“What are you going to do with those, Mommy?”
Beth asked.
“I thought we’d put them on the baby’s grave.”
The fresh dirt had frozen during the night. The luminous pine needles softened the starkness of the little mound.
“Mommy, don’t look so sad,” Beth begged.
“I’ll try not to, Mouse.” They turned away. If I could only feel something, she thought. I am so empty, so terribly empty.
On the way back to the house, she saw Clyde drive into the farm road. She waited for him to find out about Rooney.
“They won’t let her come home for a while,” he said. “They’re doing all kinds of tests and they say maybe I should put her in a special hospital for a while. I said no way. She’s been a lot better since you came here, Miz Krueger. I guess I never knew how lonesome Rooney was. She’s always afraid to leave the farm for long. Just in case Arden suddenly called or came back. But then lately she’s been worse again. You saw.”
He swallowed, fiercely blinking back tears.
“And, Miz Krueger, what Tina said, got out. The sheriff . . . he’s been talking to Rooney. He had a doll out with him. Told her to show him the way Caroline used to pat the baby’s face, and how Tina said the lady in the painting touched the baby. I don’t know what he’s up to.”
I do, Jenny thought. Erich’s right. Emily couldn’t wait to spill that story to the people in town.
Sheriff Gunderson came out three days later. “Mrs. Krueger, I have to warn you there’s been talk. I have an order to exhume your baby’s body. The medical examiner wants to do an autopsy.”
She stood and watched as sharp spades opened the newly frozen earth, as the small casket was loaded onto the funeral car.
She felt someone standing beside her. It was Mark. “Why torture yourself, Jenny? You shouldn’t be here.”
“What are they looking for?”
“They want to make sure there are no bruises or signs of pressure on the baby’s face.”
She thought of long lashes throwing shadows on the pale cheeks, the tiny mouth, the blue vein on the side of his nose. The blue vein. She’d never noticed it before that morning when she’d found him.
“Did you notice any bruises on him?” she asked. Mark would have known the difference between a bruise and a vein.
“When I tried the mouth-to-mouth resuscitation I held his face pretty hard. There could be some.”
“You told them that.”
“Yes.”
She turned to him. The wind wasn’t strong but every stir of air sent fresh shivers through her. “You told them that to protect me. It wasn’t necessary.”
“I told them the truth,” he said.
The hearse drove onto the dirt road. “Come back to the house,” Mark urged.
She tried to analyze her feelings as she trudged by his side through the fresh fallen snow. He was so tall. She’d never realized how used she’d become to Erich’s relatively small stature. Kevin had been tall, over six feet. Mark. What would he be? Six four or five?
She had a headache. Her breasts were burning. Why didn’t the milk stop flowing? It wasn’t needed. She could feel her blouse getting damp. If Erich was in the house he’d be mortified. He hated untidiness. He was so neat. And so private. If he hadn’t married her, the Krueger name wouldn’t have been dragged through the mud.
Erich believed she had scandalized his name and still he claimed he loved her. He liked her to look like his mother. That’s why he always asked her to wear the aqua gown. Maybe when she was sleepwalking she tried to look like his mother to please him.
“I guess I’m trying,” she said. Her voice startled her. She didn’t know she’d spoken aloud.
“What did you say, Jenny? Jenny!”
She was falling; she could not stop herself from falling. But something stopped her just as her hair brushed the snow.
“Jenny!” Mark was holding her, was carrying her. She hoped she wasn’t too heavy.
“Jenny, you’re burning up.”
Maybe that was why she couldn’t keep her thoughts straight. It wasn’t just the house. Oh, God, how she hated the house.
She was riding in a car. Erich was holding her. She remembered this car. It was Mark’s station wagon. He had books in it.
“Shock, milk fever,” Dr. Elmendorf said. “We’ll keep her here.”
It was so nice to float away, so nice to wear one of those rough hospital gowns. She hated the aqua gown.
