The Uninvited

by Cat Winters

  Recognition registered in Daniel’s eyes. He bent his legs like a coiled spring about to shoot forward.

  “Don’t hurt him.” I lunged out of the shadows with my arms spread wide, for I imagined my poor mother, forced to nurse an injured husband in the midst of all her other worries. “I know you might be tempted—”

  “I wasn’t going to hurt him,” said Daniel, but he kept his gaze on his intruder with a hard stare and a taut mouth. He puckered his brow and watched Father tinker with the loose leg of an oak desk chair. “What is he doing?” he asked in the harsher tones of his accent that made him sound as though he were speaking German, even though he had uttered the words in English.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. I heard a noise downstairs and just found him standing here. He sort of . . .”

  Father bent down and screwed the wobbly chair leg back into place.

  “He looks as if . . .” I paused and watched some more, astounded at Father’s tender actions—the gentle twist he employed to mend that chair. “As if he’s trying to fix his mess.”

  Intrigued, I crossed to the front counter and rested my right hand on top of the smooth grains of wood. I felt compelled to shift my attention back and forth between the two men, ensuring that Daniel wouldn’t pounce forward and slam a chair over Father’s head . . . and that Father wouldn’t violate the store any further.

  Daniel stayed frozen in place, his hand still gripping the doorframe.

  “Is there anything that you want to say to him?” I asked.

  Daniel’s lips parted, but he said nothing. He seemed to lose his balance for a moment, his hand slipping off the frame, but he quickly straightened his legs and grabbed the wood with more force. His knuckles whitened. His brow bubbled with sweat.

  “He won’t hear you,” I said, “but it might feel nice to release some of the anger. Is there anything you wish he could know?”

  “Yes, there is.” Daniel dropped his hand to his side with a soft brush of his fingers against his trousers. “I want to say . . .” He swallowed and stepped forward. “I want to say to him . . . ‘I understand.’”

  I wrinkled my forehead. “You . . . you understand? That’s all you’d want him to hear?”

  He nodded and squeezed his right hand around his left thumb, and he said again, “I understand.” His eyes veered to me. “He’s more yours to scold . . . and to forgive. You bear a far deeper grudge against him than I do. He was just doing what his country instructed him to do.”

  “But . . .”

  Daniel retreated back toward the workroom before I could say another word, but we both stopped and turned when the front door clanged open.

  Two mustached workmen in nut-brown caps and coats entered the store and surveyed the half-repaired tangle of furniture, as well as the floorboards lying there in the dim streaks of light, bleached and ugly and stained in that pink phantom blood.

  “We’re here to replace a window,” said the taller man to Father. He was a burly fellow who sounded as if he were asking a question instead of making a statement. We’re here to replace a window in this godforsaken mess of a murder scene? Is that right?

  Daniel and I exchanged a glance of mutual befuddlement.

  “It’s just”—the worker pointed his thumb toward the boarded-up glass over his left shoulder—“an order for one window, according to the paperwork.”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Father got to his feet. “I could only afford to pay for one of the windows, but . . . well . . .” He slapped his hand against the back of his neck, perhaps feeling me there again, smacking the pesky-fly sensation away.

  “What happened in here?” asked the shorter man with a smile, his eyes bright and eager for a tale of blood and gore.

  “Vagrants,” said Father. “They attacked this place pretty badly. Killed one of the store’s owners.”

  “It’s not your store, then?” asked the tall fellow.

  “No, the window’s just a gift.” Father tucked his hands in his pockets. “That’s why I requested you to come early in the morning. I arranged everything with your boss, so there’s nothing to worry over. I paid for everything, fair and square.”

  “Well”—the shorter one shrugged—“if everything’s paid for and arranged . . .”

  “All right.” The tall one nodded. “We’ll get to work, then. We won’t be any trouble to you, so you can go about your business.”

  “I’m heading back on home, as a matter of fact.” Father rubbed at his neck so hard that his skin turned as red and scaly as a sunburn. “But you fellas do what you can to get the job done as quickly as possible. It’s a . . . a sort of a . . . surprise, for the owner.”

