The Uninvited

by Cat Winters

  “Where did you go?” she asked with a lift of her dark eyebrows.

  “I’m sorry I took off like that.” I grabbed my leather handbag from the floor below the chest of drawers and clicked open the gold clasp. “I just . . . um . . .” I pulled several dollars out of the purse. “Let me go ahead and pay you. I’m really sorry I’ve been a terrible boarder, but I—”

  “Ivy.”

  I snapped my face upright and fully met her eyes for the first time since I had caught her with the man who looked like Eddie.

  May stepped farther inside the room with her hands on the black sash of her robe. “Are you leaving me?”

  “Yes.” I handed her the bills. “Here’s some rent money.”

  She wrinkled her nose. “That’s more than enough. You weren’t even here a full week.”

  “Take it, for your troubles.” I held out the money with the tips of my fingers until she grabbed hold of the bills.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “Where are you going to live?”

  “Um . . . a friend . . .” I scratched at my ear. “A friend invited me to stay.”

  “A friend?” The right side of her mouth edged into a grin.

  “Yes. A close friend.”

  “You said your only good friend in Buchanan moved away over the summer.”

  “Yes, well . . .” I turned back to the dresser and slid open the top drawer. “There’s another friend.”

  “The German?”

  I didn’t answer.

  “Ivy?”

  “What?” I peeked back at her.

  “Are you sure you’re ready for this?”

  “No, I’m not, but—” I stopped and raised both my hands in the air, for a terrible realization occurred to me. “Oh, Christ! I’m covered in germs. I can’t touch my clothing and then wear it around him. Why have I been going near him afterward?” I spun toward May, my hands still raised. “I shouldn’t be near you either. I’m going to kill everyone. This is why I saw Billy.”

  “Who’s Billy?”

  “My brother, the one killed in the war. Why do I keep going near all of you after being around all those sick people we’re transporting? I’m the reason someone is going to die.”

  “Come downstairs.” May waved me over to the top of the staircase. “You can take a bath before you go to your German Romeo. Wash your hair, disinfect your shoes with my bottle of Lysol, and throw those clothes you’re wearing out to my leaf piles I’ll eventually burn. But don’t panic so much, Sarah Bernhardt.”

  My feet refused to budge. “May.”

  She turned back toward me. “What?”

  “Who did I see you with in your bedroom?”

  She sank down to the topmost step, and her dark eyes grew large and childlike. “Does it matter?”

  “Is he here right now?”

  She shook her head, her dark curls wobbling. “No. Not until three o’clock. He always arrives at three in the morning. The witching hour.” She disappeared down two more steps; all I could see were the tops of her eyes and her head of black hair, and she made my blood run cold peering at me that way. “You have two and a half hours to bathe before he arrives,” she said. “Flap your wings and get flying off to that bath if you don’t want to see him.”

  MAY MONITORED MY BATHWATER in her plumbed downstairs bathroom, while I shivered outside on her back porch for fear of infiltrating her house with influenza. I longed to dunk my entire body into scalding water and burn away every last trace of the germs.

  With a deep moan of the wood, I lowered myself down to a seated position on the top step, and I leaned my head against a post. Out in the backyard rose silhouettes of trees with thick autumn leaves waiting to plummet to the earth. I feared a shadowed figure in an army uniform would step out from behind one of the trunks, and I’d see the glow of Billy’s cigarette. Or Lucas’s eyes behind his glasses.

  May opened the bathroom window behind me and called out, “It’s ready. Take off your clothes and toss them onto one of the leaf piles.”

  I stood up and craned my neck to survey the proximity of the backyard to the nearest windows of the neighboring houses. “Will any of your neighbors be able to see?”

  “It’s dark. They’re asleep. They’re other widows anyway, with children.”

  “Are you sure you’re alone in there?”

  “Yes. I’m alone right now. Don’t be so modest, Ivy. Take off your clothes.”

