Leeway Cottage (26 page)

O
n April 30, 1945, Adolf Hitler shot himself. On
May 4, the German High Command surrendered Denmark to Field Marshal Montgomery. The whole city of Copenhagen rang with joy, as Montgomery was driven, waving from an open car belonging to the king, through streets filled with confetti and Union Jacks. It was no small thing that he reached Denmark before the Russians, or its future would have resembled East Germany's or Czechoslovakia's, not that of the Free West, and Monty didn't beat the Russians by all that much. Christmas Møller came home a national hero for the courage and persistence he had called forth with his passionate broadcasts from London, once the Resistance gathered force and his mission finally clarified. Laurus Moss came home with him.

Laurus was in Copenhagen when his parents and Nina came back from Sweden. There were tears, especially for the marks of suffering Nina wore like a poisoned cloak, which everyone could see but no one talked about. There was a great deal of laughter. It was almost enough to see the comfort Nina drew from simply being again in the completed family circle. Laurus could have stayed for months, revisiting old friends, hearing over and over how this one had escaped, how these others resisted, how the survivors had survived. There were calls to pay on families of those who had not come back. There was so much that was not yet known, just the empty beds, the absence of news from a husband or wife, a son or daughter. Per Bennike came to call more than once, though Nina always withdrew soon after he appeared; Laurus noticed how Per's eyes followed her as she slipped out of the room. And Nina wouldn't talk, to Laurus or anyone, about her time in Germany. “I'm not ready,” she would say. Laurus always wondered if he could have helped if he had stayed. If he could have seen signs that others missed that she could start coming back to them, if given the right stone to step to, the right hand to hold for balance. Kaj was so busy with his work and his new girl that he was hardly at home, and Ditte and Henrik were so shattered by the thought of Nina's pain that to them she showed a quiet mask and they all pretended it was her face.

But Laurus couldn't stay in Denmark when he had a wife and child waiting across the ocean. He tore himself away to go back to London, resigned his commission in the Buffs, and managed to book a seat on a Pan Am flight from London to Idlewild on the twentieth of July. He thought about traveling in civilian clothes, but decided that his wife had done without him for four years because he was a soldier; a soldier was what she ought to get back.

The flight, a dreamlike interlude between all that he'd seen and what was to come, took forever. An Englishwoman in the seat next to him was going to Connecticut to retrieve the small son and daughter she'd sent to America at the start of the Blitz. She showed him pictures of the way they looked the last time she saw them, and the pictures her sister in Norwalk had sent a month ago. Laurus showed her a picture of the daughter he'd never seen; Eleanor on the beach at Dundee in her little striped bathing suit. The woman took her shoes off and went to sleep. Laurus dozed, too, and found himself swallowed by a ferocious longing for Sydney, a dream Sydney he'd been inventing and perfecting for four years, for touching and holding her, for the moment they would once again be together as man and wife. It was a longing he had managed to keep tamped down for so long that he felt as if he had opened a door to an empty room and found there a ravening tiger. He had to try to keep himself awake, fearing he might otherwise say in his sleep words that should only be heard by his wife.

When they were finally circling New York, the woman beside him awoke and found that her feet had swollen so that she couldn't get her shoes back on. She began to weep at the thought that she was going to have to greet her children barefoot. The stewardess gave her a pair of bed socks from the first-class cabin, and Laurus convinced her it was funny. His elation at being almost home, almost back in his darling's arms, was so huge, it was like a derangement.

Customs seemed to take forever. As the customs officer handed him his passport and said, “Welcome home, Captain Moss,” he turned to wave goodbye to his seatmate. She was putting her shoes on and stuffing the socks into her purse. The delay had done some good.

He walked out into free America with his heart hammering. He heard Sydney before he saw her.

“Laurus!” She was running toward him. He stood by his luggage with his arms stretched wide. She was tan and glowing, taller and thicker than he remembered; then she was in his arms, laughing as they staggered backward a step. Then, a kiss to seal away all that they had missed and to bind them together, lips and tongues and breath. She was finally real, after all those fantasy nights. She smelled delicious, her skin like lemons, her mouth like Dentyne. He was sure he smelled like airline upholstery, stale air and cigarettes, but if she noticed, she didn't care.

He held her at arm's length, at last, so they could look at each other.

“You!” he said.

“You!” she cried. They were giddy.

When they were finally seated in a taxi, with four years of his life stowed in the trunk behind them and the city before them, they looked at each other for long moments, then both began to talk at once.

“When did you—”

“How was the—”

They laughed and subsided. Then they did it again.

“Did you have any—”

“How long did you—”

They looked at each other for another stretch. Finally Laurus said, “Let's just neck.” So they did that.

When they got to Perry Street, Sydney paid the taxi, as Laurus had no American currency. When he walked into the apartment he had visited so often in memory, he put down his bags in the middle of the room and stared. Sydney stood to one side, watching him. The living room was smaller than he remembered, the ceiling lower, but the windows were larger. He went toward the kitchen and stood looking in. Sydney had painted it a creamy yellow. There were bright white curtains, and a fan in the open window at the back moved the soft summer air and carried in traffic noise from the next block. He drank all the colors with his eyes. He went in and opened cupboard doors. Then the refrigerator. He stared at the unfamiliar packages, the cleanliness and plenty.

She followed him into their bedroom. The walls had become sky blue in the bedroom, the moldings and ceiling white. There were crisp sheets on the bed and a blue bedspread Sydney had made to match the curtains. He turned to her.

“It's beautiful.”

“Thank you.”

“You're
beautiful…”

He put his arms around her and whispered into her hair. “All those years, missing this, missing you …and you've made it even better than my dreams.”

Floating in bliss, he took his wife to bed in the middle of the afternoon. It was fast, it was wild, nearly explosive. Afterward they lay in a tangle.

