“Not top engineer,” Thomas said, coloring, “not top at all.”
“Don’t sell yourself short,” Dotty declared. “We will have none of that in my house.” Rose couldn’t remember telling Dotty where Thomas worked, let alone that he was an engineer. How did she find that out? “And my Kurt is an acclaimed screenwriter,” Dotty said.
“Acclaimed,” Kurt repeated, lifting a bushy eyebrow, “is one way to put it.”
“It’s my way,” Dotty said, and laced her hand with his.
“What films have you written?” Rose asked.
“Have you seen The Thing?”
“The Thing?” Rose asked, puzzled.
“Yes, the Thing movies: The Thing Escapes, The Thing Returns. Now I’m working on The Reign of the Thing. Have you seen any of them?”
Rose shook her head. “I don’t believe so, I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be,” he said. “I would be more surprised if you had.”
“Why is that? They’re witty, wonderful films,” Dotty said.
“You know, I did see one, years ago,” Thomas said. “It was quite entertaining. It truly was. Well done.”
“Thank you,” Kurt said with a little bow.
“What is the Thing?” Rose asked.
“What do you mean?”
“Is the Thing a person? A monster, a figure of the imagination?”
“We don’t know,” Kurt said with a wry little smile. “That’s why he keeps coming back.”
“Now we could talk about the Thing all day, but come now,” Dotty said. “Let’s get you some food.”
Under the gazebo, oh, the sweet abundance: Such an array of desserts—dark chocolate Sacher tortes, as Dotty had promised, and poppy-seed cakes and a platter of almond cookies dusted with sugar and elegant petits fours in the form of tiny purple flowers. There was a large silver coffee urn surrounded by rows of china teacups stacked on top of each other and several pitchers of water accompanied by tall glasses to help wash down the treats just as, Rose unexpectedly remembered, her father liked to do.
Soon Rose was settled on a lounge chair balancing a plate that held a slice of the Sacher torte, and drinking the strong coffee and listening to a composer (“very accomplished,” Dotty had ducked down to whisper) talk about the Vienna Opera House and the mournful cries of the coyotes he heard at night from his house in the hills. Thomas was engaged in a conversation with a portly man about air travel while his stunning wife tried not to look bored (“his third,” Dotty informed Rose).
“Did you ask your analyst?” Rose heard a mustached man ask Dotty.
“Oh, he would never answer,” Dotty said.
“That is why I go monthly to Menninger in Kansas,” he said. “To have an analyst with such an astute, incredible mind, it is worth journeying.”
The composer said to Rose: “Have you been back to Vienna?”
“Me?” She shook her head. “No.” After a moment, she asked: “You?”
“No,” he said. “Why would I ever go back? It’s just as Wilder says: ‘The Austrians have managed to convince the world that Beethoven was Austrian and Hitler a German.’ You cannot trust them.”
“No,” she said quietly. “You can’t.” Rose felt hot in her tweed skirt. Her head hurt. She shouldn’t have had that second cup of coffee. She made her way around the pool, toward the house. Inside it was thankfully cool, enveloping. She found the bathroom again, but it was occupied. She waited. A moment later, the door opened and Kurt stepped out.
“Well. Hello.” A smile lit his handsome face. He had a hand against the doorframe. “Enjoying yourself?”
“Yes, very, thank you.” She gestured at the door. “Excuse me—”
He moved closer. They were neither in the bathroom nor in the hall. “I was hoping to see you alone. You have a look about you. Your eyes—they’re beautiful. They remind me of Adele’s.” His voice was gentle.
Who was Adele? “I’m sorry—” Rose stuttered. Kurt kept his gaze trained on her. She shifted uncomfortably. Thomas must still be outside. She shouldn’t be reminding Kurt of anyone.
“It is the most uncanny resemblance,” Kurt said. A light smokiness emanated from his clothes. She could have moved past him, but she didn’t. “You’re lovely like her. Not of this world, like her.”
Rose was too stunned to say anything. Finally she murmured: “I have to—I should go.”
“Of course.” But he leaned in and she didn’t move. He grazed his lips across hers. They felt cool and dry. It was quick and then it was over.
“No, don’t,” she said after the fact.
He looked at her, smiled, shrugged. And then he was gone.
Rose had no idea how long she remained in the bathroom, trying to slow her flailing heart. It doesn’t matter, she told herself sternly, except that was a lie. She splashed water on her face, once, twice, smoothed her hair, stared at herself in the mirror. Thomas would take one look at her and know. Eventually she walked out. In the hall, she heard: “Rose?”
Dotty was in the kitchen, cutting oranges into quarters and adding them to a glass pitcher with lemons already crowding the bottom. “Sangria,” she explained. “It can’t be coffee and Sacher torte all the time.” Inside, with her hat and sunglasses off, without an audience, she seemed smaller. “I am glad you are here. Was that Kurt you were speaking to in the hall?”
Rose nodded.
“Is he okay?”
“Yes,” Rose said quickly. “Of course.”
Dotty’s hand guided the knife, chop, chop chop. “Did you know Adele growing up?”
“Excuse me?” Rose blurted.
“Adele. Did you know her?”
Rose shook her head. Was she too quick to answer? Why would she know her? “Who is she?”
“His wife,” Dotty said, funneling sugar into the pitcher, a white snowy path. “His first wife.”
“Oh,” Rose only said. She wasn’t sure she wanted to know the rest.
Dotty stirred the contents of the pitcher. She didn’t look up. “They were childhood sweethearts in Vienna. I thought maybe you knew her; I’m certain your brother did. She and Kurt were madly in love. They married, in the camp. They were nineteen. And then she caught pneumonia. Died.”
“I didn’t realize,” Rose said. It was inconceivable. All of these stories were: Kurt’s, her parents’, so many stories, each ghastly in its own particular way. “That’s terrible.”
“It is,” Dotty said. Only then did she stop mixing. “It is terrible. He yells out in his sleep sometimes: ‘Adele, Adele!’ He has a Ouija board. I know he tries to reach her. But he won’t talk to me about her.” She turned back to the sangria, gave it a vigorous stir. “I tell myself it’s over, but it’s not. When will it be over?”
Rose looked at the pitcher filled with fruit, such a bright, optimistic bounty, and she was back in those bleak days in London after the war. “Dotty,” she asked in a voice far gentler than her own, “what can he possibly say?”
Monday morning, the headmistress’s secretary came to Rose’s classroom with a note. “You’ll be getting another student for sixth period next week, possibly two. Helen Peale has left.”
“What?” Rose could only say dumbly. “When?”