  I flung my beloved green overcoat into the yard and heard it splat across the brittle leaves. Not wanting to risk wearing one stitch of flu-infested clothing, I stripped all the way down to the buff, hurled my garments into the night, and ran inside.

  May stood in the kitchen and held open the door to the adjoining bathroom for me. I covered my chest and my privates and hurried past her on bare feet that squeaked against the tiled floor.

  “Don’t be such a prude,” she said with a laugh. “You’ve got a body like the Venus de Milo’s. Flaunt it.”

  I climbed into her claw-foot bathtub, and before she could say another word about my nakedness, I sank down on my back and submerged my head in the warm and silent waters, watching my long hair drift to the surface above me like undulating blades of river grass.

  A CLOCK IN MAY’S FRONT ROOM CHIMED one thirty in the morning. Dressed in fresh clothing and Lysol-disinfected shoes, I meandered downstairs with my packed-up bags in hand and the butterfly wings tucked beneath my left arm. I managed to pin up my wet hair, but it still dripped plump drops onto the back of my clean white blouse.

  May stood up from her armchair, a mug of steaming tea in hand.

  “Well.” I set down my bags by my sides. “I guess this is good-bye.”

  “I guess so.” She lowered her mug to a table. “That was an awfully short stay. We were supposed to have heaps of fun.”

  “I’m sorry. It’s just . . .” I tried my best not to glance back at her bedroom door. “Thank you for housing me, even if it was so temporary.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I grabbed up the handles of my bags again and hoisted the luggage to the front door.

  “I know it doesn’t make any sense,” she said from behind me before I could reach for the knob.

  I shifted around to face her.

  She pulled her robe a little farther over her chest and folded her hands together. “I can’t explain how he arrives, but his presence doesn’t ever frighten me. We’re happy as clams during those heavenly moments in the early-morning hours.” She smiled. “Truly we are.”

  I stood there and gawked with my mouth tipped open too far.

  “You don’t need to feel frightened for me,” she said. “Or worried. I’m fine. Just”—she raised her shoulders to her ears in a sort of shrug—“a little lonely during the remaining hours of the day.”

  “I’ll come visit again,” I offered. “Once it’s not so dangerous to be outside. I feel I should hole myself up with Daniel in his apartment for a while until the rapid spread of infection passes. I want to keep him safe.”

  “I understand.” She nodded, and her smile looked strained. Her eyes moistened.

  “Will you be all right?”

  “Oh sure. I’ve got company coming soon.” She wiped her eyes and glanced at the clock. “I’ll be fine, Ivy. Go. Take those wings and fly.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes. You deserve a little zig-zig.”

  “A little what?”

  She winked and nodded toward the door. “Go. I’m sure he’s waiting.”

  “Our Own Robert Prager”

  A Message from a Murdered Man’s Brother

  Six months have passed since three to four hundred men and boys wrapped Robert P. Prager in an American flag and hung him from a tree branch one mile west of Collinsville, Ill. Prager, a German-born coalminer, was accused of making disloyal and Socialist remarks to other miners and died at the hands of ordinary United States citizens—citizens later acquitted of the crime of his murder.

  I
n August 1917, vigilantes lynched IWW organizer Frank Little near Butte, Montana. Less than a month before Prager’s death, four men—a Polish Catholic priest included—were tarred and feathered in Christopher, Ill., to Collinsville’s south. Two other men were previously tarred and feathered in the same region. Only God knows how many other attacks upon immigrants and Socialists have gone unreported within this state and elsewhere.

  Almost six months to the exact date of the Prager lynching, my own brother lost his life at the hands of vigilantes right here in Buchanan, Ill. The Buchanan Sentinel claims that “vagrants” wandered into our place of business and brutally beat and killed him in a random moment of patriotic passion. However, because of the particular condition of our store in the aftermath of the crime and the specific tools and yellow paint carried to the scene, I believe his death resulted from local “superpatriots” hell-bent on driving Germans and other foreigners out of the region.

