The American Lady (12 page)

Harold squeezed her hand. “I warn you, my darling, if you order a glass of that dreadful aniseed muck you like so much, I’ll give you the telling off you’re hoping to avoid from your mother!”

“Don’t worry, I’d much rather have a whiskey!” Wanda replied. In fact her throat was so dry that she wanted nothing more than a tall glass of water.

“A whiskey—listen to the girl!” Marie said. “We’ll all end up drunk, and I shudder to think what your mother will have to say about that.”

Wanda shrugged tersely. “Some things are easier to bear when you’ve had a stiff drink.”

Marie giggled. “Now you sound just like your father. That’s what he used to say when he and Ruth had squabbled.”

“Father? What do you mean?” Wanda turned to look at her, frowning. “He never touches spirit
s . . .
”

13

“
I . . .
I only meant tha
t . . .
” Marie looked down the hallway. She was horrified to see that Ruth was headed straight for them with a thunderous look on her face.

“The lion has ventured from its den,” Wanda muttered. She let go of Marie’s arm. “So, what did you mean just now?”

Wanda had always thought that attack was the best form of defense, and right now she seized on Marie’s odd remark as a welcome distraction. She hoped that if she spent a little longer digging around here, perhaps the lion would forget to roar. “I can’t remember my father ever taking a drink because he’d squabbled with Mother. The two of you agree on everything, isn’t that right, Mother?”

“Would anybody like to tell me what is going on here?” Ruth asked. There was a tiny tremor beneath her right eye—a first sign that a migraine was coming on.

“Nothing at all,” Marie reassured her desperately. “Would you like to come back inside with me? I’m dying for a glass of champagne and—”

“Now really, Aunt Marie! You can’t call my father a drunkard and then just leave it at that!” Wanda looked the very picture of innocence. “Or is there perhaps something that I ought to know about my father?” She put an accusing note into the question.

“Marie?” Ruth’s eyelids were fluttering now. She was clearly disconcerted, and her rouged cheeks had turned pale. “Wha
t . . .
what have you told her?”

That was odd—Mother’s voice sounded so thin and strange! She also seemed to have forgotten entirely that she was supposed to be angry at Wanda. A strange feeling knotted at the pit of Wanda’s stomach.

Harold cleared his throat. “Wanda, my dear, I suggest we bring this conversation to a close. Shall we dance?” He offered her his arm gallantly.
Please don’t make any more trouble,
his eyes pleaded.

Wanda glared at him. “Well really! I hope that I may expect an answer to a simple question. I’m becoming quite tired of your treating me like a fool. I may be young, but I’m not stupid!”

“Perhaps not, but you seem not to realize that one simply does not pry into one’s parents’ past indiscretions,” Harold replied.

He had a cheerful grin on his face, which just irritated Wanda all the more. Don’t cause a fuss; don’t make trouble—that was so typical of Harold! He could take her side once in a while, just for a change. If not, she would just have to speak up for herself!

“Past indiscretion
s . . .
” she said, trying out how the phrase sounded on her lips.

“Nonsense!” Marie laughed shrilly. “We had no time for indiscretions back in Lauscha; we had to grow up fast. Faster than we wanted t
o . . .
isn’t that right, Ruth?”

Wanda was horrified to see the look her mother shot Aunt Marie.

Leave it. Take Marie’s arm and act as though she never said anything,
said a voice inside her.

Why?
asked another voice simultaneously.
If you act as though nothing has happened, you will be just like Mother!

Wanda looked from her aunt to her mother. She felt as though she were watching a play onstage but also acting in the scene at the same time. And the drama was about to reach its climax. All the actors were in place and waiting for the next cue. Was it her line? Suddenly every word she spoke, every move, seemed fraught with huge significance.

Why did her mother look as though she’d been caught breaking into a safe?

Why did Aunt Marie look as though she wished the ground would swallow her up?

She had only wanted to distract their attention from the debacle of the failed dance recita
l . . .

Father, a drunkard? Never. There was something wrong here. Very wrong.

“. . . we had to grow up fast. Faster than we wanted to.”

Wanda turned to face Marie slowly, excruciatingly slowly. She was as stiff as a marionette on strings. It was as though she wanted to put off the next moment as long as she could.

