It was at this Easter party that the summer plan had been hatched. John planned to make the long weekend commute back and forth from the city for the season and Arden, faced with the prospect of loneliness during the week, itched for something to fill her dance card. She badly wanted a job writing the society column for an upstate paper out of Syracuse—more occupation, John had announced to the table, than was strictly required.
— You’ve already got two deadlines: Drop me off at the station on Sunday, and pick me up again on Friday night. There’s women who’d kill for that kind of leisure! Make some friends, why don’t you? What about Heike here? Didn’t you say your brother had an offer from Cornell?
John’s idea, almost: the girls hadn’t even had to do the work. Eric, unprepared for once, reticently agreed. Arden had an estate agent within the month.
Now Heike watched her fussing in the hall mirror: she couldn’t make the damn sleeve cooperate. Arden let out a breath of frustration, and her bangs lifted and fell. Heike rose high on her toes again.
The men had been out on the veranda with rocks glasses, and as Heike carried the meat through to the dining room it was suddenly decided that they would eat al fresco instead. Eric had hired a man to install a new trellis at one end of the rail, and within the trumpet vine he’d hidden a hummingbird feeder made of blown glass. For Heike, Eric said. He was hoping the hummers would give them an evening show. She diverted course and set the platter on the outdoor table, wedging it between a couple of fat candles in brass holders, not wanting to tell him that the noise of their dinner party would almost certainly defy his efforts. Eric followed her back inside and gathered the cutlery from the set table, jangling it in his hands and scrunching the folded napkins.
— Heike’s been ransacking an abandoned house, Arden said when they’d all sat down.
Eric looked up from salting his greens. He had dark hair, close cut, and high enough cheekbones. The sort of skin that tans easily in sunshine. The overall effect was dashing, especially in summer, but there was some problem around the eyes, something Heike could identify but not name. Disloyal, to think it.
— What house? John said. He leaned to Arden: Your brother’s been trying to hook me with his research propositions again. I need a change of subject before I’m compelled to turn state’s evidence.
Eric turned from Heike to look at John:
— Any decent doctor tries his own scripts. The whole thing is about opening the mind. Too progressive for you?
— Oppenheimer was also progressive.
John said this with his usual pleasant manner and shook out his napkin before tucking it in over the top button of his shirt.
Arden took up the salt shaker.
— I’m afraid John is quite a Continental theorist, Eric. Mad on the French, you know.
— The French? The French are still obsessed with Freud. What I’m doing is strictly twentieth century.
— Like the Fox, John said. Only less foxy. Heike, what’s this house?
She’d been moving a baby potato back and forth with her knife, half-watching the new feeder, and now picked up her fork to give the meal her attention.
— It’s not so much a house, Heike said. A fishing cabin. Maybe a mile up the lake. Mile and a half or so.
— Funny, she never mentioned a breath of it to me, Eric said. He laid a hand over Heike’s on the table and stroked the soft place between her thumb and forefinger with his own thumb. Then, to Arden: You ladies and your tales.
— I was out walking, Heike said. And I stopped to fix my ankle. I’m sure I told you. She turned away to take the breadbasket from John’s hand. You’ve probably passed by it ten times before. You can’t see it from the road. It’s hidden, kind of.
— But you went inside, Eric said.
— I knocked, and there was no one. The door was unlocked.
This was a lie. The deadbolt wasn’t engaged, but there was a doorknob lock, and Heike had tinkered with the knob and smacked hard against it with her hip until the door swung open.
— I could tell no one was there, she said. It has that look. There are dandelions growing right in front of the doorway.
— Squatter? John said. If it’s well hidden. He scooped up a pat of butter and used the back of his dessert spoon to spread a firm circle of it inside a roll.
— I think a squatter wouldn’t have so many nice things, Heike said. Would you? If you’re just staking a claim?
— What kind of things? Eric said.
