It's You (24 page)

“Do you need help, Aunt Edie?” Craig asks.

She stops, turns around. “Can you get one of my boxes down? I want the Berlin years.”

“Of course I can. Come sit back down.”

But she doesn’t sit back down on her loveseat. She comes to sit next to me on mine. Craig hands her the box and she takes off the lid, and carefully goes through the small boxes and bundles of letters and envelopes until she comes to a dark brown leather book on the bottom. She draws it out, running a light hand across the dark leather cover as Craig sets the box on the coffee table.

“Haven’t looked at this one in years,” Edie says. “Not sure I want to look at it now.” She traces a scratch in the leather then looks at me. “This is the last one, the diary I kept the summer of 1944. As you know, I’d always kept diaries, but after this one, I stopped. I couldn’t write.”

I hear heaviness in her voice, and sorrow.

“Too much to say?” I ask gently.

She gives her head a nearly imperceptible shake. “Because there was nothing to say. The war said it all.”

I’m determined not to be emotional. I’m determined to be calm and matter-of-fact but I know what this diary is. I know what it represents. The summer of 1944 was the summer of the July 20 assassination attempt. The attempt failed and all those involved were rounded up, tortured, and killed.

Edie runs her fingers across the scuffed cover again and again. Craig and I both watch her, neither of us speaking.

“I learned during that trip to Berlin with my sister, back in 1978, that Franz wasn’t buried anywhere.” Her voice cracks.
“None of them were. They were executed and cremated and the ashes were scattered . . . blown by the wind. But if the Gestapo and the People’s Court thought they’d punished the traitors by discarding the ashes, they were wrong.
Wrong!
”

She lifts her head, looks me in the eye. “All they did was free the men, returning them to their land.”

Her voice quavers. “You see why I have not spoken of Germany for all these years. It is impossible. My friends were not Nazis. My friends were those the Nazis despised—the artists, the intellectuals, the students, the Jews, the Gypsies, the Poles, the aristocrats. My Germany was all of those things and then it was gone. Just as my Berlin was not the Berlin I found in 1978. That Berlin sickened me. She was once so beautiful and to see her divided, punished with that wall and barbed wire—”

“But that’s not the Berlin Ali will find,” Craig says quietly. “The wall is gone. The ugly empty scar of Potsdamer Platz has been given new life with a bold redevelopment project.”

“Those glass and neon buildings you showed me,” Edie sniffs.

“There was no way to go back and re-create what was lost during the war. Better to move forward, integrating the old with the new.” He looks at me, and smiles. “You’re lucky I have my Tuscany wine expo or I’d go to Berlin with you.”

Edie

A
lison and Craig washed and dried the plates and teacups and saucers, putting them away. Craig is walking Alison out now, and there’s nothing for me to do.

It was a good night. I enjoyed myself. Interestingly enough, tonight Alison didn’t even annoy me.

I take a damp dish towel and wipe the counters one more time, determined to ignore the flower box with the cheerful dahlias and zinnias on one of the counters. Craig promised to hang it for me this weekend. I told him not to bother. He laughed and called me a sourpuss. I told him he was disrespectful.

Alison listened to us; she’s always listening and watching. She’s such a strange girl but she’s growing on me. A little.

I turn to my window box.

I like it. I do, especially the spiky pink dahlias with the yellow peach glow in the center.

Glamour puss.

Show-off.

I hang the towel up and face the window box. Bob used to buy
me flowers. He knew I liked them. Franz didn’t buy me flowers, but that was because there were no flowers available. Or chocolates. Or sweets.

If one went out into the country, you could get something special—like milk and cheese, but in the city, we had so little. The rationing was so severe. We tried to make it a game but it wasn’t easy. Near the end, nothing was easy.

But then, the end for Franz and me came so fast I didn’t even know it was the end until it was too late.

Most of those committed to the Resistance were married men, men with wives and children and responsibilities. But they were also responsible for Germany. They were, after all, Germans and this wasn’t the Germany they knew and loved.

They couldn’t look the other way. They couldn’t stay silent. Do nothing.

We, the women who loved them, understood. This is why we loved them. This is why we risked our lives, too, because nobody was safe.

None of us wanted pain. We didn’t want to die. We didn’t want to be tortured. But a man has a conscience, and a relationship with God, and that relationship with God requires one to act.

To do.

I didn’t know that anything had been planned for July 20.

I didn’t know anything immediate was in the works.

I did know Franz was tense. Tired. He wasn’t sleeping much, and was constantly working, and traveling, and in secret meetings.

