William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

After a moment she asked, “Did the music go well at church?”

“Yes,” I said. “But not as good as when you’re there.”

She nodded and although she didn’t smile I could tell she was pleased.

“Is he going to be okay? Mr. Brandt, I mean.”

She stubbed out her cigarette in a square glass ashtray beside her and stared at the black smudge and answered slowly, “Emil is complicated. But I’m sure he’ll recover.”

“Why’d he do it?” I spoke quietly so that the others wouldn’t hear. “I mean, he’s famous and everything. Is it because of his face?”

“He’s a beautiful man, Frankie,” she said. “His face isn’t important.”

Maybe to him it is, I thought but didn’t say.

Julia Brandt stood up and walked toward us. She wore a pink dress with black piping and her high heels were black and pink to match. Around her neck was a string of pearls and her earrings were pearl too. Her hair was as black as a moonless night and her eyes dark as cold cinders. I didn’t like Julia Brandt and I knew my mother didn’t like her either.

“Ruth,” Mrs. Brandt said looking pained, “this is all so horrible.”

“Yes,” my mother said.

Mrs. Brandt reached into the purse she carried and pulled out a gold cigarette case and snapped it open. She held it out to my mother in offering and my mother shook her head and said, “No thank you, Julia.” Mrs. Brandt slipped a cigarette free and tapped it on the lid of the gold case and put the case away and brought out a gold lighter with a little sapphire in the center. She slid the cigarette between her rubied lips and flipped the lighter open and thumbed the striker and touched the flame to the tip of her cigarette and lifted her head high like a wild animal about to howl and blew out a flourish of smoke.

“Tragic,” she said. She looked toward the corner where Karl and Ariel sat together, and deep in the dark cinders of her eyes little flames seemed to have been kindled. She said, “Though it’s fortunate in a way.”

“Fortunate?” My mother’s voice and face were taut.

“For Ariel and Karl, I mean. That it’s happened now while they still have each other for comfort. In a few weeks, they’ll be off in different worlds, very far from each other.”

“Julia,” my mother said, “there is nothing fortunate about this except that Emil didn’t succeed.”

Mrs. Brandt drew on her cigarette and smiled and smoke escaped slowly from her lips. “You and Emil have always been close,” she said. “I remember when we all thought you might marry. We might have been sisters. She carefully eyed my mother’s Sunday dress and shook her head. “I can’t imagine being married to a minister, always having to dress so. .” She drew on her cigarette again, let out a billow of smoke, and finished, “. . sensibly. But then you have a wonderful life, a very spiritual life, I suppose.”

“And I’m sure you have a very different life, Julia.”

“It can be a trial, the responsibility of being a Brandt, Ruth.”

“A terrible burden,” my mother agreed.

“You have no idea,” Mrs. Brandt said with a sigh.

“Oh but I do, Julia. It’s clear from all those worry lines on your face. Excuse me,” she said sliding from the sill. “I need to get some air.”

My mother walked from the waiting area and Mrs. Brandt took another long draw on her cigarette and said under her breath, “You perfect bitch.” Then she looked down at me and smiled and turned away.

Jake succeeded in coaxing Lise from her brother’s hospital room and Jake and my father and Axel all drove her home together in Mr. Brandt’s Cadillac. My mother followed in the Packard along with Ariel and me. In his sports car Karl returned his mother to her big mansion. Emil was left alone to get the rest everyone said he needed.

Because Ariel and Jake were familiar visitors to the house and because they were willing it was decided that they would stay with Lise until Emil was able to return home. My mother said she’d pack overnight bags for them. When everyone left I stuck around to keep Jake and Ariel company for a while.

There were curtains over the windows but the interior walls of Emil Brandt’s home were basically bare. The blind man, I figured, cared not at all about appearance and Lise Brandt was such a mystery to me that I didn’t know what to think about her. There was little furniture and it was placed far apart and Ariel had told me that because of Mr. Brandt’s blindness it was never moved. There were no bookshelves, no books. But there were flowers, a profusion of flowers arranged beautifully in vases set about every room. The center of the house seemed to be the grand piano that took up the entire space of what had probably once been the dining room. Ariel had told me this was where Emil Brandt practiced and composed. Near the piano sat expensive-looking reel-to-reel recording equipment which, according to Ariel, Brandt used while composing since he couldn’t see to write on a score sheet. There was a fine hi-fi system in the living room with enormous speakers and a whole wall of shelves filled with records. I considered the spare look of the house, and thought about the texture of the furniture upholstery which was soft as a flower petal, and about the fragrance of the flowers that perfumed the rooms, and about the piano and the stereo speakers that filled the house with music, and I realized that Emil Brandt had constructed a world of those senses he still possessed.

The kitchen was different from the rest of the house. This was Lise’s territory. It was large and neatly arranged and colorful and had a wide sliding door along the back wall that opened onto a beautiful deck that overlooked the gardens and the river.

It was late afternoon by the time we were settled and Lise Brandt set about making dinner. Ariel asked if she could help, facing Lise and enunciating clearly so Lise could read her lips. Lise shook her head and motioned Ariel out but she beckoned Jake to come and give her a hand. We ate at a table in the kitchen, ate a better meal than my mother had ever put together. Fried chicken, mashed potatoes and gravy, buttered carrots, baked squash, all of it delicious. I thought that despite his blindness Emil Brandt was a lucky man. After dinner Ariel offered to do the dishes but once again Lise shooed her away and accepted help only from Jake.

It was nearing sunset when Lise put on her overalls and signed to Jake that there was still work to be done in the garden. I could tell he was not inclined but he said okay. He also asked if it would be all right if I helped and after a few moments of consideration Lise nodded. Ariel stayed inside and the music she played on the grand piano flowed out the windows of the house. From what I knew of the music of Emil Brandt I was pretty sure she was playing one of his compositions, a piece in a minor key, sad and beautiful. In the large toolshed Lise took a pick, a shovel, and a crowbar from where they hung on a wall and handed a tool to each of us. I got the pick, Jake the shovel, and Lise kept the crowbar. She led us to an area of recently turned earth along the back picket fence. It was clear she was expanding her garden but she’d encountered an obstacle, a rock the size of a prizewinning pumpkin near the center of the new plot. It was deeply embedded in a layer of clay and probably had been there since the Glacial River Warren tumbled it down from the Dakotas. We stood for a minute eyeing it from all angles.

I lifted my hand to get Lise’s attention. “Maybe you could just plant around it,” I suggested, speaking carefully so that she could read my lips.

She shook her head furiously and pointed at my pick and mimed digging.

“All right then,” I said. “Stand back.”