” she said, her voice suddenly hollow. “He knew he was dying, and it was in all the papers, of course. There was a very indiscreet doctor at the hospital, who spoke with a reporter, and suddenly, the art world was abuzz with the story.” She pressed her lips together. “In any case, Emily, the day before he died, the light came on within him. He was happy—beyond happy, in fact—in a way I’d never seen before. And I suppose, well, I suppose I have your grandmother to thank for that.”

  I stared at her in confusion. “But he thought my grandmother died years ago. How could she have played a role in bringing him any happiness in the end?”

  Ingrid rose and walked to the window. She gazed out at the rose garden for a long time before turning around. I could see tears glimmering in her eyes as she spoke. “Because the day before Ralph died,” she said, looking me right in the eye, “he talked to your grandmother for the first time in seventy years.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  * * *

  FEBRUARY 2015

  Peter knew it was the end, and yet somehow, he thought it would be different. How could a man live to be ninety-four, endure everything that he had endured, and not expect that death would somehow be dignified?

  But it wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. The cancer eating away at his pancreas was making its way to the other organs of his body, rendering them useless one by one. It seemed almost absurd to have survived World War II only to lose his final battle to an army of invading cells so small he couldn’t even see them.

  And yet they were advancing. The doctor had halfheartedly suggested chemotherapy, but Peter had laughed aloud. He was in his nineties. He had been lucky to have this many years. No, he would go gently and peacefully into the night, he decided. But he hadn’t expected the waves of nausea, the cascades of pain as the cancer spread. He hadn’t anticipated the way that sometimes, reality would feel fuzzy, and he wouldn’t quite be able to hang on.

  He worried most about Ingrid, about leaving her alone. But he had already done so, hadn’t he? By refusing to let her into his heart, he had left her long ago, and the remaining days were too few now to atone for that mistake. So he had to live with it, and sometimes, he wondered if the cancer was feeding on his guilt. If so, it would encounter a veritable feast, he thought. He was filled with regret over so very many things. But he knew without a doubt that it was Ingrid he had hurt not only the most, but the most deliberately.

  He blamed himself sometimes for Margaret’s death, too. If he hadn’t gotten her pregnant, she wouldn’t have died in childbirth. But over time, some of that guilt had slipped away, because he hadn’t meant to hurt her—just the opposite, in fact. It didn’t bring her back, but it absolved him slightly of the regret borne of conscious responsibility. He had done what he had done because he loved her. He hadn’t taken advantage in any way. And if God had chosen this path for them, then so be it.

  As he began to feel his body shutting down in those final weeks, capitulating to the enemy cells, he began to think seriously about heaven. It had been a long time since he’d considered it, in fact. At first, all those years ago, when a stone-faced Louise had told him that Margaret was dead, he hadn’t believed her. He refused to ask himself if his love was in heaven, looking down at him, because he so desperately wanted to believe that she was still out there. The years passed, and his hope faded, but still, he wasn’t sure about the afterlife. After all, if Margaret was up there in some sort of celestial kingdom, wouldn’t he have felt her presence sometimes? Wouldn’t he have sensed her with him in his darkest hours? But he never did.

  And now, the end was coming, and Peter felt a strange sense of hesitant elation. Would he see Margaret on the other side? Would she know him? Would she love him? And what if she didn’t? The thought terrified Peter more than the cancer itself did.

  Then one afternoon in mid-December, Peter had gotten a call from a New Yorker writer named Lauren Golgoski who had interviewed him over the years during some of his major New York exhibits. “I understand you’re ill, Mr. Gaertner,” she said. “I’m so very sorry to hear that.”

  “Who told you?”

  “A doctor mentioned it at a cocktail party. Very unprofessional, if you ask me, but word got back to me nonetheless. I’m so sorry.”

  He felt betrayed, but in the grand scheme of things, this betrayal was a small one, wasn’t it? “I suppose the cat would have been out of the bag eventually.”

  “The perils of celebrity, I suppose,” she said. “I wanted to check with you before writing anything, Mr. Gaertner. I’m afraid the news will indeed get out there, but I’d love to do it the right way. Would you be up for a brief interview?”

  Peter thought about it for a moment. He had never minded the media when they were ethical. Even when art critics were taking aim at him, he respected that they had opinions—and a right to express them. This writer in particular had always struck him as kind and honest in her dealings. “Yes, Lauren,” he said. “I’m not feeling well, but I could speak with you for a few minutes.”

  He was surprised that she didn’t pry more. He would have told her everything, if only she’d asked. He might have told her his real name. He might even have revealed the identity of the shadowy woman in his paintings, which had long been a source of speculation within the art community. But her questions were softballs about his legacy and his life, and so he answered them succinctly and hung up the phone respecting Lauren all the more for not digging too deeply.

  The article ran after the first of the year, and the news was picked up in newspapers across the country. He was even a ticker headline on CNN. It was astonishing. And then, on Valentine’s Day, not long after the story hit, Peter got a call that changed everything.

