Lauren Fox - Send for Me

Her life will not unfold in any way she can possibly imagine in this nothing-moment: neither gently, with an abundance of love, nor roughly, under the pressing weight of obligation.

One week later, Max does come into the bakery, and Annelise looks up from the table she’s cleaning and feels as if she’s being lifted into the air and dropped suddenly. A little gasp, the softest oh, escapes her mouth.

Max—of course, of course—is holding the door for a tall woman who looks like a lioness, sharp, fine features and reddish hair and green eyes gazing around like she’s deciding which small mammal she will eat. Max catches Annelise’s eye. They head toward her. Annelise will not be the small mammal! She straightens, tucks her cleaning rag into her apron pocket, smooths a strand of hair that has escaped its tie, but anyone can see it’s too late for all of that.

“This is Katarina,” Max says, and Katarina nods at Annelise, offers her hand to shake. “She’s studying cartography at the university.” He turns to Katarina. “And this is Lise,” he says. “My oldest friend.”

Fifty years later Annelise will sit at a long wooden table, an enormous book in front of her, and she will slide her glasses down her nose and trace her finger down a column of tiny print and she’ll find their names: Max Eisenberg, 32, Auschwitz; Katarina Eisenberg, 33, Auschwitz; Otto Eisenberg, 7, Auschwitz. She will want to slam the book shut, but this book is too heavy to slam, and so, instead, she will just close it, very carefully, until, a minute later, she’ll open it again, to search for other names, which she will also find.

I’ve burned a lot of things on the stove this morning. It’s very empty here now. There’s no need for us to wait for anyone anymore on Saturdays. I need to keep busy so I can forget.

If Julius could have placed an order, all those years ago, would he have put in for a boy? Well, what man doesn’t wish for a son to carry on his legacy? He imagined reading quietly with his son on a Sunday morning, playing chess with him while Klara made dinner. There would be a calm and unspoken understanding between them, two comrades against the floral-scented, overly talkative world of women.

But he fell in love with Annelise the moment the nurse placed her in his arms. Of course he did. She stared up at his face, taking its measure, blinking a secret code. He fell into an ocean of love.

Still, raising a daughter is the job of the mother, and even more so as she grows up. On more than one occasion, Julius overheard an argument between Klara and Annelise and thought, Thank goodness I’m not a part of that! And once in a while, from behind his newspaper, he allowed himself to dream of a boy, dark as Annelise, but quiet, uncomplicated. “Son, let’s go outside and kick the ball around while those two cool off, shall we?” But they lived in an apartment on a busy street. And Julius was never any good at sport.

He envied their passion, sometimes. It was dark, crimson. It blazed between them, love and hurt, adoration and tears.

They each came to him for comfort, and he knew how to soothe them, how to put out their fires. “Klara, she’s just a girl. She’s not forgetful on purpose. It’s her nature. Be patient.” “Lise, dry your tears, give her time to cool off. She expects so much from you because she loves you.”

—

When Annelise was small, they would walk together on Sunday mornings, slow rambles to the park, where Lise would investigate everything that caught her eye. Some days, immersed in the path of a bee or the crunch of leaf piles, they wouldn’t make it to the park at all.

Can we catch a squirrel? Can you teach me how to cook it? (“We don’t cook squirrels,” he told her. She squinted up at him, perplexed. “But we do cook fish?”)

There was something unusual about her, her strange, curious, reckoning mind, or maybe there was something unusual about all five-year-old little girls if you listened to them.

An image of his little brother sometimes superimposed itself upon his daughter—Paul’s green eyes replacing Lise’s brown ones, his short brown hair fading into her dark curls. He would have to catch his breath when that happened, close his eyes, pry the images apart.

How do I know we see the same blue? Are teeth little bones? When is the end of never? She had an imaginary friend called Pillow, a small, anxious man who needed frequent reassurance. Don’t worry about camels, Kissen. There are no camels where we live.

—

When Max broke her heart—did they think he didn’t know?—she wept in her mother’s arms. Julius paced the apartment. Behind her bedroom door, Lise’s sobs were melody, her mother’s low shushes the counterpoint. He had never been more useless. He walked around the living room, into the dining room, the kitchen, through the hallway, circled back again. His leather house slippers wore a path in the soft carpets.

He would march over to the apartment where Max and Dora lived, confront the damn fool. He’d stand inches from him, glowering. You are a son of a bitch! (Apologies, dear Dora.) But what the hell do you think you’re doing? How dare you …Here Julius’s fantasy stuttered. How dare you decide you’re not in love with my daughter? What then, a sharp jab to the jaw? Max might be feckless, but Julius held no sway over the private matters of Annelise’s heart. He wanted to slam his fist into the wall. But what would that solve? And who would fix the hole? Should he lift her up and place her feet on his and dance her around the apartment? His best ideas were futilities, all his old tricks worse than useless.

—

He was an observer of details. How she studied the ground after it rained, searching for worms. The neat white part down her scalp dividing her pigtails. The way she pushed beans around her plate, rearranging them as if that would fool her mother into thinking she’d eaten a few. Surly for the first hour after she woke up, loquacious before bed. It was his vocation to perceive and remember, and he did; he remembered everything. Her bitten nails. How she held a water glass with both hands. The way she paused before she spoke, as if she were slowly pulling herself out of a dream.

As soon as I get the confirmation, we will pack .

Annelise wakes up to the clang of her alarm clock on the morning of her nineteenth birthday. It’s 4:00 a.m. Frost veils her bedroom window. The moon scrapes the black sky like a little chip of glass.

Misery. What would it feel like to wake up well rested, in a room bright with sunshine? She groans as she remembers that she used the last of the coffee yesterday and forgot to pick up more. She has no one to take her to the movies tonight (well, maybe Emmi, but definitely not Sofie, who is nestled cozily in her new life now and never goes out) and anyway she’s too tired to go to the movies because she has to wake up every day at 4:00 a.m. And today, of all days, with no coffee. Her bed is so warm. The floor is freezing. It’s Friday. It is Friday, February 13, 1931, and Annelise is miserable because she is miserable.

And what, anyway, is the pleasure of celebrating your birthday in a bakery? They are the ones who provide the sweetness for other people. As Julius likes to cheerfully announce at the table on nights when there is no after-dinner cake, nothing left over from the store, The shoemaker’s children go barefoot!

Annelise washes up, squeezes a blob of Biox Ultra onto her toothbrush, and attacks her teeth with all of her repressed ire. She yanks the knots out of her hair and pins it up, dusts herself with talcum (feeling, as she does every morning as the sweet powder settles over her, just a little bit like a pastry herself). She gets dressed as fast as she can, rolls heavy wool socks over her frozen feet. She’s ready at 4:10. She grumbles into the kitchen and puts on a pot of tea. Her parents are talking softly behind their bedroom door, her mother’s alto and her father’s bass, the most familiar refrain. Annelise catches herself almost smiling, and then squashes it. Will they even remember that it’s her birthday?