In one terrible instant, Emma realized that the house of lies she had so carefully constructed was on the brink of collapse, trapping the people she loved beneath its weight. She had built it to protect and shelter them, thinking that she alone would be hurt if it ever fell.
“This is my fault. . . .” Emma mumbled to herself. She lowered herself onto the nearest chair, feeling every one of her eighty years.
“No, it’s Jeff’s fault. He doesn’t care about his family, only himself. He already decided what’s most important to him—his job. So I’m going to do the same.”
“Oh, Sue . . . where did all the love go?” Emma asked softly. “Remember when you thought Jeff would have to fight in Vietnam? Remember how you were going to follow him to Canada if you had to? You were so in love with him then. Where did it all go?”
Suzanne looked away. “I don’t know, Grandma. I honestly don’t know. Our lives just got so busy. We both have careers. . . . “She lifted a cut-glass candy dish from the shelf and idly wrapped it in newspaper. “Now we’ve grown so far apart that Jeff just accepted the job without even asking me what I thought.”
“What about your children?” Grace pleaded. “Aren’t they as important to you as your careers? They’re so young. How can you ruin their lives like this?”
Suzanne heaved a tired sigh as she placed the last bundle in the box and folded the flaps. “Mom, times have changed since Grandma got divorced. Half the kids in Melissa’s kindergarten class come from single-parent homes.”
“But your girls need their father! You have no idea what it feels like to be abandoned by your father!” Grace shuddered, as if her entire body felt the impact of her words. “If you did, you would never do this to Amy and Melissa.”
“I’m not the one who is—”
“No, you listen to me. I shoved my needs and my career aside to please your father so that you would never have to live through what I did. My father left his family. And all my life I’ve felt forsaken—unworthy of his love!”
“Oh, Gracie, no. You were precious to him. Your father loved you more than life itself.” Living alone as she did, Emma often spoke her thoughts aloud. She didn’t realize that she had done so this time until the room grew utterly still.
Grace stared at her in astonishment, her mouth hanging slack. “What did you say?” she whispered.
Emma felt the earth tremble beneath her and saw her structure of lies teeter and sway. She could prop it up with more lies, but she was deluding herself if she thought it would shelter her loved ones from further pain. The anguish in Grace’s words had revealed the depth of her wounds. And Emma knew firsthand the devastating loneliness Suzanne would face in the years ahead, even if society was more tolerant of divorce in 1980 than it had been in 1925. The falsehoods Emma had fit together so carefully had silently caved in, pinning Grace and Suzanne beneath the wreckage.
Emma stood and reached for her daughter’s hand, taking it in hers. “Gracie, why did you work so hard to set up that clinic? Why are you so passionate about fighting abortion?”
“Mother, I want you to explain what you just said about my father.”
“Answer my question first.”
“You know why—because my father didn’t want me to be born. When he tried to force you to have an abortion you had nowhere to go, no one to help you.”
“Then why would you turn down the directorship of a place you’ve worked so hard to build? Especially when it’s for a cause you care about so deeply?”
“Mother, please . . .”
“Is it because you’re afraid your husband will abandon you too, Gracie?”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she covered her face and wept without making a sound. Grace had cried that way ever since she was a child, as if her sorrow wasn’t worth disturbing anyone. Her silent weeping moved Emma to tears, as it always had. Suzanne wrapped her arms tightly around her mother.
“I’m sorry, Mom. I’m hurting so much right now, but I never meant to hurt you.”
Emma longed to pull out all the fallen joists and timbers one by one, to untangle the thousands of lies, to free her loved ones from the rubble of their destroyed lives. But after more than fifty years, the truth might cause more confusion and suffering than it cured. They would have to discover a way out by themselves.
“Suzanne, I want you to listen to me,” Emma said. “It was my own fault that my marriage ended in failure and that Karl left me. Please don’t say you admire me for that. You have an image of me as a strong, independent woman, someone you want to imitate, but that’s false. I’ve brought a lot of this on both of you by making the wrong choices years ago.”
