Hiding Places

by Shannon Heuston

  The fear of what would happen if…when…we were found out kept me awake on the blessedly few nights Maggie spent on campus. I pictured the pipe smoking Dr. Heinrich mulling over what to do with me while receiving a blow job from an eighteen-year-old beneath his desk.

  Maybe our romance would make the papers. After all, nothing exciting ever happened in Baylor. Cats knocking over trash cans in the middle of the night made the front page.

  I feared our love would come with a steep price tag. Humiliation, followed by dismissal in disgrace. When that day came, would I feel it was worth it?

  I wasn’t just worried for myself. I could always sell the house and slink back downstate with my father in tow, buy a small place in the suburbs. We would survive.

  But Maggie, my sweet Maggie, who hadn’t yet lost her idealistic innocence, would be destroyed by the fallout.

  Those were my secret nightmares. I never breathed a word about them to Maggie. Our relationship ticked on borrowed time, counting down to the unknown moment when someone guessed our secret.

  We’d been lucky so far, probably because of the age difference and the fact we were both women. No one looked at a skinny old crone whispering to a beautiful young maiden and guessed they were lovers. Not yet, anyway.

  “We need to be careful around campus,” I admonished Maggie, when she dropped by my office to lounge with one leg casually thrown over the arm of a chair.

  “No one would ever guess,” Maggie laughed, with the carelessness of the young.

  “They will, eventually,” I chided.

  People who are repressed have dirty minds. Eventually someone would notice the lovestruck way Maggie looked at me.

  “Dr. Reiter,” Dr. Heinrich prodded.

  I blinked. All my colleagues were staring at me.

  “What are your thoughts?” he asked.

  Thoughts? I had no idea what I was supposed be to be thinking, but everyone was gazing at me expectantly, waiting for my response.

  “I think it’s a splendid idea,” I enthused, praying this was an appropriate reply.

  Dr. Heinrich relaxed. “I’m glad to hear it. You’re the only psychology professor who stays in Baylor for the summer, so you were my first choice.”

  Oh, Christ. What did I just agree to?

  “What will it entail?” I asked.

  “I’ll need to get more information,” he explained, steepling his fingers beneath his chin, “but this is a great opportunity. The government chose Baylor because of our isolation. The program isn’t top secret, but they’re keeping it under wraps. They’re not expecting it to succeed anyway. They just want to demonstrate they’re making an effort, to satisfy the goddamn liberals.”

  “Ah, the liberals,” I said. How charming. “How many people in the program?”

  “That’s still up the air, but not many. They’re choosing illegals who are desperate not to be deported, either because they face death in their home countries or they’ve established a family here.”

  I nodded thoughtfully, still clueless. I wished I’d paid better attention. Apparently, I just volunteered to head some summer program at Baylor involving illegal aliens.

  After the meeting was adjourned, Dr. Heinrich asked me to wait. “I’m glad you’re willing to step up, Ursula,” he said. “I myself like to spend the summer at my family’s camp in Star Lake.”

  “Glad I could help,” I said.

  He sighed. “It’s not a bad thing per se, it will get us federal funds. We would just prefer not to have this sort of thing at Baylor,”

  “Why not?” I pressed. I was ten seconds from just admitting I was distracted during the meeting. It happened. People zoned out in my classes all the time. The worst that happened was they missed a question on the final.

  When I don’t pay attention, I sign my life away.

  “The federal government is testing this re-education program designed to “Americanize” illegal aliens slated for deportation. If they successfully complete the program, they can stay in the country. It will run about six weeks, during the summer. I can’t tell you how many immigrants will be participating, or what sort of re-education classes we’ll be having, all that is in the works. But, I have to say, I feel a lot more optimistic about this project knowing you’re on board.”

  I forced a smile. Terrific. I didn’t like this idea. It was too close to concentration camps. Maybe it was just as well I was in charge. I would make sure no one was mistreated.

  “How do we go about Americanizing someone?” I asked.

