Bluebird, page 32
Mick is at the wheel, Tony peering out from the back seat. Patricia cranks down the window glass.
“What in the world happened to you two?” she says.
“The storm,” Jake says, “it took down a wall of the summerhouse …”
“Man, did it take down your face?” Mick asks. “What were you doing in …”
“Valentina needs a doctor,” Eva says. “The telephones are not working …”
“A big tree came down across the road,” Tony says, “took the lines down, but the farmer’s got it out of the way …”
“It’s an …” Eva waves her hands. She can’t think of the word.
“An emergency,” Jake says.
“Oh,” says Patricia. “Wow. Okay …”
“Jake, man, you’re the one who needs the doctor. I think you need stitches.”
“Look,” says Patricia, “we were coming to tell you that Bets has been trying to call. She finally got somebody in the drugstore and … Anyway, Eva, your friend is waking up. At the hospital.”
Eva straightens. Like a mother who has just remembered her child. Jake leans down to the window. “Mick, how much gas is in this thing?”
“Well, you can’t go this second,” Patricia says. “You two look like you’ve been rolling up and down the lawn.”
They arrange for Mick to go get the doctor in the Studebaker—which he says won’t take more than half an hour, depending on how fast the guy can get out of bed—and then hurry back upstairs. Eva cleans up Jake’s face while he cleans the knife in the sink, and he gets into a dry shirt borrowed from Tony while she puts on the blue dress, since her only other skirt has the hem ripped out. Her shoes are still wet.
They straighten up her room together, quick, before someone can come up and see there’s been a fight inside it. Making the bed, righting the lamp, repacking the suitcases where Rolf had searched for the file, erasing the signs like the men with shiny shoes. Eva looks at the letter with the earrings and tucks it back into Brigit’s suitcase.
If the surgery has made Brigit worse, she’s going to need them. She may need them now, just to pay for it.
In twenty-five minutes, they are waiting with a lantern in the driveway, as the brakes of the Studebaker once again squeal to a stop. A man with a black bag steps out with his shirt half tucked in, and Eva tells him quickly about Valentina. How she’s started moving again, but is seeing things that aren’t there. The doctor hurries into the house with Mick and their lantern, Jake gets behind the wheel, and they are headed back down the mountain. Again.
It’s after midnight.
Eva tries to pin up her wild hair, and then she stares out the window. At the blown leaves and twigs littering the road, at the passing farms, and the signs on the highway. Wondering if Brigit has opened her eyes already. If Dr. Schneider is never coming home. What you do with a dead body. If she’d done the right thing.
She looks up when Jake exits the highway too soon.
“We need to switch cars,” he says. “We’re nearly out of gas, and Uncle Paul’s has a parking place at the hospital.” He takes them to a spot about two blocks away from Auntie Joyce’s, where an all-night diner is open, the neon glowing red and yellow. Jake turns the key and takes it out.
“Back in five minutes. I’d take you with me, but I’m going through the yards and I have to jump a fence.” He pauses. She can see a bruise starting below the stubble on his jaw. Then he leans over and kisses her before he goes, and says, “Lock the doors.”
He doesn’t say he won’t do it again.
She watches him trot away, over puddles in the pavement, shining with the reflections of the streetlights. She reaches across the seat and pushes down the door lock on his side, then the one beside her.
It’s quiet in the car. A heavy sort of quiet. Her purse is on the floorboard at her feet. She picks it up and takes out the envelope. There isn’t any writing after all, just the neon of the diner splashing color on the paper. She breaks the seal, and it’s not a letter or a document about the Doctor, like she’d thought. It’s a photograph. A portrait of a family.
Eva stares. She stares and stares at the photograph until her eyes are dry and her lungs burn. Four people. A man. A woman, and two little girls.
Imagine, the Doctor had said, two little girls. One racially valuable, while the other is not. What an opportunity, to see how the inferiority of the one might be bettered, elevated, when compared to the other, who is so naturally superior …
Two little girls in tones of gray. One is small, tiny, big-eyed with dark curls. A child-size version of herself. And the other could not be more different. With eyes a color that can be easily guessed, dimples, and beautiful fair hair that is long and straight. Eva turns over the photograph, and there is one word written on the back, in stark black ink.
