2

Alice died when I was fifteen, and Rolf and I mourned together for a short while. Then, being realistic, I decided it would be best if we went our separate ways. Mother had been the common thread that ran through our lives, and now there was nothing to bind us.

I stayed with him until he sold the house. I sold what little things Mother and I had that were of any value and gave away the rest. The light-­headedness of being free from the burdens of ownership was an extraordinary feeling. I was now responsible only for myself and my small collection of carefully chosen belongings, which I folded and packed into a small cloth backpack I’d bought with the money from the sale of Mother’s jewelry.

On our last night in the house, Rolf took me out for a pleasant dinner and as his sad brown eyes filled with tears, he told me how much he’d adored my mother and how he hoped we’d always keep in touch. I reassured him as best I could, which wasn’t very well as I was anxious to be free of burdens and commit­ments; I wished to divest myself of every obligation. He patted my hand and said, “Angelina, Angelina, Angelina,” and he wiped his eyes, then pulled an envelope from his jacket pocket and leaned it against the rose vase. His soulful eyes encouraged me to look inside. It was a check for a substantial amount of money. From the sale of the house, he said.

I didn’t want the burden of it, but I took it.

Sometime during the middle of that night, I awoke with the sound of my bedroom door opening. I wasn’t afraid, because already the night was my friend—it was the daytime that held the horrors of society. I lay very still and wrapped the familiar cloak of the darkness about my shoulders and watched the bedroom door open very slowly. I knew it was Rolf; he’d been downstairs drinking. I assumed he would be drunk, and that meant he was in my room for one of two things: to rape me or to cry. I was old enough to understand either one of those.

He came to my bedside, and though I could smell the liquor on his breath, I don’t believe he was drunk. I could barely see his glistening eyes in the dimness of the room as I looked up at him towering over me. He stood there for a long time before he spoke.

“You’re awake,” he said.

“Yes.”

He fell to his knees next to my bed. “Angelina—Angelina—will you . . .” He choked a bit. “Will you pray with me?”

While it was not what I had been expecting, I wasn’t taken totally by surprise. His grief was far more enormous than I would ever have imagined.

“Of course, Rolf,” I said.

He knelt next to my bed, wearing his striped pajamas, and he steepled his hands just as children do when they pray, and he began. He prayed for Mother and me and himself and for the forgiveness of all our sins. Then he started on the world, praying for peace and an end to disease, and I began to fidget with the more maudlin of his recitations. So I inched over in my twin bed and held the covers up and he choked out a premature “amen” and got in. He turned his back to me and his sobbing shook the bed.

I placed my hand gently on his side, my cool cheek against his warm back. Even in the farthest nether regions of my experience, I could imagine nothing that would cause me to behave as Rolf was now behaving, and that made me feel quite odd. I knew nothing of this grief, this devastation, these feelings he owned.

I pondered this for a while as exhaustion tem­pered his sobbing. Surrounded by an aura of peaceful­ness and finality, soon we were both asleep.

In the morning I brushed my teeth and my hair, packed my nightie, and said good-­bye to Rolf. He hugged me fiercely, squishing the breath out of me as he whispered in my ear, asking me if I was absolutely sure that I had to go away. I nodded against his chest and he released me, the tension of the question still trembling on the edge of his ample lower lip. I laced up my walking boots, shrugged into my backpack, and stepped out the door. I needed to visit the bank to deposit Rolf’s check and draw out my personal sav­ings, and that would be the last of my responsibilities.

I would never become enmeshed again.

ROLF BREZINSKI: “Angelina Watson, you say? Angelina. After all these years. Yes, I knew her. Of course. Married her mother. Beautiful woman, Alice was. Never found one better. How she got saddled with a child like Angelina must have been one of God’s little jokes.

“Angelina. Like steel, she was. So hard she glinted. And it all showed in her eyes. Her eyes were—I don’t know. Mesmerizing, almost. Like no other eyes I’ve ever seen. You know how sometimes you can look into someone’s eyes and see love and softness? Alice had eyes like that. Well, when you looked into Angelina’s eyes, you knew right off that someone was in there, lurking about. No God-­fearin’ mortal’s got any right to eyes like that.

“When Alice died, Angelina hung around until the house sold. Alice willed half of the house to her, of course. Then Angelina sold all her mother’s things—even her grandmother’s jewelry—and packed up and took off. She was just a young’un, but I was glad to be rid of her. And I haven’t heard of her since. Until now, that is.

“Angelina. God damn. Back like a bad penny.

“Must be bad trouble. Bad trouble, I can tell. I knew it then. That last night—I spent almost all night downstairs, thinking about her, about her ways, think­ing about her loose with all that money, and I knew there would be trouble. I’d just come to decide that if I was a real man, I’d do something about her. So I went up to her room, ready to . . . ready to kill her, I guess it’s time I confessed to it—I was just going to push a pillow on her face and keep it there . . . But when I got up there, all I could see was Alice’s soft brown eyes, and how she loved that strange child . . .

“I could never really do something like that. I could never sin like that. Never. A couple a brandies give me false courage, I guess.

“Are you here to tell me I was wrong, that I should have gone through with it?”