by Jenna Blum
There's one other thing you might want to know, the nurse says.
What's that?
She's not talking. She hasn't said a word since she came in, not to the doctor, not to anybody. We had to get her information from her social worker.
Trudy nods.
That's nothing new, she says. But thank you for telling me. Again, that glance of compassion. Then the nurse walks away, the rubber soles of her sneakers creaking on the linoleum.
Trudy waits until the nurse has turned the corner. Then she takes a deep breath and opens her mother's door.
Oh, Mama, she says softly.
Anna is asleep in a hospital bed, the light bar over it casting a white glare on her face. If they are so adamant about Anna getting her rest, why is this on? Trudy wonders. She steals across the room. At least Anna is hooked up to nothing more dire than an IV There are no tubes snaking into her nostrils, no beeping machines. Trudy lifts a plastic chair to the bedside. She sloughs her coat and sits as near to Anna as she dares.
Trudy has not seen Anna since Anna's seventy-sixth birthday in August, and she is shocked by how much Anna has changed in three months. Failing, the older New Heidelburgers would call it. Trudy catalogues with indignant sorrow the weight loss, the age spots, the spreading bruise on her mother's hand from the IV They are frightening and unfair, the ravages time wreaks. Yet even now, Trudy is struck by the extraordinary geometry of her mother's face: the sculpted cheekbones and square jaw. The pleasing symmetry of widow's peak and pointed chin. In Anna's gray hair, the light streaks—once blond, now white—providing the touch of oddity without which real beauty is incomplete. Ever since Trudy can remember, whenever Anna made one of her rare forays into public, people would gravitate to whatever room she was in, just to look at her. But they never got too close. Anna's loveliness, combined with how little she talked, set her apart from ordinary folk. Made them clumsy. Suspicious. Shy. Resentful: Oh, she's stuck-up, all right. Thinks she's so much better than us.
But Trudy knows there are other reasons for Anna's silence. Now Trudy inches farther forward and squints, as if by concentrating she could penetrate the surface to what really interests her: her mother's skull, hard as the casing of a walnut. And within this, like the meat of a walnut with its complicated folds, her mother's brain. What information is encrypted in that soft gray matter? Trudy wonders. She watches Anna's eyes roll back and forth like marbles beneath their papery lids. What is Anna seeing now as she sleeps? What scenes so shameful that she will never speak of them, has never spoken of them, not even to her own daughter? What memories so tormenting that they have finally—perhaps—become unbearable?
As if she senses this invasive line of questioning, Anna jerks and wakes. She focuses her pale eyes on Trudy, who is reminded of the ghostly stare sometimes seen from a dead relative in an old photograph, a gaze from which one can't turn away.
Trudy hastily sits back. Anna looks at her, or perhaps through her to somebody who isn't there.
Mama? How are you feeling?
Anna doesn't so much as blink. The familiar silence spins itself out, so complete that Trudy can hear the faint and insectile buzz of the fluorescent bar over the bed.
Won't you talk to me, Mama?
Anna says nothing. Trudy waits. Then she touches Anna's hand, carefully, mindful of the tubing threaded into the vein.
Please, Mama. Was it an accident? The house, I mean. The fire. Or ... I'm sorry, but I have to know. Did you—Did you set it on purpose?
Anna turns her face away. Then she rolls her head to the center of the pillow, her eyes once again closed.
After another minute or two, Trudy stands and collects her coat from the chair.
I'm sorry to have disturbed you, Mama, she says. I'm leaving now. But don't worry. I'll be back soon. And I'll take care of everything.
She leaves the room, quietly shutting the door behind her, and walks through the trauma ward to the reception desk.
The nurse glances up and sets her romance novel aside. Passion's Promise, it is called.
How's our girl?
Better than I expected, says Trudy.
Still sleeping?
Yes.
The nurse nods with satisfaction. She's going to be just fine. Out of here in no time.
How long will you keep her, do you think? Trudy asks.
Oh, a couple of days at most. No more than that.
Trudy runs a hand through her hair. I see. I guess I'll have to make some immediate arrangements, then ... Well, thank you for everything.
