A Song Across the Sea (14 page)

Suddenly Tara was in the frigid water, her arms and legs flailing about ineffectually. “Padraig! Paddy! Paddy!” Lower and lower she sank, trying to hold her breath although she knew her lungs would soon burst. She waited for death. Just then Padraig floated into view, his eyes bulging and lifeless, his fingers swollen like plump gray sausages. She was horrified to see that the currents had peeled away the top of his skull; spiny fish with eyes like dull pearls were feeding voraciously on his exposed brain. From his slightly open mouth issued forth a steady stream of bubbles that turned into silvery minnows and fluttered away. He turned his face toward her sorrowfully and said, “Tara? It hurts. It hurts so bad to be dead. Tara, you’re my sister. Why did you let me die?”

“Tara? My God, Tara, what’s wrong?”

She felt herself being lifted up by the shoulders and pressed tightly against a man’s chest. Her door was ajar; light from the hallway angled sharply into the room and across the end of the bed.

Her cheeks were wet with tears. She shook convulsively, waiting for her pounding heart to subside to a normal pace. The dream had been worse than ever this time.

There was someone at the doorway. It was Delores, her auburn hair in disarray and a robe thrown over her nightgown, peering anxiously into the room.

“Is she all right?”

“I think so. Must have had a bad dream.”

A dull, clumping sound marked the irregular, approaching footsteps of Hap. He appeared in the doorway.

“A bad dream? Mother of God, it sounded as if she was being murdered in her sleep!”

Tara took a wrenchingly deep breath and tried to calm herself, but the terrible dream was still near, lurking in the unlit corners of the room. Fear mixed with grogginess scrambled her words when she tried to speak.

“Mmmmm…he was there…so cold…fish eating…” Her shoulders heaving, she felt the horror sweep over her again like a cold wave that was studded with bits of ice.

“Easy. Easy, now.” Reece rocked her as if she were a child.

“I’ll get her a glass of water,” Delores offered.

Tara finally managed to say something coherent. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to wake everyone up.”

“Never mind about that,” Reece said. “You didn’t, anyway. Hap and I were downstairs talking.”

“I’ve never heard a scream like that in all my life,” put in Hap. “What in God’s name was the nightmare about?”

Tara closed her eyes and rubbed her raw-feeling eyelids with her fingertips. “The Titanic. Me wee brother Paddy.”

Hap looked uncomfortable. Delores came and held a glass of water out to Tara hesitantly, as if she wasn’t sure if Tara could hold it. Tara wasn’t sure herself. Reece took the glass from Delores and set it on the dresser next to the bed.

“Why don’t you two go back downstairs?” he said to Hap and Delores. “I’ll stay with her for awhile.”

“You don’t have to. I’m sorry to be such trouble,” murmured Tara brokenly.

“No trouble at all, young lady.” Only Hap could sound so sweet and so gruff at the same time. “I’m just glad to know you’re all right.” He and Delores turned and went back downstairs.

Reece was still holding Tara. “You’re trembling.”

“You don’t have to sit with me. I’m sure you’ve better things to do.”

“Not a one. Tell me about the dream.”

“I’d rather not.”

“It helps to put a face to your fears, Tara. To drag them out into the light and see what they’re really made of.”

She felt as if she could stay this way forever, leaning against his comfortingly solid chest with his warm hand on her back.

“I was in the water, sinking deeper and deeper. Padraig floated near me. He was already dead but he could still talk and he said—”

A sob choked off her words. Reece waited patiently, a watch ticking quietly from somewhere inside his vest.

“He said, ‘Tara, why did you let me die?’”

She was glad that he didn’t say anything, didn’t offer a simple platitude to make it all better. There were none. He simply wrapped his arms around her and held her motionless against his chest, her head resting just under his chin.

She had no idea how long he sat there with her.

She awakened when dawn trailed its tangerine fingers across her bed and knew a delicious sense of well-being she hadn’t felt in a long time. He was gone, and she’d had no more bad dreams.

T
he name of the German girl at the factory turned out to be Lotte. Tara made it a point to speak to her one day during a lunch break. Most of the women at the factory kept to those of their own nationality, because of language difficulties and shared cultures.