And then he told me I needed to get away from Berlin and get some fresh air and sun. He said I should go to Switzerland, and perhaps some of my old friends from the music conservatory who were in Switzerland could join me at one of the lake resorts and relax with me, and then he’d join me at the end of the month.

I thought it was very extravagant. We didn’t have a lot of
money. It would be costly to take the train so far and stay in a hotel, but I loved the idea of good food, and sunlight. Best of all, there would be no blackouts.

I didn’t know it was the last time I’d see him. I didn’t suspect anything since Franz was always traveling and working and saying I needed more milk and fresh fruit and meat. It didn’t cross my mind that once he put me on the train for Zurich all hell would break loose.

I’d only been in Switzerland two days when word reached us on the morning of the twenty-first that there had been an attempt on der Führer’s life. It had failed and the traitors were being arrested by the dozens and they would all die.

I remember feeling as if my legs would give way. I remember collapsing into a chair, and Maria from the hotel’s front desk rushed to me, and called for help.

She didn’t know what had happened.

She didn’t know what I knew.

Franz, Adam, Peter, Helmut, Hans, Claus—they would all be arrested. I didn’t even know if they’d get a trial. Hitler and his monkey “People’s Court” didn’t believe in trials.

It was a day later that we learned Claus had been shot.

The others were being interrogated. They would eventually die a horrible death, slow strangulation—

I stop myself there, unable to finish the thought. I still can’t bear to remember the details.

They were good men and women, and ordinary men and women . . .

Men like Franz who became extraordinary for speaking out, standing up, showing courage.

I was a good woman, an ordinary woman, too, but when I returned to the US, no one knew that anymore.

No one could believe that, not after the war.

Ali

I
’m packed and the suitcases are in the trunk of the car. I turn off the lights, lock the Poppy Lane house’s front door, thinking this is a very nice house, in a very nice neighborhood. I wish Mom and Dad were still here. It feels like home.

I give the house a last glance and then I’m off. I won’t be back until Saturday night, and then I’ll be here just a day, just long enough to have brunch with Dad for Father’s Day, and then it’ll be back to the airport to fly to Phoenix.

My time in Napa is essentially over.

It’s been a good three weeks. And Dr. Morris was right. I needed the break.

I need to be in San Francisco by two, which gives me an hour to spare. I stop by Napa Estates to say good-bye to Dad. He’s not very chatty. He’s focused on getting downstairs for breakfast with “the boys.”

“Can you please act like you’ll miss me a little bit?” I tease him.

“Of course I’ll miss you. But I won’t be sitting around missing you. You’re off on an adventure. You’re going to have a great time.”

I hug him good-bye. “Just be careful while I’m gone, and watch
out for those man-hungry single ladies. I don’t want to come back next week and find out you’re married.”

“Don’t worry. I avoid those women at all costs,” he says.

I give him another hug, holding him tighter than he probably likes. I don’t feel as if I know him well. Perhaps I never will. But maybe that’s okay. Maybe we don’t need to share our innermost thoughts and feelings. Maybe it’s enough to share a meal, a game of cards, an afternoon on a Sunday. “But Dad, maybe you don’t need to avoid women altogether. Mom wouldn’t want that. Mom would want you to have companionship—”

“We don’t need to talk about this. I’m not ready to think about any of that. Besides, I’d never love anyone the way I loved your mom.”

“Maybe you don’t have to. Maybe just being some nice woman’s best friend would be enough.”

He breaks free, gives me a stern look. “Thank you, Ann Landers. You can go now.”

• • •

I
stop by Edie’s room and knock lightly on the door. She and Ruth usually have brunch together around eleven. I imagine Edie is getting dressed now.

She opens the door, and she’s in one of her nice Sunday outfits, a gray and white knit skirt and matching white knit top.

“You’re probably sick of me,” I say, smiling at her.

“I am,” she agrees. “But since you’re here, come in. I’ve something for you, for your trip. I’d meant to give it to you last night but completely forgot.”

I follow her into her living room where she hands me a plastic bag with some treats for my trip—chocolates and packages of cheese and peanut butter crackers—because she’s heard they don’t serve a lot of food on flights anymore and thought I might get hungry, if not on the flight, then maybe at the hotel when I’m wide awake with jet lag.

“Thank you,” I say, touched. “That is so nice of you.”

“I told Craig to buy them. I don’t drive anymore. I’ve given up my car.”

I know.

