Lilli's Quest

by Lila Perl

  In gratitude for rescuing me from “bleeding to death alone in the woods,” Roy was invited to have lunch at Shady Pines, and the big fuss started all over again. The guests also wanted to know about Roy. He was seventeen, just out of boot camp, and awaiting assignment to a ship, probably somewhere in the Pacific. He had heard the barking dog and my screams from across the road, where there was a leafy, well-concealed bungalow colony where he had been visiting relatives for a few days.

  Again, I was bombarded with questions from all over the dining room, this time as to whether I had any symptoms of rabies yet. “Does it burn where you were bitten?” “Have you got a headache?” “Can you drink water? Because you know that’s why they call it hydrophobia. If you can’t, well …” It was a relief when I was ordered to spend the afternoon in my room, resting. “Show me where you’ll be,” Roy whispered before leaving. “I’ll come by later and check on you, pretty girl.” He spoke in German, and every time he did that, I felt a throb of familiarity. I thought of Karl, although he would not have been so personal.

  Isabel, who I thought had been acting strangely all through lunch, was strictly warned by her mother to stay out of our room for a couple of hours so as not to disturb me. There also appeared to be something going on between her and Roy. When I glanced back after reaching our room, I saw her looking up at him and waving her arms around as if she knew him and was angry about something. Perhaps she was jealous of all the attention I’d been getting. I’d have been more than happy to transfer the whole glaring burden to her.

  I had been resting for a while and had maybe even dozed off, when I opened my eyes and noticed that one of the bureau drawers that had been assigned to me wasn’t properly closed. It sat open at an angle, as if an effort to slam it shut in a hurry had backfired.

  Instantly suspicious, I rose from my bed, limped across the floorboards, and pulled the drawer open. Sure enough, someone had been examining my possessions while I’d been exploring the unfriendly countryside.

  Most private was my Shokoladen box, which I had brought with me from Germany and treasured during my time at the Rathbones and at the hostel. It had never been tampered with before, to my knowledge. Now I could see that the mementos, photos, and letters had been sifted through. The picture with Mutti, Papa, and the three of us lay at a crooked angle. A letter, written in German, had been removed from its envelope and been reinserted the wrong way around. Isabel!

  An inspection of the half of the closet where I had hung my things revealed more snooping. Hangers had been brushed aside for a closer look. My delicate flowered chiffon dress was crushed against another garment. I knew that Aunt Harriette, who was already familiar with my wardrobe and the contents of my old chocolate box, would have no need to invade my privacy. Isabel!

  When would our stay at Shady Pines end and rid me of this “typical American girl?”

  Was I dreaming, or was Roy really calling to me from the window above my bed? Darkness pervaded the room. I had no way of knowing if Isabel was asleep. But how long could I just lie there, with Roy urging me to come outside?

  I had no time to think carefully about what I was doing. I got up and crouched close to the window. “One moment,” I whispered hastily. I was wearing the flower-sprigged seersucker summer pajamas that Aunt Harriette had bought me—“with matching robe.” Snatching up the latter, I tiptoed across the floor and let myself out the door. Roy met me at the bottom of the porch steps casually, as if there was nothing wrong with his invading Shady Pines in the middle of the night and enticing a fifteen-year-old girl to a rendezvous.

  “How’s your leg?” he asked. “Can you walk to the car? I parked just off the grounds. I could carry you.”

  “Car? No. Where are we going? It’s crazy.”

  “Helga, listen. It’s just so we can sit and talk. See, I got my orders yesterday. I have to be on the eight am train to the city. I wanted to see you again. To say goodbye.”

  Limping only slightly, I followed Roy under a starlit sky to the borrowed car he had used to take me to the doctor that morning. He had parked it at the side of the dirt road, hidden by trees. He helped me into the passenger seat and came around to the driver’s side. It felt odd to be sitting in a parked vehicle that wasn’t about to go anywhere.

  “So you must leave tomorrow,” I said to break the silence that followed after he had gotten in the car. “I’m sad. I can only say thank you once again. Do you really think you will go to the Pacific?”

