Balance of Fragile Things (21 page)

P
aul felt the pistol in his pocket. The nearly frozen air surrounded him as he marched down Sycamore toward the station. He had no choice. It was his divine duty to protect his family from the ills of the world. For Paul, it all came back to the construction—the damn hole in the ground at the station. He had to make it stop, do something. They couldn't take the station from him bit by bit. Desperation surged through his body like a drug, each step propelled by the bills on his desk that already had gone to collection, the calls from unidentified numbers, the faces of his sick children, and his wife who still hadn't said a word, as though she'd already accepted doom as their fate. He'd prayed that morning when he turned the key in the lockbox hidden in the garage. He prayed for the first time in decades to Guru Gobind for guidance. This was war, and he needed his ancestors. He'd practiced at the shooting range, but he had never aimed the gun at a person—nor did he intend to. But waving it in someone's face, yes, he could do that. Scare the shit out of the person in charge, the son of a bitch. No problem. No problem.

His pace quickened as he approached the rear of the station. It was quiet, as if all the sound had been sucked out of the world and the only thing that existed was Paul and the few feet of air surrounding his body. He reached the front of the station and saw a customer waiting to fill up an old Plymouth. Paul looked out at the road to survey the mess, the thorn that had embedded so deeply in his side, and his breath escaped his lungs. The behemoth pile of debris, the gash in the earth into which he'd recently descended, the prehistoric machines, and the portable toilets—all were gone.

But where?

Disbelief consumed him, and he looked around as though someone were playing a terrible joke. Perhaps it was never there, he thought. Or perhaps it moved? Paul jogged to the center of the street and spun round slowly in an attempt to see what was no longer. The road was clear. He kneeled down and searched with his fingers.
As his eyes adjusted he saw the seam where new asphalt met the old road. The difference was subtle. He stood and walked back a few steps.

The man with the Plymouth said, “Gone, eh? They musta fixed it.”

Paul smiled. He unlocked the convenience store and put a sign on the gas pumps that read:
10% Off Gas and Purchases, Today Only.
Within a few minutes, cars started to enter the station, not en masse, but a steady stream nonetheless. People bought cartons of cigarettes and six-packs of pop. They filled their tanks all the way instead of halfway. Mrs. Carmichael walked in, as usual, with her fistful of coins and a grin.

“Feeling generous today?”

He laughed with his eyes and nodded. The world was right again.

At the end of the day, Paul felt as though he had been terribly silly—aggressive even. He vowed to lock the gun back up in the garage as soon as he returned home. The city must have read his letters and the editorial piece. They had finally taken his pleas seriously. He cracked open a soda—something he'd never done before because it was an expense, after all—and he celebrated in the quiet buzzing of the store's fluorescent lights.

The archaic fax machine under the counter clicked on, and a few sheets of paper ran through. He put the soda down and retrieved the sheets. A letter from Creative Laboratories appeared in faded type:

Dear Clint:

Please find the following analysis of the sample. We felt it necessary to get these results to you as soon as possible. We made note of a high level of volatile organic compounds and other carcinogenic chemicals in the sample. It is important that you do not touch these materials with your bare skin or breathe the vapors from the surrounding areas. Please find the data results below.

Thanks,

Shari, Creative Laboratories

Paul's stomach dropped below his feet. He folded the fax three times and tucked the papers under his register. He washed his hands. In the mirror he saw a man with hollow eyes and a certain puffiness he'd never noticed before. He felt dizzy.

Paul locked the station and sat alone behind the counter, debating what to do. After an hour, no closer to a solution, he went home. Later, as he turned the key in his front door, he stopped. What would he do now? He just couldn't pretend that nothing had been discovered under the ground. It was his duty to keep exploring the ills in the earth. But when he pushed open the door and saw his sick children sitting together on the couch, beside the two aging relatives, and heard Maija in the kitchen preparing a leftover curry to which he knew she'd added broth and water in order to stretch it across this second meal, Paul found himself on a ledge between right and wrong. He wanted to protect his family from what lay underground, but if he did, the station would be in peril again, and he could not protect them if he had no livelihood. How could these two opposites overlap? Life was so fragile, and he needed to protect it. That's the only thing of which he was sure. Paul's mind stood on the edge, balancing between two rights and two wrongs.

