“What?” With her hip, Claire closed the silverware drawer. “Are you saying Allen Lisac would think I would fabricate something just to make contact with him and tell him, ‘Heh, hire my boyfriend Dante’?”
“No, of course not. It’s just that I don’t want there to be any confusion. Do you have any idea how rare this kind of chance is? And there will never be another opportunity like this in Portland again.”
“I know this is the opportunity of a lifetime. It’s just that I keep looking at this ring, trying to figure out why it ended up in the wall.” Dante loved a puzzle as much as she did, but he didn’t chime in. Claire finally broke the silence. “I’ll right, I’ll keep out of it. I’ll ask Charlie to return it herself and not mention me.”
Dante’s voice loosened. “I think that would be best all the way around.”
Chapter 15
1944
Charlotte crouches on their tier with the others, the boards used as table, floor, bed.
At night they sleep with no blankets, no pillows, nothing but the cold. Huddled together like animals, taking turns being on the outside.
And talking, always talking. They recreate entire meals. Describe how they will decorate their houses. Spend weeks describing, minute by minute, how they will spend their first days after they are released.
She has not been able to wash since she arrived, not even her hands in cold water. So many have died because they stopped eating.
Charlotte has learned that the women who stop believing they will return are as good as dead. One has to believe, against all odds, incredible as it might seem.
Chapter 16
MD MD
The house felt strangely quiet. Then Claire remembered Charlie was off at the doctor’s, getting her yearly physical. As far as Claire could tell, this consisted of the doctor running a half dozen tests and then marveling that the results were those of someone half Charlie’s age.
While she stretched her tight muscles, Claire leafed through the paper Charlie had left in an orderly stack of sections. The top one was folded to the back of the Metro section, where an article was circled. For the second time in a week, a man in their neighborhood had been viscously beaten by what was described as a gang of teenage boys or young men. The first man, who had a Hispanic name, had been beaten at a bus stop at Gabriel Park. The second, a white homeless man, had been attacked late at night outside an automative shop, the Velvet Wrench. Claire and Charlie’s house lay squarely in between the two. Both were places Claire walked, ran, or drove by several times a week. Both times the gangs had yelled racial slurs, the first because the victim was perceived as Mexican, the second because they hadn’t liked the idea of a white man living on the streets.
Claire didn’t think there was any point in being worried. She was a white woman who had a home. And besides, both attacks had taken place late at night, not early in the morning, the time she usually went running. It was hard to imagine bad guys setting their alarms. Still, she decided to be careful for the next little while, to keep her CD player turned down low and an eye on her surroundings.
Even if the article didn’t make Claire fearful for herself, it did make her fearful for her city. Portland was the most multi-cultural place in Oregon, but even still, it was predominantly white. Heck, in Oregon, people weren’t even that tolerant of Californians. In the small town where Claire had grown up, there had been exactly one black family, and Hispanics had been routinely referred to as wetbacks and goat-ropers. Skinheads had made Portland home before, and Claire hoped it wasn’t happening again.
After skimming the rest of the day’s news, Claire set out, wearing her new Nikes. Because Nikes ran small she wore an embarrassing size 11. However, this particular pair was white with a three-inch wide swathe of blue up the middle. From her vantage point, at least, she thought they looked smaller than most of her other shoes. It was like the shoe version of slimming stripes on a swimsuit.
As she ran, Claire thought of Elizabeth, deserted by those she thought would help her, pregnant and so desperate that she literally found herself at the end of a rope. Back in the days when a woman’s body wasn’t her strength, but more often her betrayer. With her thoughts to occupy her and with Mark Knopfler singing in the buds of her headphones, Claire felt surprisingly fast. It was 7:30 in the morning, prime commute time for both workers and students, so there were no good opportunities to cheat and walk, not when she had so many witnesses. Following her regular route, she cut through the business area of Multnomah Village. Everything was closed except for Fat City. A man walked out of the alleyway and turned toward her. Claire quickly sized him up, deciding what kind of look to give him. Mid-fifties, polo shirt, dress pants, briefcase in one hand. A business-like nod, she decided.