  Dr. Heinrich shrugged. “They haven’t said much on the topic, but I can fill in the blanks. They want them to speak English and dress like Americans and eat hamburgers and salute the flag.”

  That didn’t ease my feeling of disquiet. I was always ever vigilant for signs that what happened in Nazi Germany was starting to happen here in the United States. This seemed a little too close for comfort. The government was planning on shipping a bunch of illegal aliens to a camp in an isolated location to force them to act a certain way. Not a project I wanted to take part in, more like something I’d protest with my dying breath.

  Dr. Heinrich sensed my reluctance. “Think of the possibilities,” he cajoled. “I know your concentration of study is the psychology behind the Holocaust. This would be a rare opportunity to study how people behave when they hold someone’s future in the palm of their hand. Think about it.”

  I was thinking. My mind was already clicking. Milgraum. The Stanford Prison Experiment. I had just been given my own experiment, right here in tiny Baylor.

  “Are you suggesting that I use the participants in this program as unwilling guinea pigs?” I asked.

  “They won’t be harmed,” he said. “You’ll make sure of that, won’t you?”

  The human part of me, so recently awakened, recoiled at the possibility presented before me, even as the objective, clinical part salivated. This would be the culmination of all my research, the sum total of my life’s work. It could put me on the map. Make me a household name, elevate me to the level of Sigmund Freud. After this, I would be welcome at any university in the world.

  It was like signing a pact with the devil.

  I didn’t care about money, fame, or success, not really. I did care about the ghosts haunting my father. Here was my chance to change the world. How could I turn it down? Dr. Heinrich was right. No one would be harmed by my experiment. I’d make sure.

  Chapter Eleven

  Maggie

  I decided not to go home for Thanksgiving.

  “It’s too far,” I complained to my father over the phone.

  “Don’t you get a whole week off?” he asked.

  “Yeah, but I’d have to take all those days off from work, too,” I argued. I was hoping he didn’t realize that with the campus closed, Ursula would be on vacation as well, rendering my presence unnecessary.

  “And the ride is just so long,” I blurted, which was not a lie. The only transportation to and from Baylor was the Adirondack Trailways bus, on a route that stopped in every single tiny town in the North Country before finally depositing me in New York City, so I could ride the Metro North home. It was an odyssey.

  “You shouldn’t have gone to school so far away,” he scolded. “You should have gone to SUNY New Paltz.”

  “I know,” I agreed. I thought that was the best course to take, pretend to be upset I couldn’t join them to snarf badly cooked turkey in a cloud of Jana’s cigarette smoke.

  Ursula wasn’t much of a cook. Shake N’ Bake represented the limits of her culinary expertise. Most of the Reiter meals came from the hot foods bar at the local supermarket or the take-out restaurants that was a staple of every college town.

  I had never cooked a turkey before, but I knew I could do it. I’d roasted chickens. It couldn’t be that much harder.

  I wanted to go grocery shopping with Ursula, but she wouldn’t hear of it.

  “People might talk if they see us in the supermarket together,” she said. “
They might wonder who was watching my father. They would question the true nature of our relationship, and you know where that would lead.”

  I squelched my frustration. Ursula was being silly. No one cared what we did. Who would even see us grocery shopping together? Baylor was a ghost town once the college students departed. But I didn’t want to ruin the holiday, so I let it go. I made a grocery list with Ursula and Helmut instead.

  “We haven’t had a turkey since my Anna died!” Helmut crowed.

  “That’s not completely true, Papa,” Ursula chided. “I always cook a turkey breast.”

  “Bah, that’s not the same!” he said, waving his hand dismissively. “Not even close.”

  We decided to get a thirteen-pound turkey. Ursula’s eyes danced in amusement as she spied me studying recipes for stuffing.

  “At home, my parents use Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix and add sausage and onion,” I told her. “It’s delicious, but I want to make ours from scratch. I want everything to be perfect.”

  Ursula’s hands gave my shoulders a hesitant squeeze. Even now, after all the ways we’d been intimate, she was leery of showing physical affection outside the bedroom. Maybe she was afraid her father would see.