The nurse watches Trudy curiously as she buttons her coat.
Are you taking her to live with you then? she asks.
This suggestion so shocks Trudy that she involuntarily snorts laughter through her nose. She rubs a knuckle across it, hoping the nurse has mistaken the sound for a sneeze.
Oh, no, she replies. I don't think she's in good enough shape for that, do you?
Well, the nurse says dubiously, she seems pretty strong. Some of these older farm ladies go on forever, you know. If it was up to me, I might—
Trudy shakes her head.
It's out of the question, she says. I work full-time, I can't look after her, and even if I had enough money to hire somebody—No. It's impossible.
The nurse shrugs and opens her book again.
That's too bad, she says. I suppose she'll go to the Center then.
Trudy grimaces beneath the scarf she is winding around her face. The penitential building next door is hardly the sort of place in which one would want to spend one's golden years. But there is no use being softhearted about it. This is just the way things are. Trudy herself will end up in a similar institution one day. And now, for Anna, it is the only logical alternative.
Yes, the Good Samaritan Center, she tells the nurse, her voice muffled by wool. In fact, whom should I speak to about getting her a room? Because when my mother's ready to leave, I think it'll be best to have her transferred directly there.
9
AFTER THIS VISIT, TRUDY IS TOO WEARY TO FACE THE three-hour drive back to Minneapolis, with its attendant dangers of black ice and starving deer who wander onto the roadway. Besides, Trudy has more business in New Heidelburg; better to get it over with all at once instead of making another trip. Since the town offers nothing in the way of accommodation—it isn't exactly a tourist attraction—she spends the night in one of the cheap motels on the outskirts of Rochester, in an overheated room that smells of smoke and dirty hair. She sleeps restlessly and rises early, and after a complimentary breakfast consisting of a roll and coffee so weak Trudy can see the bottom of the cup through the liquid, she returns to New Heidelburg, where she stops first at the nursing home to arrange for Anna's room there. A single, of course; if Anna, that most private of women, were forced to endure a roommate on top of everything else, Trudy thinks, she would break her toothbrush glass and quietly eat the pieces.
This unhappy but necessary task accomplished, Trudy proceeds to the next: dropping by the town's real estate office to list the farmhouse for sale and its contents for auction. This transaction too is concluded with surprising ease, although the realtor wears on her sweater a Santa Claus pin with demonic, flashing red eyes, which both fascinates Trudy and stirs in her a vague anxiety.
She finds herself back out on the street much earlier than expected, and since she has no reason to linger, she again takes her leave of the town, this time with a bewildering sense of anticlimax. Trudy frowns, puzzled. She should be relieved, even pleased; she will reach the university campus well before her office hours and afternoon seminar. Which is good, since after receiving the call about Anna yesterday she absconded from both without so much as a note for the History Department secretary. But as Trudy passes the Chat'N'Chew, the Starlite Supper Club, the Holgars' dairy farm, the nagging feeling that she has forgotten something intensifies. The Lutheran cemetery where Jack lies buried on the ridge comes into view; is it that she has neglected to pay her respects to him? Trudy slo
ws but then notices a plastic Santa head the size of a pumpkin impaled on the pointed iron gates. Trudy shudders, turns up the heat on the dash, and drives on.
When she sees the double rows of pines that lead to the farmhouse, she realizes what has been troubling her. It is not, she tells herself, that she is being sentimental; it would be a gesture of kindness to personally retrieve Anna's belongings and bring them to the Good Samaritan Center, instead of having the social worker do it. And although insurance and county appraisers will be sent to the property to estimate its value, it is only practical that Trudy assess the fire damage firsthand. She pulls into the drive beneath the trees, wrestling with the steering wheel as the tires of her Civic whine for purchase in the snow. Eventually she reaches the dooryard, parks, and gets out. Then she stands examining her childhood home.
