Amy Bloom - Lucky Us

BY EIGHT O’CLOCK, EVERYONE was absolved and fed. The big kids were asleep. Mr. Torelli went out to a special meeting with the greengrocers. Reenie was lying down. Danny was in bed and Iris was at the theater, playing someone’s saucy Irish maid. Baby Paulie was so fussy, he was twisting out of Mrs. Torelli’s arms, arching like a pink fish. Paulie was miserable, coughing and sniffing, in and out of his million-dollar crib. Mrs. Torelli gave him baby aspirin crushed into applesauce, which he threw up three times. The fourth time, I helped her ladle it into him and he slept. I got the girls quieted down and I told Joey the story of Cowboy Joe, which was basically Puss in Boots comes to Wyoming. Mrs. Torelli said I was a godsend and I went to make us both tea. I looked for mothers the way drunks look for bars. Big ones, little ones, Italian ones, Negro ones. All I wanted was some soft, firm shoulder to lean against, a capable hand setting me right and making me breakfast.

I fell asleep on the divan in the Torellis’ bedroom and I woke up to Paulie barking like a seal. I ran to Paulie’s bedroom. He wasn’t hot. He wasn’t crying. He was shiny along all his creases and sweating, a little, with the effort of breathing. If every cough sounded like a circus seal, every inhale was a thin train whistle. Mrs. Torelli took us into her bathroom. She hung up her cashmere robe with the silk piping.

“Turn on the shower,” she said. “Very warm. Not hot.”

She handed Paulie to me and shut the bathroom door. She took off her nightgown and his diaper and stepped naked into the shower with Paulie. “Take off your socks and your shoes,” Mrs. Torelli called to me. “You might as well take off your skirt.” I did. I counted to one hundred, Mrs. Torelli sang “A-tisket, A-tasket.” She sang opera, and then Paulie stopped coughing. There was a soft wheeze and then the sound of his baby laugh. Mrs. Torelli stepped out of the shower and wrapped a towel around warm, pink Paulie and put him in my arms. He laid his head on my shoulder and I pushed his wet brown curls off his face. I saw Mrs. Torelli before she pulled the bath towel around her, a series of ivory ovals, dashes of pink, and splashes of black. I wanted to never leave that room.

PAULIE WAS ASLEEP AND Mrs. Torelli and I were dry and wide awake. I asked her to sing opera again. She looked away, like a shy girl, and sang what she sang to Paulie, “Come per me sereno.” She told me that her mother had wanted to be an opera singer. Who lives by hope, dies by hunger, Mrs. Torelli said, and I said that I hoped that wasn’t true. She said, See, hope.

I offered to read her cards. I laid out a Celtic Cross. I gave Mrs. Torelli the reading of all time. I gave her healthy children (And one more, she asked, and I said, Absolutely, if you really, really want one, because I thought that probably, in the end, she wouldn’t) and success for all of them. I gave her more Torelli Markets (because that seemed likely). I gave her good health for her and Mr. T., and better luck for her sister, who had multiple sclerosis (and I didn’t say what better luck would entail). I gave her the Lovers and the Sun and the High Priestess, in a neat pile. I gave Mrs. Torelli deathless love, which she deserved.

Fort Lincoln, North Dakota

January 1944

Dear Evie,

I fixed the roof in the dining hall, so dirt and shit and snow don’t fly in all day. We made a baseball diamond, so people can play. Mostly the real Americans play. I don’t know what Germans play in Germany and the Japs don’t play with us. After dinner, a German guy will get up, sharpen his mustache, and sing a little Wagner. The older men pound the tables like it’s a Munich beer hall. The Japs do not sing Japanese songs after dinner. We are all potential or actual traitors here at Fort Lincoln, but some of us are white.

The guy I fixed the roof with showed me the letter he sent to the INS. He wanted me to tell him that the INS would read it and say, This is a huge mistake, Mr. Hauser. No way that you — fat, dumb, and happy as you were — could be a German spy. Even though you worked for New Jersey Nickel, and were a member of the German American Social Club of Elizabeth, even though you do tend to talk people to death about Germany’s past glories — no way you are a spy.

Here’s what Karl Hauser wrote to the INS: “I have been in this great country for fifteen years. I have been a hardworking businessman and I have paid taxes. I went to night high school in Bayonne to further myself. My wife, Greta Mazur Hauser, was born in Garden City, New York, and she is an American citizen. My two children, Anna and Carolyn, are American citizens. They were both born at Elizabeth General Hospital. I am not a member of the Nazi party. I do not sympathize with the goals of the Nazi party. To my knowledge, I have no relatives who are members of the Nazi party. We have been in this camp at Fort Lincoln, North Dakota, for one year. Please review my case. Sincerely and patriotically, Karl M. Hauser.”

I told him it was a good letter and not likely to get him anywhere. He told me that back in New Jersey, two FBI agents visited his house five different times and took him to some shithole in Maryland the day before Christmas. They asked his wife if their radio was transmitting messages to and from Germany. They asked the little girls if they loved Germany more than America. On New Year’s Day, two armed guards took Greta and the kids to Fort Lincoln by train and kept the three of them in the rear car, alone.

I’d been reading about Germany since ’37 and I know I said to you, more than once, that I thought most of what I read was a load of bull. I said that I didn’t think the German people would stand for that. So, now I know that not only will the German people stand for it, so will the Americans. It turns out we’ll stand for any goddamn thing the government will do on our behalf, and if that includes a boot in the kidneys or taking everything a man has and throwing it on his front lawn for the neighbors to pick through, we’re okay with that. We’re better than they are, I hear, because we’re not exterminating a whole people. Future generations will admire our restraint.

It’s ten acres here at Fort Lincoln, with ten-foot-high wire fences and another three feet of barbed wire and dogs. We’ve got two sets of guards, Surveillance for the towers and fences and Internal, who are like beat cops. There is a long list of rules in every building. Right after how to make your bed, it says anyone trying to escape will be shot.

Karl’s the good-soldier type. No doubt his German nature. He’s volunteering to work on the Northern Pacific Railroad, which a bunch of guys do to get out of the camp. There’s a rumor that the guys who help will be freed first. I would go, but I have eyes for his wife, Greta. I figure Karl can go on the railroad and I’ll keep the home fires burning.

February 26, 1944

We got an outbreak of TB. The men working the railroad brought it back from hanging around with the Lakota Indian women. I guess misery loves company. So Karl’s got it, but not Greta. I’ve told her to stay the hell away from him and keep her girls, Anna and Carolyn, on the other side of the camp.

March 3, 1944

Karl died last night. Ice is still hanging off the roofs. We’ve got icicles in the dining hall. This morning, they brought in some more families and single men, about a hundred enemy aliens. In the hustle and bustle, I say to Greta, Let’s just have Karl slip away and I take his place. No one wants to breathe near the dead people, so I volunteer to help the hospital people move bodies. We all have towels over our faces and gloves on, and I fall right into line. I say to Greta, Call me Karl. Some broad. She waves to me and calls me Karl. She gets the girls waving to me too, grinning like monkeys.