“What do you mean? I played ball against Emil. That’s it. He helps me sometimes.”
“The man who brought my son here. I’m asking you about him. My son tells me nothing. So I’m asking you.”
Josh folded the newspaper and set it aside, his face twisting at the question. He leaned forward to sweep his body along the floor a few feet closer to look at Miihlstein. “No,” he said. “You’re not this boy’s father. Emil takes care of this one. This is one of Emil’s boys, I know.”
They stared at each other, both set back by what the other had said. What could Miihlstein think about all this? Karel was knocked out for an instant, that was what it felt like, seeing the look on his father’s face, a little glance between Karel and Josh, then like the wind was thumped out of him. Miihlstein’s mouth giving in to a little droop, his mustache, his eyes beady, sad, behind the bent frames of his glasses. It was just an instant, Karel slipping out of himself. How Miihlstein must have glimpsed that he was losing Karel, there in a dark shack with some legless Schwarzer ballplayer, a hero to the boy, who couldn’t recognize the boy’s father.
“It’s okay,” Karel said. It was up to him to set things straight. He grabbed the baseball back, took Miihlstein by the arm, and pulled to the door. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about, yeah. He’s just a guy. He gave me a baseball. It’s no big deal.”
“Whatever you say, Karel. But we’re here. You brought me here.”
“He’s a guy, a ballplayer. That’s all.”
“That’s all,” Josh echoed. “Just some schvartze, some darky. Whatever you folks say. Go on. Act like I’m the one who doesn’t know what he’s talking about. Coming in here wearing that! That set of rags! You’re wearing the wrong colors, boy, for this neighborhood.”
Karel peeled out of his knickers and the Southside jersey and his high-ankle shoes once they returned to the attic of the Eigler house. In just shorts and undershirt he collapsed to the bed and rolled the quilt over himself, hoping his father would leave him alone now.
“I’m glad you’re home,” Miihlstein said. He sat at the edge of the bed and put his hand on Karel’s leg. “We miss you around here. Anna thought it might have been something she said that makes you stay away. Is that it? Is that why you’re a bad boy all the time? You’re insulted?”
Karel said it wasn’t that. It was nothing. It was the spring weather. He didn’t look up but stared at the pattern of the green and gold quilt, a puzzle he couldn’t master. Maybe there wasn’t a pattern. It didn’t matter. His father kept moving across the room, little by little, stopping to look around until he rested his hands on the bed frame.
“I did wonder if little Anna could sour you so. I’m lucky to have such children. Silke and Theresa, Anna and you. Two complete pairs in your manners. What luck, yeah?”
Karel wouldn’t say anything. He should have run away from Miihlstein before they came up here, but he didn’t think his father would trap him again. The whole streetcar ride back from the Northside they didn’t say a word to each other. They were silent under the rattling of the window sashes, the tinging of the bell. Miihlstein maybe learned better than to ask these kinds of questions, Karel thought, on the streetcar, after the strangeness with Josh. But he was wrong.
“Anna, you know, is not getting better these days,” Miihlstein said, starting at it again. “The winter here was much worse than I thought it would be. It’s my fault, I suppose. More should have been done to learn what we were in store for coming here, don’t you think? Yet. The house suits us. You have friends. You’ve taken to a sporting life, which is just as well.”
Miihlstein stopped talking and looked to the stairs, one set of fingers in his mustache. The girls were coming to see what was wrong, but he waved them away.
“I’ll explain someday. What happened with your mother. Why we were in Galizien in the first place, why we had to leave the way we did. It ruined us, Karel. It nearly did.”
“I don’t want to know.”
“Anna told me she blurted out. She botched all she told. The Swallow, you know, that’s what the theater called your mother. It wasn’t the Sparrow, like Anna told you.” Miihlstein laughed to himself. “Surely there’s more she botched. M?del Anna. She’s an artist’s temperament. Feebleminded when it comes to most plain details.”
“Shut up,” Karel said, quiet as he wound tighter in the quilt.
Miihlstein surely heard, but he said nothing in response. “There was something special about your mother” was what he said.
THE UNINITIATED
Spring 1918
Everyone knew Jake was with Evie. Even if they didn’t go out on the town together, folks saw him on the street and figured he was headed her way. They knew he wasn’t spending his nights at the Eigler house, that he only stopped in to shave and change clothes, though he did bring Evie there to visit once. He hired a car to drive Evie over to Clandish on Saturday evening. A bunch of boys were on the sidewalk staring as he helped her out. She dressed formal, something conservative by her standards, laced to the top of her neck, with skirts that brushed over the grimy bricks of the walkway, a dress made from purple crepe with a velvet sash tied across her middle.
“Jeez, Jake.” “She looks nice. Doesn’t she?” the boys remarked. “What’s the occasion? Your birthday or something?”
“That’s right,” Jake laughed. “Who told?”
Jake introduced Evie to the Miihlstein girls. A mere “How do you do?” before Silke and Theresa fingered the lace and crepe of Evie’s dress and asked how she got her hair to curl like that. “She’s beautiful, Jake,” Theresa said. “Where have you been keeping her?” After dinner they played a game that was typical here. A newspaper and map spread out on the rug to see where the war was, a silly thing to keep up with most days, as the trenches didn’t actually move. But the girls remembered enough of Europe to despair over what had been destroyed. Silly little Anna rested against the wall and sniffled, her legs straight so she could rub where her knees bumped out. “It’s sad, isn’t it?” she said. Everyone agreed it was sad. Except she didn’t need to cry. Crying was theatrical. That was little Anna for you. Nobody knew what to do with her.