In the apartment after he left, Erich had said, “Why did he thank you and what did he mean? Did you invite him to our home?”
She’d tried to explain but the explanation felt hollow in her own ears.
“You gave him three hundred dollars?” Erich asked incredulously. “How much does he owe you in support payments and loans?”
“But I don’t need that and the furniture was half his.”
“Or maybe you wanted to be sure he had fare to come visit you?”
“Erich, how can you believe that?” She’d forced back the tears that threatened to fill her eyes but not before Erich had seen them.
“Jenny, forgive me. I’m sorry. I’m jealous of you. I admit that. I hate the fact that man ever touched you. I don’t want him to ever put a finger on you again.”
“He won’t. I can promise you that. God, if anything I’m so grateful to him for signing the adoption papers. I kept my fingers crossed right to the last minute on that.”
“Money talks.”
“Erich, you didn’t pay him?”
“Not much. Two thousand dollars. A thousand per girl. A very cheap price to get rid of him.”
“He sold you his children.” Jenny had tried to keep the contempt from showing in her voice.
“I’d have paid fifty times more.”
“You should have told me.”
“I wouldn’t have told you now except I don’t want any leftover pity for him. . . . Let’s forget him. This is our day. How about opening your wedding present?”
It was a Blackglama mink coat. “Oh, Erich.”
“Come on—try it on.”
It felt luxurious, soft, lightweight, warm. “It’s exactly right with your hair and eyes,” Erich said, pleased. “Do you know what I was thinking this morning?”
“No.”
He’d put his arms around her. “I slept so badly last night. I hate hotels and all I could think is that tonight Jenny will be with me in my own home. Do you know that poem, ‘Jenny Kissed Me’?”
“I’m not sure.”
“I could only remember a couple of the lines. ‘Say I’m weary, say I’m sad’ . . . and then the triumphant last line is ‘Jenny kissed me.’ I was thinking that as I rang the bell and then a minute later I have to watch Kevin MacPartland kiss you.”
“Please, Erich.”
“Forgive me. Let’s get out of this place. It’s depressing.”
She hadn’t had time to take a final look before he rushed her to the limousine.
Even during the ceremony Kevin had been on her mind, especially her marriage to him at St. Monica’s four years ago. They’d chosen that church because Nana had been married there. Nana sat beaming in the first row. She hadn’t approved of Kevin but put her doubts behind her when she couldn’t dissuade Jen. What would she think of this ceremony before a judge instead of a priest? “I, Jennifer, take you . . .” She hesitated. Dear God, she’d almost said Kevin. She felt Erich’s questioning eyes and began again. Firmly. “I, Jennifer, take you, Erich . . .”
“What God has joined together, man must not separate.”
The judge had spoken the words solemnly.
But they’d said that at her wedding to Kevin.
They arrived in Minneapolis one minute ahead of schedule. A large sign said, WELCOME TO THE TWIN CITIES. Jenny studied the airport with avid interest. “I’ve been all over Europe but never farther west than Pennsylvania,” she laughed. “I had a mental image of landing in the midst of a prairie.”
She was holding Beth by the hand. Erich was carrying Tina. Beth looked backward at the ramp that led to the plane. “More plane, Mommy,” she begged.
“You may have started something, Erich,” Jenny said. “They seem to be developing a taste for first-class travel.”
Erich was not listening. “I told Clyde to have Joe waiting for us,” he said. “He should have been at the arrival gate.”
“Joe?”
“One of the farmhands. He’s not too bright but he’s excellent with horses and a good driver. I always have him chauffeur me when I don’t want to leave the car at the airport. Oh, here he is.”
Jenny saw rushing toward them a straw-haired, slenderly built young man of about twenty, with wide innocent eyes and rosy cheeks. He was neatly dressed in a thermal coat, dark knit trousers, heavy boots and gloves. A chauffeur’s cap sat incongruously on his thick hair. He pulled it off as he stopped in front of Erich, and she had time to reflect that for such a handsome young man he looked awfully worried.
“Mr. Krueger, I’m sorry I’m late. The roads are pretty icy.”
