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

  Beneath the moving men’s arms were dark stains. Stefan missed Uncle Danny who didn’t smell of sweat. But Uncle Danny was no longer strong enough to carry furniture. That’s why he lived in Connecticut now. Great-uncle Tobias had arrived to pick him up in his convertible, and Uncle Danny had sent his furniture along in a moving truck. But before leaving, the two of them had gone into the garage and leaned against one another by the workbench. For an instant Stefan had been afraid that Uncle Danny was keeling over. Because that’s what he’d done twice now, keeled over with a face whiter than white, and Stefan’s mother had sat on the floor with him, holding his head on her lap till the ambulance arrived.

  But in the garage Uncle Danny’s face was pink and not white, and he was smiling. “Just one more where it all started,” he was saying.

  “What started?” Stefan asked from behind Miss Fitzpatrick’s red Chevy.

  “Hey now, Mr. Stefan Blau.” Uncle Danny laughed.

  But Great-uncle Tobias did not laugh. “What are you doing there?”

  “Playing.”

  “Let the boy—” Uncle Danny said. “This garage has always been the best place to play, Tobias. Don’t forget that.”

  “Where is your mother?”

  “Upstairs.”

  “Then go to her.”

  Though his voice was grumpy, Stefan wasn’t scared of him. He used to be when he was little. But then Great-uncle Tobias had come into his room one day and pointed to the dresser with the green knobs. “Do you know that this piece of furniture will guard your secrets?” He’d shown Stefan how the floor of one drawer rested on alphabet blocks and lifted out to reveal an empty space. “I made that when I was a boy. When I didn’t know yet that all I ever needed to hide was already inside me. Still… maybe you can use it if you ever need to hide something.”

  “Go now, boy,” Great-uncle Tobias said.

  As Stefan turned to leave, he told Uncle Danny, “Don’t keel over. Okay?”

  “Not today.”

  “How do you know?”

  “I just do.”

  Stefan hesitated. “If Uncle Danny keels over,” he instructed his great-uncle, “you yell for me, and I’ll call the ambulance. And if he gets cramps in his legs—”

  “Cramps?” No longer Great-uncle Tobias. But the taller of the moving men. Here with him in the elevator. Asking, “Who’s getting cramps?” Saying to the other man, “What’s the kid mumbling about?”

  “Leave him alone, Pete.”

  “What’s your name, kid?”

  “Stefan.”

  Just then the elevator stopped on the second floor, and the man said, “All right, Stefan, will you hold that door open for us?”

  “Okay.”

  The men wheezed as they carried furniture into the hallway. When the elevator was empty, Stefan rode it by himself. Up and down and up and down. A big box of his own where no one could see him. This morning, when the moving men had carried his mother’s bed from her room, Stefan had found the broken stem from one of his father’s pipes under the edge of the peacock rug. It was dusty, worn down at the end with tooth marks, and he’d slipped it into his pocket. The elevator was humming, and Stefan looked at the ceiling and the light with its dark specks behind the glass. They look like dead bugs. How did they get in there? Why didn’t they find their way out? Are the other bugs in their families still searching for them? He wished his father would come over to play bear with him. But his father only visited on Wednesdays. When he played bear with Stefan, he’d crawl through the apartment, shaking Stefan off if he tried to climb on his long back. But Stefan always got on, though it took a lot of holding on; and then his father would growl and laugh and ask him if he wasn’t getting too old for this.

  The gray smell of sweat rode with Stefan, wound its way into his nose, his mouth, and he pumped the number four button. When the elevator stopped and the door opened, he ran from it, taking a deep breath. Most of the furniture was already gone from this apartment: both beds and dressers, the china cabinet, the desk, and the lion chairs. In the hallway, the walls were bare. By tomorrow his mother would have hung the framed photos in the hallway of the next apartment. It always was one of the first things she did. But now she was scrubbing the kitchen counter for the new tenant, a pail with soapy water and a bottle of disinfectant next to her.

