Ursula Hegi The Burgdorf Cycle Boxed Set: Floating in My Mother's Palm, Stones from the River, The Vision of Emma Blau. Children and Fire

by Hegi, Ursula

  “Yes, your films.” Emma reached for six loaves of bread. “Can you at least tell me what they are about?”

  “It’s hard to explain. I guess … if I tried to sum them up, they’d fall apart. Look at it this way: if I could say something in a few words, I wouldn’t have to make an entire film.”

  She was listening closely, nodding.

  “I need to figure out what they are about before I feel comfortable letting you see them.”

  “I’ll wait till you’re ready then.”

  “Thank you. When I have a film worthy of an audience, I’ll bring it home.”

  “Caleb—” Already she was right back where she knew she shouldn’t go. But if she didn’t, what would happen to the house? “If Mother dies too … and I hate to even think about it—”

  “Then don’t. We already have one parent to bury.”

  For a while they added groceries to their cart without speaking.

  “But if,” she finally said, feeling ashamed and yet continuing, choosing her words with caution. “What would you want to do with the house?”

  “It’s too soon to talk about that, Emma.”

  “I know. But I think we should.”

  “Why?”

  “Just so we don’t have to worry about it.”

  “I’m not worried about it.”

  “Because you don’t live here.”

  “Listen,” he said, fed up with her urgency to know, to solve it all this moment. “Dad just died. That really is the one thing on my mind. We haven’t even buried him yet.” A huge coffin sinking toward the center of the earth. He tried to shut off the I-can-use-this voice. Usually he was grateful for the way it collected material, was accustomed to its process of recording just about everything he experienced. And even though he could never use all of it, everything he had ever brought to film had started with that impulse, had played and replayed itself for him as if it were already on screen. But not my father’s death. I don’t want to use my father’s death.

  “Please—”

  “What now, Emma?”

  “Don’t snap at me like that. Please, can’t we talk about it just once?”

  Arms crossed, he leaned against the dairy case, feeling a cold draft against his back, thinking how he used to like Heflins’ much better before it had been refurbished. “Talk then.”

  “It would be best to keep the house in the family.”

  “It’s not ours to decide. I can’t worry about what may or may not belong to me some day. And I feel goddamn creepy discussing this.”

  “If she deeded it to us, I’d make sure you and I would own it equally. I’d follow through. You know I would.”

  That he knew about her. That she followed through. While he now and then forgot to do what he’d promised. He also knew that she was a saver. Careful with what was hers. Right back to her first bicycle that she’d only ridden on the sidewalk to keep the tires clean and new. Imagine. Why bother having a bike if you don’t ride it? How devastated she’d been when he’d taken it on the road after a rain. That’s me. Impulsive and messy. At least that’s what every one of his lovers had told him so far.

  “I would send you rent money every month. You could focus on your films. Let me ask you something. Do you believe that I want what’s good for you too?”

  “I don’t know how to answer that one, Emma.”

  “But you do believe that Opa wanted to keep the house in the family.”

  Caleb laughed. “That house, Emma … that house has not been in the family for ages. Just think of that whole miserable situation that split Dad from his brother and sister. Remember that afternoon Grandma’s will was read, when you and I both knew in our bones that the house belonged to all three of them? Don’t you think it’s ironic that Mom owns all of it now even though she is not even Grandpa’s blood relative?”

  “She owns it, yes, but I’m the one who’ll end up taking care of it. And of her. So she doesn’t just spend it all on roses and … and fluff.”

  “Great with peanut butter and strawberry jam.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Fluff. Marshmallow fluff.”

  She had to laugh.

  He grasped her shoulders. “Don’t take it on, Emma. Don’t do it.”

  “I couldn’t bear doing all this work and then having you sell it.” Already she could see buyers inspecting the house. Strangers. She felt stateless, homeless. And because of that, her words came out sharper than she intended. “I deserve to know what you’ll do once the house is ours.”