With women, she usually added a smile to the nod. With another runner, she might mime being hot or tired, sticking her tongue out in an exaggerated pant, not bothering to use words since many runners wore headphones. With a teenage boy, she would make eye contact only, a wordless acknowledgement of each other’s existence. If there were four or five boys, Claire kept her eyes on her shoes and made sure to run past them quickly, the way she figured a deer would sprint when it spotted a wolf pack. You didn’t want to appear weak or vulnerable.
When she drew even with the businessman, he met her eyes with the briefest of glances, then quickly cut his gaze away and concentrated on the ground. Claire had done this herself more than once, the decision unconsciously made for her by her body, a mute show of submissiveness, an acknowledgement of the other’s dominance. But now, for the first time she could remember, she was the dominant one. She was the one a man was careful not to make prolonged eye contact with. Claire smothered a laugh.
As she ran down the street, Claire’s eyes were drawn to the Lisacs’ house, or at least to where the Lisacs’ house was, hidden by the hedge. Pretending to shake off a cramp in her leg, she walked half way up their drive. The curtains had been pulled back. On a table next to the window stood a yellow vase holding several sheaves of red gladioli.
Chapter 17
1951
Even though she felt most at home in a city, Charlie had chosen to live out here in the country. If she wanted to, she could drive into the city, into Portland. Although what they called a city was really a town. The tallest buildings in Portland were five or six stories. Portland felt raw and new, but she liked it that way. When she came here after a year in the refugee camp, it felt like Portland didn’t have any history to forget.
Multnomah was on the city’s outskirts, five blocks of small businesses and a few scattered houses surrounded by apple and cherry orchards, dairy farms, and miles of tangled woods. The woods comforted her with her their wildness.
Charlie wasn’t a country girl and would never be, but out here you could hear another car coming at night. You could hear the slamming of doors. If you needed to, you could hear the march of stiff boots.
It wasn’t rational, she knew. In America, she had been told over and over again, she was safe. But since arriving here, she had heard stories that gave her pause. Once at Elizabeth’s house she had sat next to her on the front steps while Elizabeth showed her the family photo album. Nova had leafed through the parchment sheets covered with black and white snaps, chattering about her grandparents and cousins, as her little brothers and sisters played in the bare dirt yard at their feet. Suddenly there it was, a photo of men in hoods and white sheets, torches burning in their hands. Elizabeth flushed and turned the page, murmuring that it had all been a long time ago. She had acted as if it hadn’t been her grandfather or uncle under that sheet, peering out from those eyeholes. People in America were naïve. They thought nothing truly bad could happen here. And with their thoughts they could make bad things happen. Through their ignorance. Evil was like a weed flourishing in a neglected crack, taking stubborn root.
#
Two weeks later, in the Lisasc’ home, Tom pushed himself up, away from Elizabeth’s body. Stumbling over his own
feet, he walked toward the black phone mounted on the cherry-paneled wall. “I’m calling Warren.”
“What about a doctor?” Charlie asked. “Should you not call a doctor?”
Something like anger tightened Tom’s face, deepening the tanned furrows around his eyes, and he gestured abruptly at Elizabeth. “She’s dead, Charlie. You don’t need to be a doctor to see that. And if we call Dr. Hannover, everyone will know. He’s nothing but a drunk and a gossip. There’ll be a scandal. Warren won’t like that.”
Elizabeth was the one who was sprawled on the floor, but Tom seemed to be more concerned about his boss. “Everyone will know no matter what you do,” Charlie said. She was still sitting on the floor next to the body. “What do you supposed Warren will say? What takes an nineteen-year-old girl who has never gotten so much as a sniffle?” With her thumb and forefinger, she reached out and closed Elizabeth’s eyes, but a rim of white still showed. The girl’s skin, the blue-white color of skim milk, was already losing its warmth and flexibility.