“Mari
e . . .
perhaps you weren’t actually talking abou
t . . .
Steven Miles?” Her voice failed her.

Nobody said anything.

Wanda felt her throat tighten. Her mouth was so dry that her tongue was stuck fast to the roof.

“Wh
y . . .
why are you behaving so strangely? Mother? Marie? What is it?”

Ruth’s eyes were fixed somewhere far off in the distance, and Marie had frozen like a statue. Neither of them could say a word nor move a muscle.

Wanda felt dizzy. Why was it that all of a sudden she could read their thoughts so clearly?

“Steven isn’
t . . .
my father? Mother, tell me that’s not true!”

“It’s the heat, Signor de Lucca! The hea
t . . .
” The man pointed outside as if accusing the summer air.

Franco was pacing up and down the length of the wooden shack that served as an office. Five paces from the desk to the shelves, five paces back.

“I can see for myself that it’s hot!” he said, stopping abruptly. “Why didn’t you call me? We could have begun unloading earlier!”

“But Signor de Lucca! You gave the order yourself that we were not to start unloading until the right men were on duty at custom
s . . .
”

Franco began to pace again. Damn it all, the man was right!

“Everything worked out in the end, this time at least,” he snarled. But it had been a close call, closer than last time. One of the boys was in poor shape. And as for the grandfather—he might not even last the nigh
t . . .

The other man cleared his throat. “Now that the cargo is taken care o
f . . .
will there be anything else? Does the count have any particular wish?” He pushed aside the hair that hung down over his forehead and looked toward the door, waiting for his chance to get away.

Franco waved a hand impatiently and sent the man scurrying off. Enough talk. It was no good blaming the wrong man. They had made a mistake back in Genoa; there was no doubt about it. Too many barrels. If they had loaded ten or twenty fewer, there would have been more air for the men. They could have opened the hatches earlier as well; it was the height of summer after all!

Once the man had gone Franco locked up the warehouse. He was dead tired, but he knew that he wouldn’t sleep easily tonight. Perhaps after a few glasses of win
e . . .

But instead of setting off toward Mulberry Street, he sat down on one of the empty steel drums that his workers used as table and chair during their breaks, and he stared out at the water. A fishing fleet was just setting out to the open sea, the lights from the boats dancing gently on the waves.

Genoa to New York. It was a long way, especially if you spent the crossing below deck, crammed in between hundreds of barrels of wine, hardly able to catch a breath of air, with no water to wash in and just the bare minimum to eat and drink. This was why they had begun by taking only strong young men in their prime. If one of those young fellows had run into trouble with the law, who cared about that? The de Luccas certainly didn’t, as long as he had money to pay for his crossing. Soon, though, they realized that there were many other men who wanted to cross the ocean this way, men who were not so young and not in such good health—men who would never have passed the official health checks at immigration. Though Franco had pleaded with his father to take more care choosing who to send, there were a few older men on board each time.

He lit a cigarette and sucked greedily at the smoke.

What if the old man had died during the crossing? Would the others have sat there quietly and waited? That was exactly what they had been told to do, of course, with bloodcurdling threats. But perhaps they would have forgotten all that with a dead man in their midst. Perhaps they would have drummed on the side of the wooden crate and made such a din that one of the crew noticed them. And then? What would the ship’s officers say if they found a dozen stowaways hiding in the huge crates used for de Lucca wine? The risk was simply too great—though his father turned a deaf ear to all his protests. Franco felt a pang of bitterness at the thought. Why did the old man insist on weekly telephone reports if he wasn’t going to pay any attention to his recommendations?

He flicked the cigarette, and it arced through the air, landing in a puddle.

At first he had believed what his father told him, believed that they were doing a good deed by making it possible for young Italians to enter America even if they had been refused their papers for whatever reason. Franco hadn’t seen anything wrong with the fact that their families had to beggar themselves to pay for the crossing, or that the men themselves had to spend a year working for certain handpicked restaurant owners—all customers for de Lucca wine—until the rest of the cost was paid off. After all, his family had to be paid for the risk. He even thought it was rather heroic to help a few poor souls toward a better future by smuggling them in among the crates of red wine. Perhaps he might still think so today if his father hadn’t sent him to New York with a few hundred dollars to make sure that the customs agents turned a blind eye at the right moment. For the first time he saw with his own eyes what it was like when the crates were unloaded, when the men crawled out on all fours, weak with thirst. And then his romantic ideas died, never to return. Franco realized that there was nothing heroic in buying and selling human beings.