  I peeked back at Daniel again and found his mouth agape.

  The workers trooped back out for their supplies, and Father moseyed toward the door with the soles of his shoes swooshing against the floor.

  I stepped forward and called out, “Father.”

  He stopped and straightened his neck.

  “I don’t know if you can actually hear me”—I slid my hand off the countertop and took two more steps toward him—“but I want you to know that I don’t understand. I know the newspapers tell us to take patriotism into our own hands. I know our government isn’t punishing violence against foreigners and Socialists. But I do not understand how a man could beat and strangle the life out of another man. I forgive you because Daniel forgives you. But I will never comprehend that poisonous drop of darkness that has always dwelled inside you—not when you’ve been surrounded by love and devotion all your life. I’m truly sorry my passing caused that darkness to get the best of you, but I swear, I will never understand.”

  He swiveled around and scanned the store, his eyes darting about. I didn’t move—not because I believed standing still would conceal me from him, but because rising up tall and strong against him lightened the guilt on my shoulders. My stomach unclenched, and the pain seeped away. My hands felt light enough to drift away from my sides and into the air with the ease of a hot-air balloon ascending from the open fields of grass beyond the curve of the Minter River.

  “Go,” I said. “And be kind to Mama. Make yourself deserving of her unconditional love.”

  Father turned and left the building just as the workers pried the first boards off the rightmost windows and flooded Liberty Brothers Furniture with daylight.

  Chapter 29

  That night, after dark, just as the band awakened in its full hot-jazz splendor across the street, I disappeared into Daniel’s bathroom and dressed myself in an evening gown the golden-red shade of the autumn leaves that scattered down the streets of Buchanan. Sheer sleeves graced my shoulders and upper arms; the squared-off neckline hung low enough to expose the white of my throat and upper chest. Five silken flowers hung off the folds of the bodice, adding a pinch of sweetness to the sin. The full skirt hung down to my calves, giving way to my black patent leather dress shoes down below.

  I pulled up my hair in the back, let it pouf on the top, and allowed the shorter curls in front to frame my face. I rouged my lips and cheeks, strung pearls around my neck and wrists, and stepped out into Daniel’s front room as a woman ready to soar.

  Daniel sat on his sofa by the fireplace, whittling the same flat piece of wood with which I kept seeing him tinker.

  I walked toward him with my skirt rustling against my smooth stockings. “What is it that you’re making?”

  He looked up at me, and his face fell. “Why are you dressed like that?”

  I straightened the sash tied around the middle of the gown and fussed with tiny wrinkles far more than necessary.

  “Ivy?”

  “I’m going.” I swallowed and looked him in the eye. “And I think you should, too, despite your worries. I think you should grab your guitar, put on a dress coat, and come have a bit of fun.”

  He lowered his shoulders and balanced the carving across his legs. “I already told you why I’m not leaving.”

  “Daniel”—I sank down n
ext to him on the sofa—“you said that the greatest fears you and other Germans possessed over here were those of detainment and death by a lynching.”

  “What does that have to—?”

  “Both of those appalling experiences, in some form, already happened to you.” I pressed my hand over his hand upon the small slice of wood. “This country has trapped you in this building by planting fear for your brother’s safety deep inside you. If you let them keep you here, then they’ve succeeded in controlling you—both in life and in death. The German and U.S. governments will have successfully squashed Wilhelm Daniel Schendel and stolen every single piece of his soul.”

  He removed his hand from mine and shifted his knees away. “It’ll be two guitar picks.”

  I pinched my eyebrows together. “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s what I’m whittling.” He laid his knife on the round end table beside him. “I had one in my pocket that night, but it must have gotten knocked out and taken away.”

  “Daniel, were you even listening to what I said?”

  “I’m not leaving, Ivy. I don’t know how many times I’ll need to say it before you understand, but you will have to go without me. I’m not going anywhere until this war and this scourge of violence and disease ends and I’m certain Albrecht is safe.”

