This journey to America was uneventful except for the reawakened memories. Bela guarding her precious salami for her Lotar, Megan, in her servant’s cap dreaming impossible dreams, Eugenie, her fantasy world adorned by paper roses—where were they now? What had become of these fellow immigrants to the promised land, its wonders when still unreached yet believed, depended upon? The remembrance of John teaching her to speak American, Jane did not dwell on—it increased her longing, weakened her determination to be what he expected of her.
On a stormy autumn evening Jane and Billy arrived in Highland Park to find it had acquired a forlorn look. Without the welcoming lights from the Geiger house and Hannah’s embrace everything seemed barren as though a new poverty of spirit had settled in. Soon good friends, forever kind, rallied, made every day at least bearable. A fresh coat of paint, some floorboards nailed down, a door or two rehung, everything scrubbed, polished and repaired, and daily life in the little house took on an optimistic shine of its own. Billy entered Wayne University on a scholarship—to help out, did odd jobs, shoveled snow, delivered papers, after school worked the soda fountain in Mr. Kline’s drugstore. Advertising her dressmaking skills Jane convinced the alterations department of Detroit’s most elegant department store to hire her. On her days off and for most special holidays remembering all that Hannah had taught her, Jane became a hired cook for a well-to-do family in Dearborn. Within structured discipline, life took on expediency; emotionally every day was a waiting for John, every extra dollar earned was for the house she had promised him to keep.
Not being able to afford the luxury of a telephone, a weekly ring-a-ling to Ebbely became an anticipated evening walk down to the corner drugstore.
Necessary nickels carefully counted—laid out before her, as always slightly nervous going through the required procedure of placing a long-distance call, Jane waited for that savored moment when he accepted her call with his usual assured “Yes? Yes, this is Mr. Fish …” and the subsequent joy of Ebbely’s “Hello? Is that you, dear child? Well, and how is life treating you today?” When she was sad, he refused to allow her the luxury of complaining, usually stating that sadness being the robber of one’s resilience which was bad enough, paying five cents for discussing its presence was just money thrown to the winds. When she told him of becoming a cook, Ebbely’s shock radiated all the way up north from Louisiana.
“A cook? You? Amazing!”
“Yes—and they pay me for it!”
“But … but, dear Lady, you hate—no, if I remember correctly, you abhor cooking!”
“Oh, I do! But it’s the only extra work I could find—and I have the copybook Hannah wrote out for me with her …”
“Jane—we will not speak of Hannah.”
“But, Ebbely, I was only going to …”
“Did you hear me, Jane?” Ebbely’s voice had lost its gentleness.
“I’m sorry—I know we agreed …”
“We did, didn’t we.”
Her nickels running low, Jane hurried to another subject.
“Eugenie wrote me. She sounds so happy—now that she is working for you.”
“She runs my humble establishment with a devotion at times bordering on embellished adulation.”
“I am so glad you found her.”
“Thanks to you, dear child, thanks to you … now … this telephone communication—is it for a constructive purpose or simple need?”
“Need.”
“Which is?”
“If I could answer that …”
“You wouldn’t have to telephone me in the first place!” Ebbely finished for her, laughing. “Repartee! Delicious! You are growing up, Vifey … you are growing up.” Catching his use of Hannah’s name for her, Ebbely bid Jane a hasty good-bye and hung up.
Most nights when the day was done and she was tired, then longings intruded that she could not allow during work. Where was Hannah? Where was John? When?
John waited for a sunny autumn morning when everyone would leave the villa to enjoy its unexpected warmth, then alone and undisturbed, cocked the pistol, and blew his brains against the bathroom wall.
By its very arrival the cablegram caused anticipatory anxiety even before being opened. Hands shaking, Jane unfolded it and learned she was a widow.
Profiting by financial inability as well as the length of time it would take a ship to reach Italy to bring his widow to attend—John was buried quickly. They could have waited, sent the necessary funds, but these were not forthcoming—neither was compassion. Jane had been deserted before—known its demand for an acquired emptiness of both spirit and feeling—she was well versed in helplessness. Having been a participant of life, not an instigator of it, Jane now found herself alone once more as spectator to her own void. Her life that lay behind her seemed fallow by things neglected—emotions perhaps disregarded, so undervalued that their extinction seemed guaranteed. What had she done to lose so much? As her grief increased so did her guilt that such intense grieving deserved a greater love as catalyst than what had been shown the living.
Had she loved him enough to bring him joy? Was she even capable of a loving that could enrich another’s very existence? Somehow she doubted it—the guilt, though unacceptable, was self-erasure. She felt she had deserted him by leaving—he had deserted her by dying. For John Jr. his father’s death seemed to hardly register. Billy confused by a sadness untried, thrust upon him by one he had believed loved him—still too young to know one could still love one who disappoints, felt anger mingled with his sorrow and resented his need to understand the why of another’s action.
Highland Park
December 4, 1938
Dearest Teresa,
I am a widow. On the seventeenth of October my husband took his own life—and I was notified of this by cablegram. For you this is a terrible sin—for him I believe it may have been a valiant act of freedom. For me a numbness that even after almost two months still envelops—sits in me like one of our thick mountain fogs. I should be weeping—but can’t. For the boys it must be the same—although I can’t be certain as John, the eldest rarely shows his feelings—lives in such a world of his own that sometimes I have the fear my mother sits in wait for him. Billy is brave, looks after me—cries when he thinks I do not see. Although I continue to write to my dear friend Hannah hoping that mail will be forwarded to wherever they may have moved to—I never get an answer so I worry every day a little more and now that I know John will never come home, I sometimes even worry about me …
By her selfishness not wanting to burden Teresa’s selflessness, Jane folded the unfinished letter, tucked it away in her precious shoebox that nestled against the urn where Michael slept.
It took Billy many months to earn enough to fulfill his need to see his father’s grave.