Quiet Dell: A Novel (7 page)

“Mother! A toboggan from Canada! I can take the fellows sledding!”

She stood waiting, wearing a benign expression, her open palm before her.

He reached into his pocket and thrust a small envelope into her hand. “I hate those hats though. Do I have to wear one? I have a winter cap.”

“Oh, indulge him,” Asta said, holding the card to her breast. “They’re from Quebec, and quite warm and smart. He wants to photograph you three on the sled.”

“They look like girls’ hats.”

“Well, look fierce. You heard Charles. They’re patterned on French naval caps, and they do have a military air. Now, put on your galoshes. And bring the girls’ boots to the front porch, as well.”

“What takes girls so long?” he said, rushing past her.

Charles was coming in the front door, stomping his feet on the tiles of the entry. “Perfect snow for sledding! I’ve got the toboggan set. Where are the girls?” He stepped to the staircase. “Annabel? Bring my camera as you come down? On the bed in the . . . guest room. That’s right. Don’t drop it.”

“Was it a large branch that fell, Charles?” Asta slipped the envelope into her shirtwaist.

“A small tree, I’d say. I’ll saw it up tomorrow. Now, then. Are we ready?”

The girls appeared in their winter gear, and Hart in his; they put on the blousy winter hats, which were tight across the forehead and bound with thin red bands. They filed outside and Charles arranged them according to height, which he said was the balanced way to sled in a Canadian racing toboggan.

Asta followed, onto the porch, and watched him snap their picture. The wind whipped snow into her eyes and the children shielded their faces. The sky was a dark, bruised blue. Snow fell slowly, almost haphazardly.

“You won’t stay too long, now, will you?” she called down.

“Everyone out till we get to the park,” Charles said. “Hart, you can pull the sled.” He was rushing up the steps to give Asta the camera. “Don’t worry,” he said quietly when he reached her. “They’re with me. Go and rest. And don’t touch a dish. They’re rinsed, and Grethe and I will wash them later.”

“You are dear, Charles. They’re so excited.”

“I’m excited.” He was clambering back down the steps, and waved to her as they set off. “Go and rest.”

“I will,” she said, and went in, shutting the door behind her.

Each day, she gives herself this moment alone. Often the mail has just arrived. She lies on her neatly made bed, thinking of him, holding his words in her hands. She will read them once and again, and place them in the bureau drawer now emptied of all but the careful bundles tied in specific order, and the photographs laid
out like solitaire, each in its place. This being Christmas, there will be no mail, but yesterday’s letter promised she would hear from him, that despite the snows or weather, his fondest wish will reach her, his deepest longing, his knowledge that the new year will bring great changes for them both, and generous love such as only mature and nurturing individuals might find in one another. She takes the small pink envelope from her clothes and draws the message from inside.

All cares cease! Joyful Noel!

I love thee.

(Your) C.

It is not his script, of course, for he phoned in the order to a Park Ridge florist, but the words are his, and the phrasing so clearly the written voice she’s come to know. He has taken time and trouble to reach her; perhaps he is alone in his rooms, watching the storm, or dining in the restaurant of the fine hotel where he lives. He travels frequently, seeing to his business dealings and holdings; the Fairmont Hotel, he writes, is a fine establishment but can never be home. She reads the card again. Yes, her cares will cease. “C.” In late spring, perhaps sooner, they will meet for the first time, though she knows his soul so deeply. She will look into his eyes and see his words within them.

She knows certain passages of his letters by heart. From the beginning, he has addressed the gulf between them, the loneliness that led them to correspond, his desire to marry, his standards and means.

My dear unknown friend: My wife can have anything within reason that money can buy, but above all I expect her to give that true love and devotion everyone of us craves.

She is not unattractive, but she is past her youth. She fears she looks careworn, drab, for she cannot afford the smart clothes and
fine shoes, the appointments with hairdressers and manicurists, that might show her to better advantage. She’s not grown stout, at least; in fact, since Lavinia’s death, she’s lost weight. Such have been her worries and concerns, concerns she dares not confide, lest he think her a burden or question her motives. He must not know the depth of her exhaustion, for his words are the source of her renewal and stir in her the warmth of trust, and even, after so long, the anticipation of gentle touch.

