Lesley Kagen - Good Graces

There are also some other people in the neighborhood that have grudges against our old landlords; my sister isn’t the only one. Even though we come from different countries and like different food, there is one special thing that holds us together. We’re all Catholics. The Goldmans aren’t. They are Jewish, and everybody seems ticked off at them in general for killing Christ, but I think that’s unfair. That’d be like blaming me for the Great Potato Famine starving all those people or Eric the Red pillaging all those towns.

“How did your schooling go this year, Liebchen ?” she asks.

Mrs. Goldman was a teacher at a college before she came to this country. So she’s smart. She knows that bad things can happen when you least expect them. Her daughter got taken away by these people called the Nazis and they never brought her back again. Her name was Gretchen. She died taking a shower, which broke my heart, but didn’t shock me. (If you watch Mr. Wizard as much as I do, you learn that many accidents take place in the bathroom.)

“Sixth grade wasn’t too bad,” I tell her. “I got all As except for a D in arithmetic. I don’t really have a head for those problems. I’m not good at them.”

“You are good enough,” she says, patting me on the head. “And vhat about your sister? How is she doing in her studies?”

“She’s…” I don’t want to tell Mrs. Goldman that Troo might be getting kicked out of Mother of Good Hope School for her impure behavior. “She’s doin’ great in gym class.”

Mrs. Goldman is gazing down at the curb at my sister’s back. “Are you keeping the vatchful eye on her?”

“Tryin’ to.” Troo cannot stay still for long. She is throwing at car tires when they pass by, timing it so the ball bounces back to her.

“That is good,” Mrs. Goldman says. “And how is your mutter feeling these days?”

I picture her this morning in the shade of the garden with her TV tray in front of her and our collie licking her toes. “I wouldn’t say that she’s a hundred percent in the pink yet, but she’s better. She does jigsaw puzzles to pass the time until her legs get built back up.”

Mrs. Goldman says, “It makes me glad to hear that Helen is on the mend. I like those puzzles, too.”

“Really?” I get a bright idea. I’m gonna bring some of Mother’s old ones over to Mrs. Goldman to make up for being such a bad friend to her. There’s a bunch of those kitties playing with yarn puzzles gathering dust on the shelf in our front closet. “Do you like cats? ’Cause if you do, I might have a big surprise in store for you.”

Mrs. Goldman says in a more serious voice, “I like the katze but am not much for surprises… but for this… the one you have given me today, I am so very glad. So happy that you have come to see me. I have missed your curious mind.” She picks up my hands in hers. She has numbers tattooed on her arm. “Your coming to see me today… it is kismet.”

I never heard that word before. “Kismet?”

“ Schicksal ,” she says. “Fate. You understand the meaning of this?”

“Ohhh, yeah, sure,” I say, glad. I don’t like it when I don’t get what somebody is talking about. They could be saying something important that I should be paying attention to and it’s flying right over my head. “They teach us all about fate in Catechism class. It means that God’s got everything already planned out for us. That our life is in His hands.”

I think if that really is true, then God must have the worst case of butterfingers. There is no other explanation why He would let Bobby Brophy lick the inside of my ear. And make Daddy crash on the way home from a baseball game. And take Mrs. Goldman’s little daughter away from her. I know He’s supposed to work in mysterious ways, but I don’t think that’s mysterious. He’s being a bully and I know all about them.

The grunting man who was lugging the trunk down to the taxicab comes halfway back up the steps, mops his forehead with the bottom of his T-shirt and says to Mrs. Goldman, “That all of it?” and you can tell he sure as heck hopes it is. He’s the color of boiled rhubarb.

Mrs. Goldman says, “Thank you. That is it. Vee vill be right there.”

I got so caught up in becoming friends with her again that I put what she’s doing out of my mind. “You’re leavin’,” I say, feeling the bottom drop out of my heart.

“ Ja. Mr. Goldman and I are taking of a trip,” she says. “To Rheinland.”

“Rhinelander?” I say, completely astounded. That’s the home of Camp Towering Pines. “Troo and me just got back from there!”

For a person who doesn’t like surprises, my old friend is in for one of the worst of her life. I’m about to warn her when she says, “I think perhaps you misunderstand me, Liebchen. Otto and I are returning to the Motherland. To Germany.”

“Oooh.” Otto has been the man of her dreams for over forty years. I’ve heard him speaking from behind the curtains lots of times, but I have never actually laid eyes on him. Troo thinks he doesn’t come out of the house much because he’s a hunchback, but I think it’s because he’s shy about his English not being so good.

“My brother… he is ill and vee are going back to run Hans’s clock shop for him until he is feeling better.”

She’s got a bellowing grandfather clock and some silly cuckoos and there’s another that chimes like the bells at church. I could really count on those clocks to get me through the night when we lived upstairs. Now I know where they came from.

“I’m so sorry your brother’s sick,” I say. It is my responsibility as a Catholic to try to make her feel better even if I can’t count it as a charitable work. Doing a good deed for a Jew is frowned upon. I don’t think it’s an actual sin to do something nice for them, but it could be. “Is there anything I can do to help you? I’m really good at packing. I watched Mother get ready for the hospital. She put tissue paper between the layers so her clothes didn’t get wrinkled and sprinkled perfume on them so she’d smell good and not like shots when she came home.”

“ Nein , thank you for the kindness offer, but the packing it is finished. But there is something that occurred to me the moment you appeared on this porch, Liebchen .” She raises her finger straight above her head. “Vere you familiar vith the Peterson family that vas renting of the upstairs?”

“Not really.” We heard they didn’t have any kids so nobody really bothered with them.

“The husband lost his job at the cookie factory. It is empty now.”

Lots of times it felt that way when we were living there so I don’t look up at the second-story windows.

“I entrusted this job to Officer Rasmussen, but he is very busy with being a detective and his new family.” Mrs. Goldman winks at me and it is so adorable because she is not very good at it. “I know what good attention you pay. Do you think you could assist your father? Keep your eye on the house while vee are gone?”

She’s right. This is fate. And such a great way to make everything up to her. “Sure I could help watch the house. Don’t worry about a thing. What about the garden?”

When I still lived here, me and Mrs. Goldman planted tiny seeds together in the backyard and soon juicy red tomatoes rounded on the vines and carrot tops pushed up so determined, which has always made me wonder how something so delicate could at the same time be so strong. We also put in purple pansies and yellow daisies. Daddy only grew crops but Mrs. Goldman thinks that while having good things to eat is important, something lovely to look at fills you up in a different kind of way. She also taught me on those early mornings that people are a lot like a garden. Not everybody is beautiful or scrumptious. There are some weeds that you’ve gotta watch out for that would be happy to choke the life out of you and she was right.