Bluebird, page 21
They sit together on the train, empty except for a man sleeping full-length along one of the seats, one of his hands scraping the floor. This time Jake puts an arm around her, and she leans against his neck.
“Where do you live?” she murmurs.
“With my mother and Uncle Paul. Upper West Side.”
“Do you have brothers? Sisters?”
“Nope.”
“Will your mother be angry, when you come home so late?”
“She’s probably called the police.”
Eva smiles. “Will your father be angry?”
“No. He’s dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay.”
They rock together, back and forth with the train.
“What do you want to do, for work, when you finish your school?”
“Write for the newspapers. Here, or somewhere else.”
“You would not go somewhere else. You love it … here.”
“Hmmm. Say, Bluebird, you’re not sleepy or anything, are you?”
Eva shakes her head and tucks her head in tighter. Her eyes are closed.
Jake smells like dancing.
He takes her by the hand again to leave the train. Outside, the store windows are dark, and so are the ones above them, the street nearly deserted. She can hear a baby crying somewhere, wailing almost the exact same note as a faraway siren.
Jake lifts a hand to a patrolling policeman, then takes her around the block to the little alley, to the dark strip of trees and blowing litter between the backyards. Through the gate, and she’s back in the square of paving stones and grass behind Powell House. There’s a light on over the back door, every other window dark. Eva looks up.
“Did they lock the doors?” She hadn’t thought of this.
“Lucky I’m the one you decided to get dance drunk with.” He holds up a key on a ring of keys and puts it to the lock. The back door cracks open with the softest of squeaks. She’s supposed to go inside now, but he hasn’t let go of her hand.
She watches him slowly untwine each of her fingers. But he holds on to the last one, lifting it until it’s just pressing against his lips. His jaw is scratchy, but his mouth is soft. He closes his pretty eyes. Smiles beneath her fingertip. Then he lays her hand back at her side.
“’Night,” he whispers, and walks away, hands in his pockets, out the gate and into the dark.
Eva shuts the door behind her without a noise. She shivers.
The house is in deep peace. Shadowy. She tiptoes up the stairs, wondering how she’d never noticed so many creaks, sliding along the wall to avoid them. Brigit is actually snoring, the dirty dinner dishes Bets brought still on the little table. Eva takes off her clothes, but it’s too hot for a nightgown, so she sits in the windowsill in her camisole, and she can’t see a rusty car or anyone on the street at all. She puts the finger Jake kissed against her mouth. Closes her eyes.
It is so unfair. To want so much what you should not have. To think he wants you back. When he should not want anything to do with you at all. And she won’t be able to do what she’d planned. Walk away. Disappear. Jake will come after her, like he did tonight.
She could tell him. The truth. Or enough of it. About who she’s been, who was in that apartment tonight. He would walk away on his own, then.
It’s what she should do. It would be best.
And she doesn’t want to do it like she doesn’t want to do her own surgery.
It’s going to hurt.
Her guilt spreads like a venom. Sickening.
She crawls into bed with Brigit and the kitten, a hint of dawn beginning behind the buildings, and when she opens her eyes again, the room is bright, and so is Brigit. She’s out of bed, smiling, happy, examining the one shoe she has put on. Eva feels the poison bubble up again. Ebbing and flowing. But Brigit’s long sleep doesn’t seem to have done her any harm, and the words Eva read in that file last night are like a nightmare that disappears with the sun.
“Guten Morgen, Brigit,” she whispers.
She swings her feet out of bed, heavy-lidded and sore inside, and goes to hang up the clothes she’d left on the floor. She never leaves her clothes on the floor. She picks up her black heels, and her purse, and sets them inside the wardrobe.
Then she grabs up her purse again, twisting open the little snap.
The photograph is gone.
EVA SEARCHES HER purse again, running her fingers through the slit in the lining.
Where could the photograph have gone?
When could it have gone?
