Karl arrived a few nights later in a brand-new car to take me to the movies. He was twenty-five, three years older than his brother Markus, six years older than me. If I had never known Markus, I might have described Karl as handsome-he had many of the same facial features as his younger brother. But Markus’s looks had been extraordinary; Karl couldn’t compare. He had a dash of Aunt Magda’s plainness, including her short, squat frame—which on a man translated into “stocky” and “barrel-chested.” He had Markus’s chocolate-brown eyes, but without the spark of laughter, and he hid his mouth behind a bushy dark beard and mustache.
“So where have you been hiding the past few years?” I asked as we bounced down River Road, headed into town. He gave me a peculiar look, as if he thought I might be mocking him. Markus would have made a joke of it, but Karl seemed to have a much more serious nature. He smoothed his mustache with his thumb and forefinger, then stroked his dark beard.
“I served in the army during the war,” he finally said.
“Your parents never mentioned . . .
“They didn’t know.”
“I see. Well, where were you stationed, what did you do?” I was just trying to make conversation. The other boys I dated talked endlessly about their exploits during the war. Karl was very different.
“I’m not at liberty to say,” he told me. “My work for the government was classified. They made use of the fact that I’m fluent in German and English.”
I didn’t know if he was telling the truth or not. No one I knew had ever seen him in a uniform.
“What did you do before the war?” I asked, still trying to make conversation. “You’ve been away from home a long time.”
“I was in college.”
“Lucky you! Where did you go? What did you study?”
He didn’t reply. I might have posed the question to a deaf man. By the time he parked the car near the movie theater I’d forgotten I’d asked, but he turned to me after shutting off the engine and said, “I’m an educated man, Emma. I graduated from college before the war.”
His stern demeanor made me feel like a chastened schoolgirl. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to be nosy,” I said. “It’s just that I’m envious of people who have left Bremenville and seen other places. I can’t imagine why you’d ever want to come back.”
“I plan to open a pharmacy on Main Street.”
“A pharmacy! So did you earn a science degree or a business degree?” Karl didn’t answer, but one thing became very clear after only a few dates with him: Karl Bauer had money. Lots of money. Where it had all come from was a mystery.
After we’d dated for about a month, he drove me downtown one day to show me the storefront he’d purchased. A construction crew, hard at work on the renovations, practically stood at attention and saluted when they saw Karl.
“Bauer’s Pharmacy will be open for business in another month,” he told me. He proudly stroked his beard, a peacock freeing his feathers. “I am outfitting the store with the finest mahogany shelves and display cases. And over here I’m installing a soda fountain with an imported marble counter top.” He pointed to where his name had been painted on the front window—Bauer’s Pharmacy, and in smaller letters, Karl D. Bauer, Proprietor. “That’s genuine gold leaf,” he said, as if I might be tempted to contradict him.
When it came to spending money, Karl had to have the very best of everything, no expense spared—not only for his store, but also for the house he was having built. He drove me up the hill to the most fashionable area of Bremenville to show me the rambling Victorian home.
“Karl, it’s huge! What will you do with so much space? Will your father and sisters be moving in too?” Gus had lost heart after Markus and Magda died, drinking so heavily that he’d lost his home and his share in the Ford garage. He and Karl’s four youngest sisters lived on charity. I asked the question without thinking, and Karl answered it with silence.
Much later, after we’d walked all around the site and had returned to his car, Karl said in a voice as cold as the grave, “My father will never set one foot in my house.” I knew better than to ask about his sisters.
Karl lavished lots of money and charm on me during our four-month courtship. Mama lit up like a Roman candle every time he appeared on our doorstep. “Such a fine young man,” she would murmur. “Magda would be so proud of her son if she were alive.” My sister Vera adored him—and his pocket full of peppermints. And though I never knew quite how he did it, Karl made Papa laugh. It was a welcome sound in our home after all the years of gloom.