For this was what it was.

He, Franco, was a slave trader.

14

It took some time for Ruth to wake up from her faint. She lay on the chaise longue, surrounded by her Art Nouveau treasures, pale and exhausted, with a damp cloth on her brow. As soon as she opened her eyes she called out, “Wand
a . . . ?
Where is my daughter? I have to go to her, I have to explain everything.
I . . .
” She sat up, swaying.

Marie held her tight by the arm. “Wanda has run off. She doesn’t want to see anyone.”

“Run off?” Ruth began to cry, putting her hands in front of her face like a child. “What have you done?
I . . .
I don’t want to lose her.”

Marie was struggling with tears as well. The good cheer from earlier in the evening had long since evaporated. She forgot about Pandora, about Franco, about how she had wanted to make him laugh by turning the dance fiasco into a humorous anecdote.

“I’m so sorry, so dreadfully sorry! It was a chance remar
k . . .
I don’t know myself how it happened. I promise you I’ll make everything right!” She would have promised Ruth anything just then, but her sister’s face remained buried in her hands.

“There are some things that cannot be made right,” she muttered without looking at Marie.

After Steven had come to Ruth’s side to take over for Marie, she left the apartment with Harold to look for Wanda again. While he walked along Fifth Avenue calling her name, Marie went to the small bar on the corner of Sixth Avenue. She paid no attention to the customers’ high spirits on this Saturday evening, any more than she let the oppressive heat on the streets put her off.

“She’s not in the apartment, and we’ve looked everywhere we can nearby. Where else shall we try?” Marie’s voice was low and troubled when Harold met her at the bar. “She won’t have gone to Pandora, will she?”

“I shouldn’t think so.” Harold seemed distracted. “There’s somewhere we haven’t tried, though. She told me once that she likes to go out on the roof. Because it brings her closer to the stars.”

“My father was a glassblower in Lausch
a . . .
” Wanda was leaning against the chimney. Her face was gray, and her eyes were glazed. The wind was tugging at the thin fabric of her ball gown and her right foot was planted firmly in a slick puddle, but she seemed not to notice.

Marie looked around, distraught. Was this really Wanda’s favorite hideaway? This horrible place? How lonely she must be if this was where she felt safe!

When they had found Wanda, Marie sent Harold away. She wanted to talk to her niece alone.

Wanda looked up. “My father was a violent man—is that really true?” Tears ran down her face.

Marie felt panic rise inside her.
I can’t do this,
a voice inside her cried.

“I think everybody has their own different truth,” she said. How hollow that sounded! Shuddering, she remembered how Ruth and Wanda’s argument had ended.

“You want to know why I never told you anything about the man you call your
father
?” Ruth had asked, grabbing her daughter by the arms so that their faces were only inches apart. Hysteria and despair battled in Ruth’s face, twisting her fine features. “I’ll tell you why: because when you were just a babe in arms, he would have beaten you to death if I hadn’t sheltered you with my own body!
That’s
the truth about your father.”

At that, Wanda had doubled over as though punched in the gut.

“I don’t believe you. You’re a liar!” she whispered, then ran away, her hands clasped over her ears.

“Ruth and Thomas were young. They were too young to know that they weren’t really suited for one another,” Marie began.

Wanda laughed. She sounded tired. “For eighteen years now I’ve been calling a man Father who isn’t really my father at all—
that’s
the truth!” She began to cry. “This can’t be true!
I . . .
”

Marie was afraid that Wanda would shove her away as soon as she put her arm around her niece’s shoulders, but Wanda simply nestled into her embrace.

“I just don’t know what to d
o . . .
Marie, help me!”

And so Marie told her about Lauscha. Wanda’s head lay on her breast and her gown was wet with tears. She stumbled over the words at first, for the memories were rusty, but with every sentence she spoke the past came more vividly to life.

