The Puzzle King (26 page)

O
NE EVENING, CLOSE
to midnight, Seema was sitting with her mother. It was her turn and the others had gone to
bed. The awful smell was all over the room. At first, she tried to ignore it, but it wasn’t something that could be ignored. Several times she walked out, hoping the odor would have disappeared by the time she returned. But each time it stung her eyes and stuck in her throat until she gagged.

She closed her eyes and begged to find the strength to do what she would have to do now. Out of habit, she reached for her gold chain, and again it wasn’t there. But she pretended it was, and she thought about the cross and the young girl she’d imagined had lost it and how she’d felt so protective of her. She looked at the figure lying in the bed, pitiful and even smaller than the young girl in her imagination, and she stopped thinking that this was her mother. She was another child, a helpless infant, and she thought to herself that no one with an ounce of humanity in them could deny an infant.

I can do this, she thought, as she pulled back the sheets. She cleaned her mother, tossed the soiled diaper in a bucket for Margot to wash, and fashioned another one out of an old dishrag. She did these things without holding her breath, and when she finished, she gently tucked in the sheets around her mother. She felt surprisingly protective, and she even allowed herself to realize that when she was a baby her mother must have done the same for her. It made her wince with forgotten comfort, but it didn’t make her like her mother one bit more.

Late in the evening on Thanksgiving Day, Flora sat by her mother’s bedside writing her daily letter to Simon:

Right now I imagine you are sitting down to dinner at Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul’s. I close my eyes and wish with all of my heart that I were there with you. I
hope that Aunt Hannah doesn’t make that disgusting sweet potato dish with marshmallows, and that you get to carve the turkey instead of Uncle Paul, because I know that his sloppy carving drives you crazy. Here it is depressing and lonely and about as opposite from Thanksgiving as can ever be. I am so homesick it is hard to describe.

The thought of home seemed like a miracle to her, and impossibly out of reach. She allowed herself a moment of sadness, and even said out loud, “Oh Simon.” It was in the silence that followed that she became aware of her mother’s breathing, irregular and rattling. Flora dropped the letter onto the floor and ran to get the others. They came in, reluctantly, and stood around the bed, none of them knowing what to say. The sisters, Edith, and Frederick sat vigil until dawn blazed across the sky. Margot got into bed and lay next to her mother as the others sat on straight-backed chairs. Just before the sun broke through, Margot rolled over. She put her arm around her mother’s shoulders and placed her head on her chest as her mother heaved and made strangled gurgling noises and finally made no sound at all.

“My poor Mutti,” whispered Margot.

The next day, they buried her in the cemetery outside of town. Some neighboring families showed up, as did a few of the men who worked with Frederick. The local rabbi performed the service, such as it was. It took him only a few minutes to read the Twenty-third Psalm and recite the Kaddish. Frederick had warned them about what would happen next. According to Jewish custom, after they lowered the pine box into the ground, members of the family would each have to place three shovelfuls
of dirt on top of it. It was a matter of honor, he said, to bury the dead personally rather than leave it to the grave diggers. Margot started at the thought. It was such a definitive act, one that made it impossible to deny what had just happened. When the baby Gilda died, they hadn’t buried her at the cemetery. The people in the hospital had taken her. Margot never considered where they might have put her, but now her mind began to wander. Had they thrown her in a sack with other ruined bodies or body parts? Dumped her in the garbage? Dropped her to the bottom of the lake? Margot’s body heaved and sagged as if she might scream. It came out as a moan. Frederick put his arms around her and helped her lift the dirt. “Don’t worry, I’m here,” he whispered.

Flora needed no help. She lifted three neat mounds and placed them squarely on the center of the coffin, then handed Seema the metal shovel. It was heavier than Seema expected, and she was unsure whether she’d be able to lift it at all. She felt as if she might fall down in the pile of dirt, or worse, on top of her mother’s casket. She was trembling and light-headed, and she was crying. Seema rarely cried, and never in public, and she looked imploringly to Flora and then to Edith and Frederick, as if any one of them could help her, but no one moved to do so. Even after she managed to dump the three shovelfuls of dirt on her mother’s casket, she continued to sob.

