Chapter 9 Anticipation
ANTICIPATION
After that, Joe’s parents embraced me and told me how glad they were to have me in their family, and I wept and told them I would devote myself from now on to being a dutiful wife and daughter-in-law, and they forgave me for being Catholic and German and so terribly blonde and gave our marriage their blessing.
I’m joking, of course. After that, Joe said, “We’ll leave you to think about that,” kissed his mother goodnight, and marshaled me firmly out of the compartment and into our own.
Where he kissed me in a very different way, and we fumbled around, taking off each other’s clothes while trying to keep our feet in the swaying car, and Joe bumped his head against the upper berth, lost his footing after all, and fell, sprawling, onto the lower berth, where I fell on top of him.
It was a silly sort of lovemaking, all elbows and knees and clothes not quite off.
We laughed as we kissed, and then Joe did some things I’d never heard of.
They embarrassed me, but felt … I can’t even describe it.
Like when you have to sneeze for so long, and the sneeze finally comes? Only a hundred times better.
The first time we’d kissed, I’d told him in wonder that it was like sparks, and when he kissed me there, well …
it was more like lightning. I was very out of breath by the time we finished, and he was sweating.
The light was still on, because we’d never managed to turn it off, and Joe had such a smile on his face!
And when he got up to turn off the light at last, stumbled over my suitcase coming back in the dark, banged his knee again, swore, and was laughing as I pulled him down into bed with me, both of us without a stitch on?
I felt like the luckiest woman in the world.
The journey took three more days. We ate breakfast with Joe’s parents each morning, as he’d promised, where I sat in a sort of glowing befuddlement at being loved so thoroughly—there’s no spice like long absence—and, I’m afraid, blushed a great deal when Joe brushed a curl from my face or smiled at me.
During the day, I watched America slide by from the window of the lounge car as Joe read from his textbooks, and felt like an alien fallen to earth.
Everything was so much larger here, especially the fields.
In Germany, the farms had been small plots, and the farmhouses mostly situated within a village, for don’t people need companionship, and neighbors, and the butcher and the baker and the post office?
Also, do you know that Nebraska is almost completely flat, with hardly a tree to be seen for hundreds of miles, nothing but snow-covered fields and the wind whistling by?
I understood the Dust Bowl better now. How the dust would roll across all this flatness!
We went through the Rocky Mountains, and I practically pressed my nose against the window—it was like Switzerland before the war, only much wilder and with no towns—and the Sierra Nevada, which are also mountains, and the flat lands in between, where vast quantities of crops grew and huge herds of cattle roamed the land.
The size of the place, like Russia must be, but so prosperous and full of machinery!
It was no wonder Americans still had so much to eat, with all these fields and cattle and all this mechanization.
They didn’t have to pound their beef thin, layer it with mustard and bacon and pickles and onions, and cook it for hours to make it tender.
Instead, they seemed to delight in taking the best possible cuts from the animal and eating them unadorned by more than salt and pepper, after barely heating them through.
Which results in a very … meaty taste. An uninterrupted meaty taste.
And what do they eat with those steaks? Why, potatoes!
Again, not made into lovely, light dumplings, but served baked in their jackets, so one has to eat and eat and eat that potato taste.
It was actually physically tiring to cut and chew that much, and rather monotonous, too.
How quickly one adjusts to one’s circumstances!
Every time my situation had grown worse during the war, I’d thought, This is too much.
I cannot do this. But within a day or two, it would become normal, and I’d no longer rail against it in my mind but would go on as always, surviving once more.
The same thing now: after going hungry for so long, I was bemoaning the fatigue caused by chewing too much meat!
Or perhaps I was merely an adaptable sort of person.
That sounded better, although it was possibly not quite true.
Eventually, we were crossing a sort of plain through California, eating our last breakfast with Joe’s parents.
In a few hours, we’d be disembarking in a city called Oakland.
From there, we’d cross the bay on a ferry, because there was no railroad bridge.
Most people in California, it seemed, drove private cars.
Imagine! And from there, we would take another train south to a place called Palo Alto, which would be my home.
The thought was making me excited, but also nervous, so I looked out the window.
The mountains were behind us, replaced by a landscape of rolling hills interspersed with flatter areas covered by vast orchards of what Joe told me were fruit trees, and fields that he told me would be planted with, yes, potatoes.
I tried to focus on the loveliness of eating fruit every day, but didn’t quite succeed, because what I came out with was, “Do you like American food best, Joe?”
He looked up from his omelet—which was made with two eggs and was full of onions and, of course, potatoes, as well as cheese; what a feast!
He was drinking a glass of orange juice, too.
Imagine that—a whole glass of pressed orange juice served to regular people on a regular train, so normal it wasn’t worth a comment.
He said, “Compared to what?” Looking wary.
“That was a trick question if I’ve ever heard one,” Mr. Stark said.
“Tread carefully, son.” Which was a joke, clearly, and he was smiling a real sort of smile.
Mr. Stark might like me a tiny bit, I was beginning to believe, despite my unfortunate ancestry.
Of course, he didn’t know about the possible grandson with hemophilia.
“Well,” I said, “compared to …” And then had to stop. “German food is really very delicious, you know. Although not the kind you’ve eaten, I think.”
“Well, no,” Joe said. “Not so much. I mostly remember some very strange sausages with plenty of gristle, and boiled potatoes without butter or margarine.” I made a face, and he smiled.
“There’s French food also, of course,” I said. “French food is lovely.”
“Again,” he said, “I can’t say that any of my stops in France was much of a culinary wonderland.”
“Oh,” I said. “Well, naturally.”
“You know what I really like?” Joe asked.
