That summer after Karel was found boozing in Mecklenburg’s Saloon was stifling for Anna too. Not that Anna was complaining about seeing more of her brother. But the way he talked to her, his insistence that she cheer up. He was becoming such a boss.
“What are you doing there?” he’d ask her, up in the attic. She wanted to tell him not to bother her, that he should be quiet. But she wouldn’t risk a demand like that. Karel was sensitive. He wouldn’t talk to her the rest of the summer if she said something like that.
Anna said, “Just watch.” There on the sofa in the attic. A sketching pad on her lap, some charcoal in her hand. Most of the time she just let her hand go as it wanted to go. Made one mark, then another. Curled out shapes with the curves from the first letter of her name. Drawing the shape of an a was fun. Before long, small shapes turned into bigger ones. She’d been drawing leaves on a tree, she realized, an aspen tree. She stroked two parallel lines in the middle of the mess. “There it is,” she said.
“Why didn’t you just start with the trunk?”
“It wasn’t there yet.”
“What does that mean?”
Anna hated having to explain things to Karel. His turning more and more red, until he grabbed the pad and charcoal to show her how to do it. He drew a straight trunk first, thick, with roots flaring where the ground must be. A decent enough start. That was how most people thought of a tree. Then branches, a bit too angular, funnel-like, a metallic kind of shape, Anna saw that right away. “Oh, hell.” Karel stopped drawing. He realized then. It looked bad.
Karel didn’t bother drawing the leaves. He scowled at Anna like it was her fault he’d drawn a strange, dead tree. “I’m sorry,” Anna said. Then, “Give me that, you klutz.” She tore the page out from the pad and put it on the table. Over those weeks a new pile grew there, separate from the neater stacks of Anna’s crafts. This one of objects Karel had botched.
Once summer was over, Karel didn’t stay around the attic much. He was free again, off with his friends. If his being in the attic didn’t cheer up Anna then being gone might do the trick. Karel was such a boy about things. He couldn’t understand.
More and more he was out with that Emil Braun character. With Alfred Braun and Jimmy McHenry. Anna hadn’t met these people, but she heard about them from Maria. Maria knew about everyone and everything on Clandish. That was how it seemed from the kitchen. How Karel was getting good at baseball. Baseball wasn’t played in the winter, not properly, but that didn’t stop him. He got better and better. He’d stay out until after dark. He’d miss dinner. Then, once spring broke, he took her down to that game. The tryout. That was all it was, some grown men playing with each other. Anna had only ever seen boys play baseball—out in the streets of New York, with broomsticks and a pink rubber ball—and hadn’t thought that grown men would play the game too. Men who took things serious. Who glared and spit and kicked at the grass with cleated shoes. Who only cracked a smile when one of them did something wrong or was hurt. Anna didn’t understand why her brother wanted to spend all his time with these men. These were the kind of men Herr taught them to avoid.
Karel was making a mistake—that’s what Anna thought, sitting there in the stands at Rourke Park. He hadn’t thought things through.
Anna was going to tell Karel that he shouldn’t be out with rabble like these. He should stay home to make something of himself, learn to play the violin properly so he could find mannerly employment later on. He was so good at reading and languages. English in particular came easy to him, while Anna struggled to speak anything but Deutsch. Karel was wasting his time playing baseball. Anna was going to tell him, but then she saw how he moved on a ballfield. How he covered space. Graceful in the way he drifted over grass, feet barely touching ground, his spine lengthening with each stride. He stood easy and told jokes. He belonged. That was why Anna had trouble talking to him on the streetcar ride back to Clandish, and the weeks later, when he kept at her to get out more, to make friends with some girls who went to his school. She couldn’t talk to Karel anymore, not like she used to. He kept at her, told her she should be more like the girls from school, girls who sounded horrible, crass, dirty, whose fathers worked in mechanic shops.
“I’m sick,” she’d say. “Did you forget that, Karel? I’m not at all well.”
It was reasonable to most people on Clandish that Anna might be bitter, even at her age. The situation wasn’t fair. Karel was her little brother, and before long he’d tower over her. He was strong and his body electric. He jumped down the six steps of Maria’s front porch when he left for school and didn’t even quiver. He landed, stiff then lithe, like a gymnast, wished her auf Wiedersehen then dashed down the avenue. Nobody could say that was fair. Older sister Anna slinking to the attic, legs shaking, remembering the sound of Karel’s feet hitting the pavement after leaping from the porch. Her legs would snap if she tried something like that. Poor girl.
She barely made a sound upstairs. Hung her straw hat on the balustrade. Curled under a quilt. Lay there a while on the sofa. Listened to Herr working away. He wouldn’t bother her. Not right away. Herr’s hands were busy restringing a cello whose tuning pegs kept unwinding. He didn’t offer much company to his youngest daughter, even if they were in the attic together most of the day. Between the string section of the Musik Verein and the horde of amateur fiddlers lurking in immigrant Omaha, he was kept busy year round. If only he charged what his services were worth and worked at a quick pace, Herr could have made quite a chunk of profit. If he made more money he wouldn’t have to work as hard. Anna understood how these things went.
After a while Herr took a break. He started his tea and perched on the edge of the sofa while he waited for the kettle to whistle. “What’s wrong, M?del Anna? Can’t you tell me?” Anna hidden, the pattern of the quilt illuminated green and gold from the lamplight on the other side. “Will you sit up? Won’t you read awhile?” Herr shifting his weight and stretching his arms around the lump on the sofa. Anna the lump. “Don’t go away from me, M?dchen. I won’t lose you. I won’t let you get away.”
Anna couldn’t help it. She sat up and let the quilt fall and leaned into him. A silly man. He was small, like Anna. He didn’t eat much. She felt his ribs rise and fall through his shirt.
“I’ll read a bit,” she told him. “Now leave me alone.”