  Since my immigration, I have learned that Americans have belittled, beaten, and killed their black and native citizens for centuries. The recent number of abused and murdered Germans and other foreign-born residents seems relatively small in comparison to the crimes against the nonwhites of this country. Yet this added surge of hatred only proves that America has no right sailing to foreign lands in the name of protecting freedom—not when we’re steeped in the mire of violent inequality here at home.

  I do not believe my brother will ever receive justice for his death. I could hire detectives and hunt down his killers, yet I know their criminal behavior will not only be pardoned, but also celebrated. I read the accounts of the trial of Robert Prager’s acquitted killers. I know a band played “The Star-Spangled Banner” in the courthouse rotunda, and after the “not-guilty” verdict was handed out, a juryman shouted, “Well, I guess nobody can say we aren’t loyal now.” And yet I sincerely hope that Buchanan residents will read my words and join together to protect other persecuted individuals from similar deaths by everyday citizens taking the law into their own hands. I am tempted to wallow in drink and pity myself because of what happened; to cower in terror and expect to one day soon find an overzealous mob coming my way, carrying a noose and a flag. I know that’s what my brother’s attackers expect of me, but I refuse to cower.

  I pray that my brother rests in peace, but I will not rest until I finish speaking my mind about his brutal and unnecessary death.

  —THE BUCHANAN WORKMAN, October 10, 1918

  Chapter 19

  With my bags still in hand, I used my left elbow to knock on the front door of Liberty Brothers Furniture. Across the street, long and jubilant slides of the trombone suggested that the night was meant for celebrating, not for fretting about ghosts and one’s uselessness.

  Daniel answered the door in his shirtsleeves and trousers.

  I lifted up my bags, and the jeweled bracelets of the wings clanked down my left arm. “How about that glass of German brandy you promised, Mr. Schendel?”

  He threw the door open farther and smiled wider than I’d ever seen him do before—wider than I’d seen anyone smile before. I stepped across the threshold and lowered my bags, and as soon as he closed the door and latched the lock, he wrapped his arms around my waist and peppered my neck with kisses. “Willkommen,” he said near my ear. “Why is your hair all wet?”

  “I washed up to ensure I wouldn’t bring any germs into your home. I want to hunker down with you during the rest of this epidemic and make sure you stay safe.”

  “You smell delicious.” He planted one more tickle of a kiss on my throat. “Let’s go put your bags away and have that drink.”

  We deposited my belongings up in his bedroom, and he grabbed my hand and steered me across the apartment to the kitchen. “Here, before we get comfortable and relaxed”—he led me to an oak table built for two, across from a cream-colored cookstove that smelled of burnt wood—“I have some things to show you.”

  He stopped us in front of three photographs, laid out in a tidy little line across the table’s smooth surface. The collection included an image of Daniel himself, attached to the inside of his Alien Registration card, above his inky thumbprint.

  “Oh.” I squeezed his hand. “You don’t have to share these if you don’t want to. I know how much you desire your privacy.”

  “So”—he lifted the framed image of his parents from the mantel—“this is indeed my mother and father—Mutter and Vater, as we say over there. They still live in Germany, as you asked, in the same home where I grew up. And this is Albrecht and his late wife, Gertrud, on their wedding day in 1911.”

  He laid his left hand next to the unframed photograph of a young man who resembled Daniel, but with straighter hair and larger teeth. The bride wore a high-collared white gown and a rounded headdress that looked like the sun rising behind her fair hair.

  “So, that’s . . . that’s how he looked,” I murmured, and I held the rounded edge of the table to steady myself. Putting a face to Father and Peter’s victim, picturing Albrecht Schendel as a real human being and not just a tragic name, caused the entire scene of the murder to flare to life inside my mind. I imagined that face in the photo a little fuller with age, and I envisioned it all—Father pinning Albrecht down on the ground of the store; Peter pummeling Albrecht’s nose and teeth with a fist that swelled and bruised from the force of the impact; Albrecht crawling on the floor to get away, blood pouring from his mouth and nostrils; Father kicking Albrecht in the ribs with his thick farm boots until the bones cracked.