Inside, the house had had a feeling of casual disuse: the cupboards lined in newspaper and all the cups stored upside down, but a thick layer of grime on the stove. No drop cloths over the furniture. Heike had picked up a corner of the coiled rag rug and let it fall, releasing a little storm of dust. But it was the presence of the raft outside that made it feel most like a home. Something extra, with no purpose other than a bit of recreation. A raft for a sunbather, for children to practice their deep dives.
— Whoever owns it, they thought they’d be coming back, Arden said.
— Whoever owns it died in the war, Eric said. He sawed at the chop on his plate. Died without family. Or they all died, who knows. He speared the meat with his fork. So long as no one knows you were there. We don’t want any trouble.
It was a three-room house, just a big kitchen and living area and one room with a bed, the coverlet pulled tight over the mattress. Heike had sat down on the edge of the bed, leaned over to peer into the crack under the highboy in the corner. Windows with their winter storms on. In the kitchen drawers there was real silverware, though, and she’d almost slipped a coffee spoon into her pocket, running the pad of her thumb in and out of the dull bowl. The newspapers lining the cupboard were from Rochester rather than New York. She let the spoon clink back into its drawer and opened up a glass cabinet instead, fingering the abandoned souvenirs before choosing a porcelain figurine of a girl, her round white hat tied under her chin, holding the corners of her apron out wide. Heike flipped the figurine over to check the bottom. Two swords. Meissen.
A destroyed place now, but Heike’s corner of the world, near to Dresden.
Bombed and scattered. She ran her fingertip down the smooth finish of the girl’s skirt. She’d been only three days away by foot when they came.
Lena sleeping next to her in a field. The sound of the planes overhead and suddenly it was morning, but in the east somehow two suns rising, instead of just one. Firebombs from Dresden and a red herring target, Böhlen, less than sixty miles to the north, lit the sky in two points. She’d thought she was crazy or dead.
Heike turned the figurine over in her hand again.
The connection seemed too much for coincidence. She pulled a single sheet of newspaper out of the cupboard and wrapped the girl up for the hike home.
— No risk of trouble, Heike said now. There was a cucumber salad on the table, and she spooned a little onto Eric’s plate before serving herself. No one’s been there for years, I’d say. You’re probably right: whoever owned it died overseas.
From the corner of her eye, she caught the sharp glint of a wing flickering in the trumpet vine, and for a moment she froze, unsure of whether to call attention to it. The little bird hovered at the feeder, neither drinking nor taking its leave, its tiny, furious body suspended. A held breath.
Heike set the salad bowl down and turned her own body to Eric.
— I walked all the way around the property, she said. No tire tracks, even. No trace.
THE NEXT DAY WAS clear and bright, with a high sun, somehow even early in the morning. Heike shifted in bed. Light flooded in strong through the sheers and caught the cut-glass vase on the vanity, spangling between the vase itself and the mirror behind it. She draped a hand across her eyes and tried to settle. John and Arden had stayed late—later, Heike knew, than Eric had originally wanted. But their attention had been too fawning for him to resist. His sister was committed to matching her own family’s camaraderie to John’s. They were all to be grea
t chums, Arden said. Like the Wylands.
Heike had crept upstairs to check on Daniel twice, watching his eyes roll and twitch beneath the closed lids. She’d tucked him snugly into their bed, a pillow on either side of him to stop him falling out. The second time, Eric had found her there, sitting quiet in her vigil, and whispered to her harshly to come back downstairs. She’d been gone too long; his brother-in-law had marked it. Ungrateful, to hide away like that.
The words came out with an abruptness that made Heike stiffen: the real problem was that her absence had forced Eric to host his relatives alone. He dropped to a crouch beside the rocking chair. After all Arden had done, he said. Imagine how it looked to others. Disappearing like a witch at midnight.
Heike said she thought it was witches who came out at midnight, and Cinderella who disappeared?
She could see by the taut corner of the bedsheet that he’d slept the night in his office. A lazy pang of regret ran through her: she could have apologized, hurried back downstairs, and saved herself what might now be a tiresome start to the day.