That evening, Flora, Seema, and Edith sat around the kitchen table eating some of the
Apfelkuchen
and
Streuselkuchen
that the neighbors had brought. Frederick poured Seema a glass of schnapps. “It’s good for the nerves,” he said, and this time Seema found his voice surprisingly soothing. Then he boiled some water for tea, stirred two tablespoons of honey into it, and placed it on a tray along with a slice of the
Streuselkuchen
and a piece of
bread with butter and jam. He carried it toward Margot’s room. “She hasn’t eaten a thing all day,” he said to nobody in particular. “She has to get something in her stomach.”

Seema swallowed her drink in one gulp and poured another, while wondering what kind of a woman would solicit that kind of sympathy from a man. Then she pulled out a pack of cigarettes from her purse, along with the silver cigarette holder that Oliver had given her. The cigarette holder felt clumsy and cold in her hands. It wasn’t of this place. Oliver wasn’t of this place. She thought about the goose-feather quilt next door, the smell of coffee at the Café Konditorei. Since she’d been here, no one had called her “Seamless” or “Seema Sweet Ass,” and no one seemed to care if she used the right fork, had the clever retort, or wore stylish gowns. As she thought about her life in New York, it seemed glamorous and expensive but not familiar or comfortable. Not like it did here.

She looked across the table and smiled at Edith, who smiled back. Seema thought that the weight her niece had gained made her look cherubic and filled with life. Then she remembered what Edith had said earlier about smoking to lose weight, and she offered her a cigarette. As they lit up, Flora waved her hand in front of her. She hated the smell of cigarettes and could be insufferable when anyone around her smoked. Seema blew a smoke ring in her sister’s direction. Flora waved both hands and Seema gave Edith a look as if to say,
You do it now
. Both of them blew smoke right under Flora’s nose. Seema knew it was mean to tease her sister this way, but Flora could be so demanding and exasperating. Edith and Seema made it into a game, and the more Flora gesticulated and grimaced, the harder they laughed. Laughing and smoking at the same time made Edith cough, which even made
Flora laugh. When she stopped long enough to catch her breath and say, “This isn’t funny, we just buried our mother today,” the three of them started screaming with laughter. Seema’s head fell to the table, and Flora buried her head in her hands. “Shhh,” said Flora. “What if Margot hears us?” That set them off even more. Tears ran down their cheeks, and they had to hold their sides. They laughed like that until their throats were sore and the backs of their necks ached, and they had no more laughter in them. Seema couldn’t remember the last time she’d laughed like that.

They were quiet now as she poured herself another drink and Edith took up a new cigarette in earnest. Flora placed her elbows on the table and folded her hands in front of her. She stared at her older sister, whose eyes were still swollen, and she spoke carefully. “So Seema, what happened to you at the cemetery today?”

Seema shook her head.

She thought about all of it: the joyless gray sky, the doleful rabbi who wouldn’t look any of them in the eye, the tiny group at the graveside, her small and shrinking family. It wasn’t any one of those things but it was all of them.

“I don’t know. I guess it’s that our mother is gone,” she said. “Our mother has always been gone, but we always had a mother and now we don’t. Does that make any sense?”

“Yes. It makes you feel off balance somehow,” said Flora. “Like no one is in charge except us.”

Seema turned to Edith. “You’re lucky, you know your mother and father and you know you’re loved by them.”

“That comes with a price, too, believe me,” said Edith.

“I’m sure it does,” said Seema, rolling her eyes in the direction of Edith’s parents’ bedroom, “but you know your place with them. I have no idea who my mother really was and she had no
idea of what my life was like. It never occurred to me that she wouldn’t just keep going on and always be there. This was so surprising. So quick.”

Seema pulled a handkerchief from her purse and blew her nose. Then she picked up her cigarette, though this time she blew the smoke away from Flora. “You’re lucky, too,” she said to Flora. “You have your place with Simon. He loves you and he really is your family.”

“And you?” said Flora. “You have Oliver. Surely, he would say that you’re his family.”

Seema shook her head. She didn’t say what she knew to be the truth. She was no more a member of the Oliver Thomas family than she was of the John D. Rockefellers.

They talked long into that night. Edith said she was worried about her mother now that her grandmother was gone. “Pappa is so patient with her. Sometimes I feel in the way here, like she’s more his child than I am. I worry that, if something should happen to him, she would be lost.”