During dinner he turned to Maija and said, “
Piyar
, the construction is done. They listened to my letters at last.”

The reaction he received from his family was better than he'd imagined. Isabella and Vic both said “yay,” Maija sighed, and Papaji grunted proudly.

After dinner, he and his father took their tea and sat together in the living room while the rest of the family cleaned up.

“So,
ji
, any news from the water people?”

Paul shook his head.

“That was some outing we had,” Papaji said in Punjabi.

“Yes, yes, it was. It is secret that we went there. Never tell anyone what we did. Okay?” Paul responded in his native tongue.

“Of course, son, of course.”

“Never.”

Paul pursed his lips and attempted to steady his building fear with his relief. Later that night, when everyone was asleep, Paul drove to the station and retrieved ten three-gallon water jugs. When he returned to the house, he stashed some of them in the garage and took the rest to the kitchen. Papaji walked out of the bathroom and looked at him curiously. Paul smiled, said good night, and hoped Papaji hadn't seen him place the water beside the kitchen sink.

I
sabella looked at herself in the mirror and saw how much of a toll the illness had taken on her appearance. Her skin was yellowish. She'd lost weight, too. After two days, she was beginning to feel human again. She and her brother had survived the worst flu Cobalt had ever seen, and, in the safety of their quarantined bedroom, Vic and Isabella had made a pact to fake-vomit every few hours. They shook hands, even though Vic was uncomfortable touching his sister, and agreed to convince their mother that they weren't up to heading back into the halls. It worked; they got the rest of the week off from school.

When the flu charade was in full force, Isabella took advantage of their quarantine. No one dared enter their room because of the heaving sound effects. Her mother knocked occasionally to let them know about mealtimes, in case they were hungry, and to remind them about shower time. Cleanliness, Isabella knew, was one of her mother's first rules of a happy home. Between these two important visits, and with Vic sound asleep, Isabella managed to pillage her grandmother's things without being disturbed. The box filled with secrets sat under her bed. It was heavier than it looked, but she scurried back to the safety of her bed with it in her hands.

She tucked her bed sheets around it so she could cover it completely in case someone opened the door. The wood creaked when she lifted the lid, and the box exhaled a breath of rosewood and myrrh.
She reached inside and pulled out a pile of well-worn letters. The first letter was written in a language Isabella hadn't seen before but assumed was Latvian. There were several Js, double Es and Zs, and accent marks above and below the letters like tails and ears. Her mother never shared her native tongue. Isabella wished she had learned Latvian, German, and Punjabi. Then maybe she could get a job with the United Nations as a translator and have an exciting life traveling around the world, listening in on top-secret conversations. She looked at the other letters, all of which were written in what Isabella took to be German and or even Russian. She traced the script with her fingers anyway, as though the meaning would come to her in time regardless of the language barrier. Names, however, were easier to recognize. She found the names Hermione, Heinrich, Olga, Alvina, and Otto. She was familiar with Hermione and Heinrich, her grandparents, and Alvina, but the rest meant nothing to her, not yet.

Beneath the stack of letters was a small pile of photographs of different sizes. The first one was, in Isabella's mind, the most beautiful image of a woman she'd ever seen. The woman's eyes were turned to the left of the camera. Her expression was mature, as though she'd seen a great deal of pain. Her short hair curled tightly against her scalp. Around her neck hung a large pendant, and though the photo was black and white, Isabella could see the stone's translucency. The woman's lips were sharply drawn and wore a dark lipstick. The curve of her porcelain cheeks was as lovely and round as a cherub's. Isabella turned the photo over in her hands and read as best she could:
Hermione, 2 februāris 1938, Katoju ielā, Rīgā
. Isabella knew that Oma was born in 1923; therefore, in this photo she would have been fifteen. Isabella sat back in her bed in awe. She was about the same age as her grandmother, frozen in the image.