Ptaszynski.
She looks up. Around. There’s no one on the street. Eva fumbles with the car lock. She gets the door open, grabs her purse and the photograph, and goes running, heels clacking on the sidewalk, splashing through the puddles. Where is Jake? She has to find Jake. And she does. Coming around the corner in the big green convertible.
He leaves rubber on the road. Leaps out of the car in the middle of the street, leaving the door open and swinging.
“Jake!” she yells. One or two heads stick out the diner door.
“What’s wrong?” he says, looking for who or what could be chasing her. “What’s happening?”
Eva thrusts the photograph into his hands.
“Brigit is my sister!”
JAKE DROPS EVA off at the double glass doors of the hospital while he parks the car and goes to get his face seen to, telling her to find him in the waiting room afterward. She runs straight to the nurse at the desk, breathless, fidgeting while the roster is checked and a telephone call made, and as soon as she gets the room number, she is running again for the elevator.
Her sister. How could she not have known?
Or maybe she had. Hadn’t she already decided that Brigit was her family? Hadn’t she always taken care of Annemarie?
What if she’s awake now? Confused? Needing her?
Out of the elevators onto the eighth floor, down a long hall, and Eva finds a private room, with glass for the upper half of the wall, so the nurses can see in as they pass. She stops and stands outside it, looking in at Brigit.
She isn’t awake. Not yet. Her hair is gone, head wrapped in a white bandage, a green hospital gown around her front, and she’s pale. Purple smudges of bruising beneath her eyes. But Eva can see the face in the photograph. She can see her small and dimpled. With violets in her hair. Even now, she’s still lovely.
Her sister.
And Brigit must know it, too. She must remember somewhere inside her head. Like the Polish.
Or maybe she won’t remember anything. Maybe she’ll be worse off than she was before. And that will be Eva’s fault, too.
Eva steps quietly into the blank room—white walls, white bed frame, white floor—and Bets is in a chair just below the window glass, head back, mouth a little open, in her suit with the AFSC badge. There’s a vase of flowers on the table beside Brigit’s bed.
A nurse comes and asks Eva’s name, checks the watch pinned to her uniform, and says she will be back. Eva brings the other chair gently to the bedside without waking Bets. Brigit’s eyes are moving beneath the lids, and every now and then, a finger twitches.
Eva takes Brigit’s hand. Holding it against her cheek. Waiting, watching while people walk by. While the bag of fluids attached to Brigit’s arm drips and drips. Then she reaches down with her other hand, into her purse, and pulls out the photograph, studying it in the hospital light.
Anna looks like her father. Her real father, and Eva doesn’t remember him at all. But her mother, that face is like a song forgotten, a song she can still sing the words to. Her mother is smiling in the picture, chin tilted, a little mischievous, but Eva can see what she looks like when she frowns, too. When she plays the piano. And the hands, folded in her lap, have painted fingernails. Red, Eva thinks. That’s what color they are. But even though the expression is different, the features are all Brigit. Same eyes. The same hair. The same upright back. And then Eva pauses. Sits up.
Her mother looks like the blond man. The Soviet agent. And not a little. She looks like him exactly.
She grips the photograph like she could shake it and make it speak. Ptaszynski would be her father’s name, or the family name. Ptaszynska for the women. Polish. But who had her mother been? The Doctor’s notes said they were Communists. Had her mother been Russian? With someone—a younger brother, perhaps—now working for Stalin? A brother whose eyes are clear blue and cold. Who tells men which necks to break. Who’d studied her so carefully, and said she would never see him again. Who walks with the same rhythmic stride as Brigit.
A man with a personal vendetta to capture the Doctor, maybe, as well as a Soviet one.
What had her mother been doing, living in Germany, when Hitler came to power? She could have asked him. And now she’ll never know.