Erich was in and out of her room. “Beth and Tina are fine. They send their love.”
Finally Mark brought the message she needed to have. “The baby is back in the cemetery. They won’t disturb him again.”
“Thank you.”
His fingers closing over her hands. “Oh, Jenny.”
That night she had two cups of tea, a piece of toast.
“Good to see you feeling better, Mrs. Krueger.” The nurse was genuinely kind. Why was it that kindness made her want to weep? She used to take for granted that people liked her.
The fever was low-grade persistent. “I won’t allow you to go home until we’ve licked it,” Dr. Elmendorf insisted.
She cried a lot. Often when she’d dozed off, she’d wake up to find her cheeks wet with tears.
Dr. Elmendorf said, “While you’re here, I’d like Dr. Philstrom to have a few talks with you.”
Dr. Philstrom was a psychiatrist.
He sat by her bed, a tidy little man who looked like a bank clerk. “I understand you had a series of pretty bad nightmares.”
They all wanted to prove that she was crazy. “I don’t have them anymore.”
And it was true. In the hospital she was starting to sleep through the night. Each day she began to feel stronger, more like herself. She realized she was joking with the nurse in the morning.
The afternoon was the hardest. She didn’t want to see Erich. The sound of his footsteps in the hall made her hands clammy.
He brought the girls to see her. They weren’t allowed inside the hospital but she stood at the window and waved to them. Somehow they seemed so forlorn, waving back up at her.
That night she ate a full dinner. She had to get her strength back. There was nothing to hold her on Krueger Farm any longer. There was no way she and Erich could recapture what they once had. She could plan to get away. And she knew how she could manage it. On the trip to Houston. Somehow on that trip, she and Beth and Tina would leave Erich and get on a plane for New York. Erich might be able to get custody of the children in Minnesota but New York would never give it to him.
She could sell Nana’s locket to get some money. A jeweler had offered Nana eleven hundred dollars for it a few years ago. If she got anything like that, it would be enough to buy airline tickets and tide her over until she got a job.
Away from Caroline’s house, Caroline’s portrait, Caroline’s bed, Caroline’s nightgown, Caroline’s son, she’d be herself again—able to think calmly, to try to capture all the awful thoughts that kept rising almost to the surface of her mind and then slipping away. There were so many of them—so many impressions that seemed to be eluding her.
Jenny fell asleep, the hint of a smile on her lips, her cheeks pillowed in her hands.
The next day she phoned Fran. Oh, blessed, blessed freedom, knowing no one would pick up the extension in the office.
“Jenny, you haven’t answered my letters. I thought you’d jettisoned me into outer space.”
She didn’t bother to explain that she’d never received them. “Fran, I need you.” As quickly as possible she explained: “I have to get out of here.”
Fran’s usual matter-of-fact laughter disappeared. “It’s been bad, Jenny. I can hear it in your voice.”
Later she could tell Fran everything. Now she simply agreed, “It’s been bad.”
“Trust me. I’ll get back to you.”
“Call after eight o’clock. That’s when visiting hours end.”
Fran called at ten af
ter seven the next night. The minute the phone rang, Jenny knew what had happened. Fran had not allowed for the time difference. It was ten after eight in New York. Erich was sitting by her bed. His eyebrows raised as he handed her the receiver. Fran’s voice was vibrant, carrying. “I’ve got great plans!”
“Fran, how good to hear from you.” Turning to him: “Erich, it’s Fran, say hello.”
Fran caught on. “Erich, how are you? So sorry to hear Jenny hasn’t been well.
After they hung up, Erich’s question: “What plans, Jenny?”
32
She went home on the last day in January. Beth and Tina seemed like strangers, curiously quiet, curiously petulant. “You’re always gone, Mommy.”
She’d spent more time with them in the evenings and weekends in New York than she had here this past year.