  I pinched my nose to stave off a headache. “Did they really beat him to death?”

  “I didn’t . . .” Daniel turned over the photo of his brother and his long-ago bride. “I didn’t show this picture to you to make you feel guilty. I assumed you’ve been wondering what he looks like.”

  I nodded. “I have been wondering, and before long I would have asked. But”—I flipped the photo back to its upright position—“I want to know, did they truly beat him to death with their own bare hands?”

  Daniel traced an index finger down the leftmost edge of the photo. “They beat him badly, to the point where he could no longer move or cry out for help. And then”—he cleared his throat—“they used something else, to finish the task.”

  I winced. “Oh . . . Daniel . . .” I covered my mouth and dug my fingers into my cheeks. “I didn’t know there was also a weapon. What did they use?”

  He turned the picture over to its back side again, and all I could see were Albrecht and Gertrud’s names, along with a note I assumed to be the date—18. März 1911—written in the center of the paper in a lovely display of slanted handwriting.

  “I don’t want to talk about what they used.” Daniel moved on to his brown registration card and released a breath from his chest. “And this is me, of course. I wanted to use an entirely different name when I escaped over here, but Albrecht had already obtained papers for me in my own name. So, at the beginning of this year, when they forced all of us Germans to register as alien enemies within five days, I had to indeed use ‘Wilhelm Schendel.’”

  I picked up his card and smiled a little at his defiant glare in the photograph. His squished-together line of a mouth looked as though he were trying not to spit at the camera’s lens.

  “One would assume,” I said, “that the U.S. would have been far kinder to a man who abandoned the army of the enemy.”

  “One would assume that.” He gathered up all the photographs in his hands, one by one. “But this is not the fantastical land of liberty that people portray in stories. The melting pot does nothing but scald and blister right now.”

  He carried the pictures out to the other room, and I eyed the wine and brandy parked on a shelf below the kitchen worktable, next to the icebox. I longed to dive straight into one of those beautiful brown or green bottles and drown myself in an ocean of brain-stupefying liquor.

  Daniel returned with a loud clap of his hands. “Now, the brandy.”

  “I have to warn you”—I st
ood up straight—“I’m not usually much of a drinker . . .”

  “As I said”—he reached down below the worktable and sifted through the bottles with gentle clinks of the glass—“I’m sure you have never experienced a glass of real, honest-to-goodness booze. The type that will make you howl at the moon and run through the streets naked.”

  I laughed.

  “Here . . .” He carried over a green bottle with a red and brown label, written in German. “This is from Albrecht’s collection he imported before the war. Sit down.” He scooted out a chair for me. “Make yourself at home.”

  He fetched two brandy snifters and a corkscrew from a cupboard. Then he stood over the table across from me and hummed along with the band across the street while twisting the cork off the top of the bottle. An explosive pop shot across the kitchen. The scent of brandy rushed through my nostrils, practically turning me pie-eyed from the fumes alone.

  Daniel planted himself in a chair and poured us each a glass of an amber-red liquid that swirled inside the bulbous bottoms of the snifters. “Well . . .” He set down the bottle and kneaded the stem of his glass between his fingers. “What should we drink to, Fräulein?”

  “Hmm. How about . . . ?” I lifted my glass into the air and tapped the tip of my left index finger against my lips. “How about to life?”

  “All right, then.” He lifted his glass as well. “To life. Prost!”

  I took a deep breath and braced myself for the sting, and we both leaned back our heads and drank a hearty swig. Fire scoured my throat, and I coughed and cringed and wiped my lips with a knuckle, while Daniel snickered from across the table.

  “Das ist gut, no?” he asked with a glimmer in his eyes. “Can you handle it, Amerikanerin?”

  “Ja, Mr. Schendel.” I sat up straight with my elbows digging into the table and asked, “What should we drink to next?”

  His smile faded to a somber expression that caused the skin between his eyebrows to crinkle. “To fate.”