Lotte, it turned out, spoke English fairly well, although hesitantly, as if she were selecting each word with care in her mind before committing it to her lips.

“My family, we are saving money for a farm in Wisconsin. The brother of my father is already there, with his family. We will buy a farm near his.”

At Tara’s urging, Lotte described her large, energetic family which, in addition to Lotte and her parents, included a grandmother, three brothers and two sisters. They lived in a dismally small apartment on the Lower East Side—Lotte wrinkled her nose in disapproval when she mentioned it—but it was worth it because some day they would be able to live on their own farm.

“Everybody has job,” said Lotte. “Even baby Karl. He helps roll cigars to sell. My grandmother, she makes paper flowers.”

Tara thought it sounded wonderful. How nice it must be to go home at night to such a large family! To have brothers and sisters to be with, a mother to tell all your troubles to. Lotte’s father sounded something like her own.

There was something immediately likable about Lotte, who had a plump, friendly face with generous, broad-boned features and shiny hair the color of hay. Her bright blue eyes turned somber as Tara told her about her own family.

“That is so sad, Tara. You are here…all alone?”

“It’s not as bad as all that. Things are getting better every day. Sure and me mother and father wouldn’t have thought much of me wallowin’ in self-pity, would they?”

“But a young girl, all alone. You are my age, nein? Seventeen?”

Tara nodded, then observed: “You speak English very well, Lotte.”

“We study it before we came to here. Papa, he is very strict. We study every night. Now that we are in America, he doesn’t let any German speaking at home. Very angry, he gets, if he hears us. ‘We are Americans now,’ he tells us. ‘Speak English!’ Except my grandmother. She is…what is the word? Stubborn. Visits other women in the building and speaks German as she pleases.”

Tara laughed at the thought of the obstinate old woman defying her determined son.

The two girls became fast friends, spending nearly every lunch break together and talking avidly of their plans for the future. Tara had difficulty envisioning the future. Work devoured her days and left her too weary in the evenings to do much more than eat dinner and read a little while before falling into bed. Would it always be like this? Would she ever be able to save some money? Would there be time for marriage and children? This last question was drowned out by a small, insistent voice in the back of her head that told her she’d already met the only man she’d ever want to marry—and she couldn’t have him.

“You have…young man, Tara?” Lotte asked her once.

Tara shook her head.

Lotte sighed. “My father, he is strict. I am not allowed to walk out with a boy on Sunday. He says the boys here are not…good boys. He says he will find me a husband when we go to Wisconsin.”

Tara had a chance to meet Lotte’s family the very next Sunday, after the two girls went to the penny arcade and spent the rest of the afternoon in the park. It was a grand place for watching people, for seeing how they escaped their workday factories and road crews, dressed in their Sunday best and enjoying time with their families, often seated on blankets spread upon the grass, eating food they’d brought with them.

Afterwards, the two girls went to Lotte’s apartment for dinner. Lotte seemed a little ashamed as they approached the tenement house, and Tara could soon see why. The row of privies standing in the narrow yard behind the building polluted the air with the noxious odor of human waste, which was magnified by the summer heat. A half-dozen disturbingly large rats fed on the decomposing garbage that lay strewn under the windows, tossed there by tenants who couldn’t be bothered to make the trip to the alleyway.

Inside the Schoeners’ apartment, however, every surface and wall showed signs of having been vigorously scrubbed and the wavery panes of the single window sparkled miraculously—testaments to Mrs. Schoener’s tenacious efforts to battle the ever-present ashes that drifted from the coal-burning stove.

Tara noted the American flag hanging on the otherwise bare wall as she was introduced to a great many Schoeners all at once. She’d never remember all of their names! Lotte’s father shook hands formally with Tara and spoke to her in confident—if unconventional—English. Was it true that Tara had been on the Titanic? He had read about it in the newspaper, a terrible thing. And her father had been a farmer? Before long he and Tara were deeply involved in a discussion of crops and livestock, harvesting techniques and milk prices.

In no time at all, Lotte’s mother had removed from the table the tobacco leaves and cigar-rolling apparatus used to supplement the family’s income and had replaced it with an oilcloth upon which she set utensils and an appetizing-looking dish.

