William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

My mother gave me a scathing look. “You won’t starve. I’ll put something together.”

The truth was that it was fine with me. I wasn’t at all fond of tuna casserole. And I thought that if she and my father were driving out to Peter Klement’s house I might go along and tell Peter about the dead man. I was really warming to the effect this story seemed to have on those who heard it.

Ariel came into the kitchen dressed for work at the country club.

My mother asked, “Would you like a sandwich before you go?”

“No, I’ll grab something when I get there.” Ariel lingered and leaned against the counter and said, “What if I didn’t go to Juilliard this fall?”

My father who’d plucked a banana from the bunch on the top of the refrigerator and was peeling it said, “We’d send you to work in the salt mines instead.”

“I mean,” Ariel said, “it would be cheaper if I went to Mankato State.”

“You’re on a scholarship,” my father pointed out and stuffed a good third of the banana into his mouth.

“I know, but you and Mom will still have to pay a lot.”

“Let us worry about that,” my father said.

“I could continue to study with Emil Brandt. He’s as good as anyone at Juilliard.”

Emil Brandt had been Ariel’s teacher since we’d come to New Bremen five years before. He was in fact much of the reason we’d come. My mother wanted Ariel to study with the best composer and pianist in Minnesota and that was Brandt. He happened also to be my mother’s good friend since childhood.

I learned my mother’s history with Brandt gradually over the whole course of my life. Some things I knew in 1961, others were revealed to me as I grew older. In those days I understood that when she was hardly more than a girl my mother had been briefly engaged to Brandt who was several years her senior. I’d also gathered that by the standards of the staid German population in New Bremen, Emil Brandt was a wild one, both a prodigiously talented musician and one of the high and mighty Brandts who knew he was destined for greater things. Shortly after he’d proposed to my mother Brandt had left her flat, gone off to New York City to seek his fortune without so much as a by your leave. By the summer of 1961, however, all of that was ancient history and my mother counted Emil Brandt as one of her dearest friends. Partly this was due to the healing property of time but I believe it was also because when he finally came home to New Bremen, Brandt was a very damaged man and my mother felt a great deal of compassion for him.

Mother stopped what she was doing and turned a stern eye on her daughter. “Is this about Karl? You don’t want to leave your boyfriend?”

“That’s not it at all, Mom.”

“Then what is it? Because it’s not about money. We settled that issue long ago. Your grandfather promised anything you need.”

My father swallowed a mouthful of banana and said, “She doesn’t need anything from him.”

My mother ignored him and kept her eyes on Ariel.

Ariel tried again: “I don’t know that I want to go so far away from my family.”

“That’s a feeble excuse, Ariel Louise, and you know it. What’s going on?”

“I just. . Never mind,” she said and rushed to the door and left the house.

My father stood looking after her. “What do you suppose that was all about?”

“Karl,” my mother said. “I never liked the idea of those two going steady. I knew he would end up a distraction.”

“Everybody goes steady these days, Ruth.”

“They’re too serious, Nathan. They spend all their free time together.”

“She went out with other friends last night,” my father said.

I thought about Ariel sneaking off after she’d returned from the drive-in theater and I wondered if it was Karl she’d gone to meet.

My mother snatched up a pack of cigarettes from the windowsill over the sink and angrily tapped out a cigarette and struck a match and from behind a swirl of smoke said, “If Ariel’s thinking that she might marry instead of going to college, I’ll be happy to set that girl straight right now.”

“Ruth,” my father said, “we don’t know anything of the sort. But it would be a good idea to sit down with her and find out what’s going on. Discuss it calmly.”

“I’ll calmly tan her backside,” my mother said.

My father smiled. “You’ve never hit the children, Ruth.”

“She’s not a child.”

“All the more reason to talk to her like an adult. We’ll do it tonight after she’s home from work.”

When they were ready to drive to the Klements’ house I asked if I could go along to see Peter which meant that Jake would have to come too. My father saw no reason for leaving us behind especially in light of the constraint Jake and I were under not to go out of the yard without his permission. Jake didn’t mind going. He brought along the most recent issues of Aquaman and Green Lantern to read in the car. We piled into the Packard and headed for Cadbury.

Mr. Klement operated a small engine repair business out of a shop that was a converted barn next to his house. His father had owned two hundred acres just outside town and on his death had passed it to his son who had neither the disposition nor the inclination to be a farmer. Travis Klement sold the arable acreage but kept the house and outbuildings and established his business there.

We arrived midafternoon and the heat lay oppressive on the land. We parked in the gravel drive in the shade of a big walnut tree. My mother took her casserole and my father took the bowl of Jell-O salad and they climbed the front steps and stood on the rickety porch and knocked at the screen door. Jake and I hung back. From the yard we could see the steeples of Cadbury just a quarter mile north. Between the Klements’ house and town Sioux Creek crossed the road. Under the narrow bridge, on those occasions when we were able to slip away from some dull church function, we’d hung out with Peter and caught crawdads and had once observed a family of foxes scurrying into a thicket along the creek bank.

Peter came to the door and stood behind the screen and my father said, “Good afternoon, Peter. Is your mother home?”

“Just a minute,” Peter said. He looked beyond my parents toward Jake and me in the yard and then he turned back and disappeared into the dark inside the house. A moment later his mother took his place. She was a woman plain of face but had long gold hair that she often wore in a braid and that hung like a silk rope down the middle of her back and that I always thought kept her from being in appearance completely unremarkable. She wore a simple sleeveless yellow dress which was something I’d heard my mother call a shift. She didn’t open the door or look directly at my parents but kept her face behind the dark of the screen and tilted downward as if fascinated by the unpainted porch boards and when she spoke it was in a voice so quiet that I could not hear what she said. This was odd behavior toward a minister and his family. People usually invited us in. I wandered onto the porch and stood near enough that I could hear the adults talking.

“We so missed you this morning, Amelia,” my mother was saying. “The music isn’t at all the same without you.”

Mrs. Klement said, “I’m sorry, Ruth.”

“We made do of course. But, Amelia, I hope you recover and can be with us for practice on Wednesday.”

“I’m sure I will,” Mrs. Klement said.

“Well, anyway, we just wanted to bring over a little something for supper so that you wouldn’t have to worry about feeding your family and you could rest and recover. Nathan?”

My father held out the bowl of Jell-O salad and my mother offered the tuna casserole. Mrs. Klement seemed uncertain about taking them. Finally she called for Peter and when he came she nudged the screen open only far enough for the dishes to be passed through. Then she stepped back quickly and let the screen door slap shut.