Grace dried her tears and carefully raised her shield of poise and dignity once again. Her eyes met Emma’s. “Tell me why you said that about my father.”
He did love you, she longed to say again. Instead, Emma took refuge in another lie. “The words came out all wrong, Gracie. I’m getting old. I was trying to say that Karl doesn’t matter. I love you. I only wish that my love could have been enough for you, that you didn’t long so for your father.”
Grace stared hard at her as if challenging the explanation. Unable to bear the scrutiny, Emma bent to retrieve a tattered photograph album from the bottom shelf. “I want you to have this. There’s one picture in here of Karl, our wedding picture. You’ve seen it before. I’ve kept it so you’d always know what he looked like.”
Grace folded her arms around the book without opening it. “I don’t think I can . . . not right now. . . .”
“May I see it, Mom?” Suzanne asked. Grace didn’t resist as she took the album from her and began leafing through it. “Which one is he, Grandma?”
Emma peered over her shoulder. “Right there. That’s Karl and me.”
“Did you love him, Grandma?”
“When I married him? No. Our families were old friends. I married him to please my parents. That’s the way things were done back then. Love was supposed to grow once you were married. This is my mama and papa, right here.” When Suzanne turned the page without asking more questions, Emma breathed a sigh of relief.
“Who are all these people?”
“Most of them are old friends from when we lived in the apartment on King Street. These are our landladies, the Mulligan sisters.”
“The ‘dreary’ Mulligan sisters?”
“Yes. Aren’t they horrible old crows?”
“Oh, Mother, they weren’t that bad,” Grace said. “They watched out for me when you had to work.”
“And this is Crazy Clancy with Father O’Duggan.”
“The priest who paid Mom to read? He’s young. Good-looking too.”
Grace moved to peer over Suzanne’s other shoulder. “Where? Let me see. Yes, that’s him. You know, whenever I hear an Irish brogue I always think of him.”
Emma pointed to another picture on the same page. “Here’s you, Gracie, when you were about four years old.”
“That was taken at Mam’s house. I stayed with her when you caught pneumonia. She was so good to me. Oh my, and that’s Booty Higgins who ran the store.”
“What kind of a name is ‘Booty’?” Suzanne asked.
“It was a nickname,” Emma said. “I don’t remember his real name anymore, but he was a bootlegger during Prohibition.”
Grace stared in surprise. “Was he? I never knew that.”
Emma simply smiled.
“Who are these three guys in the white dinner jackets and black bow ties?” Suzanne asked.
“Oh, let me see!” Grace said. “That has to be Black Jack, Slick Mick, and O’Brien! Yes, that’s them.”
“Who are they?” Suzanne asked. “They look like gangsters.”
“Yes, but they were lovable gangsters,” Emma said, laughing. “What a crazy collection of characters we all were. Nowadays I suppose we’d be locked in a lunatic asylum. But we looked out for one another back then, took care of each other. They were the only family we had.”
She gently ease
d the book from Suzanne’s hands and closed it. “Do you realize that it’s almost ten o’clock and we’ve barely packed one box? The photo album is for you, Gracie. And I want Suzanne to have this.”
She reached into the cabinet and removed a white bone china cup, trimmed with gold. A delicate painting of a little girl in a faded pink gown and bonnet decorated the front. “I’m sorry that I don’t have very many heirlooms to pass along to you children, but the piece of coal is one of them, and this cup is another.”
“Oh, Grandma, I remember that! It’s the ‘crying cup.’”
“Do you remember how it worked?”
“Whenever I was sad about something, you would let me drink from it and all my tears would magically disappear.”
Emma pressed the cup into her hands. “If only it still worked, Suzy. If only I could fill it with something that would make all your tears disappear.”
“I know, Grandma.”
“Wasn’t it your mother’s cup?” Grace asked. “Didn’t she bring it with her when she immigrated?”
