Isabel’s War (20 page)

It's early Sunday, two days after Christmas, and the morning of Harriette Frankfurter's funeral, which is to take place at a cemetery not far from the home of Mr. and Mrs. F.

First, however, we go to the funeral-home chapel where there will be a service conducted by a rabbi. People, sad-eyed and dressed in somber colors, arrive in great numbers and stand around whispering to one another in grave tones. Mr. F. is surrounded by men and women offering their condolences. My father explains to my mother that many of them are business acquaintances who have come with their wives to pay their respects. There are also neighbors and friends, but not many relatives because Mr. F. left Germany many years ago and Mrs. F. came from a very small family.

I stand beside Helga, who lingers at the fringe of the crowd, looking out of place and uncomfortable. From time to time, people approach her and say, “Ah, so you're the niece who Herman Frankfurter brought over from Europe. So sorry for your loss, dear.”

Helga just nods and says, “Thank you.”

“I guess you don't know many people here,” I comment sympathetically

“I know nobody,” Helga says with an unusually bitter edge to her voice. “These are all strangers. Everywhere people are strangers.”

I nudge her arm in a show of solidarity. “Well, we're not. You aren't alone, Helga. You're coming home with us right after the funeral. I hope you packed everything.”

In deep solemn voices, attendants in black suits now request that everyone file into the chapel for the service. Men who are not already wearing skullcaps are offered the round black head-coverings, in keeping with the laws of the Jewish religion. The few females who have come to the funeral hatless are given small black head veils. Helga is among them.

I'm walking next to Helga behind a slow-moving group of mourners, when another man in a black suit pulls her away from me. “Family members in the first pew. Family members only.”

I look around. My parents, already seated a few pews back, are beckoning to me. My mother hisses in a stage whisper, “Where were you going?”

I slide in beside my parents. “You told me to stay with Helga. I don't know the rules around here. I was only following the crowd.”

“God forbid,” my father explains in a more patient manner than usual, “you should sit in the first row.”

“It's bad luck?”

“Sure it's bad luck. It means you've lost someone close to you, a family member by either blood or marriage.”

How stupid I am. Suddenly I'm returned to the reality of why we are here. What with the hubbub and the
anxiety of trying to behave correctly in this strange place, I've almost completely forgotten about poor Mrs. F.

And now my eye lights on the burnished wooden coffin that rests on a bier at the front of the chapel, where the chief mourners are seated. Sadly, there are only two—Mr. F., his balding head covered with a black skullcap, and Helga, whose long honey-brown hair glimmers beneath its gauzy veil in the subdued light of the chapel.

My eye returns to the coffin. Is it forbidden, I wonder, to think of what Mrs. F. looks like lying beneath its closed lid? I'd like to imagine that she has her eyeliner on once again, that her scarlet lipstick and matching rouge are applied with as fine a touch as always, that her coppery hair is curled to perfection. And that she is wearing something lovely from her well-chosen wardrobe.

A hush settles over the crowd and the rabbi begins the service. He is black-bearded and stern. He speaks of Harriette Frankfurter as “the departed” and as a “good and righteous woman,” which could be anybody and doesn't tell you the least little thing about her. The rest of what he says is mainly in Hebrew, which I don't understand, and is interrupted by chanting and by several requests for those present to rise.

Then it's one of the “black suits” again, up at the podium, giving instructions to all of those present that are planning to “attend the interment.” They will follow the hearse, with their headlights on, to the cemetery gate
and then on to the gravesite.

I glance questioningly at my parents. Must I really see Mrs. F., in her lovely shining coffin, lowered into the earth? Perhaps, I think to myself, I could just wait around here and be picked up later on the way home.

But one return look from my mother and I know the answer...Helga. I'm expected to be there for Helga, Helga who suffers so many woes, and whose sorrows I am obliged to witness and to support as a penalty, I suppose, for my own good fortune.

Of all things, we seem to be having a party at the home of Mr. and Mrs. F. on our return from the cemetery. The house is cheerfully lit, after the chill and the early winter darkness of the burial ground. Two hired servants as well as the housekeeper of Mr. and Mrs. F. have set a laden buffet table.

Ice cubes clink in glasses as cocktails and highballs are poured. Salty smoked fish, cheeses, eggs, salads, and fresh rolls are the main fare. This is a custom that Helga says she is not familiar with. My mother explains that the funeral foods are symbolic of both the tears that are shed (the salty fish) and the renewal of life (the eggs).

Smoked fish isn't exactly to my taste. But there is also an array of cakes, pastries, and cookies. After the horror of watching Mrs. F.'s coffin lowered into her open grave and covered by each mourner with a shovelful of raw
earth, I need to drown myself in as much sweetness as I can stand. So I concentrate on the dessert table, helping myself to baby cream puffs and eclairs the size of a pinkie finger, jam tarts and nut pastries, buttery cookies dipped in thick chocolate. Where does Mr. F. get such luxuries during wartime?

After a while, the dining room gets extremely noisy, so I retreat with my cache of goodies to the cozy den off the living room, with its lit fireplace and book-lined walls. Some of my favorite authors are here...Louisa May Alcott, Charles Dickens, Mark Twain...including titles that I haven't read yet. I wonder if I could ask to borrow a few.

Contentedly I sip my lemonade, munch on a delectable pastry layered with flecks of chocolate, and stare into the fire. The war that is raging throughout the world seems very far away. Even the most dreadful moments at the cemetery—the black-bearded rabbi's droning voice, the slowly sinking coffin, the clods of earth landing on its polished surface—are beginning to recede in memory into little more than a bad dream. And the fire, with its leaping licks of flame, is so mesmerizing that I slump back against the cushions, my eyelids growing heavy.