To the other side, Daniel curled against her, bum wriggling. Heike peeled out of bed and began to raise the blinds, one by one, crossing the long wall of the room. The front garden was in full light, English roses glowing coral-coloured where they wound high around their arbour, then the chamomile and low-lying thyme pale against the fringe of rock roses with their wilder look, a deep red. Heike paused a moment, surveying the landscape. She could see now that she’d overslept, the sun casting only the slimmest of shadows. It was not, in fact, early morning at all. To the west side of the lawn there was a bank of raspberry canes, and part of her songbird project taking shape—Eric’s idea, a few colourful houses on stilts. Berries being, he said, a lure for birds and children. Around the back, out of view, was the kitchen garden. Then only the shade trees, and beyond that the grass ran down to the stream’s edge, too shallow in this place to swim or set a boat down, the one failing of the house.
She spun and pulled the covers up high over Daniel’s head, covering him completely.
— Hey, wake up in there!
He shrieked and curled lower in the bed, his knees tucked underneath him.
— Who’s inside? Heike gave the little mound a preliminary tickle, the lilt of her voice leaning more German now, as it always did when they were alone: Is it Mr. Snail or Mr. Turtle? Who lives always in his bed?
There was a creak, and she looked up to where the door was suddenly standing open, Eric half inside the room with them. Heike straightened and moved toward him.
— Oh, Eric, I’m sorry we fought. Don’t be angry. Let’s not fight this morning.
He had a glass with him, balanced on a tray, and he stepped farther into the room and set the whole thing down on the dressing table.
— I’d hardly call it morning. He held his arms out to her, but she’d stopped a few feet shy of him, and after a moment he let them drop to his sides. I don’t know what you’re talking about, he said. There’s no reason to fight. Is there? Have you been up to something?
He was almost smiling.
Heike pulled her dressing gown off the chair and wrapped it around herself.
— No, of course not. Not if you don’t think so. She fussed a moment with the tie on the gown. I just want to have a happy day, she said. With no problems. I’m sorry I slept so late, I don’t know what’s wrong with me. The light is beautiful.
She pulled the tie into a bow and let it drape off her hip.
— I brought you a tonic, he said. Something for your head.
She looked back to where Daniel lay, bunched up under the covers, still again, as though he’d fallen back asleep now that the game was done. She turned to Eric:
— My head. How did you guess?
— You complained of a headache last night. Eric nudged the tray with the back of his hand to settle it more securely on the vanity. It sat centred now, in front of the mirror. He adjusted a perfume bottle, and then the tray again. Symmetry was satisfying to him.
— Did I? Heike said. I have a headache now. Or maybe not quite. She pressed her hands to her temples and closed and then opened her eyes again. I can feel it there, underneath. She let her hands drop. Like it’s waiting, she said.
— You were sitting up here in the rocker, Eric said, and I came to find where you’d gone. I thought maybe Daniel had had a nightmare, or you’d heard him call out, but you said you had a headache. Remember? He reached out, not for her hand but for her wrist, and used it to pull her closer. You remember now, don’t you? A terrible headache, you said. He drew a line with his thumb across her brow, temple to temple.
Heike worked to remember if that was the excuse she’d given. She’d been half-asleep in the chair when Eric came into the room, her eyes soft and only a bit of moonlight casting the room into grey shadows. It wasn’t antisocial, not really: Dani looked so calm and lovely when he was sleeping, his breath rising and falling like a quiet tide.
— I didn’t mean to disappear, she said. I was so tired.
He let his hand drift from her temple down along her jawline and cupped her chin a moment.
— Perhaps you should stay inside today.
— Oh, no. Eric, it’s a waste to keep indoors. Look at the sky! And the garden is so charming. Really. I slept very well last night.
He leaned in as if to kiss her, then spoke low into her ear instead:
— I wouldn’t want you to tax yourself.
He bit her cheek, gently, teeth pulling at her skin.
