After various and sundry cousins and acquaintances came Betty and me. She was resplendent in a Chanel suit, the mink heads on her stole bouncing with each step. I wore a lavender raw silk sheath Mother had whipped up, which Zuzanna said suited the mother of the bride, which sent me into tears even before the service. Bringing up the rear was Lady Chatterley the sow, daisy chain around her neck, and like many of our guests most concerned with the prospect of good cake.
Our procession wended its way to our gravel driveway. Back beyond the house, behind the barns, the hayfield stretched all the way to the next street over, Munger Lane. The hay had been harvested, leaving the naked meadow spiky with tufts of straw, and the maples and elms at meadow’s edge, already starting their crimson turn, swayed in the breeze. Back there, one’s eye naturally goes to the end of the meadow, beyond the orchard to my old playhouse.
I considered the little house, a white clapboard echo of its parent, with its sturdy chimney and pedimented entryway fitted with child-sized benches. The black door shone in the sun and the silk curtains Zuzanna had sewn, the color of pussy willows, lapped out the windows with the breeze. I was not surprised it had become Zuzanna’s cocoon of sorts, where she went when the world was just too much. It was once my place of solace, where I’d spent days reading after Father died.
Once the procession wound around to the back garden, Betty and I went to the kitchen to fetch the petit fours Serge’s sous chef had prepared.
Serge had opened a restaurant in nearby Woodbury, weekend home of well-heeled Manhattanites. He called it Serge! and it was an immaculate hole-in-the-wall that had a line out the door on Saturday nights. This was not surprising, since everyone knows New Yorkers, when deprived of good French food for more than twenty-four hours, become impossible and seek it out like truffle pigs. Or maybe it was Zuzanna’s Polish desserts that kept patrons lining up.
“I do love the Polish traditions, don’t you, Caroline? Pinning money to the bride? Genius.” Betty plucked a petit four from the box and popped it into her mouth whole.
I tied on one of Serge’s new aprons with his logo, a black S, down the front. “Stop pinning hundred-dollar bills on the bride, Betty. It’s vulgar.”
“It’s such a practical tradition.”
“At least it’s distracting Zuzanna. From dwelling on the fact that none of her family could be here.”
“Those two need a honeymoon, Caroline. Must be exhausting tending to a teething child.”
“She misses her sister.”
“Kasia? Fly her in, for heaven’s sake.”
“It isn’t that easy, Betty. Poland’s a Communist country. I had a hard enough time getting her a transit visa to go to Germany—”
“To confront that doctor? Really, Caroline…”
“I sent everything she needs, but I haven’t heard a word from her.”
I’d mailed the package to Poland weeks before, express, with more than enough money for her trip to Stocksee, and still hadn’t heard a peep. And I wasn’t the only one waiting to hear if it truly was Herta Oberheuser. A slew of British doctors was ready to help me pressure the German government to revoke Herta’s medical license. Anise and friends were ready to go to battle as well. Herta was just one of many on our list of Nazi war criminals who needed to be held accountable.
“Your persuasive powers are first-rate, dear. You won’t catch me traipsing up to some godforsaken German town to identify a deranged Nazi doctor.”
How did Betty manage to boil every situation down to the absurd? Had I taken advantage of Kasia by asking her to identify Herta? She would be fine—such a strong, capable person, not unlike myself at her age.
“Well, anyway, don’t worry about all that, Caroline. I have a gift for you.”
“That isn’t necessary.”
Betty heaved a Schiaparelli tote onto the kitchen table.
“It’s lovely, Betty.”
“Oh, the bag is Mother’s, and she wants it back—she’s become positively miserly in her old age. But the gift is inside.”
I reached into the bag and felt the flannel, that unmistakable feeling of metal muffled by cloth, and knew instantly what it was.
“Oh, Betty.” I held on to the table to steady myself.
I pulled out one flannel roll and unfurled it to find a row of oyster forks.
“It’s all there,” Betty said. “I’ve been buying it from Mr. Snyder for years. You know he calls me first when he has anything good. When he had Woolsey silver…”
I pulled all twenty rolls from the bag and piled them into a brown-flannel pyramid on the table. Even the silver petit four tongs were there.
Betty wrapped her arms around me, and I rested my cheek against cool, smooth mink. “Now, don’t get all teary on me, Caroline. This is a joyous day.”
How lucky I was to have such a generous friend. Mother might pretend not to care, but she would be delighted the Woolsey silver was back.
Betty and I set up the wedding cake on a card table in the garden and used my long-lost silver tongs to serve the petit fours. The happy couple stood, surrounded by wedding guests and the last of the fall smooth-leaf hydrangeas with their white-blossom globes, like bystanders craning their necks to see the festivities. Mother, holding Julien, managed to cut the cake, while the couple took her loving cup between them, sipping vodka from it while Betty and members of the orchestra shouted, “Gorku! Gorku!”—Bitter! Bitter!—to urge them to drink.
On my way back to the house for more lemonade, I heard the tinkle of a bicycle bell and turned to find Earl Johnson riding around the corner of the house, his tires leaving a dark snake of an impression across the grass. He rode his red Schwinn Hornet bike, complete with chrome headlamp, the white straw basket peppered with yellow plastic daisies.
Earl removed his cap and had the good sense to look sheepish. “Sorry to ride on the grass, Miss Ferriday.”
“Don’t worry about it, Earl,” I said. So what if I’d asked him ad nauseam not to ride on the lawn? “It’s only grass. Just maybe walk around next time?”
Zuzanna spotted Earl and walked toward us, baby on her hip. On her way, she plucked a sprig of late fall lilac. She brushed it under Julien’s chin, causing him to draw his legs up and down like a frog in delight. How sure Zuzanna’s step was now that she was finally well.
Earl stood straddling his bike. “Got a letter for you. From—” He squinted at the return address.
I plucked the letter from his fingers.
“Thank you, Earl.” I glanced at it just long enough to see Paul’s handwriting and tucked it in my apron pocket. I ran my fingers across the letter there and felt it was thick. A good sign. Was it simply a coincidence that Pan Am had recently started direct flights from New York to Paris?
Earl produced a second envelope from his bike basket. “And a telegram. All the way from West Germany.” He handed it to me and waited, hands on his handlebar grips.
“Thank you, Earl. I can take it from here.”
Earl turned with a “Good day” and walked his bicycle back toward the front of the house but was intercepted by Mother, who led him to the cake.
Zuzanna reached me, an expectant look in her eyes.
I tore off one side of the envelope and pulled out the telegram. “It’s from Kasia. From West Germany.”
I caught the scent of zinc oxide and baby powder as Zuzanna covered my hand with hers—cold, but caring and soft. A mother’s hand.
“Shall I read it aloud?” I asked.
Zuzanna nodded.
“It reads: ‘Under way to Stocksee. Just me.’?”
“That’s it?” Zuzanna asked. “There must be more.”
“I’m sorry, but that’s all, dear. She signs off, ‘Kasia.’?”
Zuzanna released my hand and steadied herself. “So she’s going. To see if it’s Herta. By herself?”
“I’m afraid so, dear. You know how important this is. She’s a brave girl. She’ll be fine.”
Zuzanna held Julien close. “You don’t know what they’re like.”
She turned and walked in the direction of the playhouse, the baby at her shoulder watching my shrinking form with one shiny fist to his mouth. The band struck up “Young Love” by Sonny James as I watched Zuzanna walk across the meadow.
Once at the playhouse, she stepped inside and gently closed the door, leaving me with a sinking feeling I’d finally gone too far.
1959
The receptionist led me into the doctor’s office.