The Watcher (10 page)

My heart skipped as I went over the photos. These were pictures of Adrie and another man. But this man was not my father, Karl Dekker. Who was he? Several pictures were of Adrie and the stranger, sitting on the deck of a big sailboat. Adrie looked dazzling and very young! The man had his arm around her shoulders, and he was looking at her affectionately.

Another photo of that day on the boat was of Adrie and the same man, standing close together. She had her head on his shoulder, and this time he had both his arms around her. Who was he? A friend? No, there was more than friendship in that photograph. There was love in their eyes.

I fumbled my way quickly through the set of pictures. The unfamiliar man was in dozens of them. He sure was handsome, whoever he was. Adrie looked young, shining, and happier than I had ever seen her. In almost every picture where they were together, they clung to each other.

Wait a minute!

In one close-up of Adrie where she held a picnic basket, her hands were clearly in view, and there on her finger was the ruby ring! My father gave her that ruby ring. How could she be flirting and having fun with this stranger, when she was engaged to my father? I was indignant. How could she?

Perhaps this man was a relative. However, Adrie did
not have a brother, and I had never heard of cousins. So who was he? Had she been unfaithful to my father at this time? I turned over each picture to look for dates. Those that were marked had the dates 1924, 1925, and 1926. These pictures were taken before I was born. Yet, clearly, she was engaged to my father at that time because she wore the ruby ring.

I sat back in the chair, confused and puzzled, when suddenly I heard a car coming up our driveway, its lights flashing through the front windows.

It must be Adrie! If she found me in the library with the ladder and the books, she would never forgive me. I turned off the desk lamp and grabbed the books and the loose pictures.
What shall I do with them?
Hastily, I stuffed them into a wastebasket, rushed to the closet, and set the wastebasket inside.

I had no time to put the ladder away. Already I could hear someone unlocking the front door, just outside the library.

It had to be Adrie. Had she seen the light on in the library? I glanced around, looking for a place to hide, and without another thought I went into the closet and silently closed the door.

I heard the front door open and close. The hall light went on, and I could see the crack of light under the door. I heard her in her den, desk drawers opening and shutting. Then I heard her footsteps going up the stairway.

If she looked in my bedroom and found me gone, then what? She would certainly look everywhere, and then she'd
find me in here! She'd see the ladder and notice the books on the top shelf were gone.

I couldn't possibly hide the ladder. It was too big and complicated to take it apart quickly, especially in the dark.

I trembled at the thought, and I felt my heart pounding in my chest. I'd have to confess everything and beg her to forgive me.

W
hat shall I do? No time to think!
I tiptoed out into the hall, closed the library door softly, and raced to the kitchen. I shut the kitchen door and turned on the small light over the sink. I was relieved that Watcher was not under the table and was most likely in Frieda's room; otherwise, he would have barked and whined.

After grabbing cookies from a new ceramic cookie jar, I slumped into a chair at the table as if I'd been there for a while. My heart was pounding so furiously, I wondered if it could be heard, and I was gasping for breath as if I'd been in a race.

Within no more than two minutes Adrie came into the kitchen. “Oh, you frightened me,” she said. “I peeked into the bedroom and you were not there.”

“I couldn't sleep and I was hungry.” I bit into the cookie so that my mouth would be full and Adrie wouldn't notice
how my voice trembled. “How come you're back?”

“I forgot some important papers, and since I wasn't halfway there, I decided to come home and pick them up.”

“So are you staying?”
Please don't stay, please don't stay,
I prayed. I took another bite of a cookie and realized how awful it tasted. It didn't matter; I swallowed hard and tried to look natural.

“I don't know. Maybe I'll have a cup of coffee and then head out again.”

“I'll put the coffee on,” I offered, getting up. I needed to spit out the cookie without her noticing.

At that moment Frieda came into the kitchen dressed in a chenille bathrobe. Watcher was at her feet, and he wiggled over to me, his tail wagging.

