Safe Haven (11 page)

“But it’s fine for you to play your radio and tramp around in those ridiculous high-heeled bedroom slippers you insist on wearing until well past midnight, I suppose,” Suzanne muttered to herself as she returned to her own room and sat down at her desk. Oh yes, there was a story here that she had failed to include in that first piece, and it was time the public understood that not everyone—even in Oswego, New York—had welcomed the refugees with open arms.

By the time he finished mowing the lawn, Theo’s shirt was completely soaked with perspiration. He turned on the garden hose and held it close to his mouth to drink the tepid water then turned the flow onto his head and neck, shaking himself off like a dog coming in from the rain once he’d finished. When he looked up, Suzanne was standing on the back porch, holding a glass filled with ice and water. “Maybe you don’t need this after all?”

Theo grinned and held out his hand for the glass. He drained the water and then dug out an ice cube and ran it over his throat and neck, closing his eyes at the cool relief the melting ice gave him. “Thank you.” He looked at her as if really seeing her. “How come you look so cool?”

“I wasn’t cutting grass,” she pointed out. She sat down on the top step of the porch and shaded her eyes as she peered up at him. “I have a favor to ask.”

He propped one foot on the bottom step. “Okay.” The one thing he had noticed about Suzanne—other than the fact that she was gorgeous—was that her thoughts rarely strayed far from the business that had brought her here. It was one thing to be dedicated to your work, but Suzanne seemed to be driven as if her very life depended on her success. “What do you need?”

“I was wondering if maybe you would consider letting me attend the open house with you this coming Sunday.”

“Well sure, but this isn’t like last time. This time everybody can come—in fact I think they want people to come so they can dispel some of these rumors. You don’t need me to get you in. …”

“I know, but I think maybe that first time I got off on the wrong foot with your uncle and aunt. I do that a lot.”

“Why?” It seemed a perfectly reasonable question to Theo, but he saw that Suzanne was a little shocked.

“Why?” she repeated. “I don’t know. It’s the nature of the business, I guess.”

“The business?”

“The newspaper business?” she said, squinting at him.

“So to be a good reporter, a person needs to …”

“You’re twisting my words. Forget it, okay? I just thought maybe if I went with you I would have a chance to let your relatives see that I can be nice.” She got up and headed for the back door.

“I think you’re nice,” Theo said. “I also suspect that you’ve got something riding on getting this story about the refugees.” He sat down on the step she had vacated. “I’ve been told I’m pretty good at listening.”

He heard the squeak of the screen door and could not tell if she had continued on inside or had let the door close and was still on the back porch. But then she walked to the step and sat next to him. “I kind of got myself in a mess, and you’re right: this story is my way back from that. I don’t want to … I cannot fail. This is my life.”

“You mean your life’s work—your calling. No job is a life.”

“You know what I mean. Everything links to the job, and if it’s not there—as my job has not been for the last couple of months—other stuff starts to fall apart.”

He gave this some thought. “Maybe there’s a plan in this. I mean if you hadn’t lost your job, would you be here covering this story?”

“No, I would be in Washington covering something bigger.”

“What’s bigger than the lives of nearly a thousand people who have been hunted and harassed finding a haven here in America?”

“I didn’t mean to belittle the lives here, but the key to what happens to the refugees lies within the halls of power in Washington, and that makes it the larger story.”

He tried to frame her words into something that made sense to him. “Seems to me that as the storyteller you get to figure out where the larger story lies. All that finagling down there in Washington is pretty dull reading, but the stories inside that fence …” He jerked his head in the general direction of the fort.

“You seem to know a lot about politics.”

“For a farmer from Wisconsin?” He grinned.

“That’s not what I meant.”

He realized that she did not take teasing well. “I majored in political science at the University of Wisconsin.”

“Really? I mean from what you told me about the farm, I just assumed. …”

“And that’s kind of the overall problem with the world, isn’t it? We all have this tendency to make assumptions before we have the facts.”

“And what are the facts behind being raised on a farm and majoring in political science?”

“When the war first began in Europe, I was pretty sure that eventually we would be in it.”

“You assumed?” She gave him a wry smile, and he amended his former thought. She might not take teasing well but she was not above using it herself.

“I assumed,” he agreed. “Anyway, I was thinking about how I might be able to serve. I wouldn’t be able to join the fight—wouldn’t want to. War is never the answer.”

“I used to believe that, but in this case …”

“There has to be another way, and I guess that’s why I went the direction I did. If I could understand how governments work—the science of politics—then just maybe I could figure out a way to make a difference.”

“How about helping me gather facts so I can write a story that will make a difference for those folks cooped up in the fort?” She looked up at him. “Let’s make a difference together.”

He knew that she was really asking for his help in persuading his aunt and uncle to let her tell
their
story. “How about this? How about we go together to the open house and you just enjoy the tour the way I will and everyone from town will? How about you putting aside that little notebook you always seem to have in your hand and leave the camera in your room and for those few hours you’re just another visitor?”

“I have a deadline—several of them. My editor wants me to write two or three stories a week. I don’t have time.”

