Highland Blessings (43 page)

Fifteen minutes later Sturmbannführer Wolfschmidt stood with arms crossed in the middle of the Jewish Community Center offices on
Ny Kongensgade
, New King’s Street
.
Surely it didn’t need to take this long to find a simple file of addresses?

And this librarian—Fischer—worse than useless. They could have easily broken down the front door, and never mind the keys which the little man now held in his trembling hands as he watched five uniformed schutzpolizei taking apart his office, file by useless file.

“It’s not in this one, either,” reported one of the polizei, tossing another file drawer into the middle of the room. Still the librarian trembled.

“You’re wasting our time!” cried Wolfschmidt. “Or would you rather we simply torch this place and be done with it? We’re going to find it, whether we destroy your office or not.”

Fischer looked to be in pain as he closed his eyes and mouthed … what, a prayer? Little good it did him now, because a moment later one of the schutzpolizei let out a cry as he pried open a locked metal file cabinet with a crowbar.

“I think I found something!” said the young man. Fischer winced but said nothing as they poured out the contents of the drawer, and then another—hundreds upon hundreds of cards, each one neatly printed with a name and address. Wolfschmidt smiled and stepped over to pick one up.

“Davidsen, Noah.” He smiled as he fingered the card. “You don’t imagine this could be a Jewish name, by chance?”

By this time the schutzpolizei had dumped the contents of several drawers on the floor. Which was all very well, but now they would just have to gather them all up and cart them away.

“In a box,” he said with a wave. “All of them.”

All of them, yes. The name and address of every Jew in this little country—and that would constitute close to seven thousand names. Perhaps that didn’t amount to much, compared to populations in other countries they had liberated. But it was enough to make their job much easier when the time came.

And that, he knew, would be very soon.

Walking on Broken Glass

Copyright © 2010 by Christa Allan

ISBN-13: 978-1-4267-0227-3

Published by Abingdon Press, P.O. Box 801, Nashville, TN 37202

www.abingdonpress.com

All rights reserved.

No part of this publication may be reproduced in any form,
stored in any retrieval system, posted on any website, or
transmitted in any form or by any means—digital, electronic,
scanning, photocopy, recording or otherwise—without written
permission from the publisher, except for brief quotations in
printed reviews and articles.

The persons and events portrayed in this work of fiction are the
creations of the author, and any resemblance to persons living or
dead is purely coincidental.

Published in association with WordServe Literary Group, Ltd.,
10152 S. Knoll Circle, Highlands Ranch, CO 80130

Cover design by Anderson Design Group, Nashville, TN

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Allan, Christa.

Walking on broken glass / Christa Allan.

p. cm.

ISBN 978-1-4267-0227-3

1. African American women—Fiction. 2. Women alcoholics—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3601.L4125W35 2010

813’.6 — dc22

All scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the New King James Version®. Copyright © 1982 by Thomas Nelson, Inc. Used by permission. All rights reserved.

Scripture quotations marked (NLT) are taken from the
Holy Bible
, New Living Translation, copyright © 1996. Used by permission of Tyndale House Publishers, Inc., Wheaton, Illinois 60189. All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 / 15 14 13 12 11 10

Patient Discharge Statement

If I had known children break on the inside and the cracks don’t surface until years later, I would have been more careful with my words.

If I had known some parents don’t live to watch grandchildren grow, I would have taken more pictures and been more careful with my words.

If I had known couples can be fragile and want what they are unprepared to give or unwilling to take, I would have been more careful with my words.

If I had known teaching lasts a lifetime and students don’t speak of their tragic lives, I would have been more careful with my words.

If I had known my muscles and organs and bones and skin are not lifetime guarantees, that when broken, snagged, unstitched, or unseemly, cannot be replaced, I would have been kinder to the shell that prevents my soul from leaking out.

If I had known I would live over half my life and have to look at photographs to remember my mother adjusting my birthday party hat so that my father could take the picture that sliced the moment out of time—if I had known, if I had known—I would have been more careful with my life.

Leah T.
August 4

C
ruising the sparkling aisles of Catalano’s Supermarket, I lost my sanity buying frozen apple juice.

Okay, so maybe it started several aisles before the refrigerated cases. Somewhere between the canned vegetables and cleaning supplies. I needed to kill the taste of that soy milk in my iced vanilla latte. Darn my friend Molly, the dairy Nazi. I blamed her for my detour to the liquor aisle. Decisions. Decisions. Decisions. What to pour in my Starbucks cup? Amaretto? Kahlua? Vodka? And the winner was … Amaretto. Perfect for an afternoon grocery event.