“Where’s the car?” Erich asked brusquely. “I’ll get my wife and children settled, then you and I can attend to the luggage.”
“Yes, Mr. Krueger.” The worried look deepened. “I’m really sorry I’m late.”
“Oh, for heaven sake,” Jenny said. “We’re early, one minute early.” She held out her hand. “I’m Jenny.”
He took it, holding it gingerly as though he feared hurting it. “I’m Joe, Mrs. Krueger. Everybody’s looking forward to seeing you. Everybody’s been talking about you.”
“I’m sure they have,” Erich said shortly. His arm urged Jenny forward. Joe fell back behind them. She realized Erich was annoyed. Maybe she wasn’t supposed to have been so friendly. Her life in New York and Hartley gallery and the apartment on Thirty-seventh Street suddenly seemed terribly far away.
6
Erich’s maroon Fleetwood was mint-new and the only car in the parking area not spattered with crusted snow. Jenny wondered if Joe had taken precious minutes to have it washed before arriving at the airport. Erich settled her and Tina in the back seat, gave permission to Beth to ride in front, and hurried away to help Joe collect the baggage.
A few minutes later they were pulling onto the highway. “It’s nearly a three-hour drive to the farm,” Erich told her. “Why don’t you lean against me and nap?” He seemed relaxed, even genial now, the spasm of anger forgotten.
He reached for Tina, who willingly settled in his lap. Erich had a way with the little girl. Seeing the contentment on Tina’s face snapped Jenny out of her momentary homesickness.
The car sped into the country. The lights along the highway began to disappear. The road darkened and narrowed. Joe switched on the high beams of the headlights and she could discern clumps of graceful maples and irregular, poorly shaped oaks. The land seemed absolutely flat. It was all so different from New York. That was why she’d felt that terrible sense of alienation as they left the airport.
She needed time to think, to get in focus, to adjust. Settling her head on Erich’s shoulder, she murmured, “You know something, I am tired.” She didn’t want to talk any more, not right now. But, oh, how good it was to lean against him, to know that their time together wouldn’t ever again be rushed and frantic. He had suggested that they defer an official honeymoon. “You don’t have anyone to leave with the girls,” he’d said. “Once they’re comfortably settled on the farm, we’ll find a reliable sitter and take a trip.” How many other men would have been that thoughtful? she wondered.
She felt Erich looking down at her.
“Awake, Jenny?” he asked but she didn’t answer. His hand smoothed back her hair; his fingers kneaded her temple. Tina was asleep now; her breathing came soft and measured. In the front seat, Beth had stopped chattering to Joe so she too must be napping.
Jenny made her own breath rise and fall evenly. It was time to plan ahead, to turn away from the life she had left and begin to anticipate the one that was waiting for her.
Erich’s home had been without a woman’s touch for a quarter of a century. It probably needed a massive overhaul. It would be interesting to see how much of Caroline’s influence remained in it.
Funny, she mused, I never think of Erich’s mother as his mother. I think of her as Caroline.
She wondered if his father hadn’t referred to her that way. If instead of saying “your mother” to Erich, when he remi
nisced he’d say, “Caroline and I used to . . .”
Redecorating would be a joy. How many times had she studied the apartment and thought, If I could afford it, I’d do this . . . and this . . . and this . . .
What a sense of freedom it would be to wake up in the morning and know she didn’t have to rush off to work. Just to be with the children, to spend time with them, real time, not end-of-the-day exhausted time! She’d already lost the best part of their baby years.
And to be a wife. Just as Kevin had never been a real father to the children, he’d never been a real husband to her. Even in their most intimate moments, she’d always felt that Kevin had a mental image of himself playing the romantic lead in an M-G-M film. And she was certain that he’d been unfaithful to her even during the short time they lived together.
Erich was mature. He could have married long before now but he’d waited. He welcomed responsibility. Kevin had shunned it. Erich was so reticent. Fran said she thought he was a bit stodgy and Jenny knew that even Mr. Hartley wasn’t comfortable with him. They didn’t realize that his seeming aloofness was simply a cover for an innately shy nature. “I find it easier to paint my sentiments than to express them,” he’d told her. There was so much love expressed in everything he painted. . . .
