“So you threw her out into the world. If it hadn’t been for Gabriella, who knows what would have happened to her? The two of you-what a couple of sanctimonious righteous bastards you are.”
She took my insults unflinchingly. She couldn’t understand why I would be angry over such logical parental behavior, but she’d seen me beat up her husband. She wasn’t going to risk exciting me.
“Was Art already married then?” I asked abruptly.
“No. We told him he was going to have to find a wife, start a family, or we’d have to tell Father Stepanek, tell the priest, about Louisa. We promised we wouldn’t say anything if she moved away and he started a family.”
I didn’t know what to say. All I could think of was Louisa at sixteen, pregnant, out on her own, the holy ladies of St. Wenceslaus parading in front of her door. And Gabriella riding in on her white horse to the rescue. All the old insults from the Djiaks about Gabriella’s being a Jew came back to me.
“How can you pretend to call yourselves Christians? My mother was a thousand times the Christian you ever were. She didn’t go around blathering a lot of sanctimonious bullshit; she lived charity. But you and Ed, you let your brother seduce your child and you call her wicked. If there really was a god he would annihilate you for daring to come to his altar, babbling about your righteousness. If there is a god, my only prayer is that I never have to be within a mile of you again.”
I lurched to my feet, my eyes hot with furious tears. She shrank back in her chair.
“I won’t hit you,” I said. “What good would it do either of us?”
Before I’d reached the hall she was already on her hands and knees cleaning up the broken glass.
34
I staggered from the house to the car, my stomach heaving, my throat tight and tainted with bile. All I could think of was to get to Lotty, not to stop for anything, for a toothbrush or a change of underwear. Just go straight to sanity.
I made it there on luck. A blaring horn at Seventy-first Street brought me briefly to myself I skirted my way carefully through Jackson Park, but I almost hit a bicyclist darting across the Drive at Fifty-ninth. Even after that I kept finding the speedometer needle around seventy.
Max was drinking cognac in Lotty’s sitting room when I got there. I smiled jerkily at him. With a great effort, I remembered the two had gone to a recital together and asked how they’d enjoyed the music.
“Superb. The Cellini Quintet. We knew them in London when they were just getting started after the war.” He reminded Lotty of an evening in Wigmore Hall when the power had gone off, and how the two of them had stood holding flashlights over the music so their friends could continue the concert.
Lotty laughed and was adding a memoir of her own when she broke off. “Vic! I hadn’t seen your face in the light when you came up. What is the matter?”
I forced my lips to the form of a smile. “Nothing life-threatening. Just a strange conversation that I’ll tell you about sometime.”
“I must be off anyway, my dear,” Max said, rising. “I’ve stayed far too long drinking your excellent cognac.”
Lotty saw him to the door, then hurried back to me. “What is it, Liebchen? You look like death.”
I tried smiling again. To my dismay, I found myself sobbing instead. “Lotty, I thought I’d seen every horrible thing people could do to each other in this town. Men killing each other for a bottle of wine. Women pouring lye on their lovers. Why this should upset me so much I don’t know.”
“Here.” Lotty put some brandy to my mouth. “Drink this and settle yourself a bit. Try to tell me what happened.”
I swallowed some of the cognac. It washed the taste of bile from my throat. With Lotty holding my hand, I blurted out the story. How I’d seen the resemblance between young Art and Caroline, and thought his mother must have been related to Caroline’s father. Only to learn that it was his father who was related to Caroline’s grandmother.
“That part wasn’t so awful,” I gulped. “I mean, of course it’s awful. But what made me so sick is their horrible scrubbed piety and the way they insist Louisa was to blame. Do you know how they raised her? How strictly those two sisters were watched? No dates, no boys, no talk about sex. And then her mother’s brother. He molested the one girl and they let him stay around to molest the other. And then they punish her.”
My voice was rising; I couldn’t seem to control it. “It can’t be, Lotty. It shouldn’t be. I should be able to stop something that vile from going on, but I don’t have any power.”
Lotty took me in her arms and held me without speaking. After a time my sobbing dried up, but I continued to lie against her shoulder.
“You can’t heal the world, Liebchen. I know you know that. You can only work with one person at a time, in a very small way. And over the individuals you help you have much effect. It’s only the megalomaniacs, the Hitlers and their ilk, who think they have the answer for everyone’s life. You are in the world of the sane, Victoria, the world of the limited.”
She took me into the kitchen and fed me the remains of the chicken she’d cooked for Max. She continued to pour brandy into me until I was ready for sleep. After that she took me to her spare room and undressed me.
“Mr. Contreras,” I said thickly. “I forgot to tell him I was spending the night here. Can you call him for me? Otherwise he’ll have Bobby Mallory dragging the lake for me.”
“Certainly, my dear. I’ll do it as soon as I see you’re sleeping. Just rest and don’t worry.”
When I woke Sunday morning I felt light-headed, the result of too much brandy and tears. But I’d had my first thorough sleep since my attack; the soreness in my shoulders had diminished to the point where I no longer noticed it every time I moved.
Lotty brought in The New York Times with a plate of crisp rolls and jam. We spent a leisurely morning over papers and coffee. At noon, when I wanted to start talking about Art Jurshak-about some way to get past his ubiquitous bodyguards to speak to him-Lotty silenced me.
“This will be a day of rest for you, Victoria. We’re going to the country, get fresh air, turn the mind off completely from all worries. It will make everything seem more possible tomorrow.”
I gave in with as good grace as I could muster, but she was right. We drove into Michigan, spent the day walking at the sand dunes, letting the cold lake air whip our hair. We dawdled around in the little wineries, buying a bottle of cherry-cranberry wine as a souvenir for Max, who prided himself on his palate. When we finally returned home around ten that night, I felt clean throughout.
It was a good thing I’d had that day of rest. Monday turned into a long, frustrating day. Lotty was gone when I woke up-she makes rounds at Beth Israel before opening her clinic at eight-thirty. She left me a note saying she’d looked at Dr. Chigwell’s notebooks after I went to bed, but didn’t feel confident in interpreting the blood values he’d been recording. She was taking them to a friend who specialized in nephrology for a reading.
I called Mr. Contreras. He reported a quiet night, but said that young Art was getting restless. He’d loaned him a razor and a change of underwear, but he wasn’t sure how long he could keep the boy at the apartment.
“If he wants to leave, let him,” I said. “He’s the one who wanted protection. I don’t really care too much if he doesn’t want to accept it.”
I told him I’d be by to pack a small suitcase, but that I was going to stay with Lotty until I felt more secure against midnight marauders. He agreed, wistfully-he’d much rather I sent young Art to Lotty and stayed with him and Peppy.
After stopping at my place for a shower and a change of clothes, I went downstairs to spend a few minutes with Peppy and Mr. Contreras. The strain of the last few weeks was starting to etch hollow lines in young Art’s face. Or maybe it was just thirty-six hours spent with Mr. Contreras.