Heike touched the place where his mouth had been. The cheek was warm. She left her palm there, covering it. Eric stepped back and held the glass out to her.
— Come now. Drink up your tonic like a good girl. Did you see I’ve added to your bird village? There’s a new house, a blue one.
Under the blankets, Daniel gave a squawky yawn. Heike swivelled to watch the rumple of bedding rise up and flop down again. It grew limbs, stretched like a starfish under the white sheets, and then lost them, returning to its former hunched shape, and bounced there to some rhythm of its own device.
She looked to Eric, her eyes a mix of amusement and quiet pride, and then back to Daniel. Eric leaned to one side so as to follow her gaze.
— Will you trust the good doctor, or won’t you? I’m sure Daniel wants his breakfast. He called over her shoulder, toward the bed: Don’t you, Dani?
Heike watched the bedding perform its dance, her head to one side. Eric laid a hand on her shoulder to try to draw her attention, then slid the hand along her back, his fingers playing at the knob at the top of her spine, a tiny massage.
— You’ve got fresh eggs in the icebox. The neighbour’s girl brought them over this morning.
Dani sat upright, the sheets falling away.
— Eggs and soldiers?
Heike turned back to face Eric, mimicking Daniel’s wide eyes:
— Eggs and soldiers? She had an easy smile now.
Eric held the glass.
— You know I’ll always take care of you. You do know that, don’t you, Heike?
— I know. Heike slipped the tonic out of his hand, repeating the phrase: I know you’ll always take care of me. She swallowed the liquid down, making an exaggerated face. Ugh. It tastes like baking soda.
Eric picked up the tray and took the empty glass back again.
— I think the fresh air does you good, he said. Perhaps it’s not such a bad idea to go for a little walk today. You’ll be alright all by yourself?
Heike gave the back of her head a scratch. Then, sitting down at the vanity mirror, she wrinkled up her nose and began to fix her hair, moving it this way and that. Her eyes flicked to Eric’s reflection, pausing there for a moment to read his expression. A softness in his eyes.
— We’ll just play in the garden this morning, she said. And maybe later on, a little hike in the woods.
THEY SET OUT IN the afternoon heat, on foot, Heike carrying a pack across her shoulders. For this and that, sh
e said. The pack clanked in a gentle way as she walked, the sound of glass jars knocking against each other in the cradle of the fabric. Maybe a few peaches are in there, she told Daniel. Maybe something else, too.
Daniel had strapped on a lifejacket and rain boots, although she’d explained to him that they couldn’t take the canoe the whole way. First they had to walk in the shade awhile.
— You’d get a sunburn at this time of day. Besides, don’t you want to see some rabbits?
The launch was farther downstream. She pried the rubber boots, heat-damp, off his bare feet and made him wear sandals. Daniel played with the straps of the lifejacket, pulling them tighter over his T-shirt. His swim trunks had blue stripes.
The earth at the edge of the woods had begun to look sandy again, granular. A whole day without rain. Heike picked up her own trail through the trees, boot prints still marking out a path where the ground was shaded from sun, but she wore sandals now, too, and short sleeves, the halter of her own swimsuit teasing at the back of her neck, and they stopped to peer down holes cut into the ground, tunnels hidden under brambles or tree roots. Daniel right down on his hands and knees, Heike behind, holding him by the shoulders.
— What do you call rabbit babies?
— Kits, I think, Heike said. No. Kittens?
— What about bunnies?
— Bunnies is maybe a cute word.
— But not real?
— Not scientific.
— It’s kits, Daniel said, nodding. Then, wiggling out of her grasp and lurching forward: Maybe we could catch one!
— It might not be bunnies in that hole.
— Kits!
— Kits, okay, she repeated. But maybe it’s not. Rabbits or mice. It could be badgers. Or a rat! Heike gave his shoulders a squeeze, and Daniel jumped. So we don’t try to catch things, she said.
Daniel considered this. From above them came the solitary, persistent knock of a woodpecker. He looked up, suddenly distracted from what he might find under the path.
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