She told her about the three Steinmann sisters, about how they had lost their parents at such a young age. They had been left with nothing, knew nothing of how hard life could be, had nothing but their dreams. Johanna had dreamt of the big wide world. And so she had been the one to go to Sonneberg and work for one of the wholesalers. Marie hesitated again as she told her niece how the man had brutally raped her sister. Wanda straightened up and was just about to ask a question, but Marie put a finger to her lips. Times had been hard for three orphan girls. Then she told her about Ruth, about how she had been so in love with Thomas Heimer, the son of one of the richest glassblowers in the whole village. At the time the three sisters had been hired hands in Wilhelm Heimer’s busy glass workshop, which is where Ruth had met Thomas. They had been truly happy together, at least at first, and the wedding had been a grand occasion.

“Then you came along. He had wanted a son more than anything, and when you turned out to be a girl Thomas just couldn’t forgive your mother. Some men are like that. He drank too much as well, and the marriage went downhill very quickly after that. And then, one night, there was Ruth—scared out of her wits and carrying her little girl and all her worldly goods, standing in front of our family home. Your mother is a very proud woman. She never told us what finally put an end to the marriage. She kept a firm lid on all her suffering. Then when Steven came into her life, he was the fairy-tale prince she’d always dreamt of. You were only a year old when he took the two of you off to America. He had forged papers for both of you, and Ruth was traveling as Baroness von Lausche. Two years later, Thomas Heimer finally agreed to a divorce.” Marie sighed.

Wanda clamped her lips together and didn’t say a word. She seemed amazed, as though she couldn’t believe that what Marie was telling her had anything to do with her mother, the elegant New York society lady who was always so calm and collected.

“Ruth made a mistake by never telling you about him. Thomas isn’t such a bad fellow, in his way,” Marie added. “He never married again, by the way.”

Wanda looked at her foot as though she had no idea what it was doing in that puddle.

“All these year
s . . .
” she said. “I always wondered why I felt so out of place my whole life long! Now I know at last. They never wanted me here. I was always just in the way, spoiling their royal majesties’ fun with my presence.”

“Wanda, that isn’t true! Ruth loves you more than her own life! When you were a baby, she always used to call you her own little princess.” Marie’s heart ached as she told Wanda how she and Johanna had always thought Ruth loved the little girl too much.

“Once”—Marie laughed without thinking—“she saved up all her hard-earned money to have a photograph taken of you. And God knows that wasn’t something that just anyone did, back then! Believe me, no mother has ever been prouder of her baby than Ruth was. You meant the world to her. And nothing’s changed since then.”

As she spoke, thunder roared overhead. Lightning lit up the shapes of the skyscrapers all around, which seemed to reach toward them like clutching fingers. Black clouds raced across the sky. All at once it was cold.

Marie blinked as she felt a raindrop splash onto her dress. This was all she needed! With any luck, though, the storm would pass over quickly.

“But why did she lie to me for eighteen years?” Wanda said. “Nothing means anything anymore; everything’s just a lie, even the least little thing she says! She’s always talking about my cousins Claire and Dorothy, Steven’s nieces, about how hard they work at school and how polite they are to their parents. But I’m not their cousin! I’m not related to them at all!” She sobbed from a mixture of despair and rage. “I was never elegant enough. She always says that I’m too lazy, too cheeky, too much I don’t know what. Why is she always trying to make me into somebody else? Do I remind her of my father—is that it?”

Marie shook her head. “Your mother has entirely forgotten your father. I think she’s suppressed the memory so entirely that he never existed as far as she’s concerned—which is probably why she never told you about him. You aren’t the least bit like him, believe me. You are who you are!”

“And who’s that, then?” her niece shot back. “All my life I’ve believed I’m American, and now I suddenly find out I was born in Germany. In the back of beyond, in the middle of the forest.”

“Now don’t talk that way! You’re still Wanda; you’re an enchanting young lady with more charm than most other girls,” Marie cried out.
Who am I, really?
The question kept coming up—it seemed she couldn’t run away from it.

Now the skies had really opened. But Marie couldn’t bring herself to suggest that they take cover somewhere. She wanted to finish the conversation up here, one way or another. As she huddled closer to the chimney, Wanda suddenly jumped to her feet and ran out into the middle of the roof.

