(5)
Alice never did find out why the day they were finalizing the last details of her wedding dress and tracking down those irresistible honey-colored ribbons, her mother suddenly shut herself up in her father’s study and started to cry. From the shape of her wrinkles Alice concluded it wasn’t over the wedding. Josef had left the letter on his desk, and at first Květa ignored it. For tidiness’ sake she preferred to just put it away and do a quick dusting. That was what she always did when she was anxious, and with Alice’s wedding coming up she was anxious constantly. The fact that the letter had been sent by registered mail was obvious from the way the color stood out against the pleasing brown of the desk. To pick it up and read it wouldn’t be that unusual, Květa decided in those few fractions of a second that divided her happy life from the feelings of devastation and frustration that awaited her in that moment. When she grasped what the letter said and the fact that Josef had already read it, she let out a sob. She didn’t read it all the way to the end, there was no need, everything written in it was true. She took the letter, put it back in the envelope, went into the bathroom, tore it into little pieces, threw it in the toilet bowl, and flushed it down. She went back into the study, sat in the chair at her husband’s desk, and looked through all the drawers, but except for a few slide rules and some books of engineering, math, and physics tables, she didn’t find anything. She had always felt a certain pride at the fact that he understood those things. Even now the feeling was still there. She wasn’t sobbing anymore, and she knew there was nothing left for her to do but wait for her husband. She had to just sit and wait.
Alice knew something was wrong. She wasn’t alarmed that her father wasn’t home, but the fact that her mother was sitting in his chair with swollen eyes augured something unpleasant. As far as Alice could remember, her mother had sat in her father’s chair only on a few occasions, and it was always when she was angry at him. Now, though, it looked like she was afraid. “Just leave me here. I’m all right. I just need to sit here and wait for your dad.” That was what she said when Alice went to look in on her. Smells like trouble, Alice thought, but she couldn’t pay any more attention to her mother, since she was supposed to meet Max at the train station in half an hour, and as it was she wasn’t sure if she would be on time. She gave her mother a kiss on the cheek. Her eyes were puffy, and she was trying to act as if nothing was wrong. Just in case, Alice did a quick scan of the room, but she didn’t notice anything unusual. She put on her new heels and dashed off to meet Maximilian, pausing in the entryway to call out to her mother that she might stay the night with him, adding that he’d never seen these shoes before and she was curious if he’d even notice, since she was sure he’d seen more interesting shoes in Germany. And she was gone.
Josef came home that evening. The only light on in the apartment was the lamp on his desk. He walked in and saw Květa, sitting at his desk, moving the scale back and forth on one of his slide rules. She sat huddled in the chair, obviously afraid. He saw her fear and remembered he had left the letter on the desk.
“Květa? Květa, honey?” he said, looking her in the face.
“You were never supposed to find out, even though I did do it for your sake, too,” Květa said. Despite having spent the past few hours composing and decomposing sentences in her head to arrive at what she was going to say, she knew it sounded unseemly.
“I’ll be at the cottage, Květa. Tell Alice I’ll be there, would you?” said Josef. He picked up the briefcase he took with him to work every day, and left. That night Květa couldn’t sleep. At least it meant a temporary reprieve from the nightmares, though she could hear their wings flapping above her head, and in her waking moments she had visions of long forest clearings, separated from one another by pain and regret.
On hearing the key in the door and the rhythm of her daughter’s ankles, she breathed a sigh of relief, faintly recalling the bizarre, unsettling dream she had had and feeling grateful to be awake. She dreamed that her husband had left her, that he had left her forever, and the pain she felt in the dream tore her in two. She woke feeling empty, then sighed with relief, looking forward to sharing the unusual dream with her husband. The feeling of relief didn’t last long. Even before the sweat could bead on her brow, she realized it hadn’t been a nightmare. When Alice came in with rolls, milk, and the morning paper, along with her father’s keys, which she had found in the mailbox, and asked why they were in there, the walls of anxiety came crashing down and Květa began screaming, crying, and wailing. What she had viewed as a dream just a moment before was sheer reality. Alice tried to give her a hug, tried at least to keep her from falling out of the chair and hurting herself on the sharp edges of the furniture. But the force of Květa’s grief was devastating, ravaging her heart and mind without letup. The moment her mother’s cries quieted down, Alice brought her into the bedroom and gave Maximilian a call to let him know what was happening and ask him to come over. Alice couldn’t stop hugging him once he finally got there, but neither of them knew what to do in a situation like that. At one point Květa pulled herself back together long enough to stagger over to the bedroom door and announce, “Your father left me. He left me, but don’t you ever hold it against him. It’s me he left, not you, sweetie.” Then she went back into the bedroom and went on sobbing.