She looks at Brigit, still admiring her one shoe. Could Brigit have found it in her purse? Taken it? She checks Brigit’s pockets. Under the bed. She hadn’t locked the door last night. What if that picture is lying around, somewhere in Powell House? To be picked up by Bets. Martha. A photograph of her, in that ridiculous dress, sitting in front of the Nazi eagle.
It makes her ill to think about it.
She checks the wardrobe. Snatches up her blouse from the floor and stops, hands dropping to her sides.
There’s a bird on the rug. Just below the window where she’d been sitting last night.
A dead bird.
She steps back. Throws another quick glance at Brigit. But now Brigit is busy wrapping yarn around a spoon. It’s a sparrow, Eva thinks, brown and nondescript, without a wound or a mark that she can see.
And she can feel the pieces of herself. Rising and falling. Crashing, shattering one against the other like waves from opposite directions. Telling her to remember what she cannot remember.
There had been something in that file last night. Something about a bird.
“Knock, knock!” says a voice from the door. Eva spins, and it’s Peggy, her curly gray hair in a frizz. “Sorry for the startlement, and … hello there, lovely.”
Brigit is sticking out her shoe for Peggy to see, dimpling like a cherub. Eva takes a little step sideways and drops her blouse over the dead bird.
“I’ve come to strike a bargain,” Peggy announces. And she holds up a dress. Sky blue, shiny and slim, with a wide, low collar and covered buttons. “I came across this in the sewing room down on Twenty-Third, where we do up clothes and send them overseas …”
Her blouse on the floor had come from an AFSC box. And so had her shoes.
“… and I thought you might like something a little more formal for this afternoon …”
The party. For the art exhibition. She’d completely forgotten it was today. That means Jake is coming.
“… and it wasn’t likely to be anybody else’s size, and it’s just your color. So I did a little ironing and thought I’d offer it in trade for a mountain of silver that needs to be polished, because Colette was supposed to help but Jimmy’s sick.”
Then Peggy leans forward and whispers, “Actually, you’d be making a terrible mistake to accept, because I was going to give this to you, anyway. But would you come polish silver?”
This probably means that Peggy has not seen a photograph of Eva as a Nazi.
Eva forces a smile, and says, yes, of course, and thank you, and in ten minutes, she has both herself and Brigit dressed and downstairs with their dirty dishes. And no one else has seen a picture of Eva as a Nazi, either, because everyone smiles and says good morning. And as soon as Brigit is settled, Eva slips out the back, finds a trowel in the little potting shed, and buries the bird she’s had in her pocket—well wrapped in tissue—in a back corner of the garden.
She needs to read that file.
She needs to understand exactly what Brigit is capable of.
The pile of silver waiting to be relieved of its tarnish is exactly as Peggy said. Mountainous. Serving bowls, platters, a punch bowl, little tongs, and other things Eva can’t see because they’re underneath the rest. Peggy is already at the sink with an apron, scouring with salt and hot lemon, while Eva feeds Brigit and the kitten.
Bets and Mother Martha are at the table, too, going over the food deliveries and the guest list. The head of the Jewish Women’s Council, the Urban League, members of the Federation of Churches, the Guggenheim, the president of Hunter College, the wife of the former minister to Liberia, others who should have special tours. Dignitaries, Eva thinks. They can hear Mrs. Angel running the sweeper in the parlor over their heads.
Peggy hands Eva a sugar bowl to buff, lowering her voice to keep from disturbing Bets and Martha. “And now, my dear, you get to hear the other part of my bargain for you. Or maybe bribe is the better word. I do a little luncheon here on Tuesdays, and for the past three weeks, we’ve had some volunteers reading a play, Private Life of the Master Race, by Brecht. Do you know it?”
Eva polishes and polishes her bowl, like the maids used to do to Grandmama’s silver. She shakes her head.
“It was banned in Germany, being not all that complimentary to Hitler, but it’s very provocative, with different viewpoints on life in Nazi Germany. A Jewish professor in the city, a butcher forced to live as a Nazi, the baker who believes in Nazism, that sort of thing. Jacob is going to come and read one of the parts for us, since Jimmy is sick …”
Her mind goes straight to last night. Music. Movement.