She spread out her arms and raised her face to the sky.

“Maybe the best thing would be if I were struck by lightning right now! Then it would all be over!” She laughed hysterically as lightning flashed nearby. “Closer, please! One more try! Here I am!” She spun around wildly.

A moment later, Marie had wrestled her to the ground.

“Are you mad? You could have died!” She held her niece firmly in her arms, a trembling bundle of misery. “You’re out of your mind!”

Wanda sobbed again. “Mother has Steven, Harold has his bank, Pandora has her dance, you have your glassblowing—everybody but me has something to live for! I’m nobody; I’m good for nothing. I feel as empty as a bird’s nest in December. Useless, worthless. I can’t go on like this.”

Wanda’s despair shook Marie to the core, more strongly even than the storm that raged around them. The thunder growled and echoed back from the skyscrapers, the rain lashed across her back and her arms, but for the first time in ages she felt a deep gratitude well up within her. She had her gift. All at once it was easy to answer the question of who she was. She was a glassblower, and she always would be!

“Everything will be all right, believe me. I’ll tell you all about Lauscha; I’ll tell you everything you want to know. I’ll tell you about your father; I’ll tell you about his brothers and about your grandfather. If you want I can describe every piece of glass they ever made, everything that came out of their workshop. You’ll know where your roots are, I promise you that.” Marie shook Wanda by the shoulders.

“And what good will all that do? What does that have to do with me, with my life here?”

Wanda’s skepticism simply strengthened Marie’s resolve. Yes, she wanted to give Wanda something she could call her own—that was the least she could do for her niece.

“Look at it this way—Steven will always be your father. But today you’ve found you have another father as well!”

“That’s wonderful! If I’m such a lucky girl, why do I feel as though I’d just been run over by a streetcar?” Wanda made a face, but she smiled the ghost of a smile as well.

The two of them were soaked to the skin when they climbed back down the fire escape ladder a little later.

That night—after she had taken Wanda off to her room and sat by her bedside until she fell asleep—Marie picked up her sketchpad and got one of her drawing pencils from her luggage. She could have cried with relief at the feeling of holding the pencil again, the same dear old familiar feeling. How could she ever have forgotten this comfort! It felt so good to sit here with a fresh new sheet of paper in front of her.

She stayed up the rest of the night drawing. She started by sketching what seemed useless—ball gowns, the flower arrangements that had sat on every table—nothing that she could adapt for Christmas baubles. But Marie didn’t care. She felt her heart welling over with gratitude that her pencil was moving once more, gliding over the page as if of its own free will. She could still do it! She hadn’t lost her gift!

She drew and shaded, adjusted her lines, corrected the shapes. Suddenly she saw the New York skyline take shape before her eyes, dark and sharp-edged. Then streetlamps below, lights in the windows, a moon casting a cold light over the silhouette of the Brooklyn Bridge.

Day was beginning to break when Marie finally put down her pencil. There wasn’t a blank sheet left in the pad. She had leafed through the pages so often that they were soft and pliant now, and here and there the pencil had worn furrows in the paper or smudged it black. Now it was time to sort through what she’d drawn.

It was a miracle! Among the night’s sketches were at least ten images, maybe twelve, that would be perfect for a new line of baubles. They only needed a little wor
k . . .

Then Marie’s smile faded. How could she be so happy when Wanda was doubtless in a flood of tears just a few doors down the hall?

But were joy and sorrow ever far apart? They were like day and night, light and shad
e . . .

The
Night & Day Collection
—if she ever managed to make anything from these sketches, then that was what she would call it. She would get to work on the fine detail first thing after a few hours of sleep. She wasn’t the least bit worried that she might fail. Now that she had made a fresh start, she could feel her creative powers bubbling away within her like lava in a volcano, pushing to the surface.

Marie leafed through the pad once more. She especially liked the scene depicting the skyscrapers and the night sky above. And the one where the moon hung low over the harbor front. The globes would have to be silvered inside first; then the outlines could be painted in white enamel and the shapes filled in with glitter dus
t . . .
yes, that would be lovely!