She lays her head on the bed beside Brigit. What had Brigit’s name been, her real name, so long ago? She can’t remember. But she can hear a voice. Like music. She can see red fingernails on the piano keys. On a knife, cutting a cake, inviting the wrong man into their house. The man who brought the guns …
“Inge?”
Eva’s mind is a haze. Blurry. She doesn’t know that name. And then she remembers the hospital. The dripping bag. She raises her head, and Brigit’s eyes are open. Clear and lovely, like in the photograph. Eva smiles. Brigit’s brows come together.
“Inge … my head hurts …”
Brigit’s voice. Her real voice, not the childlike one. And she’d called her Inge. And said four words that made sense. In German. Eva calls the nurse, and Bets wakes up with a start. The nurse calls Dr. Forrester, and he says this is a very good sign.
And Eva can’t stop smiling. She must have made the right decision. The surgery must have been right. Brigit is her sister and they have a future.
Brigit goes back to sleep again.
The second time Brigit opens her eyes, Eva is already awake, and Jake is asleep where Bets had been, having charmed one nurse into giving him the room number, and another into letting him stay. He has four stitches beneath a little bandage on his face. He needs a shave. She’d like to find a blanket and tuck him in. And when her gaze wanders back to the bed, Brigit is looking at her with drowsy eyes.
“Have I … had an … accident?” she asks in German. Her words are slurred, but intelligible. They’ve given her a little something for pain, but not much.
Eva smiles and takes her hand. “You’ve hurt your head. You’ve had an operation.”
She doesn’t know if Brigit is ready yet, to be asked what she can remember. Eva doesn’t know if she is ready to ask her.
“I could hear … people. Talking. And I … I could not understand …”
“They’re speaking English,” Eva says. “You’ve been sick for a long time now. We’re in America. Can you remember? Coming to America?”
Brigit closes her eyes. Frowns. “I don’t … understand. America is … the enemy …”
“No, darling. The war is over now. It’s all right … if you don’t remember …”
“It is not all right.” Brigit tosses her head, wincing. “Where is … Mama? And Heinz and Magda …”
Brigit had had other brothers and sisters. When she was Annemarie. And Eva had seen them all lying dead in front of her burning house.
“I’ll stay with you,” Eva whispers. “I will always take care of you.”
“I want … Mama,” Brigit mumbles, and her eyes fall shut.
Eva holds her hand.
The third time, it is Eva who opens her eyes, to find Brigit staring at the wall. And this time she is much more alert, with thoughts happening inside her head. Eva can see them. She smiles, rubbing the sleep from her eyes.
“Hello,” she whispers. She takes Brigit’s hand, but Brigit pulls it away.
“Inge,” she says. “Who is that?”
Jake is still asleep, head back, arms crossed over his chest. “That’s Jacob. Do you remember meeting …”
“My hair is gone.”
Eva sits up, adjusting the sheets. “You’ve had an operation, darling. They had to shave it, to fix …”
Brigit turns to look at her. She has tears in her eyes. “You left me,” she says. “I remember. There were soldiers, and you left me. You drove past me in the car.”
Eva whispers, “I came back for you …”
“You’re always running off and doing whatever you want. You never did care about anybody else.” Brigit turns on her side, wincing as she moves her head. “You are so selfish, Inge.”
Eva swallows. But if this is what Brigit is focused on, she must not remember what came next. Not yet. Jake is awake now, watching.
“I’ve been taking care of you,” Eva says. “For more than a year now …”
“I don’t want you to take care of me. I want my mother.”
Eva reaches out for her, but Brigit slaps away her hand.
“Where is my mother?” she shouts.
Then the nurse is there, soothing, telling Brigit to shush in words she can’t understand. Brigit doesn’t shush. She never did, when she was upset.
“Go away! I hate you!” she screams. “I want my mother!”
“Step out for a bit,” the nurse says, not unkindly. “She needs to sleep yet, so she doesn’t hurt herself, and he needs to go as well …” She nods her head at Jake. “I have to change her sheets and things. And you’re not doing her any good making her upset.”