Tara felt a little awkward about joining the Schoeners for dinner; there wasn’t enough room for all of them at the little table as it was. A towheaded five-year-old—Erich, perhaps?—and his seven-year-old sister Gretchen sat on a long bench against the wall that Tara supposed was converted into a bed at night. How did the Schoeners manage in such a small space? Given the number of family members, the diminutive apartment was a marvel of order and efficiency.

Lotte’s mother, an apple-cheeked woman whose wavy hair had a ginger cast to it, took Tara by the hand and seated her between Lotte and her father, making Tara feel quite welcome.

“Sauerbraten,” she said, in reply to Tara’s query. “A special treat, because we have visitor.”

Lotte explained that the dish was beef marinated in vinegar, with peppercorns, garlic, onions and a bay leaf, and then roasted in the oven.

Tara thought the taste superb. The cuisine she’d grown up with, she was beginning to realize, was hearty but exceedingly plain.

Lotte nudged Tara and pointed to her nineteen-year-old brother Conrad, who was seated across the table from the two girls. “Conrad keeps looking at you, Tara.”

“Quiet, Lotte!” Conrad, a gangly boy whose long-jawed face sported the beginnings of a straggly mustache, looked flustered.

Lotte giggled.

Before Conrad could defend himself, Mr. Schoener rapped on the table with the butt of his knife. “Lotte,” he said mildly. “You embarrass your brother in front of our guest. Is not right.”

Lotte’s mother urged another piece of black bread on Tara. “Lotte says how nice you are to her at the factory. She says you are girl who speaks up to the boss when he is yelling at other woman.”

“Yes,” Tara said ruefully, “and I nearly lost me job over it. I’ve a bad habit of lettin’ loose with me tongue, don’t you know.”

Lotte’s father said; “My boss, he try to cheat me on my money when I’m new here. He thinks I don’t know no better. I tell him I know what’s what, and he don’t do it again. But O.K. In three, four years we go to Wisconsin. I don’t have this boss no more. I’m the boss.”

At the end of the evening, Tara thanked the Schoeners for dinner and bid everyone farewell. Lotte’s grandmother looked Tara up and down as if she were a piece of livestock being examined for flaws on market day, then said something in German to Lotte.

Lotte translated for Tara: “She say even if you’re not German, she think you’re O.K.”

•  •  •

The sweltering heat and energy-sapping humidity of summer finally yielded to autumn, which arrived bearing cool breezes and a palette of crisp russet and gold tones for the leaves on the elm and maple trees shading the city’s parks. The fresh, invigorating drafts never seemed to make their way into the factory. Tara daily cursed its sluggish ventilation, the oppressively stale air made dense with Van Zandt’s cigar smoke and human perspiration—air that left her with a sick headache at the end of each day. She made a determined effort to breathe deeply on her walks to and from work, and to enjoy the brisk flavors and aromas of fall.

She felt as if her life was set on a course not of her own making, like the needle Delores lifted and let down into the outer grooves of the phonograph records she played on the boxy Victrola in her parlor. The needle followed the groove until the song ended and someone came to lift it away. It had no choice. But was it really such a bad course she followed? Work was tedious, but at least she had work. Rumors that the factory sometimes shut down for three-month stints and laid off its employees due to backlogged inventory made her value her job even more. She tried to save a little money from her earnings, in case such a thing happened, but it was difficult. She had managed to pay Reece back the money he’d given her for clothing, but lodging ate up most of her wages. Then, too, she had to buy a sturdy winter coat, gloves and some warm sweaters. She allowed herself an occasional splurge during her outings with Lotte—at the penny arcade, or on a bag of roasted peanuts from a popcorn wagon in the street—but mostly, there was little money left over.

She kept her small wardrobe scrupulously clean, scrubbing the garments against a tin washboard in a basin she borrowed from Delores, then rolling them through a ringer and clothespinning them to a line outside, to let the breeze dry them. Hanging in the narrow yard, the damp skirts and blouses looked forlorn. How long, she wondered, would they remain serviceable? Her high-button shoes were the worst of the lot, scuffed at the toes and shiny with wear, but new shoes were such a luxury that they didn’t bear thinking about.