American Pie (30 page)

When she spread the altered gown across the platform bed, Greta touched the material with trembling fingers. "I've never worn silk before. It's so soft!" Awe glowed on her translucent skin. "Describe it to me, Lucie, I can't see well enough tell me if it shimmers. Is the color as lovely as it appears?"

Lucie swallowed and shut her eyes against scalding tears. "It shimmers, dearest, like a waterfall. The color is almost the same as your hair. Lace trims the bodice and cuffs. You'll be as beautiful" a lump closed her throat, strangling her "as beautiful as the day Stefan met you."

Greta fell back into the pillows, gasping for breath, the fever burning on her cheeks. "Father Norlic agreed to waive the reading of the banns? And he doesn't mind coming here?" When Lucie confirmed it, Greta struggled against the effect of the opiates to open her eyes. "I don't know how you've managed everything. How can we thank you for all you've done?"

"Get well! Oh, Greta, get well!"

Gently Greta stroked her hand. "Don't cry, dearest Lucie," she whispered. When she could speak again, her weak grip tightened around Lucie's fingers. "I know this isn't fair, but you must be strong for all of us. We depend on your strength. And dearest sister "

"Don't try to sit up. Please, just rest."

"Help our Stefan." Her lovely eyes begged. "He seems so strong, but he's not. He will need you, Lucie."

"I know." Lucie wept.

"When some time has passed" A fit of coughing left her pale and trembling. "Help him find someone to love." When she had rested a moment, she opened her eyes and a single tear slipped down her cheek. "Help him understand it's what I wanted. He's such a good man. He needs someone to love him. And someone to love."

"Oh, Greta! I can't bear this!"

"Remember, dearest. Promise me and remember."

That night Stefan sat beside Greta on the platform bed, holding her hot hand, his face as pale as hers. His dark eyes burned with grief and bewilderment. To depart for work was torment; to sit beside her and feel her slowly leaving him was agony.

"Everything is arranged, my love," he murmured, stroking her fingers. When she managed a smile, his face constricted in an effort to return the joy in her gaze. "Do you mind terribly that you won't have a ring?"

"But she will!" Lucie slapped her forehead, then rushed to her shelf in the sleeping room. When she returned she sat on the platform bed and opened her palm to show them the gold wedding ring Greta had given her for the cream. "Your mother's ring, I saved it. I didn't sell it to buy the ingredients for the cream. I sold my hat pins instead. You gave me the ring for my dream, dearest Greta, now I give it to you for yours."

Tears of happiness flowed down Greta's cheeks as Stefan helped her sit up so she could embrace Lucie.

As Greta had to rest frequently, it required most of the afternoon to dress her and arrange her hair. Lucie did so with silent tears streaming down her cheeks. The once lush body was thin and wasted, each gesture an exhausting effort. But eventually Greta was ready minutes before Father Norlic arrived. And she was lovely.

The artful magic of a hot curling iron and three or four false curls created an illusion of golden fullness framing her face. Fever and excitement tinted her cheeks with rose. The ivory silk captured the light from the table lamp and shimmered like champagne across the platform bed. Adoration filled Stefan's wet eyes as he gazed down at her.

"You look beautiful!" he said gruffly, his throat full.

"Oh, Stefan, look at you!"

Lucie had trimmed his hair and mustache. He wore the new coat, vest and tie. Lucie stared at him, her handsome brother, and knew the years would distinguish him and he would wear them with dignity.

"Are you all right?" Jamie murmured. He and Lucie sipped the wine he had brought, not tasting it, standing at a discreet distance from the platform bed while Father Norlic spoke to Stefan and Greta.

Tears flooded Lucie's throat, choking her. "She's so terribly ill, but even now she thinks of others. She worries about Stefan. She asked me to" But she couldn't speak.

Jamie touched her cheek. "You accomplished your goal after all, lass," he said gently.

Father Norlic nodded to them then, but before they stepped forward Lucie plucked the single blossom from Greta's fading window geranium and gave it to her to hold.

"Please," Greta whispered, looking up at them. "I can't be married in bed. Stefan? Will you help me to stand?"

But her legs would not support her. In the end Stefan held her in his arms, cradling her tenderly to his chest as Father Norlic spoke the words that made them man and wife.