“But I …”
“Eva,” Jake says, hand on her back. “Let’s go for a walk.”
Brigit is screaming and screaming.
“She doesn’t understand English,” Eva says. “Do you have a German nurse?”
“Ah. Yes. I’ll see what I can do …”
Eva picks up her purse, tucking the photograph into the lining, where it won’t wrinkle. Brigit is crying when she leaves the room.
Jake takes her hand and leads her along the hall and out of the hospital, across the street and down a few blocks, turning into a little park with trees, where wrought iron fencing and lampposts line a riverbank. A good place for walking dogs and reading newspapers. The sun is out, but it’s a cooler sun, the sky brilliant blue. The year is turning.
Jake swings her hand. “She’s still sick, you know.”
“I know.” It hadn’t been that long since she’d thought Brigit would never speak again. It had only been hours since she’d thought Jake would die. And neither of those things had happened. She’s not ungrateful.
“Anyone been hanging around?” Jake asks.
“I haven’t been looking. Was Cruickshanks still there last night?”
“Asleep in his car. For all I know, he thinks you’re still at Auntie Joyce’s.”
She smiles. “How’s your face?”
“They told me I’m going to have a very handsome scar. Makes me look like a gangster, don’t you think?”
“I’m sorry.”
“I’m not sure you should be.”
Except he shouldn’t have a scar because of her. And neither should Brigit.
But if Brigit is going to be better, so much better, her memories are going to be difficult. And not just the soldiers and her missing family. Brigit must have had the same kind of training as Anna. To forget who she’d been. And when the Cruickshankses realize there is no Doctor to find, and with Brigit in more of her right mind, what is to keep them from turning their full attention on Anna Ptaszynska? They always had assumed Anna was Brigit.
She wonders how long until they find out.
There’s a stone tower ahead of them, tall and skinny, and then they turn onto a bridge, high, but only a few feet wide, for walking instead of cars. Stone arches stretch below, the open sky above, the city on either side of them. Jake stops near the center, elbows on the iron railing, watching the slow roll of the river. Eva watches it with him.
“I took the gun,” Jake says. “From your purse. I forgot to tell you.”
She’d forgotten to ask.
Jake shakes his head. “I thought nobody should be up there alone, and then I didn’t lock the door. I’m sorry. I never thought …”
“You never thought I would need a gun in Sky Island’s living room?” she finishes for him. “You probably didn’t expect a Nazi in my bedroom, either. A Nazi that wasn’t me,” she adds.
Jake shrugs. “Call yourself a Nazi if you want, Bluebird, but … you’re just so damn bad at it.”
She opens her mouth and shuts it again.
“Not that I want to hurt your feelings or anything.”
He has a grin in the corner of his mouth, and she knows what he’s doing. That had been exactly like a cup of tea with lemon and no sugar.
Eva unsnaps her purse and takes out the gun in its holster, cradling it in both her hands. Jake straightens, giving a quick glance around them, but there’s no one near. She leans over the railing and lets the gun go.
She’d dropped herself in brown water once. Trying to disappear. But she’d decided to swim back up again. Annemarie had done that for her. She watches the gun fall until the river swallows it whole.
Then she offers Jake her open purse. “Do you want to do this one?”
He takes out the knife, glances over it once, and gives it a good toss, end over end, way out into the current. “I couldn’t have watched Peggy cut bread with that thing again, anyway,” he says. “And how about this?”
He reaches into his pants pocket and brings out a much-creased and wrinkled photograph. Of her, with the eagle, in the awful pink dress. She recoils.
“Why do you have that?”
“It was supposed to remind me of all the reasons why I should never look at you again, only that didn’t work so well. And then Rolf found it in my jacket, and … he didn’t like it. And when he was on the floor in the summerhouse and you were holding the gun like some kind of avenging German angel, I took it back. I don’t even know why.” He shakes the photograph. “I mean, I don’t even know this girl. I’ve never seen her.”