“An accident. We’ll say it was an accident. She slipped and hit her head. Look at all that blood.” He walked back, leaned over, and tried to pull a few strands loose, but they stuck fast. He looked shamed. “God, I wish we hadn’t dropped her. Anyway, we’ll say that she tripped and hit her head, and unfortunately, everyone was out and she bled to death.”
“No one will believe that.” Charlie pointed at the line where the cord had bit into Elizabeth’s throat. “What about her neck?”
“They can put her in a dress with a high collar. Come on, Charlie, help me out here. Her family’s Catholic. If she’s a suicide, they’ll say her soul is damned. A priest won’t officiate at the ceremony. Do you want to do that to her family?”
Before Charlie could answer, there was a scream. They had been so caught up in their argument that they hadn’t heard the front door open. They turned in time to see Austrid drop her armful of Meier & Frank and Frederick & Nelson shopping bags in the entryway. Her gray eyes rolled back in her head. Suddenly graceless, her long body collapsed on the floor.
While Tom hurried to Austrid, Charlie quickly found the linen closet and then shook out a white sheet over Elizabeth’s body. Her shoes crunched over slivers of glass from the broken china cabinet. Elizabeth was still in her nightgown, as if she had been unable to bear facing the day even long enough to put on her clothes. Charlie tucked one outstretched bare foot underneath the sheet, as gently as if it belonged to a sleeping child. The notion was immediately blotted out by the sight of the white sheet wicking up the rusty-brown blood as it settled down over her the back of her head.
Still stooped over Elizabeth, Charlie heard Austrid’s trembling whisper behind her. “Oh, my God, what did you do to her?” She turned in time to see Austrid roughly push Tom away as he leaned over her. He staggered sideways, but did not fall. The older woman struggled to a sitting position, then crabbed frantically backward until her back was against the wall. Austrid only had eyes for Tom as she repeated, louder and with an edge of hysteria, “What did you do to her?”
“Elizabeth did it to herself.” Charlie’s voice was rougher than she had intended. She got up and then knelt by Austrid’s side, blocking the terrible sight of the sheet, and took the older woman’s cold hand in hers. Charlie tried to soften her voice, reminding herself that Austrid had just had a horrible shock and wasn’t thinking rationally. “I found her. She hung herself. Tom helped me cut her down, but it was too late.”
It was the closest contact Charlie had ever had with Austrid. She had never touched her, never even been close enough to see the careful layers of subtle makeup on her face that were obvious now that the color had drained from her face. Charlie had never had much use for Austrid, with her manners and her pretensions. The woman was incapable of seeing past the surface. In her eyes, Nova was a flirt and a flibbertigibbet. Charlie was a Jewess. And worst of all, Tom was a servant. It was clear from the way she stiffened whenever Tom came into the room that Austrid was scandalized that her son and future daughter-in-law were fraternizing with the help. Austrid never said any of these things in words, but you could tell she was thinking them.
Charlie’s parents had taught her to consider the whole human being, but she had had a few schoolmates whose mothers were just like Austrid. They thought that servants were rightfully born into their lower positions, that they were by nature coarse, larcenous, brutal.
Tom walked away from Austrid, but his back was rigid with what Charlie knew was anger. He picked up the phone and dialed. “Mr. Lisac, you and your son need to come home right away.” Mindful that it might be a party line, he continued, “There’s been an – an accident.” He listened for a second, his eyes closed, then answered. “It’s Elizabeth.” Slowly, he hung up the phone.
Austrid’s eyes were no longer so wild, and Charlie let go of her hand, thankful to release those cold fingers as tight as wires.
“Why did Elizabeth do this?” she pleaded with Charlie. “Did she tell you why she did this?”
Forcing her voice to be gentle, Charlie said, “Austrid, she was dead before we cut her down.”
“Did she leave a note?” The older woman’s gaze roamed over the room, looking everywhere except the body under the sheet.
“I don’t know. We’ve only been here for a few minutes. We’re having a hard time believing it’s true ourselves.”