Adrie and Frieda spoke to each other, and I hoped Frieda wasn't coaxing her to stay home since it was so late. I swallowed the terrible cookie and tried not to show my distaste. Frieda filled the percolator and turned on the stove.

“I love driving in the night,” I said. “I mean . . . um . . . the streets are not as busy, and there's a nice quiet world around me.”

“Hmmm,” Adrie said. “We'll see.”

Frieda turned to look at me and noticed the second cookie on the table. She exclaimed something in German and grabbed the cookie.

“Frieda wants to know if you have eaten these cookies,” Adrie said.

“Um . . . just one. I didn't care for it.”

Frieda and Adrie spoke together and then began laughing.
What was so funny?
I wondered, wishing Adrie would just get up and leave. I couldn't bear it if she stayed overnight. She'd be sure to find that ladder standing in the library—not to mention the missing books in the closet.

“What's so funny?” I demanded, feeling sick with worry.

Frieda pointed to the cookie jar—still laughing.

Adrie turned to me. “Did you notice that cookie jar is a dog? That happens to be Watcher's cookie jar. Frieda made special dog cookies for Watcher, and you ate one.”

I must have looked sick, because Adrie thrust a napkin into my hand.

“Oh, that is so funny.” Adrie stretched her arms over her head. “I'm wide awake now, so I do think I'll head out.” She spoke again in German, and Frieda, still laughing, turned off the stove.

“Let me help you out to the car,” I offered.

“Oh, no. Just go back to bed.”

I followed her out to the front door where she had her other briefcase waiting. The library door was closed, as I had left it.
Please don't go into the library. Please don't go into the library,
I prayed.

I didn't want to look anxious, so I breathed a pretend yawn and opened the front door for her. “Well, good night, Adrie. Have a safe trip.” I stayed calm, smiled, and resisted a strong urge to push her out the door.

“Dog cookies! I'll probably laugh all the way to Munich,”
she said as she headed out to the car. “Good night, Wendy.”

“Good night!” I shut the door and heaved a deep breath.

T
he next morning, while Frieda was hanging clothes in the yard, and before I stashed away the books on the top shelf, I set aside one clear snapshot of the good-looking man who seemed to have been in love with Adrie. I wrapped it in an envelope and hid it between the pages of a book on the bookshelves. It would be hard to remember the name—
Die Leiden des jungen Werther
by Goethe—I'd have to go by the color—a deep green leather cover. After I tucked it in among the other books on a middle shelf, and put away the top-shelf books, I quietly set the ladder back in the closet.

Once I could relax, I went out to the terrace to look over my study book of the German language. I brought a dish of nuts to nibble on while I browsed through the vocabulary.

I will never get this language by myself,
I decided.
Especially the pronunciation. In any case, with Johanna and Frieda to help me, I was finally getting the gist of what was being said—at least some of it.

I bit into a nut and
crack!
I spit into my napkin and looked through the brown pieces of the nut that I had chewed. To my horror, I discovered a large piece of white enamel. “My tooth!” I yelled. “Frieda!” I ran into the yard. “My tooth!”

I showed her what I had spewed into the napkin, then opened my mouth and pointed to my teeth. What was the German word for tooth?
“Zahn. Zahn.”

Frieda understood. She pulled me to the sink in the laundry room and handed me a glass of water.
“Spülen.”

I knew what she wanted. I rinsed my mouth and spit into the sink. I ran my tongue over my teeth when—ouch—a sharp edge on one of my back teeth nicked my tongue.

Frieda brought me out into the sunlight and peered into my mouth. She nodded and spoke sympathetically in German.

“What shall we do?” I asked.

As if she knew what I had said, Frieda went to the telephone and dialed. While she waited for an answer, she smiled at me and whispered, “
Mutter
—Adrie.”

After speaking with Adrie and making two more phone calls, Frieda hustled me outside, where we waited for a taxi. Then off we went into town—to the dentist.

I hated going to the dentist. I tried faithfully to keep my teeth healthy so I wouldn't have to go—except to have
them cleaned, of course. Cleaning didn't hurt too much.

