White Apples (28 page)

She was in a bedroom with many pictures on the walls. Some•one was lying in the bed watching television. It was Isabelle's grand•mother who had died five years ago. She had lived the last part of her life with Isabelle's family and helped raise the children. All of them adored her. One of the things the kids loved most to do was climb into bed with the old woman every morning and watch tele•vision with her. They had their favorite shows and they would cuddle together under her thick down duvet that smelled faintly of her hand cream. For an early hour in the morning, there was no better place on earth than in bed with Grandmother.

"Isabelle,
komm zu mir."
The old woman smiled and beckoned her over with a thin slow hand—an incredibly familiar gesture. The adult Isabelle hesitated but could not resist the invitation and walked over. She sat down on the edge of the bed and came close to swooning when she heard Austrian folk music playing on the tele•vision.

Grandmother was watching the early morning national weather report. She had always liked to see what the weather was like around the country.

She did not appear at all surprised to see Isabelle. In her in•imitable way she spoke about this and that, nothing important, just the sorts of things she had always talked about which made these moments even more dear.

Isabelle heard something behind her and turned around. Vincent was standing at the door, smiling. She tried to smile back at him but the impact of the moment and the experience left her speechless. She could only raise her hands toward him and then let them float back down to her lap.

Vincent nodded, understanding everything. In Krakow that night she had told him the one person she wished to see again was this woman whom she had loved most of all.

Her grandmother was watching television again, seemingly oblivious to Ettrich's presence in her room. "This is the other thing I remembered how to do, Fizz. Will you be all right here for a while?"

"Here? Yes, of course, but where are you going?"

"Back to the hospital. To the time before I died. There's got to be something there that can help us." He looked at her grand•mother.

Isabelle looked too, and then at him with great love. "I can't believe you were able to do this." "What's it like to see her again?"

"There's so much I want to tell her, Vincent. Is that all right? I mean—"

"Yes, it's okay. It's like the water sandwich—we think time is only the past, present, and future but it's much more than that. You can tell her whatever you like and it won't make any difference. Whenever you want to come back, just

call for me and I'll know. I'll bring you back in
a
second. Okay?" "Yes. Will you be all right?"

He was about to say sure, but the truth was he didn't know if he was going to be all right and he didn't want to lie to her. "I hope so. But listen, if something does go wrong, you'll stay here. It's five and a half years ago and you're in Vienna, obviously. The only thing you'll have to do is explain to your
Oma
why you're pregnant. I forget—what's the word in German?"

"Schwanger.
I'll tell her it's a love child. She'll like that. She was always making fun of my mother for being so conservative."

"All right. If you need me, call me. But you're safe here. I promise you that. They can't touch you or Anjo here." "I'm not worried about us. Anjo has always protected me."

"Still I'm glad you're here and not there. I'll come and get you when I can." He took one of her hands, kissed it, and walked out of the room.

Grandmother turned from the television and said,
"Komm hier, Schatz. Sag mir alles."

Isabelle lay down on the bed. After looking one more time at the door she turned to her grandmother and began to talk. The old woman, as was her way, kept watching the TV but her granddaugh•ter knew that she was listening closely to every word.

Ettrich returned to his apartment only long enough to gather the few things he would need. When he had them he left for his own past.

Half an hour later there was a knock on the apartment door. When no one answered and sufficient time had passed, it opened and Bruno Mann entered. Or rather the man he had become. He was carrying a cheap fake-leather briefcase now. He looked like a man who had come to sell you something. Normally Bruno would have had no hesitation marching right in, but to everyone's great surprise, Ettrich had proven dangerous and much cleverer than any of them had imagined. Bruno had been advised to be very careful.

"Hello? Is anyone here?" He knew if someone was they would probably be angry at him for entering uninvited. But he would find the words to fix it. This stout man with the Caesar haircut was one smooth-talking guy.

To his mild surprise no one was there. That was okay though because it gave Bruno the chance to look around Ettrich's apartment unhindered.

