“Of course it is. K?the was a horrible child. She would do anything to gain attention, and as an adult she turned out to be much the same. It’s true her mother was one of Papa’s students; he thought very highly of her work, at least he did at first. But K?the—Kitty, I guess she calls herself now. My sister Bettina and I couldn’t stand her. We had to play with her sometimes, when families from the Institut für Radiumforschung got together for outings or the New Year’s party. K?the was younger than us, so we wouldn’t have wanted to play with her, anyway, but she was such an angry girl, so prone to temper tantrums that we ran off into the park whenever we saw her coming.”
She stared at me with fierce eyes. “Before the war, when we were living in Vienna, Papa troubled himself sometimes over Fr?ulein Saginor’s sad fate. I think he tried to look after K?the because he worried about her mother, not having much of a stipend and being a single mother. And K?the twisted that into thinking he was her father!”
“I was told that Ms. Binder came to Chicago to see your father, that Ms. Binder thought he knew where her mother was.”
“Fr?ulein Saginor did not survive the war,” Herta said stiffly. “If Julius told you otherwise, it’s because he enjoys mocking people.”
“Julius didn’t mention Fr?ulein Saginor at all,” I said. “He did say you’ve always been upset by Ms. Binder’s presence in your life.”
“The war had been over for ten years,” Herta whispered. “We were sure K?the was dead. When she suddenly appeared here in Chicago—Papa was away, of course. He always was, going off to Washington or Berkeley, even though his health was not good.”
“When was that?” I asked.
“I remember it like yesterday. Probably when I am finally dying, that day will be my last thought, not my wedding or my grandchildren, but Mama phoning me, telling me that K?the had arrived and was creating the most alarming scene all over the neighborhood. Julius lived at home, but he was in class over at the university—University of Chicago. It was before he dropped out, although he probably would have been thrown out because he was failing everything.”
“So it wasn’t Kitty Binder’s sudden arrival that made Julius fall apart?” I said.
“He never minded her,” Herta said bitterly. “He’d been falling apart for a number of years before she showed up to ruin our lives. He’s always made fun of Bettina and me for what he calls overreacting to K?the. If he’d been home that morning, he might see my point.”
“What did she do?” I asked.
“Mama was home alone. By then Bettina and I were both married, but Bettina was living in Los Angeles, so it was up to me; Mama called me and I took a taxi down to the house.”
Herta shook her head, still upset by a scene half a century old. “I knew K?the at once, even though I hadn’t seen her since we left Vienna in 1936. She was looking for Papa, of course, because—well, of her strange ideas about him and her mother. K?the was going around the neighborhood, ringing doorbells, telling people that Papa—it was sickening! Even though everyone told us they didn’t believe her, you could tell from the pitying glances they gave Mama that they thought, ‘No smoke without fire.’”
“How long did this go on?” I asked. “I was told she even made a scene at the university’s physics department.”
“Papa made her go away,” Herta said.
“How?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I don’t know, but when he got back from wherever he’d been that time, he said he’d take care of it. For one week she showed up every day, at the house, or the university. She made a scene at the physics department. She even drove out to the national lab in Argonne, where they’d built the new pile, and tried to fight her way past the guards. I moved back down to the house on Greenwood Avenue, so that Mama didn’t have to be alone during the day. I was pregnant with my first child; except for worrying about K?the, it was lovely to be back in Hyde Park, with Mama looking after me, instead of having to keep house myself.” Her face softened, her youth in front of her eyes.
She looked up at me. “Anyway, whatever it was that Papa did, K?the stopped coming around, and after another week, I felt it was okay to leave Mama on her own. For years, K?the kept quiet, she didn’t bother us, but we always felt she was a, oh, an unexploded grenade. Sure enough, her horrible daughter arrived out of the blue one day, disgustingly drunk, or drugged, that’s what Stuart—my husband—said it was. And now here you are.”
I nodded: Kitty might have stopped pestering the Dzornens, but she had talked about them in front of her daughter. Junkies know no shame; Judy would have seen the Dzornens as a potential revenue stream.
“Judy tried to get money out of you,” I said.
Herta nodded, her mouth pursed into a tight rosebud. “More than once: first when she was young, around twenty. She came back several times. She tried—never mind that. My husband was a lawyer; he sent her about her business very quickly.”
“You said Ms. Binder’s mother didn’t survive the war,” I said. “Do you know what became of her? What made Ms. Binder think her mother was still alive and working in Chicago?”
“Oh, she likes to dramatize herself!” Herta flung up her hands in a contemptuous gesture. “I don’t know specifically what became of Fr?ulein Saginor, why she didn’t leave Austria when it was still possible.”