The pearls were tight around Etta’s neck, and still she put them on. Mutti had worn them every day, even when she worked in the garden or did the wash, and they’d gone yellow from sweat and her perfume. She took them off early one morning, just took them off and set them in Etta’s hand. “Take them,” she said, “wear them and enjoy them.” Etta should have been pleased at the gift, but something in Mutti’s voice unsettled her. Etta gave her extra food after that, spreading the butter thick on her bread and dropping egg yolks and fructose into her wine.
“It’s not too late,” she told Josef. “Go get your jacket.”
He ignored her. He set his hands on his knees and waited for the music to begin, and so she put on her coat and left alone. Let him sit there. Let him listen to the radio and work in his shop, she’d have no words of comfort for him later. More than two years since Max was gone and how many months since the last letter came, five, almost six, and Josef couldn’t be bothered for a walk to the station. He’d go to the gasthaus and not to the station, not to say goodbye and not to greet them either when they came back. She shut the door too hard and scared away the crows that had gathered on her stoop. They hopped by her herb beds and bobbed their shiny heads, and they were back in their places before she’d even latched the gate. They brought cold weather, those birds; they brought storms. The ladies all knew. Winter’s coming early, they told each other at the milk stand and down by the bridge. Better bring in the logs. Cover the herbs before it comes and cut back the roses.
She took the long way. She went along Lengfurter Strasse, past the old Nagel bakery, closed since their last boy died. He had died on an island and that’s where he was buried, a Finnish island and nobody knew how to say its name. She passed the butcher shop and the Weinsteins’ old shoe store, which was shuttered now and boarded shut. There were boats down by the dock, and men in rain gear worked the decks. Women ran by with their pitchers and their shopping bags. They took shelter in doorways and under store awnings, stomping their feet and closing their collars against the chill, but the wind blew the rain slantwise and soaked them where they stood.
The steps to the bridge were slick. She slipped twice and caught herself. She slowed a little. The houses across the river came into view, with their beams and their round chimneys. She stopped midway, between the third and the fourth arches. The river below foamed on its banks as if it were a living thing, and wisps of mist rose from it and disappeared into the rain. An umbrella was no use, not with the wind starting to pick up, and she set hers aside and held the rough stone railing with both her hands. She had seen the river every day of her life, and yet how beautiful it was, how beautiful the rain falling against that still surface.
She looked down at her hands, red now from the cold, and thought for a moment that the hands there were not her own, no, they were her mother’s hands, chapped from work and crisscrossed with veins. How her mother, God rest her, had scolded her on rainy days. Come on inside, she’d say, your feet are wet. You’ll catch a cold this time, you’ll catch a chill for sure, but Etta didn’t listen. She didn’t listen to her mother and her boys didn’t listen to her, and one day their children might give them trouble, too, and she’d laugh then.
A girl came skipping toward her from the other end of the bridge, her dark hair plastered against her head in snaky waves. She wore a red wool dress, and her legs were bare. The front of the girl’s shoes had been cut open, leaving her toes to hang out on the pavement. Poor thing, Etta thought, not even a pair of knee socks to keep her warm. But the child didn’t look sad, no, she looked the way Etta felt, happy to be walking alone in the rain. And though Etta had no idea why, she curtsied to the girl as she passed. The girl shot her a funny look, then smiled and curtsied back with that effortless grace only young girls have. “Good day, ma’am,” she said. She kept walking as she spoke, going the way Etta had come, a red spot in the mist. Etta reached for her umbrella. There was much to be thankful for, even now.
The Lohr train came early. It turned the corner at twenty past, and she leaned over the railing to see. She looked in all the windows. The soldiers came out first. One of them wore a sling around his arm, and his right eye was swollen shut. They weren’t tall enough to be her Max, and their hair was blond and not dark, but she watched them anyway. She looked at every man who wore a uniform, afraid that she might not know him anymore. She might not know his face. The injured soldier went to his wife and son. The mother pushed her little boy by the shoulder, but he wailed at the stranger standing there. He looked at that swollen face and cried. She crouched low in her heels to clean his tear-streaked cheeks. “Come, my little man, say hello to your papa,” she told him, but he would have none of it and latched his arms around her waist.
The old men came next, and a few schoolgirls from the gymnasium in Lohr who carried their books in satchels. The reunions were quick and quiet, muted hugs and handshakes and somber words of welcome and then the migration in clusters toward the door. Still no sign. She rubbed her hands together and stomped her feet. She was cold now that she wasn’t moving. Her feet were wet from the walk, and water dripped from her scarf and the hem of her skirt. Josef should have come. When Georg came home, they’d both be at the station, and she wouldn’t give him any peace if he tried to refuse. She’d follow him all through the house.
Max was the last passenger to come through the doors. He stepped down from the train and sheltered his eyes with his free hand. She dropped her umbrella, but she didn’t reach for it. She pushed through the gate and went to him. He wore his dark hair longer than she remembered, and his coat hung loose from his shoulders. He’s tired from the trip, she thought. He needs a meal at our table. He needs to sleep in his bed with clean pillows and his blanket and all the books he loves.
“Thank God,” she said. “Thank God you’re home.” They’d sent him back to her when other boys were leaving, and she didn’t need to know the reason. It was enough to see his face again. She drew him to her, and he didn’t resist but he didn’t embrace her either. He swayed a little in her arms. She pulled back and kissed both his cheeks. “You’re warm,” she said. She set her hand against his forehead. “I think you’ve got a fever.”
He straightened, and for a moment his face went slack, unmoored, as if his skin had come loose from the muscles beneath. She saw it as she bent to lift his bag, that strange shadow that crossed his face, and it stopped her midmotion.
“I’m thirsty,” he said. He looked at her with eyes she knew better than her own, or Josef’s even, and he smiled.
“It’s the same,” Max kept saying when they came to the house. “Everything’s just the same.” He went straight to the kitchen without taking off his shoes or his coat. He looked all around the room, at the wall bench with its faded green cushions and the pewter candlesticks and the wooden fork and spoon that hung on the wall. He turned the hourglass she kept by the counter and watched the sands fall through.
She knelt to check on the briquette. “Of course it’s the same.” She turned the knobs to raise the flame. He’d eat a warm meal tonight. They’d sit around the table, and he could have as much as he wanted, and she’d let him lick his plate for once. She wouldn’t complain. He did it to rile her, even now that he was grown.