I have no idea how long I've been here half-stupefied, half-asleep before the fire. Voices, though, seem to be coming closer. “Where is she? I haven't seen her for
a while now. Probably she's in here. The child must be so worn out.”

I look up into the face of one of the strange women I remember seeing in the funeral parlor. The person she seems to have been discussing me with is my mother, who is standing beside her.

“Oh, sorry.” I stretch and yawn, thrusting my arms above my head. “Here I am. Are we leaving now?”

“Isabel,” my mother says with a slightly irritated twist of her head. “We were not looking for you. But get up anyway because we'll be heading for home very soon. Where's Helga?”

“Helga?” I sit up straighter. “How should I know? The last time I saw her she was talking to some people in the dining room. I think she was eating a hard-boiled egg.”

My mother exchanges glances with the other woman and tsk-tsks.

“What? I stayed with her all through the burial part, which by the way was horrible and made everybody feel just terrible. There should have been some other way...”

“Stop it this instant,” my mother orders “You're positively rude. I'm completely ashamed of you. Now go and find Helga this minute.”

“Really!” I answer back, as I get to my feet. “I'm not her keeper.” I don't mean to sound nasty toward Helga, but my mother's nagging always makes me surly.

I drag myself up the stairs to the second floor. My
stomach is starting to feel queasy and my legs are wobbly. All those sweet, whipped-creamy pastries seem to have done a job on my digestion. “Helga,” I call out, as I approach her bedroom at the end of the corridor, “it's time to leave now. Are you ready?”

The bedroom door is closed. I knock softly at first and then a little louder. Maybe Helga, too, has dozed off. But there's no answer and, on instinct, I toss polite behavior to the winds and throw open the door.

The bed is neatly made and the ruffled curtains hang gracefully. Helga's bureau drawers and her closet are empty, so it's obvious she's already packed her suitcase and has probably taken it down the back stairs, the ones that the housekeeper uses.

I check the other upstairs rooms, all of which appear to be empty, and limp back down to the main floor, definitely suffering now from a whopping bellyache. How right Helga was to have eaten only one hard-boiled egg, if even that.

I advise my mother that Helga is on her way down. Then I head for the nearest bathroom and lock myself in.

Twenty

I've only been in the bathroom a short time, rinsing my face with cold water and—happily—not being sick after all, when there's a loud knocking at the door. “Isabel, let me in.”

It's my mother. I expect her to be furious with me because I've made a pig of myself. But she doesn't seem interested. Her expression instead is one of alarm.

“It's Helga,” she says, slightly out of breath. “You said she was on her way downstairs. But we can't find her anywhere. Herman Frankfurter and your father have been searching the house from cellar to attic. Some of the men are outside now checking the grounds. We're thinking of calling the police. Do you know anything at all about this?”

“Me? I told you. She packed all her stuff. Not a thing was left in her room. What... Oh, you mean?”

“Isabel, please pay attention. This is serious, very serious. Helga is missing.”

I cringe inwardly with a pang of shame and guilt. I know the last words that Mrs. F. spoke to me about
Helga—
Something terrible is gnawing away at her...she doesn't feel she should have been given a chance to survive
. I know certain mysterious and perplexing things that Helga has said to me during the months I've spent with her—
It is right that I should be punished...there is a lie that I will pay for all my life
. And I know the puzzling words that Roy has written to Helga, revealing thoughts she expressed to him that evening at Shady Pines—
You seemed so scared and not sure you would be able to stay with those people...I showed you where the key is hid
.

But I have never been able to put these bits and pieces together into a meaningful picture. Nor must anyone ever, ever know that I read Roy's letter. Yet, because of what I have learned about Helga, I must take action. Slowly, slowly, a fuzzy plan begins to take shape in my mind.

It's a dark December morning, shortly before dawn. My parents refused to leave yesterday without Helga. So the three of us remained overnight at the home of Mr. F.

Hour upon hour I've been lying uneasily in Helga's bed in the perfect bedroom with the frilled curtains and the white wicker furniture. It's impossible to sleep with the knowledge that Helga has vanished. Late into the night the police searched the neighborhood for her. They tracked the streets in and around the center of town and the nearby parks. They made inquiries at the railroad
station, from which trains run into Manhattan's Grand Central Terminal.

That is the way Helga would have traveled if she had decided to take the train from Westchester to New York City. But why would Helga have done that, when she knew we were about to drive her home?

At last I've decided what I'm going to do. I dress as quietly as I can, creep down the stairs, and let myself out the front door into the bleak cold of an early Monday morning. It's a ten-minute walk to the railway station. But I get there in about seven, running to get out of view of the Frankfurter house as quickly as possible and also to keep from freezing. In my New York City Sunday-best winter coat and hat, I'm not exactly dressed for extended outdoor activity.

Even though it's so early, a mixture of weekday commuters and of servicemen—who are forever on the move these days—are also heading for the station. When I get there, the open-air platform is half-filled with waiting passengers.

There's a coal fire burning in the pot-bellied stove in the station office, and the welcoming warmth envelops me as I step up to the ticket window. The clerk behind the window is a stout woman in a green eye-shade and a heavy wool sweater. She's probably doing war work, having taken the job of a male station clerk who's off to the service.

“Y-e-e-s, young lady?”

My voice is creaky. I'm still out of breath from running. “Um, if I wanted to go to Harpers Falls from here, how would I do it?”

“Now ain't that funny? Was somebody in here yesterday just before I went off duty, asked me the same question. Young lady a bit older 'n you. Don't get many folks heading for Harper's Falls in the winter. Something going on up there?”

My heart leaps. Suddenly I don't feel the least bit guilty that I read Roy's letter.
I showed you where the key is hid.