“Here, take it. I don’t care about the money.”
He lifted her hand and turned it palm up so he could empty his pocket into it. There was enough for her to live on for weeks.
“What is this for?” she asked.
“For what happened to you,” he said, closing her hand on the bills.
She turned again and opened the big old door.
“Please don’t think ill of me,” he said.
“Are you going to come in or not?” she said, stepping back to make way for him. Behind her was a single room with a couch and bureau and neatly made bed.
“Where are your parents?” he said.
“I’ve been on my own since I was fifteen,” she said.
“Are you sure it is all right?” he said from the doorway.
“It will be just fine,” she said.
6
EMIL SCHUMPETER WAS NOT A LETTER writer. About the only time he felt the need was to offer condolences upon someone’s passing or to scold Sears, Roebuck. Then he would spend countless hours worrying the language, which never seemed less like his first than when he dipped his pen into the black void of an inkwell. It took a lot to get Emil to confront that abyss.
So when Karl found on his bed a letter in his father’s Saxon hand, he broke the seal with trembling fingers. But instead of heralding death or illness or telling him to come home, it announced that Cristina Vogel had left for Chicago to spend the summer as a seamstress, staying with her mother’s sister, who had escaped Abbeville at nineteen to marry a man more than half again her age. His father thoughtfully included the address.
The news was welcome, but not without complication, coming as closely as it did upon Karl’s evening at Luella’s flat. And oh, what an extraordinary evening it had been. Luella had been more openly affectionate with him than anyone in Abbeville would have dared. When they’d parted, disheveled, Luella had thanked him for having more discipline than she. Still, things had happened under her caresses that before had only happened to him in dreams. He said he would, of course, do the honorable thing. She seemed to find that amusing and sent him on his way.
After receiving the letter Karl went directly to the place where Cristina was staying. The man who answered his knock wore a white dress shirt without its collar and a pair of bright red silk suspenders that secured his pants loosely over his belly like a cartoon barrel around a poor man’s middle.
“No solicitors,” the man said.
“I’ve come to call on Cristina Vogel,” Karl said.
“Oh, you have, have you? I don’t wonder that she already has begun to attract the bees. Unfortunately, you will have to fly honeyless back to your hive.”
“I’m Karl Schumpeter,” he said. “Cristina and I knew each other in Abbeville.”
“Well,” said the portly man, “that is another matter entirely.”
It was not at all clear whether he meant entirely better or entirely worse.
“We were friends,” said Karl. “I think she would tell you that.”
“If you are friends,” said the portly man, “then you must know that she is engaged to be married.”
All Karl was able to manage was a whisper.
“I have been away.”
“Engaged to Harley Ansel,” said the portly man.
Harley Ansel. How could she promise herself to Harley Ansel?
“You seem stricken, young man,” the man with suspenders said. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll get you some water. Cristina is in her room.”
“Maybe I’d better just go,” said Karl.
“If she wants to say hello to you,” the man with suspenders said, “I see no reason why she should not.”
Harley Ansel. Karl had misjudged her, misjudged the reason she had ventured to Chicago, too, pathetically misjudged that.
Cristina entered the room.
“You came,” she said.
“I just heard,” he said.
“I hoped that you would.”
“So you wouldn’t have to tell me yourself,” he said.
“Hoped that you would . . . come,” she said.
She was dressed more stylishly than he had ever seen her. A woman like this could live in the world Karl was now exploring as gracefully as she had in the one they had both left. But it was not to be with him.
“My father wrote me,” he said.
“Yes,” she said. “I asked him to.”
“But he didn’t say anything about Harley Ansel.”
Karl tried not to let the name sound bitter, but he could taste it.
“Your father doesn’t know,” she said, sitting down in a big, over-stuffed chair. Karl seated himself across from her. “I told my parents that if they said a word before I was ready, I would never return home.”
“Ready?”
“I needed,” she said, “this one last chance.”
Karl sat back.
“Chance,” he said.
She lowered her eyes to her lap.
“Do you hate me for it?” she said.
“I didn’t even know you liked Harley Ansel,” he said. Then he stopped himself. There was no point doing this to her.
“I didn’t like him,” she said. “Don’t.”
“Well, you sure enough found an odd way to express it,” Karl blurted out.
This time she did not avoid his eyes. She stood right up to them.
“I do not want to marry someone simply because my father thinks well of his prospects,” she said.
Her hands lay crossed in her lap. Karl stood and went to the window, which was hung with brocade. His hand upon the curtain stirred a mote of dust.
“I have felt the same,” he said, “not wanting the life I have waiting for me back in Abbeville.”
“I came to Chicago because I needed to find out what my own prospects are,” she said.
“You want to be a seamstress?” Karl said.
“What is it that you want, Karl?” she said.
He stuffed his hands into his pockets, looked downward again, put his toe into the carpet as if it were loam.
“What I can’t have,” he said.
“Maybe you’re giving up too easily,” she said.
“I’ve gotten a taste of certain things here,” he said.
“Well, then, let’s stay.”
He was sure she didn’t really mean to speak of them as an “us.”
“But at the same time I have felt the pull of home,” he said. “Frankly, Cristina, you have been a big part of that.”
There, he had said it.
“If you do go back, you should bring with you the things from here that you have come to love,” she said.
“And what about you?” he said.
“You could bring me, if you wanted,” she said.