Anna takes her old school satchel from the armoire and packs three changes of clothes. There is no need to bring more; by this time next month, these dresses will not fit her. She adds her hairbrush and a pair of comfortable shoes. She burrows into the bottom drawer of the bureau and retrieves her christening gown, rustling between yellowed layers of tissue paper. Then she steals down the back staircase and runs from the Elternhaus through the servants’ door.
The road to Weimar is deserted, as gasoline is impossible to get without connections and it is long past curfew. The only vehicle that might pass now would belong to SS or Gestapo, and Anna has no desire to encounter either one. She quickens her pace, jumping at movements in the weeds, her palms slick. The night is moonless and black but for the occasional sullen flare of lightning on the horizon, over the hump of the Ettersberg where the camp is. On the outskirts of the city, the sounds of people’s ordinary evenings drift from the houses: the thin cry of an infant, a sudden shout of laughter, a man calling to his wife for a glass of water. Anna hates them all.
As she walks along, her dress clinging to her like bandaging, the poem comes to her. Could it have been only twenty-four hours ago that she was in the stairwell, listening to Max recite it? He lay then with his arms crossed behind his head, eyes closed to invoke memory, unaware of Anna’s smile as she watched him.
Ah, love, let us be true to one another! . . . And we are here as on a darkling plain Swept with confused alarms of struggle and flight, Where ignorant armies clash by night.
When Anna reaches her destination, she bypasses the front entrance and rustles through shrubbery to the back. There she taps on the sectioned wooden door. There is no response, no movement within, no flicker of light in a window. Anna whispers the verse into the humid air and waits. After three repetitions, she knocks again, harder this time, and is rewarded by a scuffling sound. Anna closes her eyes: she is still there, then, thank God; she hasn’t been picked up and taken away, the only woman who can now help her. The door opens an inch to reveal the cautious, scowling face of Frau Mathilde Staudt.
Trudy, November 1996
8
IT IS ONE OF THE GREAT IRONIES OF HER MOTHER’S LIFE, thinks Trudy Swenson, that of all the places to which Anna could have emigrated, she has ended up in a town not unlike the one she left behind. Of course, Weimar was and is much bigger than New Heidelburg, and it was once a government seat, and it provided a home to Goethe, Schiller, artists and museums. There is certainly no such sophistication about this little farm hamlet. But the countryside of southern Minnesota, through which Trudy is driving, resembles the land around Weimar: the same gentle hills and fields that former Buchenwald prisoners say could be seen from the camp. And Trudy imagines that the mentality of the two places is also similar. People ostensibly turning a blind eye to their neighbors’ activities while really harvesting and analyzing every last detail of their lives. The ingredients for their dinners. The color of their underwear, purchased in the local Ben Franklin. Who is sick, who is well, who is adulterous. In the case of wartime Weimar, who had been taken away in the middle of the night.
Here and now, also in the evening but an ocean away and fifty years later, Trudy is pushing the speed limit as much as she dares: seventy-five on the highway, thirty in the populated zones. These small towns are all speed traps, and the interstate is not much better. When she reaches the New Heidelburg limits she slows still further, though she is frantic with the need to press the accelerator to the floor. Crawling along Main Street, Trudy is aware of curtains twitching, of faces gathering at the windows of Chic’s Pizza and Cathy’s Chat’N’Chew. She pretends not to see them. She knows that not only her presence here but the reason for it will have traveled through the whole town by morning. In fact, Trudy can hear the conversations as clearly as if she were eavesdropping on the party line: Did you see Trudy Swenson was here today? Nooooo. But I did hear her mother tried to burn the house down. Oh, you know, I heard that same thing! I guess Miss Big-City Swenson’ll finally have to put that old witch in the home.
Trudy doesn’t realize she has been holding her breath until she reaches the other side of New Heidelburg, at which point she lets it out in a foooooooof. The speedometer’s red needle creeps upward as she passes the last stand of trees, the defunct golf course, the Catholic cemetery—the town’s papists segregated from the Lutherans even in death—and a smattering of farms. Then there is nothing, until a few miles farther the New Heidelburg Health Clinic looms suddenly in Trudy’s high beams. The big red brick building, along with the nursing home crouched beside it like a mongrel dog, is completely isolated from the rest of the town, as if not only illness but old age—its dementia and vacancy and bed-wetting—demands quarantine.