“May I sit with you in church tomorrow, Emma?” he asked as he brought me home one Saturday night. I knew it would serve as a signal to the congregation that we were officially courting, but I lacked the will to refuse.
“You must stay for Sunday dinner,” Mama insisted after the service ended.
I saw where Karl’s and my relationship was headed, but like a boat without oars, I allowed the current to sweep me along, knowing that our marriage would bring my parents some much-needed joy. It seemed like the least I could do for them.
It was at another Sunday dinner, a few months later, that our courtship reached its inevitable destination. Without preamble or declarations of undying love, Karl took advantage of a pause in the conversation to say, “Reverend Schroder, I would like to ask you for Emma’s hand in marriage.”
Mama uttered a little cry of happiness. A pleased smile spread across Papa’s face too, but he turned to me first. “What do you say, Emma?”
“Yes, Papa . . . I’ll marry Karl.”
I had several reasons for saying yes to him. I knew our marriage would make Mama and Papa happy. I still felt so guilty for causing Eva’s death that in my confusion I thought I should take her place. She would have married a local boy and lived in Bremenville, not traveled all over the world playing the piano. And then there was the guilt I felt over Markus. The memory of what I’d done to Markus bled my heart dry.
I had caused three deaths: Eva’s, Markus’s, and Aunt Magda’s. There were no Bauer sons for Vera to marry, so I owed it to Aunt Magda and Markus to marry Karl and keep their memories alive. When Karl and I had children, they would become the family that Mama had lost in the war. I didn’t love Karl, but he treated me kindly, and I figured love would grow between us, as it had between Mama and Papa.
Karl orchestrated every detail of our wedding with the same efficient precision he’d used to build his home and his business. “I have picked out the wedding dress I’d like you to wear, Emma. You have an appointment with the seamstress tomorrow. . . . I’ve hired a photographer from the city to take our picture. I’m not happy with the quality of the local studios. . . .” I’ve arranged for our wedding dinner to be held at the hotel rather than outdoors. . . . We will be married on the twenty-first of this month. . . .” Again, I floated along with the current, without opinion or dissent. It was as if my will had died along with Eva.
Papa beamed with delight as he read us our vows. Well-wishers and friends packed the church, and Uncle Gus managed to stay sober until the ceremony ended. That night, Karl and I moved into his stately Victorian home.
I soon discovered that I was nothing but Karl’s trophy, a prize he had pursued and won. He should have shot me with a double-barreled shotgun, stuffed me like a moose, and hung my head on the wall. It would have been less painful for me in the long run.
I didn’t dare complain to Karl, but my life as the wife of a wealthy entre-Preneur bored me to near paralysis. Karl hired a German woman to cook our meals, and a maid to come in during the day to wash our clothes and clean the house and polish all the massive European furniture he had imported—no Sears Roebuck catalogue for Karl Bauer! The maid was an Irish-Catholic girl from across the tracks, and I was surprised he’d hired her, knowing how much he disliked Irish-Catholics. He required her to wear a black dress with a white apron and made her call him “Sir.” But while she was busy confirming his sense of superiority, I was left with nothing to do.
r /> “Let’s take a vacation, Karl,” I suggested one evening after dinner. I had waited for him to finish the section of newspaper he was reading and lay it down, then I’d quickly planted my hand on top of the next section before he could pick it up and hide behind it again. “How about Niagara Falls? We could drive your car . . . or take the train.”
“Out of the question.”
“Please . . . I’ve always wanted to travel, Karl, but I’ve barely been out of Bremenville.”
His eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why are you so eager to leave town?”
“Because Bremenville never changes! The last exciting thing that happened here was when the Chautauqua came to town when I was twelve! Can’t we go to Philadelphia some weekend and see a show or hear a concert?”
“My business cannot run itself, Emma.” He eyed his newspaper, frowning as if commanding me to lift my hand.
“Well, if we can’t go anywhere, how about letting me work in your store a couple of days a week. I’d love to get out of the house and talk to people for a change, help them find what they need. . . .”