  “There’s a woman named Louise trying to reach you,” Ingrid had said, pressing her lips together tightly as she handed him the phone. “She says it’s urgent and personal.”

  Louise? It couldn’t be. “Hello?” he asked tentatively.

  “Peter Dahler?” the woman said in a slow southern drawl, the vowels lengthened by age.

  “No, this is Ralph Gaertner,” he said, his heart suddenly racing.

  “Right. And I’m the queen of England. Shall we just dispense with all the bullshit? We’re too old for it, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Perhaps so,” Peter replied after a moment.

  “This is Louise Evans Candless. But you might know me as Louise Evans. Do you know who I am?”

  “Margaret’s sister,” he said, and Ingrid, who had been lingering as she feigned a reorganization of the dresser, whipped around to stare at him in disbelief.

  “Good. I was afraid you were one of those sad-sack cases with memory loss,” Louise said. “I have some things to say to you, and I’d prefer to do it in person. Can we arrange that?”

  Peter met Ingrid’s eye, knowing that she would hate it, but he had to hear what Louise had to say. “Yes. But can you come to my home? I’m not well enough to travel.”

  “I’m calling you from the Atlanta airport,” she replied immediately. “I can be there in an hour.”

  * * *

  By the time Louise arrived at the door, Peter had had time to fight with Ingrid, who had stormed out
of the house in a huff. Alice, their housekeeper, was kind enough to let Louise in.

  “Well, you look even worse than I expected,” Louise said as she plunked down in the chair Alice had set up beside Peter’s bed. Alice raised an eyebrow and left the room. “You look like crap, actually.”

  “Nice to see you too, Louise,” Peter said, oddly relieved that even his deteriorating body hadn’t made Louise retract her claws. Consistency was comforting. And oddly, despite the gray hair and the deep wrinkles, she didn’t look that different than she had the last time he’d seen her, in 1950.

  “So what’s all this Ralph Gaertner crap?” she asked. “You running from something, Peter Dahler?”

  He coughed, a long, hacking cough, but she didn’t move. She didn’t even flinch. Finally, he managed to say, “How long have you known?”

  “Oh, since the sixties or so. I’m not a big art lover, but I saw you on Johnny Carson. I would have recognized you anywhere. I couldn’t imagine why you were going by some fake name, though.”

  “I had to leave the past behind,” he said. “I had to start over.”

  “Well, that makes two of you,” she said.

  “What?”

  She shook her head. “You’re a fool, you know.”

  “I don’t follow, Louise.” Another hacking cough rattled his body, and Louise waited until he was done to continue.

  “You should have just left her in the past, along with your name. Instead, you went and painted her in every single one of your goddamn pictures, didn’t you?”

  Peter knew she was talking about Margaret. “I couldn’t forget her, Louise. You have to understand, I couldn’t let her go.”

  “What’d she have that was so special, anyways?” Louise asked.

  “Everything, Louise. She had everything. She was the love of my life.”

  Louise muttered something under her breath. Then she looked down, and after a moment, Peter could see her shoulders heaving.

  “Louise? Are you all right? Are you crying?”

  Her head snapped up, and although she was glaring at him, something in her expression had softened. “I ain’t crying.”

  Peter coughed again, tasting blood. He felt his head spinning, and he grabbed on to the bed rail to steady himself. When he could breathe again, he said, “Why did you come here, Louise? I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m not really up to socializing, I’m afraid.”

  Louise opened and closed her mouth a few times, as if she was trying to force the words out, but they wouldn’t come.

  “Louise?” Peter prompted. “What is it?”

  “She didn’t die,” Louise said flatly.

  Everything within Peter went cold. “What?”

  “Margaret. She didn’t die in childbirth, like I said she did.”

  Peter stared at her, his lungs constricting. “Is she still—?”

  Louise didn’t say anything.

  “Is she alive?” Peter demanded after the silence seemed to stretch on forever. “Tell me, Louise.”

  “Yes. Or at least she was a couple months ago. I got a letter from her two days before Christmas. First I’d heard from her in seventy years.”

  Peter’s heart seized, and he clutched his chest. He felt like he was having a heart attack, but when Louise got up and called for Alice, Peter silenced her by grabbing her arm with a death grip. “No!” he rasped. “Don’t you dare! You stay right here and tell me everything.”

  “Not until you breathe. I ain’t gonna be responsible for killing you.”

  Peter finally got himself under control, but still he was gasping for air. “Where is she?” he demanded sharply. “What did you do, Louise?”

  She bit her lip for a moment before continuing. “You gotta understand, Margaret having the bastard child of a Nazi was real embarrassing for all of us. My daddy disowned her, and there wasn’t much my mother and I could do. He was furious, and well, it was just best for everyone that they get out of town.”

  “They?” Peter whispered. “The baby lived too?”

  “Yes.” Louise cleared her throat. “Yes, he did.”

  Peter stared at her in disbelief. “You lied and kept me from Margaret?”

  “I said I apologize.”

  “And you denied me the chance to know my own son?”

  “Yes,” Louise answered a bit more softly now. “Look, I’m real sorry.”