Each day is vividly alive with keen interest and it is you, Dear, who has given me the inspiration. Before you, life was prosaic and commonplace. No longer!

Cornelius plans a future based upon her and she will not disappoint. The photographs, seated portraits taken in professional studios, show a man of no great height, well fleshed, immaculately dressed. His round gold spectacles and bow tie imply discernment. He is not handsome, but his gaze is direct, his eyes kind; perhaps he is shy, and less eloquent in person than on paper. It does not matter. She requires only his fidelity and support, his consideration, for he seems a gentleman, and takes such time and care. An ardent and faithful correspondent, he writes two letters for every one of hers, yet never reproaches her.

I am trying in this manner to find my only One. . . . I have no financial worries, but, dear, it does not satisfy the heart. I need a good, true, affectionate wife; one who will love me and make home a paradise.

The children, he knows, require her time and attention. Their grandmother’s recent passing has surely grieved them, reminding them anew of their father’s early death, but children are resilient. She has tried to make them known to him; she tells him that they are deserving and good, and not just because she loves them; adults who know them admire them, and they are well liked by the
neighborhood children. Cornelius, a widower, is childless, and a man longs for a son. She believes he feels a special sympathy for her boy, who is twelve, nearly a young man. She’s written Hart’s name on the backs of photographs enclosed in her letters, and Cornelius responded so warmly, supplying a pet name for a boy he has yet to meet.

I am indeed very proud of Buster. He looks like a splendid young chap, and the two girls, too, they look like fine children. They will have the opportunities that they deserve and they will be able to develop into whatever their inclinations may call for.

Whose children will inhabit the dilapidated playhouse when they have gone, and hide their treasures in the broken-down workshop? Perhaps both will be razed, and a garden grown on the open land. All will be open. She will take her husband’s arm as they cross streets in the South, in the gentle mountain clime Cornelius describes, and in Cedar Rapids, where he owns a city home and a farm, hundreds of acres of Iowa land, lying flat beneath the sun. She imagines the land, arable and plowed as far as the eye can see, with a great cloud passing over it.

The cloud is an image of her evasion and lack of candor. This she knows. Someday she will tell Cornelius all, the secrets she holds close, the shame, how the shock of Heinrich’s death was preceded by the trial of his betrayal, the long wrangling arguments, discussions, pleading, for he believed he had the right to betray her, to respond to his heart’s call, to end, he said, the dishonesty that undermined them both. He would say yes to Dora Hulck, née Dora Scholes, a divorcée who had ended her childless ten-year marriage and left the coal merchant whose funds had established her business. The Hallo Shop, a thriving enterprise, produced hand-wrought silver flatware, hollowware, and jewelry, just two blocks from their own barn workshop on Cedar Street, and employed many of the same artisans who designed for the Eicher enterprise. Now Dora would move her shop to Chicago.
She wanted Heinrich to manage the expanding business and be her partner in all things, for she had taken him to her bed; they were lovers truly matched and would create Hallo’s Norse Line, a collection of Scandinavian-influenced silver. “Beautiful, Useful, Enduring,” the Hallo motto, would set an industry standard; they would make permanent impress on silver design in America, their adopted country; they would do important work.

Yes? Work?

Anna imagined Heinrich leaving her, and his mother with him, taking the children, for Lavinia believed herself as much a mother to them as Anna, and believed in her only son absolutely. Anna would be destitute. She’d no sense of how to run a business, how to plead a case through the courts, no means to hire lawyers, no presence of mind but to beg him not to think of this, to beg Lavinia to counsel him, demand of him . . . but Lavinia prided herself on her disregard for bourgeois convention. She saw her son’s gifts unrealized, his talent wasted. His streetcar commute and his work in the city, actuary for Metropolitan Insurance and Casualty Co., were beneath him; he excelled of course, for his mind was precise and sharp and he inspired confidence, but business was not Art. He was finer than commerce, meant for better things, meant to foreman the major studio they’d all envisioned and could not support. Dora Scholes had offered him the opportunity he deserved. Lavinia refused Asta counsel and retired to her room at the first sound of marital argument.

