“Where’s Tolly?” He was at the window. He pulled aside the curtain and looked out to the beds. “I don’t see her.”
Her hand slipped from the knob. She turned around to see him better. “You buried her, Max.” Tolly had been their dog, a sweet lumbering shepherd who dug holes in the garden and ate all Etta’s bulbs. “She’s out under the trees.”
“She’s gone, is she?”
Etta pulled herself up. She took his coat and hung it to dry. She knelt by his feet and took off one shoe and then the other. He had always made odd jokes when he was tired. He was prone to fits of laughter. Josef would get impatient with him. “What’s wrong with him?” he’d say. “Why can’t he just be quiet, there’s nothing funny here.” Max laughed even harder at that, until his whole body shook and he gasped for air. And then his laughter ended abruptly, like the hiccups or a sneezing fit, and he wiped his eyes and his face turned serious. He was the same, she thought, just the same.
“And what about our little cadet?” He reached for his chair. All this time it had been empty, and he pulled it out again and sat down. “Is he still running circles at the school?”
“Three months and not a single letter,” Etta said. “They must be working him hard out there.”
“He’s as bad as me then,” he said. He rubbed his cheek and smiled. “I’m ashamed for us both.” He looked toward the door. He must be wondering where Josef was, but he didn’t ask. She brought him a glass of cool water and he drank it all at once and he ignored the napkin she’d set out for him and wiped his mouth with his sleeve.
She sat beside him and refilled his glass and he emptied it again, drinking with an almost urgent haste, and when he was done she touched his cheek with her fingertips. How good to see him sitting at her table, to see those eyes again and how they shone.
She waited ten minutes, then twenty, and Josef didn’t come inside. Each time the hourglass was done, Max turned it back around. She drummed her fingers and tried to ignore the ticking of the hallway clock, but her impatience was stronger than her anger, and she went out back. He was behind his bench, filing down a piece of butternut wood. His shop was neat as a doctor’s office, with every file and blade in its place and his jars of nails and screws stacked by size along the shelves. He didn’t look up when she knocked. He held the wood up to the light, angling it so he could see.
“How is he?” He ran his thumb over the carving. He had a gentle touch with the wood. She’d asked him more than once to make her something nice, some candlesticks or a tray for the dining table or a box for her silver, anything, she told him, anything at all, but he didn’t listen. He carved flowers and vines and birds of every sort and grape clusters and elk and strange scowling faces, some so real that she expected them to move beneath her fingertips, and he piled them in his workshop and left them there to warp and crack. Firewood, he called his carvings. The prettiest firewood in Heidenfeld.
“Why don’t you come inside and see?”
“In a bit.” He picked a chisel and began to work the wood again, pushing with his chest against the handle. He carved with his body and not just his hands. The rain fell against the shingles, and drops fell through the open doorway, but he didn’t seem to mind.
She waited a while longer by the door. She was always waiting for him. He didn’t know how to make things easy, not for her and not for himself. She left him with his chisels and went back to the kitchen. Their main meal was at lunchtime and not at dinner. They ate only sandwiches at dinner and pickles and radishes, but today they would have stew instead and they would eat in the dining room and not at the kitchen table. She took out the good glasses and found fresh tapers for her candleholders. She set a briquette in the living room oven, wrapping it in paper to make it last because they were expensive, those briquettes, and it was early still and winter was long by the river and damp.
Josef came in just before six. He came in when he always did. He stopped by the door and looked at Max as if he were a visitor and not his son. Max rose from the bench. He stepped toward his father, and Josef looked so small beside him. She could think of nothing to say to bring them together, and so she stayed quiet.
Josef’s face was wet from the rain. “You should have written,” he said. He folded his arms across his chest. “Your mother was worried.” He turned away then, as if regretting that he had been the first to speak. She recognized the expression on his face. It was the look of a man who had carried his anger for too long, who had grown tired from the weight of it and wanted a way now to let it go.
Max went to his father and set his arms around him. Josef’s arms hung loose by his sides at first, and then he gave in. He hugged Max and patted him on his back. Max said something to him. She couldn’t hear. Josef nodded. Yes, he said, yes, and he looked away from Max and toward the window instead.
Josef washed up first, and then Max went into the bathroom and latched the door. She set the table for three, with her finest china, the Hutschenreuther set her mother had given them on their wedding day. The girly dishes, Max had called them when he was little, wrinkling up his nose at the border of intertwined pink roses. She wiped each plate with a towel. She loved the blossoms and the fineness of the porcelain and how it went translucent when she held it up to the light. She took it out of the cupboard only on special occasions, to celebrate Max’s graduation or Georg’s birthday or to have the ladies over for a klatsch. How good it felt to need that third plate, and when Georg came home she’d be taking out another and all four of them would sit together at the table.
Josef went to the basket while she was at the sink. He took a slice of bread, but she saw and threw him a sour look. He set the bread back in its spot, dissatisfied. It was after six, this is how he thought. It was late and they weren’t at the table yet and there was no order in the house. He stood by the counter, his hands low in his pockets. He walked to the door and to the window and back again. He sat down and tapped his fingers on the table.
The water ran in the bathroom and went off again. Max came out and stopped at the kitchen doorway. He stood there for a moment, though it seemed much longer, and swayed back and forth, unsteady on his feet. He fell to his knees, as if someone had pushed him down by the crown of his head, and then he rocked from side to side without speaking, his face marked by an anguish that she had never seen before and could not comprehend.
Josef sat on the bench, his mouth hanging open, speechless at Max’s movements. Etta stepped toward Max. The plate she’d been holding fell from her hands and shattered against the edge of the counter, sending broken pieces of porcelain into the sink.
“What’s wrong?” She knelt by his side and put her arms around him to stop his rocking. “What can I do?”
He began to moan, an animal sound from low in his throat, a sound so horrible that it brought tears to her eyes. He did not stop rocking, and so she rocked with him, holding him tight in her arms, until he grew tired. She led him to bed then. She poured a glass of water and fumbled for a few aspirin tablets. He took the pills from her hand, swallowed them without water, and fell back against his pillow. When she came back to check on him, he was still awake, lying just as she had left him, his eyes open wide but strangely unfocused.