  Roy flung his arm across the back of my seat. I could feel his fingers dangling loosely at the back of my neck. “Yeah,” he mumbled. “But let’s not talk about that now. I want to tell you some things in German. I hope you can understand me.” I relaxed, looking forward to the kind of familiarity I had experienced in my sibling-like discussions with Karl. But what Roy told me in German made me blush and fidget, and long to get back to my room. His words were agonizingly personal, praising my hair, my eyes, my body. He spoke of feelings he had for me that he could barely suppress. His arm engaged my neck and he drew me to him in a smothering embrace. I pulled away sharply and opened the door of the car. “Nein! This is too much. You are asking me to pay a price for your services.”

  I ran, limping, back toward the grounds of the hotel, with Roy following me. “Listen to me, listen to me, Helga,” he said after me. “I never meant to … I truly care for you. I acted like some American guy. I was stupid. I apologize.” I slowed down. My bandaged leg had begun to hurt. “Wait,” Roy begged. “Before we get too close to the hotel. Give me your address. I’ll write to you. I swear I will. I don’t want you to forget me. I won’t forget you.” He took some paper and a pen from his pocket.

  I hesitated for a moment but then, as if under a spell, gave him my aunt and uncle’s address in Westchester. “Something else,” Roy added. “If things ever get tough for you, you can always take shelter in the bungalow where I’ve been staying. I’m writing the address and a drawing of where the key is hidden. Nobody’s there except in the summer.”

  What a strange invitation. Why would I ever want to run away and hide myself in this spooky countryside? Nevertheless, I took Roy’s note and tucked it into the pocket of my robe, suddenly wondering how I had come out to meet him so improperly dressed?

  “Now,” Roy said, as we stood together in the dark, “I get my goodbye kiss, something nobody can ever refuse a sailor.” As he pulled me toward him, half-roughly, in a firm embrace, my resistance seemed to melt. His lips were on mine, and I was responding eagerly. My very first kiss! I gave myself up to the new sensation and to the surge of sexual feeling that swept through my body. Roy! At that moment, I believed myself madly in love with him.

  We clung to each other until it was Roy who backed off. “Goodbye, you sweet girl. Think about me, huh?” His figure faded off into the darkness.

  Partings, there were always partings. I lay in bed for a long time before the weeping started. It went on for a long time, until I felt a sharp poke that made me shriek and sit up in bed. Isabel! I was pretty sure that she knew I’d left the room for a time, so I lied and told her that my leg was hurting and I had gone to the bathhouse to wash the area around the wound with cool water. Then I flung my arm across my face and pretended to fall asleep.

  *

  A few days later, there was a miraculous turn of events. Late on a Saturday afternoon, Isabel was ordered by her parents to pack up her things. Although the family’s stay at Shady Pines was to have lasted for two weeks, the Brandts were abruptly returning to their apartment in the city, which I had learned was on a thoroughfare in the Bronx known as the Grand Concourse.

  I had just come in from a volleyball game with some of the hotel guests down on the so-called athletic field to find Isabel dashing around our room, cramming her clothes and other possessions into a suitcase that was already bulging to the point of not closing. She appeared to be having a tantrum of some kind. Startled, I inquired, “Isabel, what is it? You’re leaving? Is it my fault? Where are you
going?”

  Without even looking up, she gave me a single word answer, “Home.”

  I sat down on my bed. I was hot and sweaty, and longed to go to the bathhouse to take a shower. “Isabel, please tell me. If I did something wrong, something that upset you …” All I could think of was my going out to meet Roy the night before he’d left. She had probably told her parents, and they had decided I was an immoral companion for their daughter. But wouldn’t the Brandts have reported my misbehavior to Aunt Harriette? And wouldn’t my aunt have questioned me as to my whereabouts the night I left the cabin?

  “Isabel, if you won’t talk to me, I’m sorry for whatever I did. But I have to go and take my shower now.” I extended my hand, which she took limply. I couldn’t say that I was sorry our acquaintanceship had been so short. As a matter of fact, I hoped that I would never see her again. I managed a few words: “I wish you good luck in your new school year.”