Ramping up the coffee seemed like a reasonable idea at the time. I’d left the end-of-the-year faculty party and thought I’d be a considerate wife and pick up dinner for Carl on the way home. He told me before he left for work that morning that he’d meet me at the party. Probably he had one too many meetings, which, since I’d probably had one too many beers, made us just about even. Don’t know if we matched spin cycles in our brains, though. That was the point of the coffee. A rinse cycle of sorts.

I’d just avoided a game of bumper carts with the oncoming traffic in the organic food aisle when I remembered that I needed juice. On the way to the freezer section, I maneuvered a difficult curve around the quilted toilet tissue display. My coffee sloshed in the cup in tempo with my stomach. I braked too swiftly by the refrigerator case, and a wave of latte splotched my linen shorts and newly pedicured toes. Ick.

Rows of orange juice. Apple juice was on the third shelf down. I reached in and, like a one-armed robot, I selected and returned can after can of juice, perplexed by the dilemma of cost versus quality.
Okay, this one’s four cents an ounce cheaper than this one. But this one’s …

My face would have reflected my growing agitation, but the stale icy air swirling out of the freezer numbed it. I held the door open with one hand, tried to sip my coffee with the other, and wondered how long it would take before full body paralysis set in. I stared at apple juice cans. They stared back. Something shifted, and my body broke free from a part of itself, and there I was—or there we were. I watched me watch the cans. The rational me separated from the wing-nut me, who still pondered the perplexities of juice costs. Rational me said, “Let’s get her out of here before she topples head first into the freezer case and completely humiliates herself.”

I abandoned my cart, a lone testament to my struggle and defeat, near the freezer cases and walked away. If I could fill my brain with alcohol like I filled my car with gas, it wouldn’t have to run on empty. It wouldn’t leave me high and dry in the middle of a grocery store aisle.

No, not dry this time. High. My brain is either high or dry, and it doesn’t seem to function well either way.

So that was my epiphany for sobriety.

Apple juice.

C
arl was late, too late to watch me as I weaved my way from garage to bedroom.

What was today?

Friday. Forgot.

Carl’s poker night. Reprieve.

I opened my bedroom closet door and considered changing into my scrubs, but that would’ve meant negotiating a path to the laundry room to pull them out of the dryer. Since I’d submerged my internal GPS in an Amaretto bath, I doubted I’d make it. The T-shirt and shorts I wore would do just fine. I peeled away the layers of comforter and blankets on my side and let the sheets tug the weight of my weariness into bed.

Two bathroom visits later, I felt the mattress concede as Carl’s body plowed onto his side of our bed. As usual, he reached his arm toward me, his right hand landing on my hip. As usual, I didn’t move and waited for the morning.

I woke up a rumpled mess, still wearing my coffee-stained shorts and black tee. I didn’t need a mirror to know my flat-ironed hair was smashed to my head, except for the twisted front bangs, which stood off my forehead in a lame salute. The sunlight from the bay window drilled through my eyelids. I slapped my face into the pillow but instantly regretted disturbing what could only be tiny thunderbolts in my brain. I needed to see a doctor. I woke up with far too many head throbs.

I felt the swaddled tightness as I rolled over. Carl always tucked in the sheet on his side of the bed as if to prevent me from rolling out. I turned toward the empty space on the other side of the bed to escape the sharpshooter sun.

I plucked the note left on his pillow. Thin, angular letters: “Golf at 8. Call Molly.” At the bottom, smaller print but all caps: “LET YOU SLEEP. CAN’T WAIT FOR YOU TONIGHT.” I shoved the note under his pillow and tried not to breathe in the whisper of his musky orange cologne.

Why did I remember what I wanted to forget, yet forget what I wanted to remember?

I stared at the ceiling, my eyes stung by my own thoughtlessness. Molly was probably geared up for major annoyance. Saturday mornings were reserved for our two -mile trek through the greenbelt trails of Brookforest. Late was not a time on her clock. I still wore my watch, and late ticked away: 9:00.

Molly Richardson and I met two years ago at the Christmas party for Morgan Management. Both of our husbands had recently joined the firm. She and I had barreled into the bathroom, about as much as one could barrel in ruffled silk chiffon and elastic-backed, three-inch spiked shoes. We crashed reaching for the door handle.

Molly grabbed the knob, steadied herself, scanned me, and said, “We have to stop meeting like this. People will talk.”

A woman with a sense of humor and cool shoes in the midst of granite-faced consultants. Our friendship had expanded since then beyond the boundaries of business. We knew almost everything there was to know about each other. Almost everything.

I willed myself to vertical and plodded to the phone on Carl’s side of the bed. One of our concessions after we moved into this house: blinding sun in my eyes; ringing phone in his ears.