Gerda had started playing a song meant as a duet. Desi had been taught the same song by her mother when she was a kid. Without being asked, she jumped in and played her part in the higher octaves, and if that sparkle in Gerda’s glance meant anything, Grandma was pleased.
They smiled tentatively at each other, then sat companionably for several minutes playing the piano together, and Desi was grateful that at least through music, they had a way to open up their communication. Otherwise, she felt like a stranger in a strange land in this place called Heartlandia.
“So you’re the mayor?” she asked at the end of the piano piece.
Gerda nodded. “Not by my choice, but the town likes to choose its mayor from people long invested in Heartlandia.” She looked straight ahead as she spoke. “I can trace my people almost back to the beginning. The only problem with that method is we get stuck in history, and these days we have a lot of new residents moving in because we have so much to offer families.”
“Not keeping up with the times?”
Gerda glanced at her. “Something like that. I’m only temporary, though, and we’ll have our general election next year. They promised the job wouldn’t be hard, but I’m clearly in over my head.”
“And then I show up.”
Gerda hung her head. “Desdemona, I wish we could have one huge do-over where you are concerned. Your mother ran away because she was ashamed of being pregnant. We found her when you were born, and I am deeply sorry to say Edvard and I were surprised when we saw you. Ester was such a touchy one. Always had been. I didn’t mean her to think what she did... You were my granddaughter. I loved you. But Edvard—”
“—couldn’t accept that I was half-black?”
“It’s not that simple, Desdemona. Please don’t think that.”
What was she supposed to think?
“I wanted to bring Ester and you home. She insisted she could take care of herself. I admit, I didn’t fight hard enough and gave in to Edvard.” Now Gerda connected head-on with Desi’s eyes. “I kept watch over the two of you as best I could, though from a long distance. And I sent money whenever Ester was especially hard up.”
Her mom must have kept those times to herself because in Desi’s memory they lived hand to mouth most of their years on the road. But then, out of the blue five years ago when Ester first got sick, they were able to buy a small house. The home they’d always dreamed and talked about. The timing was perfect, since her mother couldn’t keep up with traveling and chemo. Had her mom been saving Gerda’s money, or had Gerda helped out, as she’d previously suspected?
There was a reprieve from the cancer and Ester was able to take a few playing jobs here and there, but the cancer came back. Even then, Ester stayed away from Heartlandia.
“Why didn’t we ever visit?” Desi asked. It was an honest question that her mom had always evaded.
“It wasn’t because I didn’t invite you. Please know that. Your mother—” Gerda hung her head again. “She just didn’t want anything more to do with her home, I guess.”
Desi’s heart tightened. It must have been hard for Gerda to be rejected time and again by her daughter. Deciding they’d shared enough heartache for one morning, she went back to playing another simple song and soon Gerda, accepting the quiet reprieve, joined her.
After a few more duets and small talk, they went their separate ways, Gerda to spend some time at city hall and Desi to shower and dress.
She did some laundry and took a walk around the backyard, trying to figure out why her mother had been so stubborn, insisting on keeping her to herself despite the invitations to come home.
An abundance of rosebushes in assorted colors filled the air with a strong fragrance. A huge white hibiscus bush in the far corner seemed no less than twelve feet high. The Victorian-style house hadn’t looked nearly as bright yellow in the dark of night. Trimmed in green, with a pitched roof and a third-story dormer with a fanlight window, the house looked like something out of an old movie. Desi circled the perimeter of the house and noticed a partially covered balcony at the front and a second balcony on the side. What a gorgeous place...the home her mother had run away from.
Returning to the scene of the crime of last night—the gated side yard with overgrown bushes and shrubs—she glanced next door at another Victorian. It was painted completely white with a small bay window at the front, the only color in sight an aqua-blue door at the side entrance. Kent’s house almost looked medicinal. Churchlike. She wandered toward his house, noticing the artful subtleties of the architecture. But white? Really? It seemed such a waste.
Soon growing bored with trying to figure out why the big guy had the blandest house on the block, Desi’s gaze drifted to the imposing Columbia River several blocks away, down by the railroad tracks and the docks. The water twinkled beneath the strengthening sun. In the distance, the longest bridge she’d ever seen arched from this side of Oregon far across to what she assumed must be Washington State.
Though June, the brisk air brought gooseflesh to her arms even through her light sweater. She turned to go back inside. On the hillsides behind her stood dozens and dozens of more modest but brightly painted Victorians overlooking the jagged riverbank. Scattered among the Victorians were dwellings of half timber wood–half brick foundations with tall sloping roofs, reminding her of her Scandinavian heritage.
Her surname, Rask, was Danish, but according to her mother, she’d come from a place filled with Norwegians, Swedes, Finns and Icelanders along with the original Chinook peoples. When Ester rarely did talk about “home,” to Desi’s ears it sounded like a mythical place, perhaps a figment of her mother’s dreams, someplace she embellished to feed the imagination of her young daughter. This vista seemed to prove the point. It did almost look mythical.
Her mother had run away from an idyllic, lost-in-time town called Heartlandia. Or Hjartalanda, as the welcome sign at the edge of town said. She’d scoffed when she’d read the slogan beneath: Find Your Home in Heartlandia.
Was it possible? Could a quaint town fill up that huge hole inside her?
She headed up the stairs to her room. Seeing her grandmother again was only half of the reason for this trip to Oregon. The other half was her father.
A couple of hours later, after doing research on her laptop, Desi’s stomach growled. She wandered down to the kitchen, searching for food, but instead found Gerda home and fumbling with a rubber opener and a stubborn jar.
“Let me get that for you,” she said.
With a look of defeat in her eyes, Gerda handed over the jar. “My arthritis is giving me fits today.” She rubbed her hands and grimaced. “Guess I better start making phone calls and cancel tomorrow’s piano lessons.”
“How many students do you have lined up?”
“Four. I give lessons from two to six on Tuesdays and Thursdays since I do the part-time mayoral work on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.”
“All kids?”
Gerda nodded while searching the cupboard, looking at medicine bottles one by one until she found what she wanted.
“Any advanced students?”
“Oh, heavens, no. They’re all beginners in book one or two.” She shook out a couple of pills into the palm of her hand. “The next generation of great talent, as I tell their parents.”
“Why don’t you let me take over for you?”
“I couldn’t ask you to do that,” she said, filling a small glass with water and popping the pills into her mouth.
“I’m offering. It’s the least I can do since you’re letting me stay here as long as I want.”
Gerda folded her arms, her eyes nearly twinkling. “That would be wonderful.”
*