“No,” I said, then blushed, remembering what we’d done last night. I lifted my napkin to my mouth to hide it, but he noticed, because he smiled.
“Pastrami sandwiches,” he said, fortunately, “and Reubens, piping hot on rye bread with sauerkraut. Eaten at the deli counter along with a big kosher pickle. Boy, did I miss those over there. Or, at home, brisket with potato kugel and maybe some coleslaw—that’s a sort of cabbage salad, very German. ”
“Brisket is …” I said.
“A tough cut of beef,” Mrs. Stark said, “but very flavorful. Cooked for hours in the oven with garlic and caramelized onions until it’s tender, and served with gravy.”
“But that’s not so different,” I said with relief. “Cooking beef a long time—that’s what Germans do, too.”
“You do realize,” Mr. Stark said, “that we’re German Jews.”
“Oh,” I said. “Of course. I should have known.”
I wasn’t sure what else to say, but Joe came to my rescue. Unfortunately, it was to add, “Which means it won’t be hard at all for you to learn to make a few of my favorite dishes. Mom can teach you, I hope.”
“Of course.” Mrs. Stark’s lips were pressed together. Clearly, this was not her deepest desire. I just hoped she wouldn’t drop a pot on my head.
“Do you have a kitchen, then, Joe?” I asked. “In your apartment?”
“What a question!” his mother said. “Of course he does. How else would you cook his meals? You won’t be going there right away, though, Joe. You’ll come to the house first.”
“Nope,” he said cheerfully. “I’ve already missed a week of class.
The profs only stood for it because I told them I was collecting my war bride.
Wanting to eat my mom’s cooking doesn’t qualify as an excuse.
Besides, I want to take Marguerite home.
I’ve been waiting to do it for six months—for more than two years, if I’m honest—and I can’t wait a day longer. ”
“But our home is your home,” his mother said. It was nearly a wail.
“Mom.” Joe’s voice was gentle, and so was his face. “I’ll always be your son. But I’m a man now. I’ve been to war. I have a wife. My home is with her.”
Oh, this was going to go well.
Getting to Palo Alto took a long time. Everything was so far away here!
There were so many autos, too, and they were very large, as was the bay, and the bridges spanning it were longer than any I’d ever seen.
Everything was oversized, as if we were in Gulliver’s Travels.
But the sun was bright and the air nearly warm—one barely needed a coat—and it was all so green!
There were more orchards out the train window, too, and this time, they had orange globes on them.
“They can’t be oranges,” I said to Joe. “In November?”
“Navel oranges are just beginning to be harvested now,” he said, “and Valencia oranges—they’re better for juice—will ripen right after them.
Oranges are a nearly year-round crop. Lemons and grapefruit, too; some of these orchards are growing those.
A cold glass of lemonade with ice on a hot summer day—you can’t beat that. Not a bad place to live, huh?”
“Doesn’t it snow here, though?”
He laughed. “You’re in sunny California now. If you want snow, we’ll have to go back up to the mountains. I’ve never skied, but—”
“You’ve never skied?” I had to blink at that.
“I didn’t do it before the war, or my mother, either, because of falling down, and my father didn’t care for being stared at, but Bavaria has the Alps, and there’s Switzerland, too, of course.
My parents’ friends and—and other families, you know—were mad for skiing, at least until the war took such a bad turn.
You’re a wealthy family, yet you haven’t skied? ”
“It’s not really a big Jewish activity,” Joe said.
“German Jews don’t tend to be hearty outdoorsmen in Lederhosen, yodeling their way along the mountain paths with their walking sticks, haven’t you noticed?
Education, now, and the kind of work you do with your brain—that’s different.
And we’re not that wealthy. I take it ‘other families’ means the Bavarian royal family? The Prussians? We’re nowhere close.”
“Oh.” I did my best to digest that. The Starks certainly seemed wealthy, but I really had no basis for comparison.
I’d known only life in a palace and poverty, and had seen mostly poverty around me for the past few years, other than a few important Nazi officials and their still-stout wives.
“What does one do, then, for recreation on one’s holidays? ”
“Dad doesn’t really take holidays,” Joe said. “Not the way you mean. Mom and us kids would head to a summer resort in the mountains for a few weeks, and Dad would come out on the weekends. I used to camp out some with the Boy Scouts, too.”
“Camp out?” I said. “I don’t know about this.”
“Sleeping outdoors in tents,” he said. “Learning Indian lore, and walking through the woods toe-to-heel in our homemade moccasins, trying to be as silent as a Miwok brave stalking game. You laugh, but it was serious business to us. We learned to fish, shot with bows and arrows, hiked up mountains and swam in freezing lakes, and built campfires so we could burn the fish we’d caught—I don’t remember many uncharred meals.
Then we’d sit around, get smoke in our eyes, and sing camp songs.
Doesn’t sound nearly as good now, because I’ve overdone it recently on the tents and the hiking and the shooting.
Back then, though, it was a grand adventure. ”
He sat up straighter, then. “Look. See how there’s more town out there again?
We’re the next stop. Palo Alto, here we come.
I’ll show you the place, and we’ll unpack and then go eat at the diner, how’s that?
I can introduce you to those sandwiches.
Not something we can do every day, not on our budget, but we’ll spring for it tonight.
I can show you where the supermarket is, too, and the laundry and so forth.
” He took my hand. “Think about that. I’ll be coming home after school every day to have dinner with my beautiful wife. What a lucky guy.”
“Uh … yes,” I said, and smiled cheerily. “We’re both very lucky.”
Fortunately, there were those tins. Spam, and soup, and so forth. I knew how to open a tin. And there would be fruit!