Austrid’s voice turned to steel. “Well, start looking. If there’s a note, we need to find it. You take the guest bedroom – I’ll start looking out here.” She pushed herself to her feet, and Charlie was surprised to see that the older woman was no longer trembling. Her back was as straight as a fireplace poker.
“What?” Tom looked startled.
“This is a private matter, and I want it to stay that way. How this girl could be so thoughtless to break my son’s heart like this – and so cruel to defile our home – I don’t know. But I do know that if she wrote something I don’t want anyone else to find it. I don’t want the damage she has done to spread. I don’t want strangers picking at this, this - scab. Now quick, start looking, before Allen comes home. This is going to kill him.”
Charlie had never heard Austrid say so much at any one time.
#
As she searched the Lisac’s house for any sign that Elizabeth had left a note, Charlie thought about the people she had seen before who had killed themselves. In Munich, the couple in the apartment below hers had done it to keep themselves out of the hands of the Nazis. After the smell of gas filtered into Charlie’s apartment, she had been careful to give it another hour before she went downstairs to check. She found them in front of the stove, slumped forward on their knees, their hands still intertwined, their lips so blue they were nearly purple. On the kitchen table lay the summons.
In the camp, she had known a woman who slashed her wrists with a piece of broken glass, and another who had drunk stolen bleach. Others had taunted the guards, or their dogs, or tried to scale the walls. All of them knowing there was no way out unless they left their bodies behind.
Before the camp, she and Max had been sheltered by an old Christian landlord in a false room above his fabric shop. She and her son and two other families for a total of eleven people crowded into a single hidden room twenty paces by twelve. One of the women, Marta, had had a baby, gave birth in silence, grinding her teeth on a rag while the wives of Nazi party leaders brought silk ribbons and satins below.
Even Max, at four, had known how important it was to be quiet. The thin floor and walls carried the sounds so well, the jingle of change, the slam of the cash register drawer, the tone of people’s voices, if not the words themselves. Charlie had whispered to him that he was her “little man,” but it had frightened her, how he had left his childhood behind, how quiet and pale he was, with a pinched old man’s face.
A few days after Marta’s baby was born, they heard the tromping boots of soldiers down below as they came into the shop, their sure, strong voices. Why would men be i
n a fabric shop, unless they knew the secret it held? Marta’s infant, a little girl, began to make breathy, whimpering sounds. The others turned their heads toward mother and child, eyes wide, fearful, knowing the baby would betray them all. To keep it from crying, Marta yanked up her blouse and shoved her nipple in its mouth.
Pressed up tight against its mother’s breast, the baby smothered. When the soldiers finally left, pretty ribbons for their girlfriends in their hands, the infant was limp as a rag doll.
For three days after Marta did not sleep, her breasts swollen with milk, her mind crazed with fever and grief and loss and shame, her body rocking back and forth. No one blamed her, but no one could find words of comfort, either. On the third night, when it was late and Max was asleep and they could talk in whispers, Marta told Charlie she didn’t know if she had meant to kill the baby all along. Later, just before dawn, when everyone else was finally asleep, Marta had hung herself from the water pipe with her own knotted shoelaces, hidden by the sheet they had rigged up around a chamber pot. She died as quietly as her baby had, not making a sound. When they found her, they stuffed their fists in their own mouths to keep from crying out.
After the war, a doctor friend of Charlie’s told her that hanging oneself was a terrible way to die. Condemned prisoners had the luxury of the platform and the drop designed to snap a man’s spine. With no fall of any distance, death came only through strangulation. And it was much slower.
This was what Charlie thought of while they looked through the Lisacs’ house for a note from Elizabeth. She found nothing but an empty wine bottle and glass in the kitchen, signs that Elizabeth had had to numb herself before she stepped out into the air. But long after Charlie had stopped looking, Austrid continued to search, looking in ridiculous places, underneath the couch cushions, in a desk drawer jammed full of rubber-bands and pencil stubs, tucked in the shoes the girlwould never wear again. As she worked, Austrid cleaned, furiously wielding a wet sponge as if to wipe out any lingering trace of Elizabeth.