Summer Beach Reads 5-Book Bundle: Beachcombers, Heat Wave, Moon Shell Beach, Summer House, Summer Breeze (151 page)

She continued. “These are the facts, Worth. Perhaps we should have told you before now. Or perhaps I should never have told you. You must understand how much thought I’ve given this.”

Worth said, gently, “Mother. You and Father were married in 1943.”

“We were. And we were separated for almost two years by the war. Your father saw terrible things—men fighting, men dying—and for months he was on the battlefield, living in the harshest conditions, eating dreadful food, sleeping on the cold ground, not knowing whether he would live or die. I’m not trying to excuse what he did. I’m trying to explain. When the war was over, he was sent to Bremerhaven to head up the organization and dispersal of supplies arriving in that port city and sent throughout a devastated country. He was billeted in Ilke Hartman’s home. That woman, with the white-blond hair, that is Ilke Hartman. That is your mother.”

Irritation rasped in Worth’s voice. “You really should stop saying that.”

“You really should listen to me.” Nona’s voice was sharper than she meant it to be, but it silenced Worth. “I sailed to Bremerhaven in January, to work at the European end of the Stangarone shipping offices. When I arrived, I found your father living with Ilke, and she was pregnant, she was pregnant by your father. He told me they had been lovers. He told me her child was his. She gave birth in January. I was there. Worth, I was there at your birth. I saw you born.”

“But Nona.” Helen’s tone was urgent. “If this Ilke Hartman was Worth’s mother, why was Worth raised here in the United States?”

The accumulated buffer of years dissipated from around Nona like a sea mist, allowing so many emotions to return vividly to her, so many sights and sounds and wounds and terrors. “Because Ilke was killed by a UXB.” Seeing their confusion, she added, “An unexploded bomb. They were everywhere in Europe.”

Now the memories were beginning to coalesce, to weigh upon her shoulders and her lungs. “Ilke knew a butcher in another part of town, a man who had been a friend of her parents. Her parents, her
entire family, had died in the war. Ilke’s milk was not abundant, and she decided to go see the butcher, to could convince him to sell her a piece of meat. It was a Monday morning. The baby—you, Worth—was only two weeks old. He was sleeping, and she did not want to carry him with her, because the streets were difficult to walk on, with the rubble in the way, and people were often unruly, shoving in their haste to get to something, anything. The streets were always dangerous. And she knew the butcher well. It seemed a reasonable thing to do.” Something thick clogged her trachea. She tried to cough it away.

Helen leaned forward. “Would you like some water, Nona?”

Nona touched her throat, her crepey, turkey-wattle throat. “I’ve got something here, dear.” Nona sipped her Scotch.

“Go on,” Worth urged, his voice quiet now.

Nona gazed at the sixty-year-old man, handsome, silver-haired, healthy, sitting before her. “I was taking care of you, Worth. We had not yet decided what we would do, your father and I. He loved me, he had not stopped loving me, but the war … the loneliness, the hardships … I could understand. I could forgive. It was the war, you see; it was another world. And you were a beautiful baby, vulnerable, innocent, precious. Herb told me he would remain my husband. We would return to the United States eventually. But he intended to claim you as his son and to support Ilke and you. I commended his decision. I knew it was the right thing to do. For two weeks, we three adults managed to live together in—well, you could call it a kind of peace. We understood without saying it that you were the focus of all our lives.”

Worth waited in silence.

Nona clasped her hands together, directing her gaze at him. “When you hear an infant cry, Worth, you want to comfort it, feed it, ease its distress. Inside that house, it was such a strange, hot, intense world—did I tell you that the baby was premature? You. You were premature, Worth, you were seven and a half months old when you were born. You were bald and had no eyelashes or eyebrows, no fingernails. We could not weigh you, but I’m sure you weighed no more than five pounds. You were
tiny
, Worth. Absolutely beautiful, but so defenseless. Ilke did not have enough milk for you. Herb managed,
through his army contacts, to procure formula, and bottles, and the three of us took turns feeding you, because you were always hungry.” Nona leaned forward, her voice suddenly strong, powerful with the force of her emotions. “Try to envision it, Worth. Outside the little brick house spread devastation and ruin and chaos. Buildings were still collapsing, beams and roof slates and window glass giving way as houses and shops and churches and hospitals settled. Unexploded bombs were everywhere. You could not trust the ground to lie still beneath your feet. Trees lay across sidewalks, their roots dry and crooked, reaching out like the arms of the dead. And the dead were everywhere. You never knew when you might see a hand extending from a pile of debris. You never knew when you might see rats gnawing at something in a mound of broken timbers. Women roamed the street weeping, tearing their hair, their skin. Men staggered through the streets. Some of them howled.”