“Happy?” Sydney whispered.

“You can't imagine how happy.” And he fell soundly asleep.

 

It was dark when he woke. It took him a full minute to realize where he was. Not his bare room in London. Not his bedroom in Copenhagen. At last he came all the way into himself.

He stretched. He felt the temptation to go back to sleep and sleep for a year. He'd had no idea how tired he'd been, couldn't remember when he'd sunk into such an assurance of safety and peace. But he roused himself, pulled on his shorts, and went out to the living room, where he stood in the doorway, watching Sydney sit in lamplight, knitting a sock. She was dressed for the evening, with her hair up in combs or pins, however girls did that.

Something made her look up and she smiled at him. “Welcome home,” she said.

“Indeed.” He stretched and scratched the back of his neck. “What time is it?”

“Eight-thirty. Are you hungry?”

“Famished.”

“They're holding a table for us at Table d'Hôte.”

“Perfect.”

 

When he reappeared a half hour later, his hair still wet, he was wearing a suit that had hung in the closet for four years. It was a little tight across the shoulders now, but the pants were loose. He hadn't realized he'd changed.

“You can't imagine what it's like to have an American shower. All that water, as hot as you want it. I thought of staying in forever, but I missed you.”

She returned his smile. “You're not going to wear your uniform?”

A moment's pause.

“Do you want me to?”

“It's just the way I pictured it.” Her war hero. The heads turning in the restaurant.

“Do you want me to change?”

“Of course not. You must be sick of it.”

“It was so nice to open the closet and see these old friends. Look how baggy the pants are.”

“Let's go out and fatten you up,” said Sydney.

They walked arm in arm up to Hudson Street. “What a gorgeous night,” Laurus said. “Isn't it beautiful, the streetlights on, the glow from all the windows.” She smiled at the look on his face. He was in love with everything. She'd forgotten that about him, his glorious cheer.

There was a fuss over them at the restaurant. Their specialoccasion place. Bruno, the owner, who was Algerian but pretended to be French, welcomed Laurus, held Sydney's chair, was quickly back at their table with the bottle of Veuve Clicquot Sydney had ordered in advance. When the glasses had been filled and the waiter retired, they raised their glasses to each other.

“To us,” said Sydney.

“To us. SkÃ¥l.” He looked deep into her eyes and tried to hold them as they drank, but Sydney had forgotten and looked down, smiling, set her glass down, and picked up her menu. Unbidden it brought him a memory he didn't want.

When Sydney had decided what she wanted to eat, she put her menu aside, sighed deeply, and said, “Well. Where shall we begin?”

Laurus began. Once he started talking he felt like a man who'd reached an oasis after years in a desert. He told her about his fear for his family when the roundup of the Jews began. How helpless he felt. He told how he felt when he learned his little sister had been captured, how he schemed to get a message to her, of the terrible day he learned she was no longer at Frøslev. It had taken weeks to find out where she was; thank God for the Red Cross and all they did to protect prisoners of war! He told how he wept when he knew that Folke Bernadotte had succeeded in getting the Scandinavians out, and that Nina was in Sweden with his parents. And finally, seeing them! With his own eyes! To hold each one of them in his arms, to see little Nina, with her skin so dry and thin, to feel her shoulder blades poking out of her fleshless back like folded wings, to see the way she disappeared in front of their eyes, her face going dull, her mind somewhere else…What was she seeing? Would they ever get her all the way back? What could he do for her?

He stretched a hand to Sydney, beseeching her help, about to say, Tell me, with your woman's heart, now that you understand, tell me how to heal this damage. And found that his wife was weeping the tears his sister could not. Her cheeks were wet, and when he touched her, she dropped her head and started to sob.

They were back where they'd been when he told her he was going. This restaurant, this wine, practically this same table.

“Darling,” he whispered. Appalled. What was it? What had he done, what did she have to tell him? She had some awful disease? She loved somebody else, she was leaving him?

She struggled. He handed her his handkerchief. She mopped and blew and held up a finger to say, Just a second. Just a second.

At last she looked him full in the face. Her eyes were red, her mascara was smeared. “You've been home…” She had to pause for a shuddering breath, a diverted sob. “Eight hours.”

“Yes…”

“You've been home
eight
hours and you haven't asked me one thing about the baby!” She clamped her hands over her mouth and fell to sobbing again. Laurus fell back in his chair.

“You for
got
me! You just completely forgot me, you forgot what
I've
been through, you forgot we have a baby, who isn't even a baby anymore …I want my baby!”

“Where is she?” He was stricken.

“She's at Gudrun's.”

“Let's go get her right now.” He put his napkin on the table and pushed back his chair, just as the waiter swept in with two plates of hot food and placed them with a flourish.

“No!”

“Yes! Let's go right now. Let's start this evening over—”

“We
can't.
It
happened.
I planned this dinner for you, and I pictured it for four years, and you're goddamn going to eat it! At least
something
will be the way
I
wanted it.” And she began furiously sawing away at her duck à l'orange, putting great chunks of meat into her mouth and chewing while she wept as if she could chew his head off.

 

T
HE
L
EEWAY
C
OTTAGE
G
UEST
B
OOK

Eleanor had slept on the backseat or sat on Sydney's lap all the way up from New York. She was adjusting to Laurus slowly. He didn't know any of her dolls' names, and she wasn't allowed to go in and get into Mommy's bed anymore when she woke up, and for the first time she now had to wait to speak until the grown-ups were finished talking. He preferred to play the piano by himself without any help from her, although Mommy let her hammer the keyboard at will, and laughed at the noise she made and told her she was a clever bug. She kept asking Sydney when he was leaving. If you could have read the silent thoughts of the three people traveling north in the new station wagon that morning, you'd have thought they were all on different planets.