Will he pull my tooth? Will he fill it? Will it hurt? Oh, I will never eat nuts again,
I vowed.

As soon as I entered the dentist's office, I was marched into the big chair that I dreaded so much. The assistant, a tall blond woman, placed a bib around my neck without a word. She then arranged sharp-looking frightening instruments onto a tray, along with a paper cup of water. I could have used a smile or encouragement—but I never got either from her.

“Frieda!” I called loudly, realizing Frieda was not in the room with me.
“Kommen Sie her!”

Frieda peeked in through the door and put her finger to her lips. “Shh.”

The dentist, dressed in white, came into the room. “Ah, Wendy,” he said. “I'm Dr. Kempka.”

“You speak English?”

“Yes. I went to college in the States. Your mother called and said you chipped a tooth.”

“Yes, I chipped a back tooth. Please, don't remove it. I've never even had a cavity.”

“I'll need to see it before we decide anything,” Dr. Kempka said. He came closer, turned on the light over my head, and then picked up a small mirror. “Open your mouth.”

I lay stiffly in the chair while the doctor prodded and poked. He stuffed objects that felt like hard blocks of canvas into my mouth, put a lead apron over me, and then took X-rays of my teeth. I had never had X-rays before, and
I felt I would either choke on or throw up the clumps in my mouth.

Finally Dr. Kempka turned out the light and stepped back. “I can easily fix that tooth with a filling. The nerve is okay, but a large chip broke off. I'll repair it right now, and then you can go home.” He patted my shoulder. “I'm going to give you Novocain. You won't feel a thing while I repair that tooth.” He was holding something behind his back. “Close your eyes, take a deep breath, and relax.” He pushed something cold and metallic into my mouth and I felt a deep stab.

“Ow!” I yelped. “That hurt.”

“We'll look at your X-rays while we wait for that Novocain to numb your tooth,” Dr. Kempka said, ignoring me. The assistant handed him negatives, which he looked at over lighted glass. “Hmm, you have an anomaly, Wendy. Did your regular dentist tell you that?”

“What's an anomaly?”

“Well, my child, you have a tooth that is missing. It's a genetic deformity.”

“What do you mean a deformity?”

Dr. Kempka grinned. “No one, not even you, would know you have this problem just by looking at you. Not yet, that is. Perhaps you've noticed that your tooth . . . Here . . . this lateral incisor . . .” He tapped on his own tooth. “This one that's next to the center front tooth—on the right side—this is what you call a baby tooth in America. Here we call it
ein Milchzahn
—a milk tooth. In any case, it is a first tooth. You never lost it. Perhaps you've
noticed it's smaller than your other teeth.”

I thought for a moment. “Why, that's right. I don't remember ever losing that tooth.”

“There's no adult tooth under it to push it out. The one that should be underneath is absent—congenitally absent—meaning you never had it. For now we will leave that milk tooth right where it is, but eventually it may come out by itself. Or it will need to be pulled. Then you'll need to have some correction—braces—and a false tooth on a bridge will be inserted. You'll never know it is false.”

“A false tooth? Me? No, never!”

“If you don't, you'll have a gaping hole where it should be, and then your front teeth will move to the right, and your front teeth will be crooked. That wouldn't be at all becoming for a nice-looking girl like you.”

Deformity? False teeth? I wanted to weep.

“Don't worry. That baby tooth is holding the space. But once that tooth does come out or is pulled out, you'll get it fixed then.” Dr. Kempka set the chair back and adjusted the light. “Now we will fix that molar. You won't feel a thing.”

Once the doctor had finished, I went out to the waiting room where Frieda was reading a magazine. The assistant spoke to Frieda in German, explaining what the doctor had done.

We were about to leave when Dr. Kempka came out. “Remember to keep an eye on that lateral incisor, Wendy.”

“How did this happen?” I asked. “Why didn't that second tooth grow?”

“We don't really know why, but we do know it's hereditary. You probably got it from your mother or your father or even your grandparents.”

“Adrie has perfect teeth. And my father's smile was beautiful.”