“Nona,” Worth cautioned, “you’re upsetting yourself.”

“No. I’m upsetting
you
, and I mean to. I want you to try to see, really see, what it was like, for me and for your father and for your mother. We lived in a world utterly changed by war. We lived in a world of ruin and shambles. And here you were, a new life, helpless but alive and kicking, giving us all something to hope for. You were like a flower, sprouting from a field of wreckage.”

For a moment, the three of them sat quietly, reverently. Nona’s old heart was racketing around in her chest like a squirrel trapped in a cage. She forced herself to take deep breaths. She took another sip of Scotch.

Gathering her strength, she continued. “It was a friend of your father’s who told us about the bomb. The bomb that killed your mother. Your father wept. I wept, too. I had not come to know Ilke well. I was there only two weeks, after all. But from the beginning she had understood how I felt about the baby, about you. She was so generous with you. She let me help take care of you, she let me rock you and carry you, and after the first week, when it became evident that you needed more nourishment than she could supply, she allowed me to give you the bottle.” Tears she could not prevent fell down Nona’s face. “We should have hated each other. I suppose, any other
time, we would have. At least
resented.
She was so beautiful, Worth. Look at the picture. She was much more beautiful than I. And her laugh—it was like silk. Her speaking voice I didn’t find so attractive, all those gutturals and coughing sounds. But her laugh … and when she sang lullabies to you, her voice was as sweet as honey. She was very young. She was twenty-one when she died.”

Helen reached over and lifted the album from Worth’s hands. She studied the photo of Ilke Hartman. “She was beautiful, it’s true. But not more beautiful than you, Nona.”

“You’re being kind. But believe me, I know the truth. Look at her eyes. Look at the shape of her eyes, and the light eyebrows, and how they wing upward at the outside. Like Worth’s. Look at the picture, and then look at your face in a mirror, Worth.”

Worth shook his head. “I don’t know if I can take this all in.”

“Give yourself time,” Nona advised.

Helen asked, “So you adopted the baby?”

Nona said, “I
claimed
the baby. I stayed in Bremerhaven, with your father and Worth, for two years. In August we wrote home that I had had a premature baby. And Worth
was
a frail, sickly infant. In fact, he was small and under average height for the first five years of his life. He was slow to crawl, slow to walk, he didn’t even speak until he was three.” She shook her head, remembering. “Imagine our surprise when you suddenly shot up, a strong, healthy, active boy.”

“Did the Wheelwrights never suspect?” Helen asked.

Nona laughed. “Not once. They were only too eager to believe that I had given birth to a weakling. And then, as Worth became a person, they fell in love with him, just as everyone did.”

Nona sank back into her chaise. Her heart had eased, the pounding receding to its calm and regular beat. She had done it. She had finally told Worth the story of his birth. She studied his face, searching for a sign of his reaction.

Worth had taken back the album and put on his glasses and scrutinized the photo. He raised his head, slipped off his glasses, and folded them. His face was calm when he said, “I know what you’re doing, Mother.”

“Oh?” She raised an inquisitive eyebrow. “And what is that?”

“You’re trying to persuade me to accept Suzette’s baby as my own blood.”

“Well, yes, I suppose I am. I suppose that’s exactly why I chose to tell you this now.”

Worth shook his head. “I admire your inventiveness. This is quite a fabulous story you’ve concocted, and it makes me appreciate even more your own opinions on the matter of this new baby, but it doesn’t make me change my mind.”

“Oh, Worth.” Nona closed her eyes against his disbelief, his stubborn righteousness. What could she do? She had a thought. “Worth, I will take a DNA test. That will prove you are not my son, won’t it?”

At this, Worth sagged in defeat. He ran his hand over his face.

Helen asked, “Did Ilke name her son?”

Nona nodded. “She did, of course. She named her baby Hans.”