Afterwards, Stefan placed her gently on the platform bed, propped up by pillows, then stretched out beside her, holding her in the circle of his arms while Jamie toasted them with a new bottle of wine.

"Thank you," Greta whispered. "This is the happiest day of my life!" Eyes bright and dilated by opiates, she rested against Stefan's shoulder and smiled joyfully at the gold ring on her finger. "Oh, my dearest, I've waited so long for this happy day!"

Father Norlic finished his wine and tasted the wedding loaf, then he wished the newlyweds well. Before he departed, his sad eyes lingered on Stefan and Greta. Quietly, he shut the door behind him.

Shortly afterward Jamie and Lucie tactfully departed to take supper at a small German restaurant in Bowery Street. The moment they left the tenement their festive expressions dissolved into anguish. In the alleyway between the courtyard and Elizabeth Street, Lucie turned into Jamie's arms and wept until no more tears would flow, until she felt limp and drained.

"All she wanted was Stefan. And a home and children of her own. She never hurt anyone, never spoke a harsh word. I don't understand! Why is this happening?"

Jamie held her shaking body tightly, stroking her back. "I don't know, lass," he said quietly. "It isn't fair."

"She's only nineteen! She had a whole life in front of her, she" But the words suffocated her.

Neither had much appetite. Their thoughts strayed to the Elizabeth Street tenement and Stefan and Greta. What would Greta and Stefan say to each other, they who had no future? How would they spend this, which should have been the happiest night of their lives?

And they stared across the table at each other, desperate in their need to celebrate life, and in their guilt at having such thoughts and in having each other. Each thought longingly of Jamie's nearby lodgings and the new bed, though neither stated these thoughts aloud, or spoke of the hungering need to love and touch and know the thrill of rushing blood and pulsing nerves and life. Life.

But the urgency was there in their stolen moments within the deserted doorway, in fevered kisses and clinging caresses. In endearments that carried an edge of desperation and immediacy. In their reluctance to part, as if tomorrow were an uncertain mirage. It was nearly midnight before they wrenched apart and Lucie reluctantly entered the tenement to stay with Mrs. Blassing and her family.

Sometime during the night, Greta slipped away.

Mrs. Blassing woke Luce to inform her Stefan was acting strangely. He had departed the tenement before light but not before battering holes in the stairwell wall with his fists. Staggering as if drunk, weeping, he kicked in the side of one of the reeking school sinks and very nearly wrenched the handle off the pump. Shortly after dawn he returned, his arms overflowing with flowers, his eyes savage and wild.

Lucie's shoulders collapsed and she buried her face in her hands, sobbing.

"It's Greta, isn't it," Mrs. Blassing said with a heavy sigh of understanding. Wrapping her large arms around Lucie, she tried to offer comfort though none could be given. While Lucie dressed, Mrs. Blassing quietly collected several women in the building to do what must be done. They accompanied Lucie to the door.

When her key did not work, Lucie wiped her streaming eyes and stared at the door. "Stefan?" There was no answer, but she could hear him moving about inside. "Stefan? I've come with Mrs. Blassing and the others. Please, dearest, let us in."

"Go away!"

She closed her eyes against the hoarse agony searing Stefan's grief. Tears ran down her cheeks. "Stefan, please. There are things to be done."

"I'll do what's necessary. Go away."

She tried the handle of the door. But he must have thrust a chair beneath the handle. Behind her, she heard scandalized murmurs from the gathered women. She knocked and called again, but Stefan refused to respond. Grief blinded her and she could not think. Finally, because she didn't know what else to do, she sent one of the children to the new construction site on lower Broadway to fetch Jamie.

When Jamie arrived he took one look at her face, then his broad arms enclosed her and crushed her against his body. "I'm sorry," he murmured, his voice thick. "God." When he learned Stefan refused to allow the women inside, he squared his shoulders, then knocked on the door. "Stefan? It's Jamie. The women are here. Please open the door."

The silence lengthened inside. "The wagon will come at noon. They can have her then." His voice cracked. "But not before."

The women studied Jamie's expression, then silently moved away down the dark corridor, clucking their tongues. Jamie's arm slid around Lucie's waist and he led her to the rooftop where he held her shaking body and they waited, standing silently as the pale sun climbed the sky.