  “It’ll be perfect, even if it’s just Stove Top,” she assured me.

  I stayed long after the rest of the students departed on Wednesday, closing the dorm with a skeleton crew of Resident Assistants. Part of our duties included entering each student’s room and making sure the blinds were down but open and everything was unplugged. We had to do it in pairs, so no student could accuse us of theft.

  Chloe, the resident assistant from the other end of the hall, was my partner. We’d gotten along very well at the start of the year, even occasionally having lunch or dinner together. But since I began working for Ursula, our budding friendship had faded. I didn’t quite consider Chloe a friend, more a colleague, which was too bad. Perhaps our easy camaraderie would have flowered into friendship had Ursula not taken up so much of my time. Not that I minded.

  “I’m surprised you volunteered to stay,” Chloe said, as she deftly unlocked the first room with the master card. “Don’t you have to get the bus first thing in the morning, to make it home? Where will you sleep tonight?”

  Damn. I regretted my loose lips at the beginning of the year. No wonder my parents always admonished me not to tell everyone my business.

  “I’m staying at Dr. Reiter’s house,” I said, watching her reaction. “Just for tonight. She wants me to watch her father, so she could get some work done. I’ll catch the bus tomorrow.”

  “On Thanksgiving Day?” Chloe asked, making a face.

  Ugh. I should have put more thought into my response. Maybe I should have said Dr. Reiter was going down to the city Thanksgiving Day and giving me a ride. That was plausible. But now I was trapped within my lie.

  “We’re celebrating a day late this year,” I lied. “My brother couldn’t get home for Thanksgiving, so we decided to postpone our feast until Friday.”

  “That sucks,” Chloe said. “It’s not the same.”

  “No,” I agreed, “but what can you do?”

  We opened the door to a room at the end of the corridor. I recoiled. The room reeked of cigarette smoke, in spite of the prohibition against smoking on campus, and the blinds were shut tight, which meant wading across the ocean of dirty laundry between the door and the window to open them.

  This kept us busy for a few minutes, then Chloe resumed her interrogation. “Do you have a boyfriend or something? You’re never home when I drop by your room at night.”

  “I stay late at the library a lot,” I said. “Studying.” This was a possibility. It was open to midnight most nights. “It’s much quieter there, easier to concentrate.”

  “Ah,” Chloe said, nodding, but she knew I was lying.

  That was then I realized that people noticed me. All this time I thought no one paid attention or cared. But they were talking about me, speculating about where I went at night. My fellow resident assistants probably knew I rarely spent a night on campus. But it wasn’t any of their business. I wasn’t breaking any rules.

  Ursula was right. People noticed a lot more than you’d think. A wave of panic washed over me. How long until someone guessed the truth? I wasn’t worried about myself, but Ursula. She had the most to lose.

  “What are you doing for Thanksgiving?” I asked Chloe, anxious to switch the focus off me.

  The moment I walked into the Reiter house, a sense of peace enveloped me. I sighed with relief. I’d be here until Sunday. Already it felt like home.

  I loved this old house, all the passageways and hidden nooks, the way it seemed to have its own benevolent personality. This was a house that kept people safe before delivering them to freedom. It was a good house. One could feel it.

  “I’m staying until Sunday,” I promised Helmut. His face lit up.

  “We’ll have pancakes every morning!” he declared.

  “Maybe French toast sometimes, too,” I suggested, laughing. “We don’t want to get sick of pancakes.”

  Helmut grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “So glad to finally have my girl with me, after all these years,” he said. “Angela, why can’t you live with us all the time?”

  “Someday,” I promised.

  Ursula was seated in the kitchen, her laptop open in front of her. The woman worked constantly without a break.

  She looked up and smiled when I entered. “I bought everything on your list,” she said. “I hope I didn’t forget anything, because nothing will be open tomorrow. Not in this one horse town.”

  “I want to get started on the apple pie,” I said.

  She shook her head in wonder. “And to think last year we ate a frozen Sara Lee pie and a Tyson chicken breast with canned cranberry sauce and Stove Top stuffing.”

