“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’reGermanJews.”
“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 homeisyour 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,thiswas 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 inGulliver’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 notthatwealthy. 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 certainlyseemedwealthy, 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 goeat 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!
10
WITH THE SPONGY BREAD
How was I only half an hour into my new life and already in trouble? I’d planned so carefully!
I’d risen at six after our first night in the apartment, with the help of Joe’s alarm clock. He’d told me he slept until six-thirty, but when one is doing something unfamiliar, it’s best to give oneself plenty of time. Dressing was easy enough; I wore the plaid dress, which was the only real option. Trousers would have been more practical, though; the air was chilly and the apartment not clean enough by my German standards. Everything needed a good scrubbing, that was clear, and for this, trousers are better. There must be shops somewhere, for people certainly seemed to have plenty to wear. I just needed to find them. For now, I pulled on my old sludge-green cardigan, the one that had belonged to Dr. Müller, and headed into the kitchen, closing the bedroom door behind me.
The wooden house was quite new, built perhaps fifty years earlier, and divided now into four flats. Ours was in the front, at the bottom. I could hear somebody walking aroundupstairs, which was odd; perhaps the floors were thin?Couldfloors be thin?