“… and I thought for our discussion, how fascinating it would be to hear from someone who has lived through exactly what Brecht was writing about. Would you come?”
Eva buffs the sugar bowl. Hard. There is not one thing about how she lived as a Nazi that she would ever like to discuss at Powell House. And she’s not sure she could actually survive listening to Jake read a play about it.
Or maybe having to listen to him read it would be fair. Maybe it would be justice.
“All opinions welcome,” Peggy says. “We encourage different ideas …”
But Eva only asks, “What is wrong with Jimmy?”
“Oh, he gets bouts of malaria ever since the war,” Peggy sighs, starting on the punch bowl. “Colette is learning to nurse him through it.”
“But I thought … Jimmy was not in the war?”
Martha leans over and says, “James requested to drive an ambulance, but he was sent to a civilian work camp instead, with other conscientious objectors. To take over a logging operation for the men who had joined up.”
“But it wasn’t actually about logging,” Peggy says. “The army injected all those boys with malaria, on purpose, and did experiments on them, testing different cures. Told them they were being vaccinated …”
“Isn’t that disgusting?” says Bets.
Yes, Eva thinks.
Peggy shakes her head. “And malaria stays with you, too. Gives you bouts of fever and chills for the rest of your life.”
“And all because those young men acted on what they believed,” Martha says. “That killing is wrong, no matter what.”
Killing is wrong. No matter what.
Eva keeps her eyes on her silver. “But what about … justice?” she asks. Bets puts down her pen. “What if the punishment is earned?”
“The problem with justice,” says Peggy, “is that in order to dispense it, someone has to be the judge. And who among us is qualified? What person has the right to decide someone else’s life or death?”
But sometimes, Eva thinks, judgment is easy. Some things are so wrong, there’s no question. Sometimes, someone has to stop the wrong thing from happening.
Peggy sighs, rubbing vigorously with her cloth. “It’s … complicated.”
Eva agrees with her. Brigit is tugging Eva’s skirt, clamoring for attention. Eva moves Brigit’s hands away and Bets gives her a spoon.
“I don’t want you to think all of America is like that,” Peggy says. “It’s the case of a few bad apples running amok and getting away with what they shouldn’t, that’s all.”
Eva gives up trying to envision apples running. But she understands what Peggy means to say, anyway.
“The good thing about America,” Bets says, “is that when something does run amok, at least we can decide to do something about it.”
“And what about your young men who were made to be sick?” Eva asks. “What are the people doing about that?”
Martha smiles. “Thee have hit upon the problem, dear. People have to know about a thing to stop it, and Quakers are a quiet lot. More than is good for them, sometimes.”
Brigit tugs Eva’s skirt again. Spoons are not quite as interesting as they used to be. But then Olive comes in with a cookie delivery and when she gives one to Brigit, Brigit’s smile puts the sunshine to shame. Peggy laughs, and Eva smiles, polishing her silver with a steady hand.
She feels calmer now. Focused. Someone does know about her father. Someone does know about what the government would like to let him do. And it’s her. Justice is up to her. And that is more important than her guilt, her anger, or her pain.
It’s probably not the conclusion these ladies would have expected her to draw.
She sets down her shining bowl and picks up another platter, buffing until she can see her face, reflected like a mirror. And with each swipe of the cloth, she says a name. Twenty-seven of them. She says who she is.
The exhibition opens at five. Everyone should be gone by eight. She’ll have Brigit asleep by nine and go out the back. She’ll make absolutely sure she is not followed. At the bus station, she’ll get the file, take it to the ladies’ room, and read it. The gun she’ll put in her purse. And this time, she won’t go into the apartment until Rolf really has left for work. This time, she won’t leave until her father comes.
She won’t leave without justice. And then what comes will come.