Trudy turns into the clinic lot and parks, checking the dashboard clock. It is seven-thirty, two and a half hours since she received the call from Anna’s caseworker. Trudy has made good time. She shuts off the engine and headlights and sits in the dark for a minute. Then she sighs, pulls her muffler up over her face, and sprints into the building.
The hallway is quiet and dim, the check-in desk awash in fluorescence. As distracted by worry as Trudy is, the scene reminds her of a Hopper painting: the zone of bright light and the woman sitting alone in it, the distilled essence of isolation.
The nurse looks up at Trudy’s approach, inserting a finger in the paperback she is reading.
Can I help you? she asks.
I’m Trudy Swenson, says Trudy, slightly out of breath. My mother is here? Anna Schlemmer?
The nurse nods and reaches for a folder in the hanging files in front of her.
Room 113, she confirms. But visiting hours are over. You’ll have to come back in the morning. I’m sorry, hon.
No, please, says Trudy. I have to see her. I drove all the way from the Twin Cities. I came as quickly as I could—
I’m sure you did, says the nurse. But I can’t go against the rules. Your mom’s in the trauma unit—
Trauma! Trudy repeats. I was told the smoke inhalation was only minor!
Well, that’s true, says the nurse. There’s nothing for you to be real concerned about. But at your mom’s age, you know, we can’t take any chances. That’s why we’re keeping her for observation.
She gives Trudy a sympathetic smile. Why don’t you get some rest yourself and come back tomorrow? That’d be best.
Trudy stares at the nurse in frustration. For a moment she wonders whether the woman is deliberately barring her access to Anna—yet another slippery New Heidelburg trick. But no, although the nurse is about Trudy’s age, Trudy has never seen her before. She is not from the town; she must live somewhere nearby, Rochester, maybe, or LaCrosse.
Couldn’t I just sit with her for a minute? Trudy persists.
Listen, Mrs.— Swenson, is it?
Doctor, corrects Trudy automatically.
The nurse raises penciled brows.
You’re a doctor?
Of history, Trudy says, smiling.
The nurse regards her with some pity, and Trudy has the momentary and uncomfortable sensation of viewing herself as another might: a foolishly arrogant little blond woman in a pilled black overcoat, with a determined set to her jaw.
Please, she says.
The nurse sighs.
I really shouldn’t, she says. But . . . All right. Just for a minute. This way.
Trudy follows the nurse down the hall. The woman is short and stout, like the teapot. Everything about her, from her plump compact body to her easy-care perm, conveys a cozy capability. To distract herself from what might await her in the trauma ward, Trudy imagines the nurse’s life: she has at least two grown children and several grandchildren; on weekends they come over with casseroles of hot dish and brats, which they eat in the rec room while the nurse’s retired husband drinks Pig’s Eye and watches the Vikings. There would be a basketball hoop on the garage. The nurse is everything Trudy has been raised to be and nothing whatsoever like the person Trudy has become.
They stop in front of room 113.
Remember, not too long with her now, warns the nurse. And try not to wake her. She needs her sleep.
Thank you. I appreciate this.
The nurse lays a hand on Trudy’s arm. Trudy looks down at it, the short pink nails, the freckled flesh bulging on either side of the wedding and engagement rings.
There’s one other thing you might want to know, the nurse says.
What’s that?
She’s not talking. She hasn’t said a word since she came in, not to the doctor, not to anybody. We had to get her information from her social worker.
Trudy nods.
That’s nothing new, she says. But thank you for telling me.
Again, that glance of compassion. Then the nurse walks away, the rubber soles of her sneakers creaking on the linoleum.
Trudy waits until the nurse has turned the corner. Then she takes a deep breath and opens her mother’s door.
Oh, Mama, she says softly.
