Lesley Kagen - Whistling in the Dark

I wheeled her down the hall and handed her off to the old nurse, the same one who took care of Daddy. She looked at me like she didn’t remember me when she helped Mother back into bed.

I was afraid to go near Helen, so I stood in the dark corner of the room. Maybe she wasn’t my real mother either. Maybe Troo wasn’t my sister or even Nell.

She called over to me in a weak voice, “Come closer.” She sounded so desperate, I couldn’t resist. “Forgive me,” she whispered and then fell right asleep.

I sat down next to her while the rain streamed down her window, the white sheets gliding up and down with her slow breathing. Now I knew what that sad look was that she’d always been giving me. Mother loved Officer Rasmussen and I was part of that love. Forgive her? Not in a million years.

But then I remembered Daddy and how I’d sat in a room just like this one after his crash. And how he sounded when he told me he forgave Mother. It was with true love in his heart. So I sat there for a while and thought about it all. And then I surprised myself, and did the most charitable thing I had ever done while I watched Mother sleeping, maybe dreaming. I decided to forgive her for gettin’ some from Officer Rasmussen. Forgive her like my Sky King had. After all, I knew what it meant to be lonely for someone you loved. I’d been so lonely for Daddy and in some funny way I had always been lonely for Mother. She might not look at me anymore with those sad eyes if I just forgave her. Let bygones be bygones because everybody knew that forgiveness was divine. So I leaned down and placed my cheek on hers and breathed in her breath. And when I whispered, “I forgive you,” I smelled her Evening in Paris and finally understood why Troo wanted to run away to France.

On the ride home from the hospital the windshield wipers were going back and forth and back and forth like that metronome Mother kept on top of the piano to help you keep time when you couldn’t keep it yourself. When we pulled up in front of our house, Nell said, “Sally… we’re here.” She did not say, “Sally… we’re home.”

Mrs. Goldman was in her front window like she was keeping an eye out for somebody. I looked over at Troo, who was looking back at me like she had something on her mind. Whatever it was, I knew she would wait until we were alone, when it was just the O’Malley sisters, because Troo still thought Nell was a drip even if she was getting married and we got to be flower girls.

“I’m gonna head over to Kroger and get some boxes,” Eddie said.

Nell yelled to us, “Run between the raindrops, O’Malley sisters,” as we dashed for the porch. That was what Mother always said on days like this. Nell was becoming more like Mother by the minute. Like an ugly old caterpillar with horrible-looking hair, Nell was turning into a butterfly that could be on the Breck shampoo bottle.

When Nell took her key out to unlock the front door, because everybody had been told to lock their doors now because of the dead girls, Mrs. Goldman said through her screen door, “ Liebchin , may I speak to you, please?” I thought I saw sad beams coming out of her like the Baby Jesus on his holy cards. In her German accent she said, “I am so sorry, I am so sorry. We have to rent to somebody who can pay. Do you understand this?”

Nell and Troo were stomping up the steps to get their things together because neither one of them liked Mrs. Goldman as much as I did. Besides the Butchy problem, they thought our landlady was a very wet blanket because she was always telling us to be quiet. But what they didn’t know was that Mrs. Goldman’s ears got very sensitive in the concentration camp and any sort of loud noises would make her have a headache that wouldn’t go away for days.

“Yes, I understand,” I said, walking toward her. “Please don’t worry. Everything’s going to be okay now.”

She opened the door a little and handed me a plate of those chewy brown sugar cookies and a white paper bag. “Inside is a book for you. I know how you like to do the reading.”

I turned to leave but then remembered my manners. “Thank you. And if Mr. Goldman wants me to come back and help him pick caterpillars off those tomato plants, I can do that.” I looked into her brown eyes that had seen so many bad things. “Do you think that Dottie Kenfield is a ghost?” Mrs. Goldman was the only person, besides Troo, who’d heard the sounds coming from Dottie’s window. I had to know that before we left. If it was Dottie’s ghost crying, I didn’t think I could move and leave her all alone.

“ Nein , that is no ghost. Sometimes it is better to think about things in your imagination to get away from what is really happening, no?” I knew she was thinking of the concentration camp then because she always squinted her eyes and the lines around her mouth got as deep as a garden furrow. “Do you understand this? That sometimes real life it is too frightening for people so we leave it for a while and think about other things?”

“I think I understand.” She musta had to think about a lot of other stuff when she was in that concentration camp. Like her favorite things. Chocolate ice cream and cold red apples and this meat she got from Opperman’s Butcher Shop called schnitzel . “So who is that crying in Dottie’s room if it isn’t a ghost?”

Mrs. Goldman turned toward our neighbors’ house. “I believe it is Audrey Kenfield that you hear crying. Dottie’s mother.”

Mrs. Goldman looked at me like she was deciding something and then she seemed to make up her mind and then changed it again but finally said, “Mr. Kenfield made his daughter to leave his house after she became pregnant and was not married. Dottie is forbidden to come back home and… that is why Dottie’s mother cries. She is yearning for her lost daughter and the daughter of her lost daughter.”

I looked at Mrs. Goldman’s eyes real hard for a minute. And then down at those numbers on her arm. “I will come to visit you all the time. I will. I promise.” I knew she was telling the truth about Dottie because Mrs. Goldman would never lie to me. Especially about something like that. Since Mrs. Goldman’s daughter, Gretchen, never came back to the concentration camp after her shower, she probably knew what a mother who had lost her child would sound like.

“Marta, you are letting in of the flies,” Mr. Goldman said from inside the house.

“That book… you… one of my favorites.” Mrs. Goldman put hands on my shoulders and pulled me into her for a bear hug, which she had never done before even after the day I picked over twenty-five weeds out of the garden. “Offveedersane, Liebchin,” she said and closed the door.

I ran up our stairs two at a time and through the door that went into the living room. Newspapers were scattered across the floor and dust bunnies bulged in the corners and Pabst Blue Ribbon beer bottles lined the windowsills full of cigarette butts. It smelled of a place that nobody cared about anymore. I thought of Mother when I looked over at the stained red-and-brown couch. And how, after she thought Troo and me had fallen asleep at night, she would sit there sometimes and stare out the window, never seeming to find what she was looking for. But now maybe she had.

I sat down on the piano bench and opened up the white paper bag that Mrs. Goldman had given me. A Secret Garden . That was very thoughtful of Marta Goldman. Maybe I could learn more about gardening from this book, and when I came back to help them they would be amazed by what a better gardener I had become. Rasmussen, he was a good gardener, too. So maybe if I wanted to I would learn something from him. Which I wasn’t all that sure yet that I wanted to. To forgive Mother was one thing… but to forgive Rasmussen? That might take some doing.