She felt Erich’s hand stroking her cheek. “Wake up, darling, we’re nearly home.”
“What? Oh. Did I fall asleep?” She pulled herself up.
“I’m glad you slept, darling. But look out the window now. The moon is so bright you should be able to see quite a bit.” His voice was eager. “We’re on county road twenty-six. Our farm begins at that fence, on both sides of the road. The right side eventually ends at Gray’s Lake. The other side winds and twists. The woods take up nearly two hundred acres alone; they end at the river valley that slopes into the Minnesota River. Now, watch, you’ll see some of the outer buildings. Those are the polebarns, where we feed the cattle in the winter. Beyond them are the grainery and stables and the old mill. Now as we come around this bend you can see the west side of the house. It’s set on that knoll.”
Jenny pressed her face against the car window. From the background glimpses she’d seen in some of Erich’s paintings, she knew that at least part of the exterior of the house was pale red brick. She’d imagined a Currier and Ives kind of farmhouse. Nothing Erich had said had prepared her for what she was looking at now.
Even viewed from the side, it was obvious that the house was a mansion. It was somewhere between seventy and eighty feet long and three stories high. Lights streamed from the long graceful windows on the first floor. Overhead the moon blanched the roof and gables into glistening tiaras. The snow-covered fields shone like layers of white ermine, framing the structure, enhancing its flowing lines.
“Erich!”
“Do you like it, Jenny?”
“Like it? Erich, it’s magnificent. It’s twice, no five times larger than I expected. Why didn’t you warn me?”
“I wanted to surprise you. I told Clyde to be sure and have it lighted for your first impression. I see he took me at my word.”
Jenny stared, trying to absorb every detail as the car moved slowly along the road. A white wooden porch with slender columns began at the side door and extended to the rear of the house. She recognized it as the setting of Memory of Caroline. Even the swing in the painting was still there, the only piece of furniture on the porch. A gust of wind was making it sway gently to and fro.
The car turned left and drove through open gates. A sign, KRUEGER FARM, was lighted by the torchères that topped the gateposts. The car followed the driveway skirting snow-covered fields. To their right the woods began, a thick heavy forest of trees whose branches were bare and skeletal against the moon. The car turned left and completed the arc, stopping in the driveway in front of wide stone steps.
Massive, ornately carved double doors were illuminated by the fan window arching over them. Joe hurried to open Jenny’s door. Quickly Erich handed the sleeping Tina to him. “You bring in the girls, Joe,” he said.
Taking Jenny’s hand, he hurried up the steps, turned the latch and pushed open the doors. Pausing, he looked directly into her eyes. “I wish I could paint you now,” he said. “I could call the painting Coming Home. Your long, lovely dark hair, your eyes so tender looking at me . . . You do love me, don’t you, Jenny?”
“I love you, Erich,” she said quietly.
“Promise you’ll never leave me. Swear that, Jenny.”
“Erich, how can you even think that now?”
“Please promise, Jenny.”
“I’ll never leave you, Erich.” She put her arms around his neck. His need is so great, she thought. All this month she’d been troubled by the one-sided aspect of their relationship, he the giver, she the taker. She was grateful to realize it wasn’t that simple.
He picked her up. “Jenny kissed me.” Now he was smiling. As he carried her into the house he kissed her lips, at first tentatively, then with gathering emotion. “Oh, Jenny!”
He set her down in the entrance hall. It had gleaming parquet floors, delicately stenciled walls, a crystal and gold chandelier. A staircase with an ornately carved balustrade led to the second floor. The walls were covered with paintings, Erich’s bold signature in the right-hand corner. For a moment Jenny was speechless.
Joe was coming up the steps with the girls. “Now don’t run,” he was cautioning them. But the long nap had revived them and they were eager to explore. Keeping one eye on them, Jenny listened as Erich began to show her through the house. The main parlor was to the left of the entry foyer. She tried to absorb everything he was telling her about the individual pieces. Like a child showing off his toys, he pointed out the walnut étagère, kidney-shaped and marble-based. “It’s early eighteenth century,” he said. Ornate oil lamps, now wired, stood on either side of a massive high-backed couch. “My grandfather had that made in Austria. The lamps are from Switzerland.”