  “You need to stop this. Right now.” He rubbed his arms. “It’s cold in here. Let’s go.”

  As they got into the car, he already dreaded the variations of that same conversation that they’d have over the years to come, conversations about ownership and care of the house that would divide them and bring them back together again. And always, always it would be Emma who’d start it with her insistence to know what was to become of the house, but who’d then pull him back with phone calls and letters while—all around her—the house would be crumbling. She would want him to go to a lawyer with her. To draw up something simple. While he’d continue to fight her.

  But now, on the day before their father’s funeral, Emma was eager to draw away from those questions, to seek solace in what was familiar, comfortable. The idea for the people game came to her the instant they entered the state liquor store and saw a slight man with a bow tie waiting on two women.

  She nudged Caleb, motioned toward the man who was holding a bottle close to his rimless glasses. “People game?”

  “This would definitely be the superior choice,” the clerk was telling the women. “It’s full-bodied, yet unobtrusive—what I would call an intelligent wine. You get a subtle taste of the grape.” His yellow shirt barely contrasted the color of his skin. “I simply can’t stand wine if I can’t get at least a taste of the grape …”

  Caleb’s eyes flickered. Emma motioned him toward a shelf with red wine, and they watched as the clerk gently lowered the bottle into a paper bag. As he bent over it, his pale fingers folded its top, creasing the edges meticulously.

  Caleb whispered, “Can you imagine him putting his socks on in the morning?”

  Emma muffled a laugh. Still, beneath all of it she felt the loss of her father, felt a grief so cold and steady that she was afraid of letting it sink deeper. “Socks … oh yes, his socks would be ironed.”

  The clerk glanced up, briefly. His pink scalp showed through strands of blond.

  “Socks folded in pairs instead of rolled up,” Caleb whispered.

  “I can just see him. He takes at least ten minutes to pull them over his toes.”

  “The care he must take in brushing his teeth …”

  “And tying his shoelaces. Bending over each polished shoe.”

  “Adjusting the laces so the ends are the same length.”

  “Always. And then the ritual of forming a perfect bow.”

  The clerk reached for the tape dispenser, slowly detached a piece of tape, smoothed it over a creased edge of paper. He looked like the kind of man, Caleb thought, who’d use fastidious manners and pompous words to cover his loneliness. Who’d live alone— not because be chooses to, but because he’s afraid he’s too colorless and passionless to approach anyone. But there used to be someone. A wife who left. Marcia. Yes. Marcia was a good name for her. Caleb could feel what it would be like to be that man. To come home to a small, dark house where he’s lived for twenty years, the house he and Marcia saved for. He unlocks the front door, turns on the light to a room filled with things Marcia picked out: furniture, dishes, blankets, pictures, lamps… The double bed they bought on lay-away before they got married, too large and cold for him alone. Framed photos of his son who now lives with his mother: the boy laughing on the swing set in the backyard; in his Sunday suit; in his mother’s arms as an infant. In the kitchen he makes himself a pot of tea, unfolds his newspaper and—

  “Four loops.” Emma
grinned at him.

  “What?”

  “Two shoes. Two loops in each bow. That makes four.”

  “Don’t rush me.” Caleb picked up a bottle of cabernet. Held it against the light. Pretended to study its deep red glow. “I’m still on the first shoe.”

  “Which shoe?”

  He grimaced at her, no longer wanting to play the game, and yet continuing because it was easing the tension between him and Emma.

  “Hurry up then. I already got both of them tied. You’re even slower than he. Christ—” She coughed to cover another laugh. “I just thought of something.”

  “Tell me.”

  “Can you picture him having sex?”

  “We just got his shoes on him.”

  “So? Take them off.”

  “There are limits, Emma.”

  “May I assist you with something?” the clerk asked Caleb as the two women walked out with the creased bag.

