William Krueger - Ordinary Grace

I was not ignorant of sex. I simply associated it with married people and I understood that men and women who indulged in sexual intercourse before marriage were doomed in many ways and I couldn’t imagine Ariel doomed in any way. Yet in the dark corners of the place so newly opened to my thinking there were already items I’d thoughtlessly stored there. Ariel’s late night rendezvous. Her sudden reluctance to leave New Bremen for Juilliard which had been the dream of her life. Her inexplicable tears when I’d caught her alone recently. In the hours since I’d left the quarry I’d come to realize that not only was she in love with Karl Brandt but she’d probably been sleeping with him as well. At thirteen I had no idea what to do with that.

Then as if conjured by the devil of my own thinking Karl Brandt pulled alongside us in his red Triumph with the top down.

“Hey, you two goofballs,” he cried with friendly familiarity, “where you going?”

I stared at him, trying to fix in my understanding the new contours of his existence in my family’s life. What I knew without doubt was that I liked Karl Brandt. I liked him still. I’d seen no arrogance in him, had never felt patronized by him, and in all the times I’d been around him when he was a guest in our home I hadn’t once sensed in his feelings for Ariel anything but genuine affection. But what did I know?

“Looking for Gus,” Jake said.

“Haven’t seen him,” Karl said. “But I’m headed up to the college to pick up Ariel after the rehearsal. You guys up for a spin in my little red demon here?”

“Heck, yes,” Jake said.

Karl leaned over and popped the door.

There was no backseat so Jake and I were forced to squeeze into the passenger’s seat together.

Karl said, “All set?”

He shot away from the curb and almost immediately the wind was a fury all around us.

We didn’t go directly to the college which was on the hill not far from the hospital that overlooked Luther Park. Karl zipped all over New Bremen for a while and then hit a couple of the back roads beyond the town limits where he really leaned on the accelerator. The wind howled and Jake like a madman howled with it and Karl’s gold hair flew around like corn silk in a tornado and he laughed with genuine pleasure but I found myself holding back as I looked at him, marveling at the ease of his life and at the same time feeling the slow invasion of a resentment that had never been there before.

As we pulled back into town and Karl braked to a reasonable speed and the wind died around us I asked, “Are you going to marry Ariel?”

It took a moment for him to swing his gaze toward me and I thought I sensed in his hesitation something that had nothing to do with careful driving but was born of a reluctance to look me in the eye.

“We haven’t talked about marriage, Frankie.”

“You don’t want to marry her?”

“We both have other plans right now.”

“College?”

“Yeah, college.”

“Ariel doesn’t want to go to Juilliard.”

“I know. She’s told me.”

“Do you know why?”

“Look, Frankie, this isn’t a discussion I want to have with you. This is between Ariel and me.”

“Do you love her?”

He looked at the road and I knew it was because he could not look at me.

“She loves you,” I said.

“Frankie, you’ve got no idea what you’re talking about.”

“She told me love is complicated. It seems easy enough to me. You love each other and you get married and that’s how it works.”

“Not always, Frankie. Not always.” He said this with such heaviness that he sounded crushed.

The college was small and its primary purpose was to turn out Lutheran ministers. It had an excellent music program and a fine auditorium which was where we found my mother and Ariel and to my great surprise Emil Brandt. The rehearsal was just ending when we arrived and the singers who were a mix of college students and townspeople were dispersing. My mother and Ariel and Brandt all stood together at a baby grand piano that had been set on the stage. I knew that Brandt had agreed to play for the chorale and that his participation had been a huge part of the publicity for the event but I figured that considering his recent brush with death the idea had been scrapped. Not so, it appeared.

Karl bounded up the steps and greeted his uncle and my mother and gave Ariel a peck on the cheek and said to her, “All set?”

“You two go on,” my mother told them. “I’ll drive Emil home.”

Karl took Ariel’s hand and drew her off the stage. As he passed where we stood in the aisle he said, “You guys are on your own getting home.”

On the stage my mother and Brandt stood together and I had the sense that she was waiting for her sons to leave so that she could be alone with him. She wore a pair of dungarees and a blue denim shirt over a white top and she’d bunched the shirttails around her waist and tied them in a loose knot in a way that I’d seen Judy Garland do in a movie about show people.

“Frank,” she said to me in a dramatic tone, “you and Jake better get started if you’re going to make it home before dark.”

Jake in obedience turned without a word and started out of the auditorium. The lights had begun to wink off leaving the seats in darkness. I remained a moment longer, certain that something in that auditorium was unfinished.

From the stage my mother said, “Go on, Frank.”

I followed Jake into the lobby which was lit now by only a few dim overheads. My brother said, “I have to go to the bathroom.”

I pointed down the hall. “That way,” I told him. “I’ll wait here.”

The door to the auditorium stood open and the acoustics inside were excellent. My mother and Emil Brandt were in deep conversation on the stage and even in the lobby where I stood waiting for Jake I could hear every word.

Brandt said, “It’s a beautiful piece she’s composed, Ruth.”

“She’s learned a great deal from you, Emil.”

“She was born with talent. Yours.”

“She’ll do a lot more with hers than I ever did with mine.”

I heard a simple melody tapped out on the piano and then Brandt said, “Remember that?”

“Of course. You wrote it for me.”

“A present for your sixteenth birthday.”

“And two days later you were gone to New York without a word of good-bye.”

“If I knew then what I know now maybe I’d have made different decisions. Maybe I wouldn’t have this face of mine and I would still have eyes and I would have children like yours. She’s so much like you, Ruth. I hear you in her voice, I feel you in her touch.”

“She adores you, Emil. And I will always love you.”

“No, you love Nathan.”

“And you.”

“Differently.”

“Yes. Now.”

“He’s a lucky man.”

“And you, Emil, are a man much blessed too. Can’t you see that?”

“I have moments of such darkness, Ruth. Such darkness you can’t imagine.”

“Then call me, Emil. When the darkness comes, call me. I’ll be there for you, I swear it.”

In the course of their conversation I’d drifted slowly to the auditorium door and I could see them on the stage. They sat together on the piano bench. My mother’s hand was pressed to Brandt’s left cheek, the one bubbled with thick scar tissue. As I watched, Brandt’s own hand rose and covered hers.

“I love you,” he said.

“You look so tired,” she replied, then took his hand and kissed it gently and said, “I should get you home.”

She stood up. Like a man old beyond his years, Emil Brandt rose with her.

“What’s it mean? Skag?”

Jake lay in his bed in the dark on his side of the room.