  She glanced up when his shoes clicked against the black-and-white floor tiles. “Getting bored?” Her face was flushed, and her hands smelled of detergent when she hugged him.

  “No.”

  “Then why are you so gloomy?” She opened a box of animal crackers. One arm around his shoulders, she sat next to him on the corner bench that the movers hadn’t taken yet.

  The stem of his father’s pipe pressed against his thigh. His mother was always repairing things that were broken, and if she found out about the pipe, she’d make him give it to her so that she could fix that too. But he was good at keeping secrets from her. He’d learned that from his grandma.

  “Promise not to tell your mother,” she’d say when she took him along shopping. He loved to go to stores with his grandma because afterwards he’d get to help her hide the new clothes inside her apartment so that his mother wouldn’t make her take them back for a refund.

  “Still hungry?” His mother’s hand brushed crumbs from his shirt.

  He shook his head.

  “You know what I could use? One of your drawings to hang on the refrigerator in our new apartment.”

  While she covered the shelves in the cabinets with flowered paper from a roll, Stefan drew a picture of a boy in an elevator that went way up to the sky. He colored the boy’s pants brown like his own, his shirt yellow. His favorite color was white, and he wished he could use that for the boy’s shirt, but it wouldn’t show up against the paper. He was careful to stay within the lines. His mother always said he was good at coloring inside the lines. But his letters never came out the way he wanted them to: they leaned together or dropped apart in ugly squiggles. Coloring was easy. He drew the door to the elevator closed so nobody could get in, but the roof was open and the boy could see the stars. Stefan drew the Big Dipper for the boy and, to the right of it, Polaris, the only star that always stayed in the same place.

  Six months after the move, when Emma had restored this apartment too, she suggested to her mother, “We could rent out your apartment. It’s too big for one person anyhow.”

  But Yvonne refused.

  “You’d be more comfortable in a smaller place.”

  “I don’t want to piece together my life the way you do.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Nothing. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.” How could she tell Emma that she felt sad for her to be clawing for love from a man who didn’t adore her? If she could wish for one thing she could have passed on to Emma—her looks or being adored by every man who met her—it would have been that adoration. Certainly not that persistence of Emma’s that was so tedious.

  “Do you ever think how much easier it would be for you,” Emma asked, “to not have the responsibility for the house?”

  “No.”

  “See, if you deeded it over to me, I could take care of all the bills and all the repairs then, and you’d—” Emma tried to stop herself. It wasn’t decent, pushing at her mother like that.

  “No, Emma.”

  “To me and Caleb, I mean.”

  Yvonne braced herself against her daughter’s urgency. “No.”

  “You wouldn’t have anything to worry about.”

  “And nothing to live on.”

  “Your apartment would be free.”

  “My apartment is free now.”

  “I’d give you a generous amount every month to live on.”

  “I write checks for what I need.”

  “But the money won’t last. Don’t you see? Soon there’ll be nothing.”

  “We never had those problems when your father was alive.”

  “Because you had his income fro
m the clinic. And all the apartments were rented then.”

  When Emma told Justin Miles about her mother’s refusal to deed the house to her, he held her, stroked her shoulders. “I bet on some level your mother is grateful for all you’re doing.”

  “I hate wastefulness. It drives me mad. And we don’t have enough for the repairs. I wish she’d let me do it right. And for that, I need her to deed the house to my brother and me.”

  “You know what just occurred to me?”

  “What?”

  “Who your real lover is.”

  She frowned at him.

  “The house. Your real lover is this house. I’ll never be as important to you.”

  She didn’t know how to contradict him because—though true in a way—it was not that simple. And she felt irritated that he would try to manipulate her into accepting that his attachment to her, too, was not as strong as that to his family. Abruptly, she got up. “I know we have separate lives. You don’t need to remind me of that.”

  “Don’t be like that.”

