Chapter 41
41
M ARCH 1917
An odd, dreamlike sensation haunted Inga during her first day back in New York. After months of being constantly on edge, everything was so strangely normal . Shelves at the pharmacy were fully stocked with medicines, and the butcher’s windows displayed a bounty of ham, pork, and beef.
Once at the Martha Washington, she hugged old friends, who laughed and gossiped and invited her to a new theater that just opened on Broadway. It took almost an hour to escape the crush of people and head to Delia’s eighth-floor apartment. Even there, several friends crowded into the apartment, gushing over Inga’s wardrobe as she unpacked.
“Look at this adorable blazer!” Delia marveled.
Blanche scooped up Inga’s green walking suit, the one she wore for her wedding. “Please tell me I can borrow this sometime. Pretty please?”
Inga and Blanche used to swap clothes all the time, but no, her wedding outfit was off-limits to others. Nobody in New York knew of her marriage, and she intended to keep it that way, which meant she had to scramble for an excuse.
“It’s very itchy. You’ll like this one better,” she said, handing Blanche the violet gown with a portrait collar. She tucked the green suit deep into the wardrobe and closed the door.
Each gown that came out of the trunk was laden with memories. The lavender gown that got drenched the day she wheeled the piano out into the garden. The red wool jacket she wore in Rosendorff. All the while, chatter continued around her.
“Did you see any fighting over there?” Margaret asked.
Inga shook her head. “No, we were far away from the front lines.”
“All the fighting has been in France and Russia,” Delia pointed out. “Germany is completely unscathed.”
Not exactly, but Inga said nothing as she lifted another gown from her trunk.
“Thank heavens you were spared having to see any suffering,” Margaret said.
“Yes. I was very lucky.” Inga reached into the bottom of her trunk to lift out the sketchbook Percy gave her on her final visit to the Ruhleben camp. She must write to him soon. He was so lonely, and with all the chaos of escaping Berlin, she hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye to him.
A knock on the door interrupted her thoughts.
“Come in!” Delia shouted. Instead of another friend, a wall of red roses was all Inga could see.
“A delivery for you,” the downstairs clerk said as she carefully angled the enormous bouquet into the room. “Where shall I set it?”
Inga cleared space on the top of her closed trunk. Bouquets of roses would probably always remind her of how Mrs. Gerard had been bombarded with them at every whistle-stop on the East Coast.
“Who are they from?” Delia asked.
“The kaiser,” someone joked.
Inga opened the card and read:
Miss Klein,
You reported the sorry fact that you had never received roses. That sad oversight is now a thing of the past.
Welcome home, Benedict
“Well? Who are they from?” Blanche pestered, then snatched the card. “Who is Benedict?”
Inga drew a calming breath as a lump grew in her throat. “A man I cared for in Berlin. It’s over.”
“Inga the heartbreaker strikes again,” Blanche teased.
Inga slipped the card into her pocket. It was over with Benedict. She nearly burst with pride over his promotion to be an ambassador. He deserved it, and yet his being posted to Japan confirmed that she’d made the right decision. She would be a disaster in Tokyo.
“The dining room closes soon,” Margaret said. “Shall we head down for dinner?”
Most of the ladies took their meals in the first-floor restaurant, but Blanche rolled her eyes. “Don’t get your hopes up about the quality of food,” she said. “The manager has been in a dispute with the dairy company, so we’ve been stuck with nothing but condensed milk for the past two weeks. Can you imagine? I can barely choke it down.”
Inga’s lips began to tremble. Did Gita and Gerhard have enough milk for their baby? Shortages were bound to get worse with the Americans entering the war.
“I think I’ll stay and finish unpacking,” she said, unable to meet anyone’s eyes. Hopefully, a few minutes alone would beat back this weepiness.
“What are these?” Margaret asked as she lifted one of the smooth, wooden castanets from the trunk. Inga managed to smile. She’d had plenty of time to practice with them during the voyage home, and she slipped the leather cord around her wrist to demonstrate.
It was enough for her to shake off the gloom as she dug deeper into the trunk to begin passing out some of the Spanish fans. Suddenly the room was filled with laughter again as the women fluttered the fans and played the castanets.
Then memories of that breezy, balmy afternoon with Benedict in Spain swamped her. Had there ever been a sky so blue? Had he ever looked more handsome as the wind tousled his hair, and he gazed at her with such pained admiration?
Leaving him had been the right choice, but at the moment everything felt so wrong. So oddly frivolous. Nobody in this room understood what she’d been through, and she didn’t have the heart to explain.
Midge would understand. Midge had served during the Civil War and might understand Inga’s strange feeling of disconnect.
“Please excuse me,” Inga whispered. She dropped the fan and ran like a coward away from the people she’d always considered friends.
Fortunately, Midge hadn’t left for her overnight shift at the hospital yet. The old woman already wore her white nurse’s uniform, but she invited Inga to curl up on the corner chair in her apartment and unload her burdens.
Inga confided everything to Midge, including her marriage to Benedict and wanting to smack Blanche for turning up her nose at canned milk.
“Don’t hold it against Blanche,” the old nurse gently said. “I remember feeling the same as you when I returned home after the war. Nobody in Idaho had experienced what I saw throughout those terrible years. I assumed my life would go back to normal, but I was a different person. I didn’t belong in Boise anymore and ended up moving back to New York to work in a veterans’ hospital. Don’t resent Blanche because she doesn’t understand. Thank heavens she doesn’t! What a wonderful world it would be if nobody knew what war can do to a soul.”
Inga’s attention strayed outside the window, where the skyline of Manhattan was as familiar as the back of her hand. How she loved it here, but half her heart was elsewhere. It was in Ruhleben. It was with her cousins in Rosendorff and the staff from Alton House who had scattered to various outposts around the world.
It was with Benedict.
“You’re thinking about him ?” Midge asked, and Inga nodded helplessly. Half the reason she didn’t want to return to Delia’s apartment was having to see the roses.
“I’m going to miss him for a long time,” she confessed, her lip starting to wobble.
Midge seemed unusually thoughtful as she stood before a mirror to pin the folded nurse’s cap atop her head. “I fell in love once,” she said. “He was killed in the Battle of Chancellorsville. I mourned him for years and thought I’d never get over him. It was work that saved me. Carrying out the mission I believe God wants of me has given me joy and purpose. People sometimes worry about me. They wonder why I’m still working when I’m seventy-six years old, but I’m the happiest person I know! In the quiet of the night, when the rest of the world is asleep, people are still in pain, and I can be there to lend a hand. It has always given me great satisfaction to follow this mission in life.”
What was Inga’s mission now that the embassy had closed? She didn’t want to be a legal crusader like Delia or tend the sick like Midge. What had given her the greatest satisfaction of her life?
Working alongside Benedict .
She pushed the unwelcome thought away. She ought to aspire to something higher, but when she was side by side with Benedict, rowing toward the same goal, it felt like she was fulfilling a calling.
And frankly, Benedict needed her help. He was cold and prickly when she wasn’t there to warm him up. Between the two of them, they had accomplished a great deal, and she loved every minute of it.
Even so, that night as she said a prayer for his success in Tokyo, she knew she’d made the right decision to stay in New York.