Since Jack's death three years ago, Trudy has made a point of coming here four or five times a year—on Christmas, Easter, Anna's birthday, Mother's Day—enough to satisfy her own requirements for daughterly obligation. But on these occasions, her need to escape Anna's silence and return to normal life, as urgent as the pressure exerted by an unrelieved bladder, has prevented Trudy from really looking at the house. Now, as with Anna, Trudy is startled by how much and how quickly the farmhouse has decayed. It is still standing, but just barely. The paint is blistered, the foundation sinking, the roof an accident waiting to happen. The developers to whom it will probably be sold will either bulldoze the house to make room for more arable land or let it fall down by itself; to judge from outside appearances, they won't have a long wait. It is a shame, really, as the property has been in Jack's family for three generations. But it can't be helped. Trudy certainly is not going to live here, and she can't afford to maintain it.
Sorry, she mutters as she navigates the rotting steps to the porch.
Inside, there are further signs of Anna's demise in the housekeeping tasks she could no longer handle. The carpet of which she was so proud is stained and curling in the corners, the wallpaper bubbled with water stains. Trudy ventures into the kitchen and winces at the black tongues of soot around the stove. Glass crunches underfoot, and an icy current of air rattles the industrial-strength blue plastic over the window. Some member of the New Heidelburg Fire Department has smashed it with an ax. An overly dramatic gesture, Trudy thinks. Why not just try the door? The farmhouse, like most in the area, has always been left unlocked.
Upstairs, she finds her parents' bedroom unscathed, though dusty and cold. Trudy has not been in here since after Jack's funeral, and she looks sadly at the lopsided bed and battered dresser. Even the view from the window is homely and unprepossessing: the south field, the barn, a square of blank sky. So why is it that sometimes, while standing in line at the supermarket or in the midst of giving a lecture, Trudy catches herself thinking of just this scene? It rises before her uninvited and hangs there, superimposed between her mind's eye and what she actually sees.
But she is wasting time. From the closet Trudy unearths a scuffed hard-edged suitcase, a relic from the fifties, and begins filling it with Anna's clothes. Cardigans, pumps, dresses, skirts. Anna has never once in her life worn slacks, no matter how brutal the temperature. Trudy turns next to the bureau, taking from it costume jewelry and pantyhose, gloves with the pricetags still attached, a pair of slippers wrapped in crackling cellophane. When Trudy reaches the bottom drawer where the undesirables are kept, she selects the least worn of Anna's cotton nightgowns. Then she pauses, arrested by some distant bell of memory. Has Anna kept it? Is it still there?
Trudy chews her lip. She should close the drawer again. Best to let sleeping dogs lie. She leans forward and yanks the drawer out as far as it will go, ignoring the protesting shriek of old wood.
She digs through the sleepwear and darned underpants and pushes aside, in one corner, a decades-old sanitary belt, and there, at the very rear of the drawer, she finds what she is looking for: a single wool sock. She lifts it out and unrolls it with trembling hands and shakes the hard object within into her lap. Then she sits on the cold floor and stares at this sole souvenir of her mother's wartime life.
It is a gold rectangle about the size and shape of a ladies' cigarette case, and indeed, at first glance, it might be mistaken as such. The back is smooth metal, the front etched with a horizontal band of zigzagging silver lines in an art deco pattern. In the middle of this is a circle of diamonds—two or three of them missing now, leaving tiny pocked holes—and in the center of this is a silver swastika.
To somebody of Trudy's historical knowledge, this might seem an incongruous gift, since during the Reich German women were discouraged, even forbidden, to smoke. But to Trudy it is not strange, since the case is not intended for cigarettes at all. She pries open the catch at its side to reveal, framed in balding maroon velvet, an oval black-and-white photograph. Of a young Anna, seated. With the toddler Trudy on her lap, wearing a dirndl, her hair in looped braids. And behind Anna, one hand possessively on her shoulder, an SS officer in full uniform. His head is raised in an attitude of pride, his peaked cap tilted forward so that his features cannot be seen.