  She poured herself a glass of water. “You know what I wish? Do you? I wish you’d bring our son real gifts. Not the things you stuff into your pockets before leaving your office.”

  “lean do that.”

  She walked to the window. Laid her forehead against the glass. All she ever had was hope. Hope that eventually he would leave his wife. Why did she always have to want what belonged to others? The Wasserburg. This man. Who doled himself out so carefully. What mattered most to her in the world could not be hers unless she took it away from someone. She didn’t want to be in that position. With the house or with Justin. But no one looked out for her. No one made sure that she and Stefan had what they needed. If she didn’t do it, no one else would.

  “Emma?”

  “Does your wife ever ask you where you sleep Wednesday nights?” she surprised herself by asking.

  He didn’t answer. Just watched her from the sofa in that benevolent manner of his. Usually she tried to avoid thinking too much about Laura, who had him every day, while her own weeks were only bordered by his visits. Once he left, all she had was her expectation of the following Wednesday, which—if she settled for it with the patience to which he had become accustomed with his wife—could form a succession of Wednesdays that stretched to the end of their lives like posts, supporting and marking off unshaped barriers of time. While he seemed content to be with her that one afternoon and evening each week. And he would continue to be there. For her and for Stefan. As long as they could arrange the significant events of their lives on Wednesdays. Guest appearances. Suddenly, angry that he expected this patience from both her and his wife, she felt a bond to Laura. Felt pity too. Because there was always the possibility that he would leave his wife. In time. That’s why Emma had settled in for a wait that had seemed manageable at first and was only frightening if she let herself look back at the years she had already spent waiting for him.

  The spring of 1983, the people of Winnipesaukee noticed Emma Blau—followed by the son she had named after her grandfather—checking out vacant apartments in buildings throughout town. They knew why: the Wasserburg was only two thirds full, and she was trying to find out what new renters might be looking for.

  They could have told her that renters wanted garden apartments with individual entrances to the outside. Renters wanted dishwashers. Air conditioners. Garbage disposals. And with those old, narrow pipes in the Wasserburg, the townspeople knew, dishwashers were not practical even if Emma Blau had been able to afford them.

  But then she surprised them by working an agreement with the owner of Weber’s Hardware for a dozen air conditioners, installed, in return for one year’s rent on a large apartment for the owner’s son, Hank Weber III, who was getting married to Sybil Baxter, whose great-grandmother had lived in the Wasserburg as a young woman—not in any of the fancy apartments, for sure, but in the basement with the other maids. Robichaud, her maiden name had been, Birdie Robichaud, and she used to come home with tales of how magnificent the Wasserburg was. But once Sybil and Hank lived there, they could only complain about it and plot their move to a modern building as soon as their year was up.

  When the air conditioners were in place, Emma Blau placed ads in the newspaper, although—so the townspeople agreed—old Stefan Blau would have never approved of the boxy way in which they protruded from the windows. But one thing they had to admire about Emma Blau was that she did not give up, not even as the house was crumbling around her. And while they did not approve of her holding on to a married woman’s husband and having a child with him, they felt sorry for her because nothing came easy to her as it had to her grandfather. Still—what he’d had in luck, Emma had in perseverance. Not that Stefan Blau hadn’t shown perseverance too, but with him it had been linked with luck.

  Even those too young to have met Stefan Blau had heard stories about that luck. About a certain glamour that had carried over to his house. While he’d always had a waiting list of people dreaming to live in his house, word had it that Emma Blau’s tenants were grumbling—those who had lived in the Wasserburg a while, and who could blame them, really?—that the first air conditioners should have gone to them. Three families threatened to move out unless she’d let them switch to apartments with air conditioners; and to keep from renting them freshly painted rooms and having to restore theirs again, Emma was then of course forced to get air conditioners for all apartments.