He had never been in Vincent's place and was curious to see how the man lived. It frankly startled him to see how sparsely the rooms were furnished. He had imagined Vincent Ettrich would have cluttered his home with furniture the way he cluttered his life with women. But that was not the case.

When he was certain no one was there, Bruno walked through all of the rooms, looking in random drawers and cabinets, picking up a photograph and wondering what the moment was like when the picture was taken. He looked in the bedroom closet and under the bed.

There was one apple in a bowl on the kitchen counter. Pleased to be taking the last one, he bit into it and poked around the kitchen some more. He discovered a drawer full of only chopsticks and white plastic soy sauce packets. On a high shelf above the sink were two unopened bottles of Branston Pickle condiment from England. Bruno had been with Vincent in England. They'd had a fine dinner together at Langan's restaurant in London. Fine until Vincent laid eyes on an intriguing woman across the room. From one moment to the next he lost all interest in being with his colleague. His ego hurt, Bruno reciprocated with a malicious and unnecessary prank that later made Ettrich's painful death a little more sad and bleak.

Bruno Mann preferred those cruel ongoing pranks to any kind of single grand operatic killer blow. He was a whittler, his method incremental; he carved off bit after bit of his prey until there was nothing left. When Vincent Ettrich was dying of cancer, Bruno did several inventive things to remind the man of how much he would soon be missing, as well as how little he would be missed by others. His great dislike of Vincent was made up of one part jealousy, one part boredom, one part maliciousness, many parts detestation of the human race, and the simple overriding fact that Bruno Mann was a total shit. He was sure that's why he'd been chosen to be the new King of the Park.

He looked through Ettrich's CDs and books. He wondered if there was any significance in the fact the man owned four copies of Stendhal's novel
The Charterhouse of Parma.
He opened each one and riffled through the pages looking for incriminating love notes, unpaid bills, or any other dirty goody he might use later to make trouble for Vincent. Any little bit helped. As he looked around he whistled an array of Barry Manilow songs. "Oh Mandy" kept looping back.

He found photos of Vincent's children, one of Isabelle in white cotton underwear holding a pair of cowboy boots, one of his ex-wife in a green silk bathrobe. Holding up both pictures of the women, he looked from one to the other trying to decide which he would choose if it were up to him. He remembered the one time he met Kitty she was pleasant but rather aloof.

The telephone rang. He walked over and, putting his hand above it, deliberated on whether or not to pick it up. He could do a perfect imitation of any human voice so Ettrich's would be no problem. He couldn't decide on what to do and finally the answering machine kicked in.

"Hey Dad, it's your amazing son Jack."

Bruno listened attentively as the boy prattled on. He tried on Jack's voice, repeating his words as they came. It was truly un•nerving to see this middle-aged man telling his father how much he loved him in the voice of a little boy.

When that grew boring, he thought about how he might use Jack, his sister, their mother, or all three of them to tear Ettrich apart. He found a hard candy in his pocket and, unwrapping it, popped it into his mouth.

"Well, that's about all, Dad. I'll talk to you later." Jack hung up and the dial tone came on. Bruno made the sound of the dial tone deep in his throat. There had to be something in this apartment he wasn't seeing or that he had ignored. There was always a secret something in a person's house; something that shamed and thrilled them equally.

Something they would never want anyone to know they possessed. Ettrich's apartment was Spartan but Bruno was sure something important was here and that he could find it.

The phone shut off and the apartment became silent but for the sucking sound Bruno made around his hard candy.

That stopped too when he saw what he was looking for.

The wooden cake box Isabelle had brought from Vienna lay on the floor near the window.

"Woo, oo, oo, what have we here?" Bruno prided himself on never biting down on a hard candy. He had the patience to suck on them until they were tiny slivers small enough to swallow. But now he was so pleased to find this box that against all his principles, he couldn't resist a hard victorious chomp down on the butterscotch lozenge. He had what he needed.