  “All right.” I stood up with a soft whisper of satin. “Then I’ll stop asking, and I’ll stop coming and going from here. This has gone on long enough, hasn’t it?”

  He raised his face to mine, rubbing his thumb over the smoothed-down piece of wood, and his eyes seemed to tell me, No, you’re wrong. It hasn’t gone on long enough.

  His mouth, however, uttered nothing. I slid the cold clasp of my pearls better in place on the back of my neck, above my top vertebrae, and I walked away from him, toward the staircase.

  “I’ll at least go down with you and see you off,” he said behind me, getting to his feet.

  “Very well.” I stopped and allowed him to join me by my side. “That would . . .” I pressed my chin against my chest to cut off an ache in my throat. “That would be nice.”

  He gestured with his left hand for me to descend the stairs in front of him, and we wandered down to the dark workroom below. I remembered the night we first trekked up that staircase together, his footsteps hurried, mine hesitant yet curious, after he asked me to join him in his bed. The night seemed to have occurred a thousand years before, even though I understood that time still passed at a normal pace for us. The war and the flu of 1918 still terrorized the world outside that newly replaced storefront window.

  We passed through the unlit shop, our soles stepping across the pink stains as if they weren’t there, and we stopped in front of the door, next to the new, unblemished glass, which allowed the streetlamp from outside to illuminate our cheeks and hair. We faced each other, not more than two feet away from one another, while the band played on. Daniel’s thumbs fidgeted with the pockets of his trousers. I fussed again with my sash. The world beyond that clear windowpane tugged me toward it, as if magnets, not blood, traveled through my veins. The electricity of the jazz tingled up my arms and buzzed through the roots of my hair until my skin crackled and sparked.

  “Oh, God, Daniel.” I pressed a hand against my forehead. “This is so hard, letting you go.”

  “I know.” He nodded and stepped closer, his thumbs still in his pockets, his head bent toward mine. “It’s not that I don’t wish to go.”

  “But you can. You have a choice. Don’t let them take away your freedom to make your own decisions.” I reached up and wrapped my fingers around his warm neck, and I almost pressed my lips against his, forgetting for a moment his personal punishment and the Belgian girl. “Daniel . . .” I closed my eyes and let my mouth linger a mere inch from his, feeling his breath brush like butterfly wings against my face.

  “What?” His breathing quickened, and I could have sworn I heard both of our hearts pounding over the pulse of the band’s beating drums.

  “I love you.” I lifted my lashes and saw the dampness in his eyes. “I love you. And your brother loves you, too—so much that I’m sure he would loathe the idea of your being trapped inside this place for all eternity. I’m willing to bet anything that right now he’s saying to Nora, ‘I will be fine, as long as I know that Wilhelm’s soul is free.’” I stroked the smooth skin above his collar. “Wouldn’t you want the same for him?” I swallowed. “If he had died first, wouldn’t you be unable to move on with your life if you knew he wasn’t at peace?”

  Daniel’s lips and lower jaw quivered. Tears brimmed in his eyes to the point of spilling over, and yet I knew he still would not join me in the outside world.

  “How do you say ‘I love you’ in German?” I asked in a whisper, while the band filled the store with the type of rag meant for dancing, not departures.

  Daniel cleared his throat and whispered back, “Ich liebe dich.”

  I kissed his left cheek and said into his ear in my softest voice, “Ich liebe dich, Wilhelm.”

  And without another word, I slipped out the door.

  THE RED CROSS AMBULANCE sat in front of the curb across the street again. Two figures standing on the sidewalk beyond—a gray one and an olive-green one—caught my eye through the vehicle’s driving compartment, and when they moved farther to the left, toward the front door of the lodge, I slapped my hand over my mouth and squeezed my fingers into the skin against my teeth.

  Addie escorted Billy to the Masonic Lodge door. I only saw the backs of them, the crisp lines of their uniforms and hats, but I recognized Addie’s pinned-back loops of black hair and Billy’s bowlegged walk that looked as though he were strolling inside our farmhouse for Sunday dinner.