  When I returned to the annex room after my shower, Isabel and her suitcase were gone. Her bedding had been removed and only the bare mattress stared back at me. I dressed for the Saturday evening dinner in a pretty, aquamarine cap-sleeve dress that Aunt Harriette had bought for me in the “department store” in Harper’s Falls, and wandered out onto the grounds. I was still certain that I was the reason for Isabel’s departure.

  Our table in the dining room had now shrunken to three places instead of six.

  The arriving diners were surprised at our sudden reduction in numbers, and many stopped by to question my aunt and uncle. “I saw them pulling away in the car about two hours ago,” a moustached, card-playing friend of Isabel’s father remarked. “His tires were kicking up the dirt like a bucking bronco. Didn’t say goodbye to nobody. What happened?”

  “A family matter,” Aunt Harriette replied sweetly. “Nobody sick or dying. Just a little private matter.” The unsatisfied questioner moved away hunching his shoulders, and went off to the other tables to report his non-news.

  I turned to Aunt Harriette. “It was something I did that offended Isabel and her parents. Right?”

  “You! Oh, no, no, no, dear.”

  With enormous relief, I learned that Isabel’s brother Arnold, who was about to turn eighteen, had given up his plan to enter college in the fall and enlisted in the Air Force instead. Although Isabel’s father was an all-out supporter of the war effort and had praised Roy generously for having joined the navy, he had hoped his own son would go to college and maybe even get a deferment. The news of Arnold’s defection from civilian life that very afternoon, had resulted in Mr. Brandt’s decision to cut short the family’s stay at Shady Pines. They were a strange family, the Brandts, the parents often squabbling and criticizing each other, as well as Isabel. Perhaps I should have made allowances for Isabel’s brusque and bossy ways? Anyway, I was now free to have my own room, to enjoy tennis on the hotel’s dilapidated court, play volleyball on the bumpy lawn, go for short walks with Aunt Harriette, and to see the latest Hollywood movies at the small town movie theater in Harper’s Falls.

  There was also Isabel’s friend, Ruth, the daughter of the Moskin family, the owners of the hotel. Although much of the placid and friendly twelve-year-old’s time was taken up serving as governess for the young children of the guests, she and I had become friends. Unlike Isabel, Ruth was soft-spoken, and sensitive to others. She told me that Isabel was boy-crazy and had had a crush on Roy, whom she had already run into near the bungalow colony before my arrival. So that accounted, I suppose, for some of Isabel’s hostility toward me. Ruth, too, admitted she was anxious to learn how to attract boys, and offered to teach me the dance rage of the day, the Lindy Hop. We spent many an evening practicing to canned music in the empty casino.

  In spite of my encounter with the crazed dog, I also resumed hiking in the early morning before breakfast. One morning, I crossed the road in search of the bungalow colony where Roy had been staying. I had a vague memory of his having shown me his cabin on that awful morning when I’d been bitten. I had brought Roy’s directions with me, and a good thing I did, as the cottages, all twelve of them, looked exactly alike. They were painted dark green with white shutters, and had numbers nailed to the front doors. Without Roy’s note, I’d never have known which one held the hidden key.

  Although it was still very early, many residents of the colony were up and about, some heading for the nearby lake to fish, so I left the grounds and continued my usual outing before returning to Shady Pines. I arrived at the hotel in a pleasantly dreamy state. I was rid of Isabel, and I would soon return to my aunt and uncle’s house in Westchester, where I would attend the local high school, on a grade level appropriate to my age. I could look forward to mail from my friend Karl in England, and from Roy who, in my thoughts, had taken on a dangerous but thrilling allure.

  On approaching the hotel grounds, however, my selfish meanderings fled, as it was immediately obvious that something serious was taking place. An ambulance was pulled up onto the lawn directly in front of the main building. Hotel guests and staff were milling about in a state of noise and confusion. Somewhere in their midst, I caught sight of my Uncle Herman, with his balding head and black-rimmed eyeglasses. He was waving his arms about and trying to make his way through the imploring crowd, which was apparently seeking information from him.