  The townspeople didn’t envy her the struggle to keep her mother from spending funds she needed to keep the building alive. Recently, Yvonne had taken out an additional mortgage without telling Emma, who finally had to find out from the bank. Yvonne’s spending habits that might have been merely flamboyant before her husband had swallowed himself into his grave, had become embarrassing to witness. Even to just go to the store, she’d dress as if she were attending a formal reception.

  To her hairdresser she complained that Emma kept at her to deed the house to her, and several women in the beauty parlor agreed with her that it was tacky to pressure your parent for your inheritance. “It’s not Emma’s to decide over,” they’d tell her. Yet later, amongst themselves, they’d decide it was equally tacky of Yvonne Blau to try and rent anyone at the beauty parlor one of the maids’ rooms—“If you have visitors, let me know and I’ll get you a key, but don’t tell my daughter”—for seven dollars a night, cash only. The women could just imagine Emma Blau finding Vera Larch’s mother-in-law, say, in the bathtub and demanding to know who’d let her in. They couldn’t really fault Emma Blau for watching her mother so closely, reminding her to take her pills, scolding her about money. It wasn’t pleasant to watch but understandable because every month she had less to put back into the house. And it was obvious to the people of Winnipesaukee that a different sort of renters were moving in—people who were late with their checks, whose dented cars left dark stains on the ground, who let their children run about without wiping their noses.

  And to think that the Wasserburg used to be the place to live.

  The older ones among them would reminisce how Stefan Blau’s house—through its magnificent example—had changed their town and had emboldened all of them to aspire beyond what they’d believed they could do and have. Yet, in its decline, the house had become something to not emulate, a warning of what might happen if they were not vigilant because—much like a marriage that may still appear intact after all warmth has left—it had not deteriorated all at once. After judging the worth of their achievements against the Wasserburg for so long, the people of Winnipesaukee found it unsettling to separate themselves from its allure, even more unsettling to determine their own measures and desires. Because how could they ever match something as visible as the Wasserburg? Visible in its splendor. Visible in its decay that brought them up against regrets of their own, regrets about times they’d let themselves down, times when something had gotten away from them. Like a dream. A lover. A child.

  Though both women were inte
nsely aware of each other, they had not been in the same room since the day of Helene Blau’s funeral when Emma was still a girl. But during the fourth-grade Christmas play when Emma’s son played a shepherd and Laura’s son the angel who announces Christ’s birth to the shepherds, Emma sat five rows behind Laura and Justin. She tensed up along with Laura when the angel Oliver missed a line and the shepherd Stefan had to whisper it to him. By the end of the play, she knew the gray and auburn hairs that straggled from Laura Miles’ topknot better than she knew the back of her own head.

  When all the children, still in their costumes, scrambled down from the stage, Emma saw Stefan heading toward his father as if he’d forgotten that they were not at home. Quickly she moved forward to catch her son’s arm and walk him to the other end of the room, where a table with red punch and trays of Christmas cookies had been set up.

  “You must be thirsty,” she said, wanting to protect him. Protect him from the knowledge of not belonging. But you’re mine. Not enough, is it? No. As she handed him the paper cup filled with red punch—I wish I could do so much more for you—she felt herself being watched. Justin’s wife. Gazing at her from across the room in her old jeans and baggy sweater that were too casual, yet made Emma feel overdressed.

  Tilting her face to Justin, Laura whispered something that made him smile.

  What if they’re talking about me? What has he been telling her about me?

  “Mom?” Stefan’s voice.

  The sleeves of Emma’s silk blouse felt tight as though her thin arms had suddenly grown heavy. Heavy with shame. With rage.

  “Mom?”

  “Would you like more punch?”

  His mother’s hand on his shoulder, Stefan drank the sweet raspberry punch—too sweet, much too sweet—and watched his father near the door with Oliver Miles, who was in his class and had the same birthday every year with cupcakes and all the kids singing “Happy Birthday dear Stefan and Oliver. …” Sometimes Oliver’s name first. Sometimes Stefan’s. He still wanted to run over to his father, but it felt wrong to do that. Because of all the other people.