Maybe that’s why I can’t stop looking at her, and smiling at her.

“Have you packed an umbrella?” she asks. “The weather can change quickly in Berlin, and you don’t want to pay those high European prices for an umbrella once you’re there.”

“I have one. I bought one. Here.”

“Good.” She folds her hands in front of her. “The last time I was in Germany the dollar was very strong, and so it was much more affordable. It’s not that way anymore from what I understand.”

“That’s true.”

She asks if I’ve packed a coat—I have. She wants to know if I’m taking anything sharp for evenings (her words, not mine) in case I go to dinner or the opera, and perhaps a couple cardigans for the daytime if the weather is cool. I told her I have.

She says that in her time, everyone rode bicycles all over Berlin and girls had no problem riding bikes with their long skirts, but she thinks trousers or capris might be easier for me. I tell her I haven’t ridden a bike in ages and I’m not sure I’ll have time to ride one while in Germany, but I promise to take lots of photos and look up all the people and places she’s mentioned. “And I wrote down the addresses, too, of your old house and your friends’ houses. I’ll go take pictures of whatever’s there. It might be old. It might be new. Hopefully you won’t be disappointed—”

“Me? Why should I be disappointed? This is your trip, not mine.”

“But I want to go for you—”

“I don’t believe that. Nor should you.” Her gaze meets mine, fixed, steady, even as one of her hands moves lightly over her lap, skimming the soft knit fabric. “This trip isn’t about me. Which
makes me wonder why you’re going. What is it you’re looking for in Germany? And why Germany?”

For a long moment there is silence.

I don’t know what to say. And I don’t know what to say because I don’t know the answers to these questions. I’m not even sure why I feel so compelled to go—now. But there is an urgency, and a need to know. To see.

But know what?

See what?

“You loved Germany,” I say at last. “You loved your music studies and the people you met. You loved Berlin.”

“Yes.”

“And then it was all gone.”

“Yes.”

My chest tightens and a lump fills my throat. It hurts to swallow. “The war . . . the chaos . . . the deaths, and betrayals . . . you couldn’t stop it.”

“No.”

“You couldn’t change it.”

“No.”

“And yet you still love Germany.”

“Even though Germany broke my heart?” Her thin shoulders twist. She doesn’t wait for a response. “Disappointment is part of life. We can’t escape it. Ever.”

“I just want to understand it better.”

“It?”

“Germany. The war. The losses. All of it.”

“You might be disappointed.”

“Why?”

“Germans do not like discussing the war. They do not like being confronted with their past. I discovered in 1978 that younger generations were determined to distance themselves from the past.
They have no desire to be burdened by the older generation’s failings and atrocities.”

“I’m not going to judge, but to learn.”

“Then maybe this might be helpful.” Edie slowly rises and goes to the kitchen, returning with the diary with the scratched dark leather cover. “Take this one with you. It might help answer some of your questions, or at the very least, give you a perspective you might not get otherwise. But maybe wait to read it, wait until the end of your trip, until after you’ve seen the city for yourself. I think that’s better. Yes, I think that’s best.”

“I’ll wait until the end. I promise. And I’ll take lots of photos, and show you everything when I come back.”

“You are lucky to go and see this new shiny Berlin without the weight and suffering of its past.”

I hear the wistful note in her voice. “Do you wish you were going with me?”

“No. I’m tired. Just keeping Ruthie entertained is exhausting enough.”

I smile. “She’s lucky to have you.”

“I’m lucky to have her.”

“You’ve never regretted not marrying again?”

Her sparse eyebrows shoot up. “I did marry again. Stephens is my second husband’s name.”

“What?”

“I was twenty-four when Franz was killed, too young to remain alone for the rest of my life. I wanted what you still want—a husband, children—and I found a perfect gentleman in Bob Stephens. We met in 1947, at an event at the San Francisco consulate, and were married the following year.”

“Edie, I had no idea. I thought Stephens was Franz’s last name.”

“Franz’s last name is Franz. Well, von Franz. His given name was Tor. But you know that—”

“I’ve never heard this before.”

“Nonsense. You weren’t listening—”

“I’ve listened to everything you’ve told me.”

“Then you’d know his name was Major Baron Torsten von Franz. But I never called him Torsten. He was always Franz to me. When we married I became von Franz, but when I remarried, I took Bob’s last name.”

I want to write this all down so I look around for my purse and notebook but I left both in the car. “No wonder I couldn’t find him in my research. I had Franz’s name all wrong.”