Shortly after the noon whistle blew they heard the body wagon rattle to a stop in the street below. Jamie looked over the rooftop, saw the pine coffins destined for Potter's Field, and nodded to Lucie who bolted for the stairs.

"Oh, Jamie! Don't let them take her until I've said goodbye!"

This time Lucie's key opened the door and she ran inside, then stopped abruptly. What seemed like a hundred candles burned on the table and surrounded the platform bed.

Stefan had dressed Greta in her ivory silk wedding gown and had arranged her golden hair over the pillows like a halo. Her slender fingers held a single red geranium. Thousands of geranium petals covered her silk skirt, her breast, her hair, and the bed, each petal placed with exquisite patience and loving devotion. She lay as if asleep in a bower of flickering candles, surrounded by the fragrant petals she had loved so much.

Stefan had gone.

The following days passed in a blur of grief and anxiety. Because she sensed Stefan would want them, Lucie kept many of the geranium petals, placing them in her treasure box on the shelf in the sleeping room. Jamie dismantled the platform bed and sent Greta's flower supplies to Miss Elfin on the ground floor whom they had learned was now working at the Hudson Factory. Lucie packed Greta's few belongings into a pillowcase and placed it in the sleeping room for Stefan.

Whenever she thought of Stefan her heart tangled in painful knots. Greta had been the center of his life. Without her, he would be like a ship without anchor. Lucie knew him well enough to know his grief would be a savage storm, brutal in its intensity. But she discovered she didn't know him well enough to guess where he might have gone.

"It's been four days," she murmured to Jamie, her white face lowered over a cup of coffee so pale it looked like tinted water. But the heat felt good beneath her palms. The nights were sharp and chill now and yesterday she had awakened to frost coating the courtyard floor. "Please, Jamie," she said, lifting her face. "I've never asked for anything please don't give Stefan the sack. I beg you, grant him a little more time."

She saw the pain her request caused him. Knots rose like stones along his jawline, his hands curled into fists.

"I would give the world if I could do as you ask," he said in a low voice. "But I can't. I had to notify Mr. Tucker's office that Stefan is off the site. I'm sorry, lass. But it's done."

"Oh, God," she whispered. A long breath collapsed her chest and her fingers whitened around the mug. Now neither she nor Stefan had work. ? ,

"God, lass. Don't look at me like that." He tried to take her hands, but she sat as if she were granite, unable to move. Jamie swore softly. "Don't you think I would have kept Stefan on the roll if there was any way I could? If he were anyone but Stefan, I would have given him the sack the first day! Lucie, please. For God's sake, try to understand. Stefan would. He knows I can't show favoritism. Wherever he is, he knows his job is gone."

"The agent came for the rent," she said in an expressionless tone. "I persuaded him to come back the day after tomorrow." Her head dropped. "But I won't have the money then, either."

Throwing back his chair Jamie paced across the space where the platform bed had been. "I have a dollar, that's all." He kicked at the stove, then stood staring down at the top.

Lucie thought of the money he had lent her for the wedding. For an instant the memory of that day blinded her. She shook her vision away with difficulty. Even if she ended in the street, she did not regret the wedding. Given the same circumstances, she would spend the money the same way again.

"I'll sell our bed," Jamie said, turning to look at her.

"And then what?" Lucie asked in a dull voice. She shook her head. "No, Jamie, keep your bed."

"Our bed, lass."

"You wouldn't get full price for it now. And the money would only prolong whatever is going to happen. Without work, and with jobs so hard to find" Her shoulders lifted then fell, and she covered her face in her hands.

"Lucie, Lucie lass." Jamie dropped to his knees beside her, trying to look into her face. "Damn it, I feel so helpless! So damned helpless!"

"Please. Just held me." She felt so cold.

And she felt betrayed. Worse, she understood Jamie knew she blamed him for giving Stefan the sack.

Her practical mind understood Jamie had no real choice. To make an exception of Stefan would damage his credibility with the other workmen on the site, and ignoring procedure would anger Mr. Tucker and possibly jeopardize Jamie's own employment.

But in her heart, she blamed him regardless. This was Stefan, alone and lost and floundering in a world turned dark and bitter. He needed their help, not another loss.