  A pang of terror gripped me. I sensed immediately that something had happened to Aunt Harriette. I soon learned that, as in the case of Isabel and the Brandts, my aunt and uncle and I were fated to leave Shady Pines before finishing our intended stay. Although my aunt had never complained of illness, she seemed to tire easily recently. On this particular morning, she had awakened, cried out in pain to my uncle, pressed her hand to her abdomen, and fainted. An ambulance had been called to take her to the small hospital in Harper’s Falls. The following day, she would be transported by long-distance ambulance to a hospital in Westchester, and my uncle and I would follow in the Cadillac. Visits to doctors would ensue, and a sleepin nurse would be added to the housekeeping staff in the big house. My brief idyll was about to come to an end. Once again, there would be a painful parting. My guilt at having taken Helga’s place seized me as never before. My life in America would be changed forever, I was sure, and I would be punished, as I deserved to be.

  Eleven

  At first, the cause of Aunt Harriette’s stabbing abdominal pain was difficult for the doctors to diagnose. She admitted to having had gripping attacks in the past, which she had managed to conceal. “I’ve always hated to spoil a good time,” she confessed to me as she lay in her hospital bed. Nearly a week had passed since my aunt had been hospitalized, and she was yearning to go home. “So many things to do. I want to get you some sports equipment, Helga, for when you enter high school, and ice skates for the winter. We have so many ponds that freeze over, as well as the town rink.” I stroked her smooth-as-silk hand. “Don’t think about me, Aunt Harriette. Just think of getting well.”

  The news of my aunt’s impending surgery followed all too quickly. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, a too-often deadly form of the disease. The only hope lay in the removal of the affected organs. Her total recovery time would be six to eight weeks. This devastating news was frightening enough, before my uncle told me, confidentially, that he feared for her survival. Arrangements, however, had been made for me during the time of my aunt’s incapacity—the Brandts had offered to take me into their apartment in the Bronx! Sally Brandt, Isabel’s mother, would do anything for her longtime friend. I would go to school there, and share a room with my recent acquaintance, Isabel. My weak protests, promises that I would be no trouble if I was allowed to stay in Westchester and attend the local high school, that I wanted to be closer to Aunt Harriette in the hospital, were to no avail. Both my aunt and uncle decreed that they would be failing in their loyalty to Papa if they did not see to it that I was safe and in a good home during this trying time.

  On a late-summer day, just after the start of the new school year, Mrs. Brandt and
Isabel came to pick me up and take me home with them to the Bronx. The scene was Aunt Harriette’s room in the hospital. Always anxious to appear bright and chipper, my courageous aunt had skillfully applied her makeup, eyes ringed as usual with black liner, eyelids shimmering with a purplish-blue hue that matched her eye color. She sat up against numerous pillows, wearing a luxurious satin bed jacket. The scent of her cologne overrode the antiseptic odor of the room. It was hard to believe that, within a day or two, she would undergo a painful and debilitating operation, as she commanded everyone, “No crying, no crying.”

  Isabel and I just stared at each other dumbly at first. She finally mumbled something about having sent a postcard to Ruth and me, and apparently not having received a reply. The card, which was addressed to Ruth, had explained about Isabel’s brother enlisting in the Air Force, and I’d left it to Ruth to respond. After inquiring politely about my leg, the usual nosy Isabel emerged, asking if I’d been in touch with Roy, if Ruth and I had become friends, and whether we’d been spending time together. I found Isabel’s questions annoying and out of place. But I suppose she was trying to be more friendly than on the day when she’d swept out of our room at Shady Pines.

  When the time came to say our goodbyes, Isabel and Mrs. Brandt preceded me and waited outside in the corridor.

  “No crying, no crying,” Aunt Harriette again insisted. “You know what that will do to my eye makeup.” Choking on unspoken words, I picked up my suitcase and tiptoed out of the room to join my new hosts for the trip to the Bronx.

  It was early evening when we rose up in the elevator to the fourth floor of the brick apartment building on the Grand Concourse. The journey from Westchester had involved taking a bus, and then a very hot and airless subway train. Isabel assured me that the trip took much less time by car, and wasn’t nearly so exhausting.