How many times as a girl, as an adolescent, has Trudy done exactly this, while Anna was hanging laundry in the dooryard or busy at the stove or helping Jack with the livestock? Peering at the photograph, trying to tease the details from its background. There aren't many. The folding canvas chair in which Anna and Trudy sit. The curving bulk of the staff car at the officer's back, a dot that might be the Mercedes emblem on its hood. Behind his head, tiny waving lines the size of lashes: the fronds of the willows in the Park an der Ilm, where Trudy knows this picture was taken. Or does she? Does this photograph truly confirm her earliest memories? Or has she merely looked at it so often that she only thinks she remembers? Images substituting for reality.
Trudy wipes her eyes on her sleeve. They are watering and her nose is clogged, facts she decides to blame on the cold.
She gets up, her knees popping like gunshots, and takes the photograph over to the window. She tilts the case this way and that, an action she performed countless times in her youth, as if by doing so she could shake off the officer's hat and finally, finally see her father's face.
But since of course she cannot, other memories obligingly come in its stead.
Where is he, Mama? Why isn't he here with us? I miss him—
Be quiet, Trudie! Do you want Jack to hear you? Now I will tell you something very important. You must never say such things in this house. You must never speak of that man at all. You must never even think of him. Never. Do you understand?
But I don't want Jack. I want him—
Her mother's strong fingers, digging into the soft flesh on either side of Trudy's childish chin.
I said you will not speak of him. He no longer exists. He belongs to the past, to that other place and time, and all of that is dead. Do you hear? The past is dead, and better it remain so.
And this conversation, held in the barn where Jack spent most of his time:
Daddy, I have a question.
Sure, Strudel. What is it?
Promise you won't get mad?
Why would I get mad?
Because it's kind of a bad question.
I could never be mad at you, Strudel. Ask away.
Daddy, did you know my real father?
I don't know what you mean, honey.
Yes you do. My real father. From Germany. Did you ever meet him?
Well, Strudel, you're right, that's not a nice question. It hurts my feelings. I'm your dad.
I know, but—
And that's all there is to say about that.
Okay, but—
And you shouldn't talk about these things, Strudel. Not to anybody. But especially not around your mother. You know how it upsets her.
And so on and so forth. A conspiracy of silence, a wall that Trudy could neither penetrate nor scale. She has often wondered whether Anna and Jack conferred as to what they would say when faced with such
queries or if they made their responses independently and instinctively. Not that it really matters. The denials are confirmation enough. And the photograph, the solid evidence. Of course Jack, despite his stumbling, kindhearted evasions, is not Trudy's father. No, her real father, though perhaps now as dead as her adopted one, is still with her. He is Trudy's blond hair, her love of organization, her penchant for chess and classical music and all the other tastes to which Jack and Anna never subscribed. Sometimes Trudy thinks she can smell him on her, the personal scents of the man coming from her own pores: fresh barbering, boot polish, the sauerkraut and venison he had for lunch.
What Trudy doesn't know is the nature of Anna's relationship with him.
Was she the officer's mistress? His wife?
If either, did she enter into the contract willingly? Did she care about him, even love him? Trudy can't quite bring herself to believe this. The very thought turns her stomach cold and closes her throat. But why else would Anna have kept this picture—and her silent counsel—all these years?
Trudy holds the image up to the light and squints at her young mother. Anna's expression gives nothing away. It is calm, perhaps a bit grave. Does this signify a secret satisfaction at having secured such a powerful partner? Could Anna really be so morally bankrupt as to have solicited the liaison with the officer, enjoyed it, relished it? Could there be, behind that beautiful face, a void?
Or perhaps Anna's expression conceals resigned acceptance. Or horror. Or is an external portrait of the internal deadening, the numbness, that accompanies repeated abuse. Trudy has read dozens of case studies of women who undertook desperate measures in times of war, in order to survive. Maybe the officer forced Anna. Maybe she had no choice. But if this is so, and Anna is a victim of circumstance, why has she chosen never to explain this to her daughter?
The past is dead. The past is dead, and better it remain so.
Trudy gazes at the photograph a minute longer, then shakes her head and decisively snaps the case closed. Enough is enough. There is nothing to be gained by once again asking painful questions to which there are no ready answers. Whatever Anna has done, Trudy has made her own life, and it is high time that she return to it. She has afternoon classes to teach.
