When We Meet Again (17 page)

Inside, a cheerful blond waitress chatted with my father in German and showed us to a small table in the nearly empty restaurant’s back corner. The dark-paneled walls and the exposed wood beams of the ceiling reminded me a bit of a cellar, but the windows let in enough light that the room seemed to glow. Three gray-haired men, all wearing suspenders, were clustered around a table against the opposite wall, each of them clutching the handle of a giant beer stein.

My father followed my gaze and smiled. “When in Rome,” he said. He scanned the beer list and asked if I felt like a drink. I nodded, and he helped me decipher the beer offerings, then he flagged our waitress down and ordered a Hacker-Pschorr Münchener Gold for himself and a Hofbräu München Original for me.

“You speak German really well,” I said as she hurried away to get our order. It felt strange to compliment him; I was much more accustomed to carrying around a chip on my shoulder. “I never knew.”

He shrugged. “I took it in college for a few years. My accent is terrible.”

“But you’re fluent?”

“Mostly. I brush up every now and again.”

The waitress returned a moment later with two giant glass beer steins. She plunked one down in front of me and the other in front of my father, splashing a bit of beer on the table in the process. She asked him something in German, and he replied with a smile. She nodded and walked away.

“She wanted to know if we’re ready to order,” he explained. “I told her we needed a minute with the menu.”

I looked at my huge beer and then at the unintelligible food descriptions, feeling suddenly overwhelmed.

“Don’t worry, I’ll translate,” my father said, and though it felt strange to rely on him for anything, I knew I didn’t have much of a choice. Ten minutes later, I had ordered a
Schlachtplatte—
a platter of Bavarian sausages, potatoes, and sauerkraut—and he had ordered
Nürnberger
sausages with a side of
Käsespätzle
, which he explained were German egg noodles with onions and cheese. We toasted, and we each took a giant sip of beer. I wasn’t usually a beer drinker, but after traipsing around Munich for a few hours, the Hofbräu was incredibly refreshing.

While we waited for our food, my father called up the Wikipedia article on Ralph Gaertner again and began to read the brief biography of the artist aloud.

“Ralph Gaertner, born February 10, 1921, died just this February. He was a realist painter,” he began. “He was one of the most well-known American artists of the 1960s and 1970s, helping to shape the resurgence of realism in the United States.”

“He only died earlier this year?” I asked, feeling strangely crushed. After all, there was no real proof that he was in any way connected to my grandmother or to the painting we’d received. Still, it felt like another possible lead vanishing. What if we could have reached him, and he could have pointed us in the right direction? Now we’d never know.

My father nodded and looked back at his phone. “It says he was born in Germany, and that he moved to the United States in the 1950s, eventually settling in Atlanta.” He read a bit more and added, “Gaertner was known for his vibrant skyscapes. Every one of his paintings featured a signature image: a woman in the shadows, with her back to the artist. Sometimes, the woman—known simply as the Gaertner Angel—was in the foreground. Sometimes, she was in the background, in the middle of a crowd. He refused to discuss the significance of the imagery, and art critics have long speculated that the familiar feminine silhouette was meant to represent the everywoman. Some say she’s supposed to represent justice, and others say she’s supposed to be a humanization of the Statue of Liberty, to honor his experience as an immigrant. But one thing always remained constant: Gaertner never painted her face. ‘It’s too intimate,’ he told
Newsweek
in a 1995 interview. ‘Painting a person’s face and revealing it to the world is like a form of robbery.’ ”

My father looked up at me and frowned. “So that seems to support what Nicola Schubert told us. The painting you have definitely couldn’t be a Gaertner, because it features the woman’s face.”

“But it also includes a beautiful sky,” I argued. “And doesn’t it say Gaertner’s known for that?”

“Maybe that’s why Nicola thought of Gaertner when she saw the painting.” My father scanned the Wikipedia entry in silence for a moment. “There isn’t much here about his background. It says he favored watercolor, drybrush, and egg tempera, much like Andrew Wyeth, who was a contemporary of his.” He read some more and looked up. “Emily, I don’t know. I can see the similarities between Gaertner’s style and the style of whoever painted our painting. But would he encourage his pupils to paint faces if he didn’t believe in it?”

