"Vietnam?"
She takes a long time to answer and sounds grown-up when she does. "I'll wait until I'm older."
"Will you be sad to leave Swansea tomorrow?"
There is a distinct nod, different from a shake of the head, against my shoulder, but no words.
"Everyone is sad when they have to leave here," I say. "People write books about Swansea, because it's so beautiful."
"Is that what your book is about?"
"That's some of it."
"Will it have pictures?"
"It's not that kind of book."
"What kind of book is it?"
Her head leans tenderly on my shoulder. We are speaking softly, like lovers; my arms encircle her arms, like lovers'; and I am uncertain about how to explain it to a child, even this child, who knows so much, who has lost two mothers, a father in Vietnam, God knows how many biological siblings, her country, her language, the date and year of her birth, her entire history. When I don't answer right away, she slings another question at me: "Just tell me this: is it going to have a happy ending?"
The predictable ending I've been considering is Will's funeral. So, no, not particularly happy. But as funerals go, Will's was dull, much duller than the man himself, presided over by a doddering, pious Boston Irishman. I don't mean to sound flippant, but it did have the flavor of a parody, of the wrong man's funeral. The coffin-I call it Clare's coffin, since she picked it out and paid five thousand dollars for it-was a piece of Mafia-rococo furniture, a bronze finish with silver buckles and miniature marble caryatids in which I knew Will would not want to spend eternity. But there he was on the catafalque, in Clare's Cadillac, about to be buried next to his son in an old island cemetery. I sat between Henderson and our neighbor Ben in the second row, behind my stepdaughters and their mother, and cried quietly, except when the priest was actually talking about Will, because everything he said had an "as told to" quality. It didn't feel like Will distilled; it felt like Will watered down, a dim Xerox of the man. He was hardly there.
When it was my turn, I read two poems, the Emily Dickinson that begins, That it will never come again/is what makes life so sweet, and Henderson's gift of Paul Muldoon's "The Birth," about his daughter's first moments in the world. When I spoke for a few minutes after I read, about Will's love of Swansea, about our meeting on Honeysuckle Road, about how game he always was, I found myself looking over the audience for Crystal and was disappointed not to see her, although there was no reason to expect I would. Our encounter the day before had brought something to a close for me, and I entertained a brief fantasy that it had for her, too. But for her, it was probably more bad news about her own life: no relief, no illumination. She had caused someone in bad shape a lot of pain; that's all. Chances are she was trying to forget about it. I didn't have that luxury. What I had was that haunting line from Will's diary, which I had shared only with Henderson, and I went back and forth on how to interpret it, like someone pulling the petals of a daisy. He loves me, he loves me not. I saved him, I let him go, I saved him, I killed him, I loved him, I should have loved him longer, I left him, I shouldn't have, if I hadn't he'd be alive, but then again he might not be. Cause of Death: Inconclusive. The answer is that there will be no answer, ever. My love may be what kept him alive ten years ago, but would my devotion have done as much for the next ten years? Crystal had no reason to come to his funeral, but in front of me were forty or forty-five people who had cared about him. They were here because of his decency, good humor, and adventurousness. The sadness and fragility were not what he showed the world.
"Well," Vicki says again, this time more sharply, "will it or won't it have a happy ending?"
In lieu of the funeral, I've considered ending the book with my phone call to the Eighth Deadly when I returned to New York for those few days after the funeral. I told him I wouldn't write the autobiography of Bill and Melinda Gates's nanny. I told him it was time for me to quit being a ghost writer, and told myself I had to quit being second-in-command, the interpreter and inheritor of other people's lives, the second wife, the stepmother, the mimic. I had to tell my own story, not everyone else's. I wanted to dwell in my own ragged, insolvent, unkempt life, and I wanted to seize all the days I could.
That is too complicated to explain to a child, even one as precocious as Vicki, but I start in anyway. I stop talking halfway through the first sentence, when I see I am being as oblivious of her needs as Daniel was of mine. She had a bad dream, and all she wants to know-all any of us want to know-is that there will be a happy ending, despite all the evidence to the contrary.
"Of course there will be," I tell her. "No question about it."
And who's to say that the two of us, entwined on a wooden armchair in this house that used to be mine on this beautiful late summer night, this child who has lost as much as she has, and I-you know my story-who's to say that this is not it?
Elizabeth Benedict
Elizabeth Benedict is the author of Slow Dancing, a finalist for the National Book Award and the Los Angeles Times Fiction Prize; The Beginner's Book of Dreams; Safe Conduct; and The Joy of Writing Sex. Her work has appeared in Salmagundi, the New York Times, Esquire, Harper's Bazaar, the American Prospect, Tin House, and other periodicals. She has taught writing at Princeton University, Swarthmore College, and the University of Iowa Writers' Workshop. She now lives in New York City and Somerville, Massachusetts.
THOSE WHO SAVE US by Jenna Blum
Copyright © 2004 by Jenna Blum
This book is for my mother, Frances Joerg Blum, who took me to Germany and gave me the key:
Ich liebe Dich, meine Mutti.
And it is in beloved memory of my dad, Robert P. Blum, who would have said Mazel tov.
I had voluntarily joined the ranks of the active SS and I had become
too fond of the black uniform to relinquish it in this way.
– RUDOLF HOESS, COMMANDANT OF AUSCHWITZ
Prologue: Trudy and Anna, 1993
THE FUNERAL IS WELL ATTENDED, THE NEW HEIDELBURG LUTHERAN CHURCH packed to capacity with farmers and their families who have come to bid farewell to one of their own. Since every seat is full, they also line the walls and crowd the vestibule. The men are comically unfamiliar in dark suits; they don't get this dressed up for regular services. The women, however, wear what they do every Sunday no matter what the weather, skirt-and-sweater sets with hose and pumps. Their parkas, which are puffy and incongruous and signify the imminent return to life's practicalities, are their sole concession to the cold.
And it is cold. December in Minnesota is a bad time to have to bury a loved one, Trudy Swenson thinks. In fact, it is quite impossible. The topsoil is frozen three feet down, and her father will have to be housed in a refrigeration unit in the county morgue until the earth thaws enough to receive him. Trudy tries to steer her mind away from how Jack will look after several months in storage. She makes an attempt to instead concentrate on the eulogy. But she must be suffering the disjointed cognition of the bereaved, for her thoughts have assumed a willful life of their own.They circle above her in the nave, presenting her with an aerial view of the church and its inhabitants: Trudy herself sitting very upright in the front row next to her mother, Anna; the minister droning on about a man who, from his description, could be any fellow here; the deceased looking dead in his casket; the rest of the town seated behind Trudy, staring at the back of her head. Trudy feels horribly conspicuous, and although she means her father no disrespect, she prays only for the service to be over.