“Yes, it belonged to Mama’s grandmother in Germany. Oma was the one who first named it the ‘crying cup’ years earlier. When my mother left her family to come to America, Oma gave it to her. Mama said she filled it to the brim with tears on the boat to America.”
“How did you end up with it, Mother?”
Emma didn’t answer. Instead, she opened a cabinet drawer and lifted out a worn cigar box. “Do you remember these, Gracie?” Inside were three hemmed strips of cloth—green velvet, purple satin, white brocade—trimmed with elegant lace and fringe.
“The miniature vestments I made! Oh, Mother, I can’t believe you saved those silly things all these years.”
“You made these, Mom? What are they?”
“Vestments . . . you know, it’s a kind of shawl that clergymen wear over their robes on special occasions. Only these are doll-sized. I made them when I stayed at Mam’s house.”
“You’d better not let Amy and Melissa see them, or they’ll swipe them for their Barbie dolls.”
Grace laid the cigar box aside and reached for another empty carton, filling it with books from Emma’s shelf. Emma caught her breath when a worn, pocket-sized leather book fell out from where she had hidden it behind the others. The black leather cover curved slightly from the years it had spent inside a breast pocket, conforming to the swell of a man’s broad chest.
“Is this a Bible?” Grace asked. Before Emma could stop her, Grace opened the cover and read the inscription on the front page. “‘Presented to Father Thomas O’Duggan, June 5, 1923.’” She gazed at Emma in astonishment. “Mother, why on earth do you have Father O’Duggan’s prayer book?”
“I . . . I have no idea where it could have come from. Let me see it . . . I suppose I should give it back to his family or someone from his church.” The book seemed to burn in her hands like the lies burning in her heart. The pages rustled like dry leaves as Emma fumbled through them, searching for the place marked with the faded purple ribbon.
Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions. Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin. For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me. When the page blurred, Emma closed the book.
The doors and drawers of her curio cabinet stood open, ready to be emptied so that she could move on to the next stage of her life. Emma longed to do the same with her past—to empty it of all its secrets so that Grace and Suzanne could move on with their lives—but that was impossible. If only she hadn’t made such a mess of things. She carefully laid the book down and picked up a framed photograph of Suzanne and Jeff with their two girls.
“‘For I the Lord your God, am a jealous God,’” Emma recited, “‘punishing the children for the sin of the fathers to the third and fourth generation . . .’”
Suzanne gazed at Emma curiously. “What did you say, Grandma?”
“Nothing . . . just something Papa once told me years ago.” She turned the photograph around so Suzanne could see it. “Your mother is right,” she said softly. “What you and Jeff do will affect these children for the rest of their lives. Don’t base your decision on the choices your mother made. She was influenced by the wrong choices I made. And my decisions were based on my own mother’s mistakes. And so it goes, on and on. We’re like those wooden dolls that nest inside one another, each taking the shape of the one that came before it. Someone has to open the last one, someone has to break the pattern. Learn from the past, Suzy, don’t repeat it.”
“But Grandma . . .”
“Did you ever hear my mother’s story?”
“I don’t think so. Maybe years ago.”
“Then perhaps it’s time you did.”
ONE
* * *
THE RHINE VALLEY, GERMANY, 1894
It had seemed like any other Christmas Eve at first, with laughter drifting through Papa’s sturdy farmhouse along with the aroma of roast goose and apple strudel. I was home again, spending Christmas with my family after becoming Friedrich Schroder’s bride only four months earlier. My sisters, Ada and Runa, had come home with their families, and our brother Kurt, who farmed with Papa, had crossed the fields from his cottage with his wife, Gerda, and their children. Emil, who still lived at home, bounded around all of us like a puppy dog, delighted to have the farmhouse bursting with loved ones once again.