Anna is asleep in a hospital bed, the light bar over it casting a white glare on her face. If they are so adamant about Anna getting her rest, why is this on? Trudy wonders. She steals across the room. At least Anna is hooked up to nothing more dire than an IV. There are no tubes snaking into her nostrils, no beeping machines. Trudy lifts a plastic chair to the bedside. She sloughs her coat and sits as near to Anna as she dares.
Trudy has not seen Anna since Anna’s seventy-sixth birthday in August, and she is shocked by how much Anna has changed in three months. Failing , the older New Heidelburgers would call it. Trudy catalogues with indignant sorrow the weight loss, the age spots, the spreading bruise on her mother’s hand from the IV. They are frightening and unfair, the ravages time wreaks. Yet even now, Trudy is struck by the extraordinary geometry of her mother’s face: the sculpted cheekbones and square jaw. The pleasing symmetry of widow’s peak and pointed chin. In Anna’s gray hair, the light streaks—once blond, now white—providing the touch of oddity without which real beauty is incomplete. Ever since Trudy can remember, whenever Anna made one of her rare forays into public, people would gravitate to whatever room she was in, just to look at her. But they never got too close. Anna’s loveliness, combined with how little she talked, set her apart from ordinary folk. Made them clumsy. Suspicious. Shy. Resentful: Oh, she’s stuck-up, all right. Thinks she’s so much better than us.
But Trudy knows there are other reasons for Anna’s silence. Now Trudy inches farther forward and squints, as if by concentrating she could penetrate the surface to what really interests her: her mother’s skull, hard as the casing of a walnut. And within this, like the meat of a walnut with its complicated folds, her mother’s brain. What information is encrypted in that soft gray matter? Trudy wonders. She watches Anna’s eyes roll back and forth like marbles beneath their papery lids. What is Anna seeing now as she sleeps? What scenes so shameful that she will never speak of them, has never spoken of them, not even to her own daughter? What memories so tormenting that they have finally—perhaps—become unbearable?
As if she senses this invasive line of questioning, Anna jerks and wakes. She focuses her pale eyes on Trudy, who is reminded of the ghostly stare sometimes seen from a dead relative in an old photograph, a gaze from which one can’t turn away.
Trudy hastily sits back. Anna looks at her, or perhaps through her to somebody who isn’t there.
Mama? How are you feeling?
Anna doesn’t so much as blink. The familiar silence spins itself out, so complete that Trudy can hear the faint and insectile buzz of the fluorescent bar over the bed.
Won’t you talk to me, Mama?
Anna says nothing. Trudy waits. Then she touches Anna’s hand, carefully, mindful of the tubing threaded into the vein.
Please, Mama. Was it an accident? The house, I mean. The fire. Or . . . I’m sorry, but I have to know. Did you— Did you set it on purpose?
Anna turns her face away. Then she rolls her head to the center of the pillow, her eyes once again closed.
After another minute or two, Trudy stands and collects her coat from the chair.
I’m sorry to have disturbed you, Mama, she says. I’m leaving now. But don’t worry. I’ll be back soon. And I’ll take care of everything.
She leaves the room, quietly shutting the door behind her, and walks through the trauma ward to the reception desk.
The nurse glances up and sets her romance novel aside. Passion’s Promise, it is called.
How’s our girl?
Better than I expected, says Trudy.
Still sleeping?
Yes.
The nurse nods with satisfaction. She’s going to be just fine. Out of here in no time.
How long will you keep her, do you think? Trudy asks.
Oh, a couple of days at most. No more than that.
Trudy runs a hand through her hair. I see. I guess I’ll have to make some immediate arrangements, then...Well, thank you for everything.
The nurse watches Trudy curiously as she buttons her coat.
Are you taking her to live with you then? she asks.
This suggestion so shocks Trudy that she involuntarily snorts laughter through her nose. She rubs a knuckle across it, hoping the nurse has mistaken the sound for a sneeze.
Oh, no, she replies. I don’t think she’s in good enough shape for that, do you?
Well, the nurse says dubiously, she seems pretty strong. Some of these older farm ladies go on forever, you know. If it was up to me, I might—Trudy shakes her head.
It’s out of the question, she says. I work full-time, I can’t look after her, and even if I had enough money to hire somebody—No. It’s impossible.