  I started lining ingredients up on the counter. “Did you have a real Thanksgiving when your mother was still alive?”

  “Of course,” Ursula said. “But that was so long ago. Even then, I longed for one with family and friends crowding the table. There was always just the three of us. Not all that different than an ordinary day.” She shook her head. “No one could visit, because of the way Papa was, and also, I never developed the social skills to make friends.”

  “Me neither,” I admitted. “The only person my age I ever felt close with was my cousin, Laila. She was my best friend when we were little. The best part of the year was spending holidays and vacations with her. Then, we got older. My father lost his job. Her father opened his own law firm. They grew wealthy, while we struggled to make ends meet. We drifted apart. Nothing in common anymore.”

  “I didn’t even have a Laila,” Ursula said. “My mother isolated herself from our relatives because she didn’t want them to know how bad Papa was. It was a secret she kept until she died. And so, here we are. Two lonely ladies.”

  “I’m not lonely anymore,” I whispered.

  “Me neither,” Ursula replied, pressing her lips together in that cold smile.

  Thanksgiving Day dawned clear and cold. It was cozy watching the parade in Helmut’s sitting room, the heavenly scent of turkey wafting through the house. I had risen at dawn to stuff the turkey and peel the potatoes. I used Jana’s technique of layering the bird with bacon, so it didn’t need basting. I took a break from cooking to watch the parade with Helmut while Ursula made Belgian waffles in the waffle maker she never used.

  Ursula set up TV trays, so we could eat together in front of the television. As we ate, I looked around with gratitude and gave a silent thanks to whomever made this possible. I was happy. Really happy. For the first time in my entire life.

  Around noon, I ducked out to the sun porch, bundled in a fleece jacket, to make a quick call home. “Happy Thanksgiving!” I trilled when Jana answered the phone.

  “Happy for you,” my mother responded in her raspy voice, strained from thirty plus years of cigarette smoking. “I have to work a double shift, thr
ee in the afternoon until seven tomorrow morning.”

  “Sorry,” I said, deflating. What did I expect? For my cheerful greeting to be returned?

  I could see Ursula through the windows, frowning at her computer screen. Always working.

  “It’s just as well you didn’t bother coming home, it’s not much of a Thanksgiving,” Jana complained. “I’m too tired to cook. Your father’s trying, but you know he’ll screw it up.”

  “I’m sure he’ll do okay,” I said. I could feel my mother poking and prodding, trying to get a rise out of me. This was how our fights started. Jana would rattle my cage, almost experimentally, to see what would get me going. And she wouldn’t relent until she hit pay dirt.

  “Great life I have, working a double shift on a holiday for ungrateful kids and a deadbeat husband,” Jana complained. She’d lit a cigarette. I could hear her exhaling smoke into the phone. If I was physically in her presence, she’d be blowing it into my face.

  “Sounds awful,” I agreed.

  “Well, you can’t even be bothered to come home.”

  “I can’t afford the bus ticket, Ma,” I said.

  “So, you think I should pay for your bus ticket?” Jana retorted.

  I rolled my eyes. Every conversation with my mother always went this way, despite my best intentions. Jana twisted everything I said. It was exhausting. No wonder I preferred the peace and quiet of the Reiter home, where no one deliberately sought out arguments, or complained, or spread their misery everywhere.

  “Put Dad on, please,” I pleaded.

  “How do you even know he’s your Dad?” Jana huffed. “You only think he is because I said so.”

  “I have to go,” I said.

  A few minutes later I tossed my cell phone onto the counter. “Got Thanksgiving tidings out of the way with the fam,” I said. “Talking to them didn’t make me a bit homesick. Instead, it made me glad I wasn’t there.”

  “Sorry,” Ursula said without looking up from her computer.

  I forced a smile. Stop, I ordered myself. I didn’t want to be like Jana, spreading misery everywhere I went, my life one long endless complaint. Wasn’t it said that all girls turned into their mother? That would be a horrible fate. I needed to guard against it.