How much did Erich suspect about Fran’s calls? She’d been evasive. “I just realized I hadn’t spoken to Fran in ages and picked up the phone. Wasn’t it dear of her to call me back?”
She’d called Fran after Erich left the hospital that night. Fran had exulted: “I have a friend who runs a nursery school near Red Bank, New Jersey. It’s marvelous and goes right through kindergarten. I told her you can teach music and art and she has a job for you if you want it. She’s looking for an apartment for you.”
Jenny bided her time.
Erich was preparing for the Houston exhibition. He began bringing in paintings from the cabin.
“I call this one The Provider,” he said, holding up an oil on canvas in tones of blue and green. High on the branches of an elm, a nest could be seen. The mother bird was flying toward the tree, a worm in its beak. The leaves sheltered the nest so it was impossible to see the baby birds. But somehow the viewer sensed their presence.
“The idea for that painting came to me that first night on Second Avenue, when I came on you carrying the girls,” Erich said. “You had a purposeful look on your face and you could just tell you were anxious to get the kids home and fed.”
His tone was affectionate. He put his arm around her. “How do you like it?”
“It’s beautiful.”
The one time she was not nervous with Erich was when she studied his work. This was the man with whom she had fallen in love, the artist whose wondrous talent at once could capture the simplicity of daily life and the complicated emotions that attended that simplicity.
The trees in the background. She recognized the line of Norwegian pines that grew near the graveyard. “Erich, you just finished this painting?”
“Yes, darling.”
She pointed. “But that tree is gone. You had most of the elms near the cemetery taken down because of the Dutch elm disease last spring.”
“I started a painting using that tree in the background but couldn’t make it express what I wanted to say. Then one day I saw a bird flying with food for its young and thought of you. You inspire everything I do, Jenny.”
In the beginning, a statement like that would have melted her heart. Now it only caused her fear. Invariably it was followed by a remark that would reduce her to trembling nerves for the rest of the day.
The remark wasn’t long in coming. Erich covered the painting. “I’m sending thirty canvases. The shippers will pick them up in the morning. Will you be here to make sure they take them all?”
“Of course I’ll be here. Where else would I be?”
“Don’t be edgy, Jenny. I thought Mark might try to see you before he goes.”
“What do you mean?”
“Luke had a heart attack just after he got back to Florida. But that doesn’t give him the right to try to break up our marriage.”
“Erich, what are you talking about?”
“Luke called me last Thursday. He’s out of the hospital. He suggested that you and the girls visit him in Florida. Mark is leaving today to spend a week with him. Luke had the nerve to think I’d let you travel down there with Mark.”
“How kind of him.” Jenny knew the offer had been refused.
“It wasn’t kind of him. Luke just wanted to get you down there away from me. I told him so.”
“Erich!”
“Don’t be surprised, Jenny. Why do you think Mark and Emily have stopped seeing each other?”
“Have they stopped?”
“Jenny, why are you always so blind? Mark told Emily he realized he wasn’t interested in getting married and that it wasn’t fair to take her time.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“A man doesn’t do that unless he has some other woman in mind.”
“Not necessarily.”
“Mark’s crazy about you, Jenny. If it weren’t for him the sheriff would have ordered an inquest into the baby’s death. You know that, don’t you?”
“No, I don’t.” All the hard-won calm of the hospital was deserting her. Her mouth was dry; her hands were sweaty. She felt herself trembling. “Erich, what are you saying?”
“I’m saying that there was a bruise near the baby’s right nostril. The coroner said that it probably preceded death. Mark insisted that he was rough when he was trying to resuscitate the baby.”
The memory of Mark holding the tiny form flashed through her mind.
Erich was standing next to her now, his lips against her ear. “Mark knows. You know. I know. The baby was bruised, Jenny.”
“What are you telling me?”