Asta begged Heinrich to consider their marriage of more than twelve years, their own struggling but solvent enterprise, his years of seniority at the firm that employed him, and their children, their children! Was his life so unbearable? Had he no feeling at all for her?

He said, in a tense, quiet voice, “I’m leaving you.”

“Why?” Asta shouted. “Why Dora? Is it her business, the money?”

He looked at her, stunned, then advanced upon her, enraged. “Why Dora? Why do you think? Shall I show you why? Throw off your clothes, as she does! Start on your knees! Take me to mine!”

They were alone, for the children were at school, and Lavinia would not intervene. Asta tried to flee the room.

But he took hold of her, and dragged her to this bedroom. He forced her against the wall, there, by the mirror, and held her wrists above her head. He stood nearly against her, as though he would kiss or fondle her. She turned her face from him and closed her eyes, but he spoke against her throat, hissing his anger, and she felt each word enter her. “I must work, and work, and work, to even begin with you. I am a man! I am this man! I am not a villain, despoiling you. And I am not your teacher! You do not learn!”

She opened her eyes and saw that his other hand was fisted, that he shook with restraint, lest he beat her senseless. And then he turned and left the house, taking with him the valise he’d left packed at the front door.

Lavinia spoke frankly of Heinrich’s infidelity only once, late that night over tea at the kitchen table, when the children were asleep. The room was shadowy in the snowy, windy night.

Lavinia, appearing regal, kindly, poured the tea. “Asta, hear me out. In this world in which women have so little freedom and enjoy so little regard, it is not always a bad thing to share a man, openly or not, if all are happy, and it is not such an unusual arrangement among artistic people, that alliances be discreet, particularly when there are children involved, over whom aspersions must not be cast.”

“Children? Aspersions? How dare you, Lavinia—”

She held up a thin hand in caution. “I will tell you now that I counseled Heinrich, most seriously, never to tell you and wound you so, and to demand discretion of Dora, if she loved him, discretion that would have preserved your home and even your marriage. He might simply have taken the job as foreman at Hallo, maintained a room in Chicago for the sake of appearances, satisfied his passion for Dora, which would have cooled in time, I assure you, and remained a husband and father finally able to provide for his family; be the artist he was and yet allay your cares, allow you time to do your own work. That he should even think of dragging
his children through such a scandal! No, I did not agree! But Dora Hulck is working-class Dutch, and childless, and older than Heinrich, remember; she divorced a wealthy, disagreeable man, and she wants my son to marry her.”

Asta steeled herself; she was determined not to weep. “I thought you would have taken the children, and gone with them.”

Lavinia shook her head, and reached for Asta’s hand. “I could not live with Dora Hulck, nor would she allow my presence. She is shrewd, but not the right sort of influence for the children, nor has she any interest in them. Oh, dear Asta. She requires his genius and is blindly, passionately in love with him, but she hasn’t the breeding or education for the discretion that might have made it all possible.”

Asta pulled away and spoke in an angry whisper; she wanted to shout and throw the tea against the wall. “Lavinia, you are wicked, wicked, to think I would live in a shell of a marriage while my husband opens Hallo Shops in New York and Boston—”

“Dora will not have children; she is obviously barren. Asta, you had only to be patient for a year, five years . . . you have every advantage to press. Heinrich’s love for these children is limitless; he’s devoted to them. You must welcome and encourage his devotion, as Dora will not—”

“Stop it! Stop it!”

She would not. “And to you, Asta. He’s devoted to you, their mother who loves them, and never deserved the wavering of his affections.”

“Then why? Why?” Emotion choked her, for she knew why, and surmised that Lavinia did not; Heinrich had allowed them, at least, the privacy of their intimate relations.

Lavinia leaned forward into the small nimbus of light and spoke fiercely, insistently. “We do not get what we deserve! Never! If we did, the world would be just! We get what we work for, or what we’re born to, if fortune does not intervene to take it from us! Talent grows if it is exercised. And passion, like hunger and thirst, demands satisfaction.”