She spent the rest of the day imagining the lives of those captured in the photos. Some photos appeared cheerful and seemed to have been taken during family gatherings. Others were during wartime; she knew this because of the presence of guns, uniforms, and grim expressions. One image in particular Isabella inspected closely: a handsome man standing alone beside a tree. He was smiling, but there were shadows behind his eyes as though he'd seen too much. Who was this man? Isabella's hand shook a little as she turned the photo over and read:
Heinrich, decembris 1944.
Was this an image of the grandfather she'd never known? She went to put the photos back inside the box when her hand grazed a raised piece of wood on the bottom.

She gave the small block of wood a push, and the entire bottom panel came free, exposing a hiding place. Isabella's heart pounded as she heard movement in the hallway just outside the door. She couldn't stop now; she was compelled by history. Under the panel were several items: a lady's watch, a large amber pendant, a string of amber beads, a pair of cufflinks, a fine gold chain with a modest Star of David hanging from it, and an enamel charm that looked like an eye. The eye seemed to speak its purpose just through its gaze. Isabella turned the Star of David over and over in her hand.

She heard a brisk knock at the door. Isabella stuffed the jewelry into the bottom panel, the photos back into the box, and covered the whole lot with the thickest part of her comforter. She stuffed the letters under her pillow—she would hide them in her shoebox later because she needed to know more about them. Her heart raced as the door opened. Her grandmother stood there, smelling of meatballs and cookies.

“Hallo, mine darlings. It's time for lunch. You must keep up your strength if you will get better, neh?”

Once Oma left, Isabella reconfigured the contents of the box so everything was as she'd found it, then placed it under her bed. She tapped Vic on the shoulder to wake him for lunch, but when he didn't move, she left him alone.

Isabella sat at the dining table beside Oma, who was already enjoying a dark brown slice of bread with hard cheese and a sliced apple. There was a steaming hot bowl of soup waiting for Isabella.

“This is
frikadelu zupa
. Meatballs and dill.”

“Thank you.” Isabella tasted the soup and felt instantly warmed. The small yet adequate meatballs were succulent, and the cream on top of the dilly clear broth made it rich but still fresh and light.

“Are you feeling better?” Oma looked pleased.

Isabella paused with a meatball in her mouth. She wanted to ask if Oma was Jewish, and if so, why she'd hid this all these years. If she was Jewish, that meant that Isabella was, too, at least in part. Suddenly, Isabella's history felt foreign to her, as if the disparate pieces of her identity had fallen to the floor and scattered like a detailed jigsaw puzzle. She wanted nothing more than to collect them and paste herself back together again. Instead, she swallowed and said, “A little, yes.”

“Good, good.” Oma did not take her eyes off Isabella. “Did you have a question, darlink?”

“No. Yes. What were you thinking about planting in the backyard?” Isabella knew how silly this sounded, as the backyard was more soupy than earthy, and Oma wouldn't be able to plant anything until spring, which was months away.

“Ah, yes, gardening. Do you like to garden, too?”

Isabella nodded. “Mama doesn't have much time to garden, but sometimes we do.”

“What would you like to plant, then? We can plant almost anything here. Za soil is rich. When it's normal.”

“Anything? Huh. I guess it would be nice to have some flowers. Something bright and humungous.”

“Za dahlias. They would be nice. We can plant them in za summer. They will grow taller and taller until their flowers, like suns of red and purple, reach za sky, neh?”

“If it ever stops raining,” Isabella said.

“We had everything in mine garden in Latvia. Za tomatoes tasted like springtime, and za lettuce vas a rich purple.”

“Purple lettuce?”

“And za cucumbers and squash would feed a whole family. That is, unless za birds and animals ate them before we did.”

Isabella finished her soup and nibbled on a lemon cookie. She felt full and brave and thought about the contents in the box. “Oma? What was Opa like?”