“Maybe,” I say slowly. But I had to admit that my father was right. We were almost back to square one.

“Penny for your thoughts,” my father said, and I realized I’d been staring into space for the last few minutes.

“I was just wondering if we’ve run out of leads.” I took a sip of my beer. “Maybe we shouldn’t have come here.”

“But we
do
have a lead. Bettina mentioned the Ponce Gallery in Atlanta.”

“I guess.”

“Besides, I’m glad we came,” he said after a pause. “It’s giving us a chance to reconnect a bit.”

The words rubbed me the wrong way. “We’re not really reconnecting, though, are we?” I said, hating myself a little when I saw hurt flicker across my father’s face for a second. “I mean, I appreciate you being here with me, and I appreciate you springing for the tickets. But don’t make this into more than it is.”

“Emily,” he said after a pause, “this is the most we’ve talked to each other in years. That has to mean something.”

“I think you’re reading too much into it.” I clenched my hands into fists in my lap. “It’s not like I’m going to give you the silent treatment while we work on something together. This is about Grandma Margaret, not you and me.”

“I just want to believe that maybe there’s a day in the future when you’ll think about opening the door a crack. I can’t begin to make things up to you until you start to let me in.”

I opened my mouth to reply, but we were interrupted by the arrival of our food, delivered by our waitress and an equally cheerful-looking waiter with a thick mustache and beard. Our plates were heaped so high it was almost comical; I couldn’t imagine eating that much sausage and sauerkraut in a lifetime. But my stomach growled, and I dug in.

The food was savory and incredible, and for a few minutes, we ate without talking. My dad was the one to break the silence between us.

“You know I love you, Emily,” he said. “Always have, always will.”

I didn’t reply right away. There was a lump in my throat that had no business being there. I had to remind myself that the words meant nothing if he didn’t have the strength of character to do right by me. And for so much of his life, he hadn’t. “Yeah, well, forgive me if I have trouble believing you. You used to tell me you loved me when I was a kid too, but it was awfully easy for you to vanish when it became convenient for you, wasn’t it?”

“Biggest mistake I ever made.”

“I know you want me to believe that,” I said finally. “But you can’t erase the past.”

“I know.”

“So why are you trying to rewrite history? We’re never going to be buddies, you and me.”

“I hope you know that makes me profoundly sad.”

“But it’s your fault!” I could hear my voice rising an octave, and I knew my blood pressure was rising along with it. “You can’t just sit there and act like this is some sort of unfortunate thing out of your control. You screwed up. Then you spent years and years pretending I didn’t exist, because it was easier for you that way. And now, suddenly, you think you can just stroll back in and we’ll be friends again? What, because you’re a good German translator?”

My dad opened and closed his mouth without saying anything, and I tried not to be bothered by his wounded expression. I wasn’t sure whether he was speechless because I’d hit the nail on the head or because he was appalled that I was such a terrible daughter. “I really hurt you,” he finally said.

I blinked a few times. “Yes.”

“I’m sorry.”

When I looked up at him, he held my gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he said again, more firmly this time. “And I’ll keep telling you that for the rest of my life, because it’s truer than you’ll ever know. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. I left because I was a fool, and then I didn’t know how to fix it. I know you think I rode off into the sunset and didn’t think about you anymore, but the truth is, you were with me every day. I just didn’t know how to undo what I had done. It was my own weakness, pure and simple. I have to live with those regrets every day, and I know I deserve every angry word you say to me. I just hope that someday, you’ll understand, and you can forgive at least a little bit of what I’ve done.”

I didn’t reply, because I couldn’t seem to summon words. It wasn’t just that I’d never heard my father declare his emotions so plainly. It was that he was echoing some of my own sentiments about Nick and Catherine.
I just didn’t know how to undo what I had done.
It made me uneasy to be reminded of how closely I had followed in his footsteps.