Memory of Caroline was hung above the couch. An overhead light revealed the face in the portrait more intimately than it had appeared in the gallery window. It seemed to Jenny that in this lighting, in this room, her own resemblance to Caroline was accentuated. The woman in the painting seemed to be looking directly at her. “It’s almost like an icon,” Jenny whispered. “I feel as though her eyes are following me.”
“I always feel that way,” Erich said. “Do you think they might be?”
An immense rosewood reed organ on the west wall immediately attracted the children. They climbed onto the velvet-cushioned bench and began to press the keys. Jenny saw Erich wince as the buckle of Tina’s shoe scratched the leg of the bench. Quickly she lifted the protesting girls down. “Let’s see the rest of the house,” she suggested.
The dining room was dominated by a banquet table large enough to accommodate twelve chairs. An elaborate heart motif was carved out of each of the chairbacks.
A quilt was hung like a tapestry on the far wall. Pieced entirely of hexagons with a scalloped border and stitched in flower motifs, it added a bright note to the austerely handsome room. “My mother made it,” Erich said. “See her initials.”
All the walls of the large library were covered with walnut bookcases. Each shelf held an even row of precisely placed books. Jennie glanced at some of the titles. “Am I going to have a good time!” she exclaimed. “I can’t wait to catch up on reading. About how many books have you got?”
“Eleven hundred and twenty-three.”
“You know exactly how many?”
“Of course.”
The kitchen was huge. The left wall contained the appliances. A round oak table and chairs were placed exactly in the center of the room. On the east wall, a giant old iron stove with highly polished nickel chrome and isinglass windows looked capable of heating the whole house. An oak cradle next to the stove held firewood. A couch covered in a colonial print and matching chair were at rigid right angles to each other. In this room, as in the others she had seen, absol
utely nothing was out of place.
“It’s a little different from your apartment, isn’t it, Jenny?” His tone was proud. “You see why I didn’t tell you. I wanted to enjoy your reaction.”
Jenny felt an urge to defend the apartment. “It’s certainly bigger,” she agreed. “How many rooms are there?”
“Twenty-two,” Erich said proudly. “Let’s just have a quick look at our bedrooms. We’ll finish the tour tomorrow.”
He put his arm around her as they walked up the stairs. The gesture was comforting and helped to relieve some of the strangeness she was feeling. All right, she thought, I do feel as though I’m on a guided tour: Look but don’t touch.
The master bedroom was a large corner room in the front of the house. Dark mahogany furniture gleamed with a fine velvet patina. The massive four-poster bed was covered with a spread of cranberry-colored brocade. The brocade was repeated in the canopy and draperies. A leaded crystal bowl on the left side of the dresser was filled with small bars of pine soap. An initialed silver dressing set, each piece an inch apart, was to the right of the bowl. The dressing set had been Erich’s great-grandmother’s; the bowl was Caroline’s and had come from Venice. “Caroline never wore perfume but loved the scent of pine,” Erich said. “That soap is imported from England.”
The pine soap. That was what she had detected as she came into the room—the faint aroma of pine, so subtle it was almost impossible to distinguish.
“Is this where Tina and I sleep, Mommy?” Beth asked.
Erich laughed. “No, Mouse. You and Tina will be across the hall. But do you want to see my room first? It’s right next door.”
Jenny followed, expecting to see the room of a bachelor in the family home. She was anxious to experience Erich’s personal taste in furnishing. Almost everything she had seen so far seemed to have been left to him.
He threw open the door of the room next to the master bedroom. Here too the overhead light was already on. She saw a single maple bed covered by a colorful quilt. A rolltop desk, half-open, revealed pencils and crayons and sketch pads. A three-shelf bookcase contained the Book of Knowledge. A Little League trophy stood on the dresser. A high-backed rocker was in the left corner near the door. A hockey stick was propped against the right wall.