“Nothing, darling. I’m just warning you. We both know how delicate the baby’s skin was. That last night the way he was flailing his fists. He probably bruised himself. But Mark lied. He’s just like his father. Everyone knew the way Luke felt about Caroline. Even now whenever he’s here he sits in the wing chair so he can see her portrait. He was driving Caroline to the airport that last day. All she had to do was snap her fingers and he was there.
“And now Mark thinks he can pull the same thing. Well he can’t. I called Lars Ivanson, the veterinarian from Hennepin Grove. He’ll start caring for my animals. Mark Garrett will never set foot on this farm again.”
“Erich, you can’t mean that.”
“Oh, but I can. I know you didn’t mean it but you encouraged him, Jenny. I saw it. How many times did he come to the hospital?”
“He came twice. Once to tell me that the baby was back in his grave. Once to bring fruit Luke had ordered for me from Florida. Erich, don’t you see? You read so much into the simplest, most innocent situation. Where does it end?”
She did not wait for a reply. She walked out of the room and opened the door onto the west porch. The last of the sun was slipping behind the woods. The evening wind was making Caroline’s swing rock. No wonder Caroline had sat out here. She had been driven from the house too.
That night Erich came into the bedroom shortly after her. She held herself rigid, not wanting to be close to him. But he simply turned on his side and went to sleep. She felt her body go limp with relief.
She would not see Mark again. By the time he returned from Florida she would be in New Jersey. Was Erich right? Had she been sending out some kind of signal to Mark? Or was it simply that he and Emily had decided they weren’t right for each other and Erich, always suspicious, was reading more into it?
For once, she thought, Erich may be right.
The next morning she prepared a list of odds and ends she needed for the trip. She expected Erich to argue about her requesting the car but he was unexpectedly indifferent. “But leave the girls with Elsa,” he told her.
After he left for the cabin she circled a jewelry store listed in the classified ad section that advertised HIGHEST PRICES PAID FOR YOUR GOLD. It was in a shopping center two towns away. She called and described Nana’s locket. Yes, they’d be interested in buying it. Immediately she phoned Fran. Fran wasn’t home but her recorder was on. She left a message. “We’ll be in New York on the seventh or eighth. Don’t phone here.”
While the children napped she rushed to the jewelry store.
She was offered eight hundred dollar
s for the locket. It wasn’t enough but she had no choice.
She bought makeup and underwear and panty hose with the credit card Erich had given her. She made a point of showing the things to him.
Their first wedding anniversary was February third. “Why don’t we celebrate in Houston, darling?” Erich asked. “I’ll give you your present there.”
“That will be fine.” She wasn’t a good enough actress to keep up the farce of celebrating this marriage. But, oh, God, soon, soon it would be over. The anticipation put a sparkle in her eye that had not been there in months. Tina and Beth responded to it. They had become so quiet. Now they brightened as she chatted with them. “Do you remember when we were on the plane and had that lovely ride? We’re going on a plane again to a big city.”
Erich came in. “What are you talking about?”
“I’m telling them about our trip to Houston, what fun it will be.”
“You’re smiling, Jenny. Do you know how long it’s been since you looked happy?”
“Too long.”
“Tina, Beth, come on with Daddy to the store. I’ll buy you ice cream.”
Beth put her hand on Jenny’s arm. “I want to stay with Mommy.”
“I do too,” Tina said positively.
“Then I won’t go,” Erich said.
He seemed unwilling to leave her alone with the children.
On the night of the fifth she packed. She only took what would appear reasonable for three days. “What fur should I take, my coat or jacket?” she asked Erich. “What’s the weather like in Houston?”
“The jacket would be enough, I think. Why are you so nervous, Jenny?”
“I’m not nervous. It’s just that I’m out of the habit of traveling. Will I need a long dress?”
“Maybe one. That taffeta skirt and blouse would do. Wear your locket with it.”
Was there an edge in his voice; was he toying with her? She tried to sound natural. “That’s a good idea.”
They had a two o’clock flight from Minneapolis. “I’ve asked Joe to drive us to the airport,” Erich said.