  That didn’t matter to Peter. Not at all. Her apology meant nothing, for the things she had taken from him could never be replaced. But the ache in his chest over missing a lifetime with his family was replaced suddenly by a different kind of ache. He looked up at her in horror. “But how could Margaret leave without trying to find me? I promised I would return for her!”

  “A letter arrived from someone claiming to be you in January of ’46, the day before the baby was born,” Louise said. “It said your fling with Margaret was a mistake and you were marrying your old girlfriend. You wanted Margaret to move on.” She looked him in the eye, and Peter knew she wasn’t lying. Someone close to him—probably his father—had destroyed everything. His stomach heaved, and he thought he might throw up as she continued. “I don’t think Margaret believed it at first. But of course she never heard from you, and well, eventually, she realized she had to let you go. It was what was best for the baby.”

  “But I wrote to her so many times,” Peter whispered.

  Louise looked down again. “I—I never gave her the letters. I thought it would be better for everyone if she just moved on.”

  “Louise! Why?”

  “Because she didn’t deserve you!” Louise said, suddenly fierce. “And if she had gone off to be with you, it would have ruined all of us. Is that what you wanted? To ruin our family?”

  “No,” Peter murmured. “I wanted to build a family of my own. With the woman I loved more than life itself. But you took that from me.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m sorry,” Louise said, bowing her head.

  “And you say she’s still alive? Where is she? What happened to her?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. She said in her letter that she was in a nursing home in Orlando. She said she forgave me; she didn’t know how much time she had left, and something her granddaughter said made her realize that she didn’t want to leave this earth with a burden of anger on her heart.”

  “Her granddaughter?” Peter whispered. “My son’s daughter?”

  “I assume so.”

  “I have a granddaughter too?” He felt like he’d been punched in the gut. “Are they okay? What became of my son?”

  “I honestly don’t know. Margaret didn’t give me any details. I guess she felt it wasn’t my right to know about her life. And she said she didn’t want me to call her. She just wanted me to know she wasn’t taking her anger to the grave.” Her eyes filled, and she looked away.

  “So why are you here, Louise?” Peter demanded, suddenly furious at this woman who was calmly recounting all she’d stolen from him. “To kick me while I’m down? To ruin what’s left of my life?”

  She looked horrified. “Of course not.”

  “Then why?”

  “Because I saw on the news that you were dying. And I don’t know, I thought maybe it wasn’t too late to set things right.”

  “To set things right?” He could feel his heart pounding too hard. He hadn’t been this furious in years. He tried to breathe. “What could you possibly do to fix things now?”

  “I got the name of the nursing home. It’s in Orlando,” she said quietly, handing over a piece of paper with the information jotted down. “Maybe you can call her there. Margaret changed her name too. Just like you. You were both running from the past, but the past was there all along, wasn’t it?”

  “You took it from us! You took away the past and any chance of a future! You and your parents and my father. There’s nothing that can make up for that.”

  “I said I’m sorry.”

  “What name did she take?” He wanted to ask if she had taken his name,
but to be honest, he had considered that before. Back in the ’50s, when he didn’t want to believe she was dead, he had also had the investigator he hired search for a Margaret Dahler, just in case.

  “Emerson,” Louise said. “Margaret Emerson. After some writer she liked.”

  Peter’s eyes filled. “Ralph Waldo Emerson.”

  “Yeah, that’s right.” Louise squinted at him. “Hey. Ralph, like your fake name.”

  “Yes, Louise,” Peter murmured. “Ralph, like my fake name.”

  Louise stared at him for a moment before understanding crossed her face. “Oh.” She cleared her throat. “Well, the boy is named Victor. Victor Jeremiah Emerson.”

  Victor. Exactly what Peter had named the boy in his mind when he thought he was merely a figment of his imagination. “The middle name is for the boy Margaret used to care for?”

  Louise frowned. “I suppose so. He was the only one who stood by her when the whole town turned against her. Whole lotta good it did her, having a little black boy stand up for her. He left the same night she did. Boy, that would have started some rumors if we didn’t tell people she died in childbirth.”

  “Good for them,” Peter murmured. “And the girl? Our granddaughter? Do you know her name?”

  “Margaret said in her letter it was Emily.”

  “Emily,” he whispered. “Where are they now? Victor and Emily?”

  Louise shook her head. “No idea.”

  “But they’re your family, Louise. Don’t you care?”

  “It’s too late, Peter. They’d hate me.”

  Peter coughed again, but this time, it wasn’t his lungs betraying him. It was the lump in his throat. “Does Margaret know I’m still alive?”

  “I got no idea. Probably not. You think she could have forgiven me if she knew that?” She paused and stood. “I wish I’d told her years ago, but it’s too late for that. And like I said, I’m sorry. You ain’t gonna hold a grudge, are you?”

  Peter didn’t know how to answer that. He couldn’t possibly absolve her, but like Margaret had said in her letter, he didn’t want to carry such anger to his grave. So he stared at her for a long time and finally said, “What’s done is done.”