By the time Rose got out of bed the next day, Thomas was long gone. He had left a note by her bedside: “You have an appointment with Dr. Cohen at three o’clock. No skipping it.”
Rose pulled on her bathrobe, went into the kitchen. Harry was there, in jeans and a flannel shirt, long legs stretched out beneath the breakfast table, a copy of Variety along with a crumbled pack of cigarettes on the table, spooning peanut butter out of the jar into his mouth. He sprang up when she entered. “Hello, Auntie.”
Rose motioned for him to sit, turned on the kettle. “You’re up early.”
“Yes. Well, you’re up late.”
She took a spoon from the drawer, took the jar of peanut butter from him, and carved out a generous spoonful. She had awoken with the nausea mostly gone. She was starving.
“Today is my first elocution class,” Harry said. “I’m gonna learn to speak like an American.” He said this last part with a deliberate twang.
The kettle whistled. Rose poured tea for herself; Harry declined. He reached for the jar of peanut butter, spooned out more. “Peanut butter is a very strange substance, don’t you think?” he said. “I remember it from my trip here when I was fifteen. I was repulsed by it—the stickiness, the flavor, all of it. But I was also determined to like it. I thought it would make me American.”
Rose let out a rueful laugh, sipped her tea. “I hated it too, when I arrived. But nothing makes you American. One day you wake up, and you simply are. The moment has passed, and you didn’t even see it happen.”
“I should only be so lucky.” Harry pulled a cigarette out of the pack, and only then, while tapping it on the table, said, “Do you mind?” Rose shook her head. He lit it, took a long drag.
“May I have one?” Rose gestured at the pack.
Harry offered it to her. “I didn’t know you smoked.”
“I don’t.”
Harry smiled, lit a cigarette for her. She hadn’t smoked in years. She had never been a heavy smoker, but she had liked a cigarette at night, after supper. She had quit along with Thomas not long after they moved here. The last time she could remember having a cigarette was at the Ambassador; she and Thomas had gone to celebrate her getting the Eastgate job. In the ballroom’s low light, the fake palm trees that fanned the perimeter of the crowded dance floor looked disarmingly real—papier-maché coconuts and mechanical monkeys climbing the trees, their yellow electric eyes blinking and following her every move. She and Thomas drank and smoked and danced—Thomas was a good dancer, agile on his feet, more graceful than she—and the place felt silly but wonderful too. She had not wanted to leave England, but now that they were settled here, it was difficult to recall the particulars of why.
Rose sucked in smoke, felt the rush go to her head. “Now, why did I ever quit?”
Harry let out a low laugh and tapped off ash into a gold-rimmed ashtray that Rose realized wasn’t hers—Harry must have picked it up somewhere. She was about to ask him where when he said: “May I ask you something, Auntie? The other day, when we were at the museum, you got upset.”
Rose drew in and held the smoke in her lungs. She tapped the cigarette against the ashtray. This was another reason she had liked smoking: it gave her something to do with her hands. “I wasn’t feeling well.”
“I know,” he said. “But it was more than that, wasn’t it? I saw the poster too.”
“What?” she asked thickly.
“I saw the poster for the Soutine exhibit. That’s what you were looking at, wasn’t it?”
“How do you know about that?”
His prominent unlined brow now furrowed. “You mean the Soutine? My dad told me.”
“He did?”
“’Course. He told me that your mum had loved the painting and that the painter was well known. He must have told me when I was a little kid. He told me that your flat had lots of beautiful things. That your mother had a good eye.”
“Of course,” Rose echoed as she ground her cigarette down. She was trying to take all of it in. Her brother, the same one who told her to forget it all, was telling his children about the Soutine? He was proud?
“He doesn’t talk about Vienna much, but he’d tell us stories now and again: like how your mother used to ask, ‘Are they fine people? Or are they not so fine?’ about anyone she would meet. And how frugal your father could be, how he refused to smoke an imported cigar because he thought it was as unnecessary extravagance, instead smoking whatever the government issued.”
“‘Just like Franz Joseph.’” Rose heard herself quoting her father automatically. She hadn’t thought about that in thirty years. She remembered her father smoking, that stale woodsy smell from his study—was that the smell of a cheap cigar? She hadn’t remembered her mother’s focus on ‘fine people,’ but she could so easily hear Mutti saying that. What else did Gerhard remember that she did not? They rarely talked about their childhood.
“The painting wasn’t at the exhibit, was it?” Harry asked.
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry.”
She nodded again. “As am I,” she managed to say.
“But you still find yourself looking for it, even when you’re not looking.”
“Yes,” she breathed.
“I do too.” His voice was low. “I don’t even know what it looks like exactly—but I do too.”
Was he truly looking for it? For Gerhard? For himself? Rose couldn’t bring herself to ask. The kitchen was warm. She was aware of small noises floating about: the ticking of the electric clock, the wheeze of the ice-maker. She touched Harry’s wrist. Thank you for saying that, she wanted to say, but she said nothing, afraid the words might have proved her undoing.
The doctor’s waiting area was stifling. Even the ficus in the corner looked dejected. Rose’s queasiness had returned. The exam room she was ushered into felt twenty degrees colder. The nurse instructed her to change into a gown and then Rose waited some more. She pulled her knees to her chest. Why such thin gowns? Why didn’t they provide something with a little more protection?
Finally Dr. Cohen walked in. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Downes! I haven’t seen you in a while. Too good for me these days?” Dr. Cohen sported a thick, snowy-white mustache and a jovial demeanor. While she complained about his style to Thomas—she half expected him to say one day, Hello, Mrs. Downes, I’m here to tell you that you have shingles!—she found him surprisingly reassuring. It could be worse, he was fond of telling her, and most of the time, she had to agree.
He took her temperature, asked her if she was still teaching at Eastgate, checked her throat, ears, and nose, pronounced all normal. Then he examined her abdomen, pressing down with his thumb and forefinger. He asked about her symptoms again, nodding all the while.
“When was your last period, Mrs. Downes?”
It had been some time. She struggled to remember. A month and a half? Maybe longer? It hadn’t alarmed her. After all, she was nearly forty-one. “They’ve been irregular as of late,” she said. “I’m not quite sure.”
“Well! I believe a blood test is in order. I would not be at all surprised.”