But I didn’t know how to forgive him. And if I couldn’t forgive him, how could I ever expect Nick and my daughter to forgive me for walking away? Was my father living with the same kind of guilt I was day in and day out? Maybe I owed it to him—and to myself, in a way—to try harder to understand where he was coming from, but the thought of letting down my walls was terrifying. It was my anger that kept me safe.

We ate in silence for a few more minutes before I pushed away my meal. My appetite was gone.

“I know you mean well,” I said finally. “I’m just not ready to move forward with you, okay?”

“Understood.” My father looked like he wanted to say something else, but then he shook his head and placed a hand on my arm. “Let’s change the subject, then. Would you like to see a bit more of Munich this evening?”

I shook my head. I wasn’t capable of switching tracks that easily. “I think I need to catch up on sleep. And I want to read a bit more about Ralph Gaertner and see if I can find any connection between him and Grandma Margaret. Maybe he was a POW in Belle Creek too.”

“I’ll walk you back to the hotel, then,” my father said, pulling his credit card from his wallet and beckoning to the waitress. I reached for my wallet too, but he waved me away.

When we walked outside, twilight had already fallen over the city, and I was struck by the thought that the rich purple sky here looked a lot like the sky over Belle Creek in the painting. The city had come alive with twinkling lights, and the fading sun cast an ethereal glow over the rooftops as it sent its last rays over the horizon.

As my father held the door to the hotel lobby for me and walked with me to the elevator, I couldn’t quite believe that we were here, together, on the other side of the world. What would my mother say?

“This is you,” my father said, pausing at my doorway and waiting while I fumbled around in my purse for my room key.

“Thanks for walking me back.” I felt suddenly awkward. “So are you heading out again?”

“I think I’ll walk for a little while,” he said. “But I should be back in an hour or two. And it looks like I’m getting e-mail access on my phone, so if you need anything in the meantime, just shoot me a message. I’ll keep checking it.”

“Thanks, but I’ll be fine.”

He leaned in for a hug, and I felt strange as I hugged back. I couldn’t remember the last time we had done that.

When he pulled away, he cleared his throat, took a big step back and said, “Good night, Emily. I’ll see you in the morning.” He was walking away before I had a chance to reply.

I
woke up just past six in the morning, disoriented and confused. It took me a few seconds to realize where I was—a hotel bed in Munich, Germany.

I turned on the small lamp on my night table and sat up. Had my father and I really connected a bit last night? For the first time in nearly twenty years? I didn’t know quite what to make of it, and in my foggy state, it felt almost like a dream.

I spent the next two hours on the Internet, clicking through my usual roster of adoption search sites to see if there was anything new from an eighteen-year-old girl who could possibly be my daughter. It was, as usual, an exercise in futility, and I finally shut the computer down, frustrated.

I met my father in the lobby at nine, and we grabbed to-go coffees in the hotel’s dining room before heading back out to Franz Dahler’s apartment. The streets of Munich were quiet as we walked; the Marienplatz was uncrowded, the market not yet bustling.

“It feels like we have the city to ourselves,” my father said with a smile.

I nodded my agreement, but I didn’t reply. The fact that I understood him a little better meant that something had shifted between us, and now the ground beneath me felt unstable and foreign.

We buzzed Franz Dahler’s apartment once again, and there was no answer. My father and I exchanged disappointed looks. “Let’s try once more,” he said.

I nodded and pushed the button beside the name Dahler again. We were greeted with silence, and dejected, I shrugged and began to walk away. But just then, a voice crackled from the speakers.

“
Hallo?
” It was a man’s voice. “
Wer ist da?
”

I looked to my father, confused, but he was already responding in a string of rapid German. I heard my name and his, and then I heard him say
Franz Dahler
.

There was a pause, and then the man said over the speaker, “
Ja. Kommen Sie herein.
”

My father grinned at me as the door buzzed and he pulled it open. “He said to come up. It’s Franz Dahler, Emily. We’ve found him.”

We climbed three flights of stairs and found an old man waiting for us on the landing. He looked like he was in his eighties or nineties, with snow white hair, pale wrinkled skin, and cloudy blue eyes. “
Sie sind
Victor?” he asked, looking at us suspiciously. He asked something else, and my father replied in German, gesturing briefly to me.