  “We’re looking for four reds and four whites.” When Caleb glanced at Emma, her eyes were bright, urging him to be outrageous. “Something light, yet full-bodied. Not too obtrusive, though,” he added, feeling as though he were betraying this man in whose house he’d been, whose loneliness he’d probed.

  “You’re wicked,” Emma gasped as soon as they were outside the store with their bottles. “Wonderfully wicked.” She wiped her eyes.

  “Well, I wanted to make sure you’d get a wine with at least a taste of the grape.”

  But as they approached Emma’s car, the reality of their father’s death settled on them a sorrowfulness that stayed with them through the afternoon and night, through the morning of his funeral and beyond when Emma would still have dreams about the size of his casket and the circle of mourners around his grave site—her mother and brother, Aunt Greta and her priest who said prayers over her father’s grave, several townspeople who used to bring their animals to her father’s clinic, and just a few of the tenants—a circle much smaller than at her Oma’s funeral ten years before.

  Though Emma was prepared to look after her mother, Yvonne only crumpled for a few days and then arose as if the weight of her husband’s concern had kept her confined.

  “Don’t do too much at once,” Emma warned her.

  But Yvonne had been resting up for decades and felt buoyant with long-stored energy; she went for walks by herself, declined dinner invitations from Pearl Bloom and Rosalie Perelli; decreased her pain medication; called cabs to take her to her favorite stores; talked about studying for a driver’s license; and dyed her hair the blue-black it used to be. Still, her newfound strength had little to do with matters of the house: there, she relied on Emma who nested herself back into the fifth-floor apartment, though Yvonne urged her to go back to school. But Emma arranged with her professors to finish her last assignments by mail, and the day her classmates walked across the stage at UNH to receive their degrees, she sat at the built-in desk in her old room, making a list of repairs the way Opa used to. Except his lists had been shorter since he’d never let anything get run down. He used to have workmen to call on. Homer and Irene Wilson. Danny. While all Emma had left was Danny.

  Since her Uncle Tobias worried about Danny’s health, he called her at least once a week to make sure Danny was eating enough and not working too hard. It meant a lot to her to be getting closer to this uncle who’d been so aloof with her entire family ever since her father had inherited the Wasserburg. But he was no longer like that with her. Because she’d found his mother’s old notebook in the storage bin. When she’d given it to him, she’d apologized because it smelled musty, but he’d said, “Oh no, that’s all part of it, of her and that time,” and he’d slowly turned the stained, buckled pages, reading to her about fights between the Chocoruas and the Aquadoctans, about the peace between the tribes that came when an Aquadoctan princess married a Chocoruan prince.

  “It should be that easy for all of us,” he’d said and closed his mother’s notebook.

  On the phone, Emma would assure him that Danny was pacing himself, that she reminded him about taking his vitamins and arthritis pills. Most days she felt that all she inherited were Danny and her mother. Except it was easier to talk with Danny about expenses.

  Her mother would only wave Emma’s concerns away and claim there’d always been enough money to care for the house. She’d want to hear what Emma thought of her new linen coat, say, or if she should get a pink or peach scarf to wear with it. The things her mother bought were useless and expensive, like long mirrors on each floor next to the elevator. “So you can take one more look at yourself before you leave the building.”

  At almost seventy, Danny was still able to fix almost everything, though he had become quite slow. Yet, about his appearance he was as conscientious as ever: his clothes were stylish, and he brushed his thick hair frequently, often half-crouched as he admired himself in the side mirrors of cars in the garage. Once a month he took an overnight trip. To see family, he said. Family, Emma knew, meant Uncle Tobias who wanted Danny to retire and live with him in Hartford. But Danny was stubborn: he liked to go to the dog races in Belmont; fish from the dock; walk to the diner on Main for breakfast before starting his workday.