“Hans!” This spurred Worth into a kind of helpless action. He rose from his chair and strode around the bedroom, shaking his head like a bull trying to shake off spears. He clenched his fists, needing to hit something, having no available target. Turning suddenly, he shouted at Nona, “How could you love a child named Hans? How could you love a
German?
”

Nona’s reply was simple. “How could I not love
you?
”

Worth wrenched his gaze to Helen. “You know what this means, don’t you? If Nona is telling the truth, it means our children are
German.
”

Helen offered a gentle smile. “Oh, Worth, I don’t think so. I’ve never noticed a proclivity for sauerkraut or beer. They can’t yodel. They don’t—”

“How can you be flippant at a time like this!” Worth thundered. Facing Nona, he demanded, “Why didn’t you tell me this before?”

Nona stretched out a beseeching hand, but Worth would not take it. “Your father and I discussed it often. But then again, not as often as you might think. Our lives were busy. You favor your father in your looks: the strong square jaw, the set of your head on your neck, the angle of your ears, your straight patrician nose. Only your eyes are like your biological mother’s, but of course I have blue eyes, too, as did Herb. We could not think what good would come of telling
you. At first you were too young, and then you were too much
yourself.
Had there ever been a medical exigency, we might have told you, but Worth, think about your life, remember it. When could we have told you? When should we have told you? And why? You are my son. I love you as much as I love Grace. I always have. In fact, I know that Grace believes I favor you. Isn’t that right?”

Worth didn’t reply. Exhaustion was weighing down on Nona’s chest and shoulders. It was as if this secret had filled her life and her body like a second set of lungs, and now it had been excised and she was empty. She was hollow. She wanted to say,
Worth, do you know I am too feeble to carry even baby Zoe across a room? In that same way, I can no longer carry your pride, your anger, your pain, in my heart.
But she only said, “Do you know, my dear ones? I am suddenly very tired.”

Helen asked, “Would you like us to help you back to bed?”

“Thank you, no. I think I would prefer to rest on my chaise. But my shoes—” She looked at her son. “Worth, would you help me, please?”

His jaw was set in a lock Nona knew so well. For a moment he hesitated. Then he asked, coldly, politely, “Would you like me to remove your shoes?”

“Please.”

He bent on one knee to unlace and slip off her shoes, and Nona saw the top of his head, saw the bald spot beginning in the midst of all his silver hair, and she saw as if through layers of time, how his hair had been thick, white blond, slightly wavy, and once, so long ago, how his scalp had been bald, delicate, defenseless, an infant’s bare scalp with its vulnerable fontanel. He had been a sickly baby, relentlessly crying in a thin, high wail, needing constant attention, sleeping only when someone held him.

They had taken turns, Herb and Anne, rocking and walking the infant, for those first few days when Ilke rested, recovering from the sudden birth. Nona could remember the speckled pattern of linoleum on the kitchen floor, the rag rug in the hall, the handsome ivory and green oriental carpet in the parlor. The framed photographs of Ilke Hartman’s parents and sister on the mantel. The curtains,
heavy striped silk. The comfortable chair, upholstered in velvet and stuffed with horsehair, where she had often sat, for the few moments the infant would allow her to rest. Outside the house had been chaos and destruction. Inside the house was warmth and order and new life.

Anne had not slept with Herb those two weeks. He remained on the sofa and left for work every morning and returned every evening, bringing whatever food supplies he had scrounged from army supplies or bought on the black market. Anne never went to work at Stangarone’s. She was too busy keeping house, making stews; women today had no idea how much time the preparation of meals used to take. And how everything had to be saved. She could make one chicken last the three of them for four days. First, the luxury of roasted chicken. Then, a casserole made with back meat and noodles. Then, a stew from the bones and flour dumplings. Finally, a soup, with whatever vegetables could be found to add.

The lion’s share of the food went to Ilke, who was nursing the baby, or trying to, not very successfully. Anne lost a great deal of weight while she was in Germany, but so did everyone, and the good news was that Ilke’s parents had a wine cellar, so every night she and Herb allowed themselves a glass or two, and that luxury settled their nerves. She did not touch Herb. He did not touch her. When they spoke, it was only about the baby, or the outside world; the news from America, the docking of more ships, the arrival of more displaced persons.