  I just stood at the edge of the opposite sidewalk and watched them, understanding Addie’s hesitancy to run straightaway to her sister. There’s simply no adequate way to describe the knocked-over-sideways feeling of viewing someone you were never meant to see again.

  Billy opened the door for Addie, and they entered the first floor of the lodge.

  All traces of my old headaches disappeared. My skull mended back into one solid piece, stitched up and smoothed over, never to split apart again. Pain had become the Uninvited Guest.

  I thought one last time of Emily Dickinson, and her brightest, most optimistic of poems:

  Hope is the thing with feathers

  That perches in the soul,

  And sings the tune without the words,

  And never stops at all . . .

  The band switched to a song that reminded me of the raucous style of the Original Dixieland Jass Band, but I didn’t recognize the number, and I didn’t know the name, which made me long to turn around, knock on Daniel’s door, and ask him what the song was called. Just one more song name, I thought with my back to his store. That’s all I’ll ask of him. Just one more song.

  Instead, I crossed the street and pushed Daniel into the past, along with my home and the war and my days of suffering from the flu. The murder. My former reclusive self. Mama. Father. Peter. Wyatt professing his love by the lake. Lucas bounding toward our house in his untied shoes. Eddie Dover’s broad smile. May stretched out on a checkered blanket at a summer picnic. Helen, Sigrid, and I, clustered around the display counters of Weiss’s Bakery. Buchanan, Illinois, on a starlit childhood night, when its dark secrets hid so well. I left it all behind and strolled over to the glass-paneled door waiting just beyond the ambulance. The music’s potent allure caused my hands to shake and sweat, and my fingers trembled so much that they looked like blurs when I reached out to the cold brass knob. My heart shattered to a thousand pieces, but I knew I had to enter. It would be for the best to just lose myself and forget everything, especially him. Just forget him. Forget it all.

  “Ivy.”

  I spun around.

  Daniel exited his store, carrying his guitar in a black leather case by his side. He wore a dark dress coat over a pair of gray-striped trousers, and he had slicked down his hai
r and parted it on his left until it looked almost as painted on as the piano player’s. He walked toward me across the street, the case swinging in his left hand, the moon brightening his skin, showing me a clear neck without a single vicious sign of rope burn. His eyes shone in a bewitching shade of blue, and I imagined pools of Rhineland waters gleaming in that same color on a German summer night, back when he lived wild and free.

  He stopped in front of me, and for a moment I couldn’t think what the devil I should say.

  “The moonlight suits you, Mr. Schendel,” I said when no other words seemed quite right.

  “We’re old friends.” He cracked a small smile that crinkled the skin near his eyes. “He watched over me many a night, years ago.”

  “I don’t . . .” I shifted my weight between my feet. “I don’t quite know what to say. It seems so strange to see you out here. A minute ago, I almost ran back to ask you the name of this song.”

  “‘At the Jass Band Ball.’”

  “By the Original Dixieland Jass Band?”

  He nodded. “They’re not even the best band, to be honest. They just recorded their music first, before everyone else got the same brilliant idea this past year.”

  “Well . . .” I scanned him from head to toe to make sure my eyes weren’t deceiving me. “I still can’t believe you’re out here. I just”—I wiped a damp spot from the inner corner of my right eye—“I honestly don’t know what to say.”

  He peeked up at the windows of the lodge and tightened his grip on the handle of the guitar case. “Are you sure I’ll be invited here?”

  “I’m absolutely positive. These are the same folks who played Beethoven for you, remember?”

  “And what if we don’t like it here? What if we get tired of all the dancing and the music?”

  “Then we’ll go somewhere else and let the rays of the moon swallow us up. Or else we’ll simply disappear into the notes of the music and drift through the streets of Buchanan, until we find somewhere else that better suits us.” I wiped another stray tear and sputtered up a laugh. “I honestly don’t care where we go. Let’s just have some fun.”