“No.”
His cold, unyielding tone made me angry. “I’m not stupid, Karl. I know the difference between witch hazel and Bromo seltzer. I think I can figure out when to prescribe Castoria and when to prescribe corn plasters. I can count out five penny candies for a nickel.”
“You are my wife, not an employee. I work hard six days a week so that you don’t have to.”
“I know I don’t have to work,” I pleaded. “I want to work. We could be together all day.” I tried to drape my arm around his shoulder, but he brushed it away.
“Enough, Emma! I will hear no more about it!”
“But why—?” I had pushed him too far. He turned on me like a dog on a short chain.
“Because I cannot forget how my father lay drunk in bed all day while my mother worked like a peasant, scrubbing floors and emptying other people’s chamber pots just to put food on our table! What was her reward for all her hard work? She had the privilege of bringing him pleasure every night, then she’d give birth to another scrawny, unwanted brat nine months later. She would have had thirteen children, Emma. Thirteen! Just like a filthy Catholic, but four of them had sense enough to die and avoid being beaten senseless whenever our old man came home in a drunken rage!”
Even in his anger, Karl was cool and controlled, his words clipped and precise. They pummelled me like a rain of hailstones.
“I don’t want to hear this, Karl.”
“No? Well, maybe you should hear it.” He rose to his feet, his face inches from mine. “Then you can explain to me why the good Reverend Schroder looked the other way all those years while his best friend Gus Bauer treated his family like garbage.”
“Papa never knew—”
“He chose not to know, Emma.”
“How dare you accuse my father of such a thing! Papa put food on your table from his own garden countless times! Mama brought you milk and eggs-”
“How I hated their pity!” His hands bunched into fists and he took a swing at a Chinese vase I’d filled with gladiolus. It crashed to the floor.
Karl’s violence terrified me. I’d rarely seen Papa lose his temper, and even then he’d never resorted to smashing things. I needed to soothe Karl before he turned on me.
“Let’s not fight, Karl. It doesn’t matter—”
“It matters to me!” he said, waving his finger in my face. “Don’t ever forget it!”
* * *
“The Bremenville Women’s Exercise and Dramatic Club is accepting new members,” Karl told me one night at the dinner table. “You must join.”
“But why? You know I hate that sort of thing.”
“The mill owners’ wives and all the other high society ladies belong. It will help my standing in the community. Do it for me.”
I reluctantly agreed to go to the next meeting. I was the only woman who didn’t arrive dressed in a toga. “Why don’t you let me play the piano for you,” I offered. “You can dance or exercise or whatever it is that you do, and I’ll play.”
I plunked away on the piano while the other ladies twirled around the dance floor like fat cows, pretending they were Grecian urns. They looked ridiculous to me. I deliberately speeded up the tempo as they danced, but I did it gradually, so that no one noticed it until they were whirling like crazed dervishes, the sweat pouring down their faces. When they tried to halt their own momentum, they began tripping over each other’s togas until they finally toppled like a row of plump dominoes. I played a chorus of “Alexander’s Ragtime Band” for an encore as they struggled to untangle themselves. They never invited me back.
Shunned by polite society, I spent more and more time out at the parson-age—the very place I’d wanted so badly to flee. I worked hard to disguise my misery so my parents would have no idea how unhappy I was. Restless and discontented, I eventually lost the will to play the piano.
One gorgeous spring day, the urge for excitement became so strong I went to our garage and sat behind the wheel of Karl’s car. “How hard can it be to drive?” I asked myself. I started the engine. I felt the latent power of the purring eight-cylinder engine, and my mind was made up. I stole Karl’s car.
By the time I reached the farm, I was already managing the clutch without jerking and hopping like a startled rabbit. My sister Vera had the day off from school. “Do you feel like having an adventure today?” I asked her.
“Emma! I didn’t know you could drive!”
“Nothing to it. Climb in and I’ll show you.”
