Howard Norman - What Is Left the Daughter

"Wyatt, I wonder if anyone but you and me recognize Hans Mohring in that photograph," she said. "I mean, knows his actual name. Hundreds must've at least looked at it, eh? Of course, those German sailors are front and center, so who'd really notice which people are in the background. But what's strange is that, as I'm standing here staring at it, I see different Germans. There's the ones who did harm and Hans who didn't. And I imagine all of them are at the bottom of the sea now."

"You know, Cornelia, I read in the Mail that the Laughing Cow was sunk off the coast of France in 1944."

"I heard they built a memorial statue in Port aux Basques and survivors of the Caribou meet there every year for a reunion."

Cornelia had three more cognacs. She kept looking at the photograph, trying to keep it in focus. Finally, she said, "Wyatt, I can't be in here one more minute." She was so wobbly we had to take a taxi, even just the short distance to her hotel.

At about eight o'clock the next morning, my telephone rang. When I picked up, Cornelia said, "Me and my headache will meet you downstairs at my hotel for breakfast. How about fifteen minutes?"

It was raining. I threw on a sweater and slacks, put on my raincoat, took my umbrella and hurried over to the Dresden Arms. I found Cornelia at a window-side table. "I ordered scones and coffee," she said. "As for the scones, I'm not optimistic."

"You get breakfast free in this hotel. Don't forget that."

"Believe me, If I don't forget one thing all day, it'll be that."

The waitress brought us each a blueberry scone. The scones had been heated and pats of butter came along on the plates. Cornelia said, "Well, mine looks like a scone."

I took a bite and said, "It's the one hundred fifty-fifth best one I've ever had, Cornelia."

"The first one hundred fifty-four being mine."

"Your arithmetic is correct."

She ate her scone, drank some coffee and said, "You know why I like this scone? Mainly because I didn't have to make it. In fact, you just saw me eat the very first scone I've eaten outside of Middle Economy, which includes ones my grandmother and mother made, and mine. There it is, then. I've still never been to Paris. I've still never been to London. And here I'm of a certain advanced age, and this was my first scone ever in Halifax."

It was Saturday. I walked Cornelia to the 11:05 bus out of the city, the same run on which Tilda had first made the acquaintance of Hans Mohring.

Speaking of birthday parties again, that same evening I'd been invited to a party for Evie Michaels's daughter Ellen's fifth birthday. The party was held at six P.M. at the Michaelses' house on St. Harris Street, not far from Halifax North Common. Evie's husband, William — he's a custodian at Halifax General Hospital — was there, and ten other girls, all Ellen's kindergarten classmates. The girls had gotten gussied up, and Evie had made paper corsages to pin to their dresses. She served peanut butter and jelly sandwiches followed by a chocolate birthday cake and vanilla ice cream. A balloon floated above each girl's chair, tied to it with string. They all had a great rollicking time. Evie had invited the gaffing crew, and all of us showed up. Ellen got a ton of presents, and each time she opened a box, she tied the ribbon in her hair, so by the end she had them streaming out like fireworks. William had borrowed a camera and took a lot of photographs, mostly of the children, naturally, but a few of the grownups, too. At one point Ellen Michaels got so excited that she stuck her fingers right into her slice of birthday cake and then rubbed frosting all over her face and let their mutt Handy lick it off, and nobody cared. After the cake, Evie set out two metal tubs and the children bobbed for apples. Rules are rules, and they had to clasp their hands behind their backs, so of course got their faces soaked. Evie dried them off with a bath towel. When the children went into the parlor to listen to a fright show on the radio — there were two fright shows on Saturday evenings — the gaffing crew got into the spirit of things. One by one, we bobbed for apples. Evie Michaels said, "Look at this! Us expert gaffers of Halifax Harbor and not one apple's been lifted out of the water!"

The children had all left by eight o'clock. Ellen went to bed by nine, and then Evie got inspired to make a big pot of spaghetti. We could see that she seemed quite happy to provide this meal. It was just spaghetti, butter and sprigs of parsley, and two bottles of red wine, but enough to go around. At the table Sebastian Firth said, "Evie, that was thoughtful of you and Bill to put warm water in those tubs. You don't want children bobbing for apples in freezing water, no sir. That's one childhood memory I have. For some reason, whenever me and my friends bobbed for apples, my mother always put cold water in the tub."

"I suppose she couldn't think of everything," Evie said.

Those apples floated in the tubs until after our late supper. Finally, Evie smoothed out the napkins from the party, lined them up on the dining room table and set the apples on them to dry.

I was the last guest to leave. When I put on my coat, Evie said, "Hey, Wyatt, come look at this." She led me into the parlor. It had bookshelves all around.

She pointed out the set of encyclopedias. "It took a full week, but William and I dried them out individually by the woodstove. A lot of pages stuck together, and you can see that some bindings warped, but my children use them every week for homework. Neighbor kids, too. It's known up and down the block we've got a complete set."

"The effort was worth it, Evie," I said.

"Thank you," she said. "Say, Wyatt, why not take two or three apples back to your hotel?"

LIFE WENT ALONG, Marlais. Life just goes along. I'm never late for work. Never late, that's one thing. The other is that every Sunday I listen to the Cavalcade of Radio programs. I tune it in from Buffalo. There's The Jack Benny Hour and Our Miss Brooks and a detective show, Dragnet, another one about a gumshoe, Yours Truly, Johnny Dollar and a mystery fright show called Lights Out. These are called nostalgia programs now, but they remain my favorites. Last but not least, there's Classical Hour. Sometimes on Classical Hour they celebrate a composer's birthday by playing as much of his work as they can fit into an hour.

What else? Fridays after work, for years now, I stop by Ballade & Fugue. Randall Webb's store is now on Argyle Street near City Hall. In 1955 he married a Dutch-born woman named Helen Duoma, whom he called his best customer. Helen once remarked that almost their entire courtship took place in the store. She works for the International Refugee Organization, mostly as a translator. For years she was a colleague of a woman famously nicknamed "German Sister" — her real name's Sister Florence Kelly — at Pier 21. Pier 21 is where immigrants are legally processed and welcomed to Canada. German Sister worked with a group called Sisters of Service. Her nickname became a kind of joke, because how did someone with the Irish last name of Kelly come to interpret in the German language? Truth was, Sister Florence Kelly was born and raised in Nova Scotia. She'd become fluent in German in university, is all. Nevertheless, Helen Duoma said that every so often a newly arrived German claimed to recognize exactly which part of Germany that German Sister was raised in, just from her accent.

Helen and Randall have a son now, Talbot. The boy's full birth-certificate name is Talbot Duoma Frederic Webb, the Frederic after Frédéric Chopin, Helen's and Randall's favorite composer. Randall splits his time about equally between his house and the store, so we don't socialize much except in those two places. Helen and Randall always invite me for Canadian Thanksgiving and for Christmas, and that's always pleasant. We spend New Year's Eve together, too, and without fail that's the night Helen and Randall separately ask, "When are you getting married, Wyatt?" And each time, I never know if they'd agreed beforehand to ask it.