She starts down the hall and gestures for me to follow. We enter her bedroom and approach her nightstand. She lifts one of the silver-framed photos and holds it out to me.

I’m expecting a young handsome blond man, someone dashing, with piercing blue eyes and a chiseled jaw, but the man in the photo is middle-aged with a buzz cut, a wide mouth, and ears that don’t quite lie flat. But he looks affable, and he has nice eyes.

“This is Bob,” she tells me. “He was a career army man.”

He looks like a Bob. He also looks kind, which I imagine is just what Edie needed, but I want to see Franz—correction, Torsten. I want to see who inspired such great passion and devotion in young Edie.

But Edie’s still talking about Bob. “He saw considerable action in the Pacific during World War II. Like me, he spoke several languages, different languages—Korean, Japanese, Mandarin, some Cantonese—and so when the US entered the Korean war, even though he’d just retired, they asked if he’d go and serve as intelligence. They trusted him, and needed him. I understood why he went—he, like me, believed it was essential to stop dictators and the spread of Communism, but it was not easy to let him go.” She pauses. “But I did.”

I glance back down into Bob’s affable face, with his protruding ears and wide easy smile. “Tell me this story ends happily.”

Her lips press. Her shoulders lift, and fall.

Dammit.

I take a step away, frustrated. “You tell the worst stories, Edie. They are so
sad
.”

“They didn’t happen to you.”

“No, but it’s horrific. You’ve lived through unimaginable tragedies and now you’re going to tell me your lovely, kind second husband dies in Korea?”

“Just because I loved twice and lost both times, doesn’t mean you will.”

“That’s not the point.”

“But I think it is the point. It’s what’s in the back of your mind.” She returns the frame to her night stand. “And if, on the unlikely chance, it did happen again to you, you’d recover, Alison. Why? Because it’s what strong people do.”

“Maybe I don’t want to be strong!”

“It’s too late. You were born with resolve. You yourself said you’ve always had goals, you need lists, you like to accomplish things, so accomplish things and live your life. That’s what you are meant to do.”

My heart still pounds. I feel queasy. “I thought you loved Franz so much.”

“I did.”

“But you have no picture of him, nothing here, next to your bed.”

“There were no photos to frame. I left Berlin mid-July 1944 with a small suitcase for a couple of weeks in Switzerland. I didn’t know I’d never return. And by the time the war was over, there was no way to get anything back. Franz was gone. His family scattered, their home and town now in the Russian sector. Once the wall went up, there was no information available, no one I could contact. My world, my Germany had vanished.”

“Wasn’t it difficult to replace him?”

“He was never replaced. You don’t replace someone like Franz, and yet at the same time, I was twenty-four, and he was gone. He wasn’t coming back. What was I to do? Never care for anyone again? Never need anyone again? Never crave companionship or tenderness? I was too young to be alone for the rest of my life.”

“So you fell in love—a second time.”

“Yes, because Bob was nothing like Franz. I didn’t want to love someone like Franz, and I don’t think I could have. Bob was older, and mature, and so very protective of me.”

“Not that protective if he went off to Korea leaving you behind.”

“We both knew Korea would be dangerous, but I don’t think either of us expected him to die there. He was intelligence. He wouldn’t be on the front line.”

I glance down at the cluster of photos on the table, seeing him tucked between the old-fashioned black-and-white photo of two little girls in matching sailor dresses with ringlets and huge white silk bows in their hair, and a picture of Edie with her blonde, teenage nephews, Craig and Chad.

Bob is still smiling into the camera. He’s not a handsome man. He doesn’t look dashing, but he does look kind.

“Edie, I just can’t believe he’d leave you for war.”

She shrugged. “He wouldn’t have gone if I’d asked him to stay.”

“No?”

“He asked my opinion. He wanted to know what I thought. I understood why he felt compelled to go. I respected his sense of duty and honor.” She hesitates. “And to be honest, I thought he’d come back. I was sure he’d come home. I didn’t think I’d lose him.”

“Did you feel guilty?”

“Angry, shocked, guilty and . . . heartbroken. Heartbroken,” she repeats. “I received the telegram on Christmas Day. I’ve never wanted to celebrate Christmas since. And perhaps the greatest
tragedy is that it was a non-combat accident. He was in the same jeep with General Walker. Their vehicle was struck by a speeding truck. It could have happened anywhere . . . here, there. It wasn’t enemy fire, or friendly fire. It was a speeding truck.”

I don’t know what to say. I don’t have the words. But I would like to hug her.