We flew down River Road like two sparrows set free from their cages, bouncing on the stiff velvety seats and laughing like a pair of lunatics escaped from the asylum. When we got to the neighboring village we went on a shopping spree—or I should say, a trying-on spree. Karl would never allow me to wear such outrageous hats and brightly colored frocks in a million years. We had a glorious time.
If I hadn’t scraped the car’s fender along the garage door when I tried to sneak it back inside, Karl never would have known what I’d done. I was in a hurry though, since he would be arriving home for dinner any minute, and I didn’t take the time to prop open the garage doors like Karl always did. The wind blew one of them shut as I drove inside, leaving a neat, vertical dent in the rear fender.
Karl discovered the dent that same evening. “Do you know anything about that dent in my car?” he asked with icy calm. I’d grown to fear that tone of voice.
“I’m sorry, it was my fault, Karl. The garage door blew shut on it—”
“How could that happen if the car was inside the garage?” I could tell he knew the truth. He was torturing me the way a boy might toy with an insect.
“The car wasn’t in the garage. I borrowed it to go out to the farm.”
“You took something that didn’t belong to you, Emma?”
“Well, yes . . .”
The first blow of his palm across my face took me by surprise. The ones that followed seemed inevitable. It was a simple matter of cause and effect—I’d damaged his car, he beat me in return.
“I’m sorry,” Karl said as I huddled on the kitchen floor afterward. “But since you aren’t the submissive wife I thought I married, this is the only way to teach you.”
I didn’t want our maid or anyone else to see me until my bruises healed, so the next day I banished myself to a tiny island in the middle of Squaw River that I had often explored as a child. The wooded islet was privately owned but rarely used, and it even had a small fishing lodge on it. I sat on the front step of the cabin and listened to the melody of bird song and lapping water, dreaming of the music I’d forfeited the right to play.
For a long time I sat wondering what my life would have been like if I’d obeyed Papa and stayed away from the movies with Eva that fateful night. When I realized the futility of such thoughts, I wondered for the hundredth time why I hadn’t died instead of Eva, or why Karl hadn’t died instead of Markus. When I trie
d to imagine being married to Markus I remembered the passion of his kiss . . . and mourned the lack of passion in my husband’s kisses. But it was useless to rail against the hand of God. Karl was the punishment I deserved. As the pine trees cast long afternoon shadows across the little clearing, I rowed the borrowed rowboat back to shore—back to Karl.
* * *
Karl and I slept in separate bedrooms with a small dressing room in between. If he wanted to sleep with me, he would politely ask permission first, as if we were strangers at a fancy ball—“May I have this dance, Milady?” “Yes, Milord.” Then he would remove his dressing gown and lay it neatly on the chair beside my bed. Karl called it “The Marital Act,” as if the words were written with capital letters, but it resembled a Japanese tea ritual more than an act of passion.
“I want to make an appointment to see the doctor,” I told him after three years of marriage. “I don’t understand why I’m still not pregnant.” I had followed him into his den after dinner, knowing that the best time to talk to Karl was when he was relaxed and mellow after a good meal. He had already made himself comfortable in his leather armchair and lit his cigar. I leaned against the mantel, attempting to appear casual, but I was always on my guard around Karl.
“You’re not pregnant because I am preventing it.”
His words stunned me. I stared at him, but his dark eyes were as unfathomable as two lumps of coal.
“But, Karl, why?”
“I will decide when to begin a family.” He flicked the ash off his after-dinner cigar like a gentleman and picked up his newspaper. To Karl, that was the end of the discussion.
“Well, when might you decide to start one?” I asked. “I need something to do all day besides sit in this cold, polished house, listening to the clock tick. I’m going crazy.” When he turned the page of his newspaper without answering me, I lost my temper.
“You need to arrange everything, don’t you, Karl? You always have to be in control! You get to decide when we eat, what we eat, when we sleep together, even when we’ll have children! You’re so afraid of being poor again, so afraid I’ll end up like your mother with nine children and you’ll be like your father—”