Bets determines that Eva has the prettiest handwriting of the group, so she spends the afternoon writing names on cards. Selma Burke. Palmer Hayden. Ellis Wilson. Every name from Bets’s list, gluing each card to a safety pin, so the guests can recognize the artists. She’s quiet while she writes, thinking about what she might say to Jake.
She doesn’t have the words. But if she can take a gun to Rolf’s apartment, then surely she can tell Jake the truth.
His light has no place in her darkness. And he will have to know it.
Maybe it will be pain, after all, that will be her own justice.
Or being alone.
Eva takes Brigit upstairs, out of the last-minute scurry. Brigit looks out the window, wanting the birds to come, but Eva gives her the harmonica instead, and leaves the window shut. She pulls the blue dress over her head, tries to tame down her hair, and then lets it be what it is. And at a few minutes before five, Mrs. Angel comes in, and Eva promises to switch places with her in an hour.
Eva watches her feet in their ankle-strap heels. Down every step. Walking across each landing. Closer. Closer. She doesn’t know what she’s going to say to him.
Except the truth.
She can hear the people in the foyer before she can see them. And when she rounds the curve of the stairs, Martha and Bets are shaking gloved hands, all the furs and pearls, ties and flowered hats mingling in a little crowd. And Jake is on the bottom step, waiting for her. He’s shaved, combed his hair, and is wearing an actual suit and tie, unwrinkled, though not with the jacket buttoned.
He doesn’t move. Just watches her come down the stairs. And he smiles.
She smiles back. It can’t be helped.
“Hi, Bluebird,” he says, very quiet. “Tired today?”
“A little.”
“I never slept.”
He lifts a hand, like he’s going to tuck her hair behind her ear, and just brushes a thumb against the corner of her mouth. She shivers.
And she can’t remember what the truth is anymore.
Jake leans against the wall. “Come out with me tonight.”
She shakes her head. But she’s still smiling.
“I was thinking we could take Brigit up to the music room, she’d like that. And after she’s asleep, we could go down to the park. There’s this guy I know, he rents the boats on the lake, he said he’d let us …”
And then Jake looks over his shoulder. A woman in a little black hat has just come through the door, kissing Martha on the cheek.
“Hey,” he says. “Fair warning. You’re about to meet my mother.”
She takes a quick peek around Jake. The woman is coming straight for them.
“And I wouldn’t mention that nightclub if I were you,” Jake whispers. And then he’s standing up straight and the woman is beside them, nudging Jake with her elbow.
“Is this her?” she asks. “Is this the one? There’s nothing to her!”
She has plucked eyebrows, dark brown hair with no gray, tall heels, and two wedding rings strung on a gold chain around her neck. Eva knows now where Jake got his eyes. Though she’s never seen his gaze narrowed at her quite like this one.
“Eva Gerst,” says Jake. “This is my mother.”
“I have something to say to you,” says Mrs. Katz. “I won’t have Jacob running around with girls. He’s got responsibilities. He’s got school to finish, and he won’t do it staying out all night. He’s going places, and there will be plenty of nice girls for him to choose from. Later. Once he’s made something of himself.”
And by “nice girls,” Eva thinks, Mrs. Katz means any girl other than her. She glances at Jake, rocking on his heels with his brows up, waiting to see where this might go. Eva tries to imagine what it would be like to have a mother like his.
A mother who cares.
She looks back at Mrs. Katz. “I agree with you.”
Mrs. Katz would be surprised to know just how much she agrees.
“Last night was my fault. He probably told you it was his, but he’s only being nice. I was … I have a friend who came here with me …”
Jake is tilting his head in encouragement.
“… she is not well. I needed help, but I should not have let him stay out so late when he has … papers”—Jake half-closes his eyes, giving her the tiniest nod—“for his classes. I have always been told that … an education should come first …”
An image of Frau Koch flashes through her mind, standing beneath the fluttering swastikas, telling her rapt little group that good German girls get married and produce good German babies as soon as they’re able. That a German girl would never ruin her bloodline. Would never, ever even think of sullying herself with a boy like Jacob Katz.