The nurse shrugs and opens her book again.
That’s too bad, she says. I suppose she’ll go to the Center then.
Trudy grimaces beneath the scarf she is winding around her face. The penitential building next door is hardly the sort of place in which one would want to spend one’s golden years. But there is no use being softhearted about it. This is just the way things are. Trudy herself will end up in a similar institution one day. And now, for Anna, it is the only logical alternative.
Yes, the Good Samaritan Center, she tells the nurse, her voice muffled by wool. In fact, whom should I speak to about getting her a room? Because when my mother’s ready to leave, I think it’ll be best to have her transferred directly there.
9
AFTER THIS VISIT, TRUDY IS TOO WEARY TO FACE THE three-hour drive back to Minneapolis, with its attendant dangers of black ice and starving deer who wander onto the roadway. Besides, Trudy has more business in New Heidelburg; better to get it over with all at once instead of making another trip. Since the town offers nothing in the way of accommodation—it isn’t exactly a tourist attraction—she spends the night in one of the cheap motels on the outskirts of Rochester, in an overheated room that smells of smoke and dirty hair. She sleeps restlessly and rises early, and after a complimentary breakfast consisting of a roll and coffee so weak Trudy can see the bottom of the cup through the liquid, she returns to New Heidelburg, where she stops first at the nursing home to arrange for Anna’s room there. A single, of course; if Anna, that most private of women, were forced to endure a roommate on top of everything else, Trudy thinks, she would break her toothbrush glass and quietly eat the pieces.
This unhappy but necessary task accomplished, Trudy proceeds to the next: dropping by the town’s real estate office to list the farmhouse for sale and its contents for auction. This transaction too is concluded with surprising ease, although the realtor wears on her sweater a Santa Claus pin with demonic, flashing red eyes, which both fascinates Trudy and stirs in her a vague anxiety.
She finds herself back out on the street much earlier than expected, and since she has no reason to linger, she again takes her leave of the town, this time with a bewildering sense of anticlimax. Trudy frowns, puzzled. She should be relieved, even pleased; she will reach the university campus well
before her office hours and afternoon seminar. Which is good, since after receiving the call about Anna yesterday she absconded from both without so much as a note for the History Department secretary. But as Trudy passes the Chat’N’Chew, the Starlite Supper Club, the Holgars’ dairy farm, the nagging feeling that she has forgotten something intensifies. The Lutheran cemetery where Jack lies buried on the ridge comes into view; is it that she has neglected to pay her respects to him? Trudy slows but then notices a plastic Santa head the size of a pumpkin impaled on the pointed iron gates. Trudy shudders, turns up the heat on the dash, and drives on.
When she sees the double rows of pines that lead to the farmhouse, she realizes what has been troubling her. It is not, she tells herself, that she is being sentimental; it would be a gesture of kindness to personally retrieve Anna’s belongings and bring them to the Good Samaritan Center, instead of having the social worker do it. And although insurance and county appraisers will be sent to the property to estimate its value, it is only practical that Trudy assess the fire damage firsthand. She pulls into the drive beneath the trees, wrestling with the steering wheel as the tires of her Civic whine for purchase in the snow. Eventually she reaches the dooryard, parks, and gets out. Then she stands examining her childhood home.
Since Jack’s death three years ago, Trudy has made a point of coming here four or five times a year—on Christmas, Easter, Anna’s birthday, Mother’s Day—enough to satisfy her own requirements for daughterly obligation. But on these occasions, her need to escape Anna’s silence and return to normal life, as urgent as the pressure exerted by an unrelieved bladder, has prevented Trudy from really looking at the house. Now, as with Anna, Trudy is startled by how much and how quickly the farmhouse has decayed. It is still standing, but just barely. The paint is blistered, the foundation sinking, the roof an accident waiting to happen. The developers to whom it will probably be sold will either bulldoze the house to make room for more arable land or let it fall down by itself; to judge from outside appearances, they won’t have a long wait. It is a shame, really, as the property has been in Jack’s family for three generations. But it can’t be helped. Trudy certainly is not going to live here, and she can’t afford to maintain it.