He placed his hand on hers and then withdrew it at once when he realized that he had not washed up yet after mowing the grass. “How about you try letting the story come to you instead of going in there with some preconceived idea?”

She bristled.

“Or I could help you,” he added with a grin.

Ilse looked around the tiny apartment. The floor had been scrubbed, the furniture dusted, the beds were made up with sheets that she had bleached and ironed, and at the foot of each of the three cots was a neatly folded blanket. Their clothes were all stored in the lockers. She had found a glass milk bottle and filled it with flowers for the table, and Franz had helped her hang curtains sent in a box of donated household items from one of the Jewish charities that had been incredibly generous in making sure all the refugees had what one of the ladies had called “the comforts of home.”

“It will have to do,” Ilse said with a sigh as she wiped the table, which was already spotless.

“It will more than do,” Franz replied. “You have turned this place into a real home, Ilse.” The now-familiar dreamy expression came over his features, and she knew that he was thinking of the home they had shared back in Munich.

“You look very nice,” she said as she straightened the knot of his tie. “You’ve put on some weight—at least the quarantine accomplished something. Your clothes fit so much better than before.”

He chuckled. “Don’t you find it amazing how in just a few short weeks—with enough food and some exercise and the lack of fear and worry that we lived with before—everyone is beginning to look less like refugees and more like the people we were?”

“The people we
are
,” Ilse corrected him. “You are
Herr
Professor Franz Schneider, and I am your very proud wife. That has not changed.”

Franz studied her for a long moment. “You have changed, Ilse. You have become more beautiful.”

She felt the blush of a schoolgirl stain her face at his compliment and even more so at the fire of desire that ignited within her. Embarrassed at such feelings, she brushed off the compliment. “We should go out and watch for Theo. Liesl is already by the gate.”

When the gates were opened, Ilse was astonished at the number of people who filed through, and it took some time and craning of their necks before they finally saw Theo waving to them from the back of the crowd. He was with the reporter, and it occurred to Ilse that they made a handsome couple—both tall and athletic with those unique American traits of unaffected poise and unconscious self-assurance.

“The reporter is with him,” Franz murmured. “I thought we made our position quite clear.”

“She might simply be coming to see the place. Theo might have asked her to come with him not as a reporter but as a lovely young woman.”

Franz blinked at her as if she had just announced that their nephew might marry this woman. “You are matchmaking?”

“Apparently my skills in that area are unnecessary. It appears to me that Theo is doing quite well without my help.” She nodded toward the couple, and they both saw that Theo was laughing at something Suzanne had said and that at the same time he placed his hand lightly on her waist as he steered her through the throng to where they were standing.

Franz frowned. “I do not wish to become a part of her reporting, Ilse. We may be in America, but when we go back to Germany …”

“If we go back.”

He stared at her. “You do not want to go home?”

Her attempt at a laugh was so filled with disbelief that it came out a snort. “What home, Franz? We have no home—not here and not there.”

“Perhaps not, but you—we—have family. Your sister and the Friends from our meeting.”

“Do we know where any of them are? My sister? Her husband and children? The other Quakers from our meeting?”

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder. “Sh-h-h. Here come Theo and the reporter.”

She looked up, her bitterness at their situation still a metallic taste in her mouth. Liesl had run to meet Theo, the doll he had given her clutched firmly under one arm. But Ilse found her focus on the woman—Suzanne. She was wearing a cotton sundress that exposed her shoulders, and her hair was piled loosely on top of her head. Her flat sandals exposed her painted toenails, and over one shoulder she carried a large straw purse.

She was a woman who had probably never known real deprivation, real fear. And she wanted to write about them. Franz was right. Not because anything she might write could cause them problems over time, but because how could this quintessential American beauty even come close to being able to imagine the horrors they had experienced?

Suddenly Ilse wanted her to understand. She wanted all these Americans who sat in their offices in Washington and here at the fort making decisions for Franz and her and the others as if they were incapable of thinking or speaking for themselves to grasp the reality of what they were expecting the refugees to do when the war ended. She would not add to Franz’s worry by becoming involved directly. Instead she would introduce Suzanne to the one person she had met since coming to the shelter who Ilse knew would not tolerate the reporter’s idealism.

She scanned the crowd for Gisele St. Germaine, the French actress she had met in the laundry. With her sarcasm and wry sense of humor, Gisele had had all the women laughing at their situation and snickering at her impersonation of Adolf Hitler. Gisele had made the dictator seem so ridiculous that she robbed him of his power, and afterward the women had talked seriously about how it could be possible that this former housepainter and paperhanger had been able to turn the world upside down.

“Good afternoon, Mrs. Schneider,” Suzanne said, extending her hand in greeting. “It’s so good to see you again.”

Liesl was tugging at Suzanne’s arm. “Suzanne?”

“Liesl, this is Miss Randolph,” Ilse corrected.

“Oh that’s all—” Suzanne caught Ilse’s look and changed her words. “That’s right, Liesl.”

Liesl frowned. “And then am I Miss Schneider?”

Suzanne smiled. “If you like.”