Chapter 14 Like You #3
What both senior Winslows did see coming was that Chantal Beaudette and Honor were cooking something up together. After all, Thomas and Constance were very much aware of what their fourth daughter had cooked up with Esther.
“It looks like another kind of two-moms idea to me, Tommy,” Constance said.
Thomas argued that Honor had the only child she wanted, and—to Thomas’s thinking—what set Chantal apart from the rest of those Beaudette girls was that Chantal wanted nothing to do with boys or babies.
(Especially nothing to do with babies, Constance thought to herself.)
“So it appears, Tommy, but when I see two women talking this exclusively and intently to each other, I think they must be talking about sex or childbirth—or both,” Constance told him.
She knew Thomas Winslow would have been happier defending Modernism as a literary movement than he would willingly talk about sex or childbirth—God forbid both.
In May 1963, the Buddhists were demonstrating in South Vietnam—not that Jimmy Winslow appeared to care. As he told Chantal, he was more concerned that Arnaud never answered his letters or made only the most cursory replies.
“Arnaud isn’t a writer, Jimmy,” Chantal told him. “When Arnaud is with you, he’s totally there—when he’s away, he’s totally gone.”
“I saw you talking to Chantal. Do you find her attractive?” Jimmy’s mom asked him.
“Do I find her what?” Jimmy exclaimed.
“Jimmy, I’m just asking if you think Chantal is sexually attractive. I’m just asking, honey,” his mother said.
“I think Chantal is very attractive, but she’s Arnaud’s aunt,” Jimmy pointed out.
“You and Chantal—you’re just the same!” Honor declared. “What does Arnaud have to do with it?”
In June 1963, a protesting Buddhist monk burned himself to death in Saigon; there were photos of the monk’s self-immolation in U.S. newspapers. As young James Winslow told Chantal, he was more interested to know what his mother was thinking.
“Just imagine that you get me pregnant, Jimmy,” Chantal began. “We get married, or not—or we get married and divorced—but the custody of our child is entirely yours,” Chantal told him.
“It’s like you do an Esther,” Jimmy said. (He was only beginning to get the picture.)
“If you’re the single parent of our child, you don’t get drafted, Jimmy,” Chantal explained. “We don’t have to live together, or have a real relationship,” Chantal told him—as if a real relationship were the worst thing she could imagine.
“Arnaud will go bananas,” was all Jimmy could think of saying.
“If I knew I could keep Arnaud out of a war, I would have his baby—Arnaud will go bananas either way!” Chantal told him.
“I’ll go bananas either way!” Jimmy exclaimed.
“You’re going to Vienna, Jimmy—maybe it’s better if you knock up a European girl,” Chantal suggested.
If Isaac and Bluma Drucker had been alive, they would have been too old to know what Esther was arranging in Vienna. Only the Rosenthals had noticed the German tutor’s name—die Hauslehrerin, “the private tutor,” was a certain Fr?ulein Annelies Eissler.
“Annelies Marie Frank was Anne Frank’s full name,” Naomi Rosenthal told the senior Winslows.
“And you remember Schnitzler’s Willy Eissler, Tommy—the oversensitive Jew who thinks ‘every ambiguous smile’ is anti-Semitic,” Daniel said.
“You’re saying Fr?ulein Eissler has a made-up name—she’s not a coincidence?” Thomas asked.
“She sounds fictional—it’s a name an operative would have,” Daniel answered.
“An operative—you make Fr?ulein Eissler sound like a secret agent!” Constance exclaimed.
“We know Esther has Mossad connections, Connie,” Naomi reminded her.
“We know the Mossad operates beyond Israel’s borders—that’s no secret,” Daniel said.
“But we’re just guessing, Daniel. No one knows exactly how Esther and Fr?ulein Eissler are connected,” Naomi said.
“Yes, we’re just guessing,” Daniel told the Winslows. “No one knows what Esther’s connections really are—we just think Esther and Fr?ulein Eissler are working together.”
The senior Winslows would tell the Rosenthals that Honor had recently written Esther, inquiring if Fr?ulein Eissler knew any wrestlers in Vienna. Was there a wrestling club, a gym where Jimmy could continue to work out with other wrestlers?
What were those two moms cooking up together now?
both the Rosenthals and the senior Winslows were wondering.
If Honor Winslow wanted her dear James to keep wrestling, she’d not given up on the Smillie surgery.
And if Chantal Beaudette was reluctant to do an Esther, maybe Annelies Eissler knew a European girl Jimmy could knock up.
His grandfather was right: James Winslow was a dreamer, in the way young writers in the making are.
Yet Jimmy had read The Diary of a Young Girl and The Road into the Open very carefully; Jimmy knew where Annelies Eissler came from.
At first, he’d imagined that his birth mom might be his German tutor—he’d hoped that Esther had made up Annelies Eissler to disguise herself.
But Jimmy was told that his tutor was a “young” woman; he knew his birth mother’s story.
Esther was fifty-eight in 1963. It was nonetheless encouraging to young James Winslow to believe his birth mom must have had a hand in choosing his Jewish German tutor, not only her name.
Jimmy wanted to write Esther and thank her for not naming his tutor Anna Rosner—Baron von Wergenthin’s unmarried lover, the woman whose baby dies in childbirth—but Jimmy guessed that writing to his birth mother wouldn’t be welcomed or allowed.
Jimmy was satisfied with whispering to Esther as he fell asleep. “Like you, I’m going to Vienna first—then to Jerusalem,” he whispered. “Like you.” And during the day, unconsciously, he would sometimes say it out loud. “Like you.”