I spent all morning in the kitchen, of course, bumping elbows with three generations of Fischer women as we hurried to put the finishing touches on dinner. Toddlers balanced on my sisters’ hips or clung to their skirts as we worked, adding their sniffles and whines to the clamor of banging pots and bubbling kettles. I reveled in every noisy, chaotic moment as I sat at the table peeling potatoes. The four miles of pastures, farmland, and forests that lay between Papa’s farm and my new home in the village hadn’t broken the link that forged me to these other women. That bond was the “three k’s”—kinder, kuche, and kirche. Those three—children, cooking, and the church—defined the life of every good German wife. Like all the other women in my family, I found my duty, my identity, in them.
“You’re risking a swat with this wooden spoon,” Ada warned as her two children scampered through the kitchen with their cousin, trying to steal a sweet gherkin from the dish on the sideboard.
“Oh, let them be,” Mama said. “One little pickle isn’t going to spoil their appetites. Besides, it’s Christmas.” As she held the forbidden relish tray within their reach, I marvelled at how my mama, who had raised five children with stern discipline and rules, had transformed into another woman altogether once she became a grandmother.
“That’s all now! Stay out of the kitchen!” Ada shouted as the children skipped away, licking sweet pickle juice from their fingers. “At least the men have sense enough to stay out from underfoot,” she grumbled.
“Where did they all disappear to?” I asked.
“They’re in the parlor,” Mama said, “discussing politics and farm prices, I suppose.”
Runa shook her head. “Don’t believe it, Louise. They’re in there smoking fat cigars and drinking schnapps. And I’ll bet my egg money they’re teaching your Friedrich all their bad habits too.”
“Uh oh,” Oma said,“I’d haul him home fast if I were you, Louise.” Everyone laughed. Being teased by the other women was the price I paid for being the newest bride. I was probably in for a lot more of it before the day ended.
My grandmother, Oma Fischer, presided over the kitchen full of women, her gray eyes shining in her wrinkled face, a strand of wool-white hair sliding loose from its hairpins as she bustled around the hot stove. She finished basting the Christmas goose and closed the oven door, then paused beside the table to caress my cheek. I loved the touch of her soft, plump hands. They smelled of cinnamon and cloves.
“How pretty you look today, Liebchen,” she told me. “And so grown-up with your hair fixed
in a French bun.” I had never thought of myself as pretty until Friedrich began telling me I was. And even though I was nineteen and married now, I barely thought of myself as grown-up. Whenever I studied my face in the mirror, hoping to see a woman gazing back at last, I was always disappointed to see the full, innocent face of a young girl, with freckles on her nose and lips that pouted like a child’s. Instead of the slender, high cheekbones I yearned for, my cheeks dimpled and blushed like a schoolgirl’s when I smiled.
Oma bent to kiss my forehead. “What gives you such a rosy glow and sweet smile?”
“It must be her handsome new husband,” Ada said with a wink. “She and Friedrich are still newlyweds, you know.” I felt the color rise to my cheeks against my will.
Runa, who was eight months pregnant, smiled knowingly. “Could it be the glow of motherhood, baby sister?”
I attacked the potato skins as I felt my blush deepen, wishing I could run away and hide with the children. I was fairly certain that I was expecting, but Friedrich and I had agreed not to share the news with anyone yet. It was still our own special secret, to be savored and treasured for a while between the two of us.
“Don’t listen to my silly sisters, Oma,” I said. “If I have a glow, it comes from the coal stove. The goose isn’t the only one who’s roasting.” I chopped the last potato and dropped it into the water with the others, then carried the pot over to the stove to boil. The kitchen was steaming hot, and I wiped the moisture off the window to gaze outside.
Beyond the foggy glass, the farmyard lay beneath a covering of fresh snow, Papa’s cattle a stark contrast against it as they huddled together beside the creek. I smiled to myself, remembering how those witless animals had brought Friedrich and me together—his father owned the butcher shop where Papa sold his beef. As lifelong friends, Papa and Herr Schroder thought it only natural to arrange a match between the butcher’s fourth son and Papa’s youngest daughter.