  It didn’t take the tenants long to bring their complaints to Emma. Though Yvonne was charming when they called her, she’d forget their problems, just as she’d forget to deposit their rent checks and let them accumulate in her kitchen along with unopened bills and scraps of paper with phone numbers but no names. When Emma finally took the checks to the bank, her mother didn’t let her deposit the ones from Aunt Greta that arrived from Boston every month.

  “She obviously wants to pay for her apartment,” Emma said. “And it’s no hardship for her. She has millions.”

  “Your father always honored Greta’s rent-free arrangement.”

  “But it’s wasteful. She hardly uses the apartment. Still, we keep it available for her. We should either accept her checks or—”

  “I’m not taking rent money from Greta.”

  “Then let’s rent her apartment. We need the income.” She kept talking while her mother shook her head. “And the few times she and Uncle Noah are here, they can stay with us.”

  The end of August, Emma decided to postpone her acceptance to graduate school at the University of Wisconsin.

  “You don’t need to do that,” her mother told her.

  “I want to help you with the house. It’s too much for you alone.”

  The pattern of Emma’s days was alike. After breakfast with her mother, she’d inspect apartments, hallways, and storage areas, scheduling repairs and maintenance. Evenings she cleaned her mother’s apartment or washed both their clothes. In her memory every day with her Opa had been distinctly different, but now her days of labor bled into each other as she tried to find tenants for empty apartments, helped Danny paint the lobby, brought in a plumber to take care of leaks, an electrician to replace the broken light fixtures in the elevator.

  During those years when her father had managed the building without enough foresight and energy, he’d never minded that people moved out without returning the keys to their apartments or to the outside door. As a result, a lot of keys were missing, and some tenants had to keep their doors unlocked in order to get back inside. Since the records he’d kept were incomplete and impossible to balance against bank statements, Emma started a new set of books.

  None of the rents had been raised since Oma’s death. When she sent out notices, announcing a ten percent increase, and added up all income and expenses she expected for the following year, she felt encouraged that, gradually, she would be able to restore the Wasserburg. She painted the rooms in the basement where the maids used to live, bought secondhand beds and dressers, hung a plastic shower curtain in the shared bathroom, and sent another round of notices, announcing that each room would be available for five dollars a night to the tenants’ visiting relatives.

  “Now she’s running a motel in my basement,” Danny complained to Tobias
one Saturday evening while they were washing dishes. “Makes them bring their own sheets and towels. And if she thinks that it’ll bring in another buck, she’ll have me serving them coffee and eggs in bed.”

  “I’ll serve you coffee and eggs in bed.”

  “Bare-assed in a white apron?”

  “For you … sure. I’ll start tomorrow morning. I’ll even iron your shirts for you. Cut your toenails.”

  “Please. You’ll turn me into a kept man.”

  “It’s called retirement, Danny. And you’re five years overdue for that. My house has space for both of us.”

  “You don’t have enough stuff on your walls.”

  “That way you can hang up your greyhound pictures and anything else you want.”

  “What I like about my job is having the entire basement to myself.”

  “Emma is changing that, isn’t she? Soon she’ll want your spare bedroom for guests and—”

  “Don’t even think that.”

  “You have to be realistic. Since you have a kitchen, Emma will figure anytime now that she can charge the guests for using that. You’ll wake up and—”

  “Don’t.”

  “—and there’ll be four, five people in your kitchen, making pot roasts or pies. …”

  Danny grinned, shaking his head. “Even as a kid, you were a pain.” He rinsed out a bowl, set it in the drying rack for Tobias.

  “You can have my basement.”

  “All of it?”

  “Plus half of this bed.”

  “We’re so … different, Tobias.”

  “Not really.”

  “I think so.”

  “You mean things like education?”

  “That too. Mostly the way we love. You’re more like your father that way.”

  Tobias stopped drying the silverware. “My father?”

  “Don’t get so upset.”

  “I don’t make people destroy what’s important to them.”

  “I was talking about wanting more than you already have. Keeping at it the way he used to.”