Ettrich made a mistake. It was certainly understandable because what he had remembered of death came back at him as such a huge jumbled mess that the force of it almost knocked him over. It was a wonder that he had been able to bring Isabelle to her grandmother on his first try. In fact that might have been the thing that threw him off—it had been so easy that he thought hey, this won't be a problem. I know what I'm doing. But he did not know what he was doing and where he was now proved
that.

He didn't know where he was other than a hotel room some•where. By the look of the yellowing wallpaper and the old sink and bidet in a corner, it was probably Europe but he couldn't be sure. He had wanted to go back to the hospital where he had died but instead he was in a cheap hotel room maybe somewhere in Europe. But whether he recognized it or not, this room had to be in his life somewhere because that's the way this thing worked: In death you could go back and forth across your life as if it were a railroad track. They encouraged you to do it because studying your life, sometimes frame by frame, brought greater insight into the experience you had just completed. So this room was part of Ettrich's life. But because he didn't recognize it at all, the question was
what
part? He didn't have long to wait.

He hadn't even given the place a good once-over before the door opened and he heard a woman's laughter. To his great surprise, he recognized the laugh because it was unusually deep and sexy and belonged to his mother. But the woman who walked into this room was very different looking from the one who had made him five hundred or so peanut butter sandwiches and folded his underpants neatly in the underpants drawer of his dresser when he was a boy.

This woman had a long lustrous 1940s movie-star hairdo. She was wearing a thin blue and green sleeveless summer dress that showed off her full breasts and long legs to their absolute best ad•vantage. The old Vincent Ettrich would have pursued this woman big time if he had met her at a party. He had seen photos of his mother when she was young, and yes, this was that woman. But it was also so different because this was the real, living Ruth Ettrich and she glowed. That laugh, the rustling clinging dress and every inch of her thin but shapely arms showing... she was a knockout. Then a man came into the room and of course it was Vincent's father, Stan. He was wearing a black polo shirt and old jeans. He was thin and his face was interesting looking almost to the point of being handsome. He also had a full head of hair which fascinated Ettrich because he'd only known his father as a bald man. They were a striking couple. How old were they—late twenties, early thirties? His dad had two suitcases in his hands which he lowered slowly to the floor and let out a sigh of relief. Ettrich remembered for the first time in years how his father always complained that his wife packed too much when they went on a trip.

Ruth went to the window and looked out. She gestured for Stan to join her there. He walked over and, standing behind his wife, put his hands on her shoulders. Such a familiar gesture! How often had Ettrich seen his parents standing like that—his tall father towering behind his mother, her hands on top of his as they rested on her shoulders. With a great hot pain of love and longing, Ettrich suddenly missed them both terribly. Both had died years ago in a horrendous tunnel fire on an
Autobahn
in Switzerland, leaving him bereft because, among other things, he lost two very good friends.

"Oh, look at the view, Stan. It's beautiful down there." She nuzzled his hand and kept looking out the window.

Vincent wanted to take a peek out that window at what was so beautiful. But he was wholly content just to be in a room again with his living parents. Ironically, they were both much younger than he was now.

"What's the name of this town?" "Recey."

Ettrich's mouth dropped open because hearing that name, he knew exactly where he was, what was about to happen, and most importantly why he was here. This room was the home of one of the nicest stories of his parents' life together. While he was growing up he had asked them to tell it again and again. Sometimes it would be his mother's version and sometimes his dad's. It didn't matter which because none of them ever tired of hearing it.

Three years after they were married, the Ettrichs were hired to teach at an international school in Zurich. Neither had ever been to Europe so the summer before school began they came over early, rented a car, and drove around looking at this new world.

One evening near the French—Swiss border they stopped in a small nondescript French village. Exhausted by a long day in the car, they asked directions to the only
auberge
in Recey which from the outside didn't look like much. But there was no other option at that hour after twilight so they went in and rented a room.