Oma's eyes sparkled. “Yes, Izjah, you never got za chance to meet him, neh? He vas tall and good-looking, when he smiled, you know.”

Isabella knew the man in the photo had to be him. Was it his star as well? She lacked the courage to ask. “Do you miss Latvia?'

Oma didn't answer and instead cleaned the plates and poured two cups of tea without responding. When she returned to the dining table, she said, “Have I told you za story about za animals and za girl?”

Isabella shook her head no.

“Zoh, it vas a long, long time ago. I don't even know vie long. Mine little country is four thousand years old. Latvia vas made mit these tribal people, neh? And there vas always big war. They were too small to defend themselves. Invaders came always and slaved us. Then, one day za Germans came and took our land away and made us work in big farms. They owned za land, they stole za earth, za trees, za branches on za ground.” Oma sipped her tea. “Zoh, there vas a girl whose father married a bad woman who already had her own daughter. Firewood vas scarce because za Germans took everything, neh? Za evil mother blew out all za fire in za house and sent za stepdaughter to za ogre's castle to get fire.”

“So she sent her to die,” Isabella said.

Oma nodded.

“On za way, za girl passed a cow that asked her, ‘Oh, please will you milk me? Mine udders are zoh full.' So za girl milked za cow and went on her way. Then she came upon a sheep, whose hair vas to za ground. It said, ‘Oh, pretty girl, won't you shear me? I am so hot.' So, za girl sheared za sheep. Then she found a horse tied too tight to za fence, neh? And za horse said, ‘My owner tied me too tight; won't you un-tether me?' So she did.”

“What a nice girl.”

“Yes. Zoh, in za ogre's castle, za girl meets za ogre who licks his lips to eat her, when a mouse comes from za wall and says, ‘Oh, girl, take this gold, neh? And run as fast as you can.' So she goes back through za forest. Za ogre was on her heels but za cow, horse, and sheep all told za ogre to go in different directions, so she got away.”

“Phew.” Isabella sighed.

Oma took a sip of tea and wiped her mouth with a handkerchief. “Well, za ugly stepmother thought dis was a good deal mit za gold, so she sent her real daughter to get more gold from za ogre za next night. She also met za cow, horse and sheep, but she did not help them. When she got to za castle, za ogre went to eat her and za mouse gave her za gold and told her to run. She ran as fast as she could, but za cow, sheep and horse told za ogre where to find her and—he ate her.”

“Eww. That's terrible.”

“Neh, za second real daughter deserved it. Nature is brutal. She will help when we help her. Well, sometimes, you know.”

“What happened to the first girl?”

“She married a prince.”

“Of course she did.”

“Yes, he saw vie beautiful and kind and smart she vas, zoh he said, ‘Now that is who I should marry,' neh?”

Isabella smiled at Oma and thought about the cautionary tale about the balance between nature and humankind. She looked outside and saw that the rain was clearing a bit; she could see the water running from the gutters toward the trees and bushes that were drowning.

“We won't be able to plant anything here for a while. The trees, the soil—it's all too wet.” Isabella sighed.

“Okay, when you finish your cookie, help me mit something in za backyard, neh?”

Oma put on her yellow rain clothes and went outside. When she was finished eating, Isabella dressed warmly and followed. Oma was at the side of the house lifting small but hefty bags of sand. She'd built a row that was working hard to keep out the few inches of water that had built up and headed toward the backyard. Without asking, Isabella lifted a small bag and helped Oma complete the row.

“Now, maybe we can keep za ground healthy.”

“Oma? Where did those bags come from?”

“I don't know, darlink. They were next to the garage. Maybe yours father brought them?”

Isabella wondered why her father would have bought sand bags but not place them properly. He seemed even more frazzled than usual lately. Earlier that day, she'd heard in a weather report that Cobalt and the tri-city area was set for a long ride with the storm and suggested blocking low-lying areas and keeping gutters clear.

“However they came, it's good they're here now.”