“How’s he doing?” asked Flora.

Edith shrugged. “You see how he is. Cheerful, helpful. I think it must be a relief for him to go to work each day even though that place is horrible.”

“You think the job’s going okay?” Flora continued. “You know, with things the way they are?”

Once again Edith shrugged. “All I know is there’s still food on the table.”

Flora was playing with her napkin, twisting its corners. “Edith, let me ask you a question. I don’t want you to answer right away, but I want you to think about it. The situation here, as I’m sure you know, is not so good. Simon doesn’t think it’s going to get
better soon, and he’s usually right about things like that. We’ve been talking a lot about it, and we would like to bring you and your parents to America. Now that your grandmother is gone and the rest of us are in New York, it would be a good time to come. Your mother would have company and we could all be together. Simon is certain he could get your father a job, and you could go to school at one of the universities nearby. I’m going to bring it up to your parents tomorrow.”

“I could eat this cake all by myself,” said Edith, nibbling at the
Apfelkuchen
. “That’s the thing about being away at gymnasium. No one tells you what you can or can’t do, so you do everything to extreme until you realize that you can’t anymore. Look at me. I’m as fat as a horse, yet there’s always more cake and potatoes and chocolate to eat.”

“Oh darling, you look beautiful just the way you are. Just get the hair out of your eyes,” said Seema, sweeping Edith’s hair off her face. “Look at those gorgeous eyes. Who can see them behind all this?” You know what? I think you should cut your hair and have bangs. You’d look adorable. Don’t you think so, Flora?” Seema went to pour herself another glass of schnapps but the bottle was empty.

Flora stared at the two of them as if they were speaking Chinese. “Has anyone heard anything I’ve been saying?”

“What? Were you saying something?” asked Seema.

Edith picked up Seema’s taunting voice. “Oh, Aunt Flora, I’m sorry, I didn’t hear what you said.”

The two of them giggled. Flora was so earnest and persistent and so easy to tease.

“Do you think this is a joke?” Flora raised her voice and turned toward Edith. “This country is nearly bankrupt. Your
mother is emotionally and physically exhausted. And I’ll tell you something else: Simon and I don’t think this is a great place for Jewish people to be right now. Your father could be out on the street at any second. And then where would you be? Is that really so funny?”

Seema shook her head from side to side and made an exasperated face. “Whoops, there she goes again. Edith, in case you hadn’t noticed, your Aunt Flora and Uncle Simon are Jews on a mission. According to them, the whole world is anti-Semitic. With them, it’s all about who’s for the Jews and who’s against them.” Then, turning to Flora, she said, “Nobody cares that much, Flora. Really, nobody does!”

Flora was about to answer her when Edith broke in. “I’m sorry, Aunt Flora. It is very kind of you and Uncle Simon to think about bringing us to America. But you know my mother. She’ll never leave this country, not even this town or this house. And Pappa, well, you know how he feels about Germany. Sometimes he’ll say that Germany is having its growing pains, but that’s as far as he goes. How do you say it in America? He’s a German through and through. Me? I’d come in a minute if they would, but I can’t imagine going without them.”

Flora leaned back in her chair. “Have you ever seen pictures of New York City at Christmas? There are lights everywhere, and the streets are filled with people, and every store you go into is playing Christmas music. It’s beautiful, like nothing you’ve ever seen before. We could all be in New York by Christmas. Together. That would be something. Don’t you agree, Seema?”

Seema was staring at something on the floor and didn’t bother to raise her head. She was thinking about how every year since she’d known him, Oliver had taken his family skiing in St. Moritz
over Christmas and she’d end up spending the holidays sitting alone in her apartment on Park Avenue. She never wanted to admit to Flora or to Aunt Hannah and Uncle Paul that her married boyfriend was off with his family, so she’d decline their invitations and pretend that she and Oliver were going away together for some swanky holiday in Florida or Havana. Now the thought of spending another Christmas alone in that stuffy, overfurnished apartment lodged in her throat. When she finally answered Flora, it came out in a croak. “Christmas in New York stinks,” she said. “And you know what else? New York stinks, and I’m never going back there.”