OVER AT THE BAUMS’ apartment, Grandma Engel held tight to Elizabeth’s hand. Aunt Edith was in the kitchen putting the kettle on for tea while Uncle Hal held a sleeping Martha on his lap at the dining room table. Next to them, Katie was teaching Ava how to cut a deck of cards with one hand, while Amy and Mr. Washington sat on the sofa in silence.
They could hear the fireworks from the city square and winced at each boom, which rattled the apartment windows. They were already on edge, as they waited for the telephone to ring or for Mother to come home from the hospital with news, and the sound of their sky exploding only made things worse.
Bismarck paced from one end of the apartment to the other and could not get settled. “I never did care much for fireworks,” said Grandma Engel. “Would somebody stop that dog? All his back and forth is making me a nervous wreck.”
“Dogs don’t like fireworks much, either,” said Uncle Hal.
But Frankie knew different. “He knows something is wrong with Daddy,” she said from under the dining room table. She barely had enough room for herself under there, what with Uncle Hal’s, Ava’s, and Katie’s legs there, too, but still, she called Bismarck to her and, when he came, she coaxed him to crawl under Ava’s chair and lie down beside her. Frankie stroked his velvety ears as he panted, and she whispered to him over and over that everything would be all right.
Whether he could tell she was lying, she wasn’t sure. But perhaps he couldn’t, because afterward, he lay there next to her and rested his head on her knee, quite content.
Every now and then, Grandma Engel would check on Frankie from her easy chair. “You doing all right over there, honey girl?” she’d call out from the living room.
Each time, Frankie told her that she was.
Until finally, when Frankie’s worries got so bad they made her start to tremble, so much that Bismarck began to whine, she instead answered, “No, Grandma. I need to know about Daddy.”
“We all do, sugar,” said Grandma Engel. “We just have to wait.”
“That’s not what I mean,” said Frankie. “I need to know about that photograph. Who is that woman? And why was it at the bottom of the dresser?” She was glad for the cover of the table and legs around her and found it easier to ask questions from under there than if she were out in the open. She hoped that being under the table would also make it easier to hear the answers.
“Oh, Frankie,” said Grandma Engel in a weary voice.
Ava stuck her head under the table. “What woman?”
“I know you said it isn’t your story to tell,” said Frankie, ignoring Ava, “but I can’t take not knowing.” Frankie’s voice started to crack.
“What woman?” asked Ava again.
“What are you talking about?” asked Elizabeth.
After a few quiet moments, Grandma Engel said, “Fine. But come out from under that table. This isn’t the kind of story that should be told from across the room or heard while under furniture.”
Frankie climbed over Bismarck and scrambled into the living room. She sat on the floor by Grandma Engel’s feet. Ava soon joined her, and Elizabeth moved to the upholstered chair closest to her. Aunt Edith brought two cups of tea for Amy and Mr. Washington. “What’s going on?” she asked.
“I’m telling them about Hermann and Victoria,” said Grandma Engel.
“You aren’t,” said Aunt Edith, nearly spilling the tea.
“You just hush,” said Grandma Engel. “There’s no reason they shouldn’t know. And their father would tell them if he were here and able.” She looked at Frankie. “This one here already knows something of it and has nothing but her imagination to fill in the blanks.”
Mr. Washington stood up. “Maybe me and Amy shouldn’t be around to hear.” He nudged Amy to put down her tea and get up.
“Nonsense,” said Grandma Engel. “You’re here, you’re family. Now sit back down.”
They did.
“Now,” began Grandma Engel. “Frankie, go get that photograph.”
Frankie ran down the hall to the walnut dresser and opened the bottom cupboard. She pulled out the table linens and box of sewing notions and reached back into the far corner where she had left the picture. She grasped it and, leaving everything else where it was, raced back to the living room.
“Let me have it,” said Grandma Engel.
Frankie handed it over.
Grandma Engel turned the frame over in her swollen hands and then rested the picture on her lap so that it faced Frankie, Ava, and Elizabeth. “But that’s Daddy,” said Elizabeth, looking confused.
“It is,” said Grandma Engel.
Ava put her face real close to the picture. “Aunt Mildred don’t even look like herself.”
“That’s because it isn’t her,” said Frankie, looking at Grandma Engel.
“This was your daddy’s first wife,” said Grandma Engel. “Her name was Victoria.”
“First wife?” said Ava. “How many does he have?”
“Ava,” said Grandma Engel, “would you please?”
“Would I please what?”
Grandma Engel shook her head. “Victoria and Hermann were married before he and Mildred were married.”
“I didn’t know Daddy was married before,” said Elizabeth.
“What happened to her?” asked Frankie. “Where is she now? Does she live in Germany?”
“Germany?” said Grandma Engel. “Why in the world would you think that? For goodness’ sakes, she lived right here in Maryland. She was a lovely girl.”
“You knew her?” asked Frankie.
“I did,” said Grandma Engel. “Not too well, but this was a smaller town back then and most people knew of each other at least. Not like today. Anyway, she and your father were married a few years and they were expecting a baby.”
This was all too much for Frankie to hear. “A baby!”
“Does Mother know?” asked Elizabeth.
“Well, of course she does. What do you think?” Grandma Engel said.
Frankie didn’t know what to think, and apparently neither did Elizabeth.
Grandma Engel lovingly patted the photograph. She sighed. “And, as sometimes happens, sadly, Victoria died while giving birth. They lost the baby, too.”
The words, all of them, hung in the air like smoke.
Frankie found it hard to swallow. “Was it a girl?” she whispered. “The baby, I mean?” She didn’t know exactly why she wanted to know this, or why it mattered, just that it did.
“Frankie!” scolded Elizabeth, as if such a thing were nobody’s business, especially hers.
Grandma Engel cocked her head to the side as if she were trying to understand the reason behind Frankie’s question. “No,” she said finally. “It was a boy.”
A boy.
There weren’t any boys in the Baum family, only girls. Which made Frankie wonder if it was an even bigger disappointment to Daddy that he never got to have that boy, or any other. Three girls, that’s what he ended up with, but was he hoping for a boy each time?
“Huh,” said Ava, and then she went back to the table to practice her card trick.
“Is that it?” asked Frankie.
“That’s all she wrote.” Grandma Engel handed the photograph back to Frankie. “Now the story has all been told. You can go ahead and put that back.”
Frankie was about to return it to the cupboard. But then she wondered aloud, “Why did Daddy put it at the bottom of that dresser? It was all covered with dust.”
Grandma shrugged. “You’d have to ask him about that. But sometimes you don’t want to be reminded of painful things. Sometimes you just want to put them away somewhere and forget they ever happened.”
Frankie wasn’t sure she understood, and she felt bad for Victoria that she was left in the dresser that Daddy hated, in the thing that left him with bruises. So she went to the kitchen and, with a damp dish towel, wiped off the rest of the dust. Then she laid it carefully on the pile of table linens in the dresser and closed the cupboard doors.