Such matters of theology were too difficult for me to make out, so once again, I tucked the question away. Perhaps a couple that loved each other could celebrate both HanukkahandChristmas? Whether it was correct or not, that was what Joe and I had done. We hadn’t told his parents.
I’d only had the day itself off from work, but that wasn’t so different from the bakery. The Christmas Eve meal of my childhood had been out of the question, too, as I’d been rushed off my feet all day with last-minute shoppers. But I was in a new country now, and Americans ate their Christmas feast on the day, so I would simply adjust.
Just as well, for after going to Mass, it took me most of the rest of the day to prepare the meal. Not fried Spam and potatoes and cabbage and a bar of chocolate this year, but a real feast—if I could only manage it.
I’d purchased a chicken—what extravagance!—and now, I stuffed its cavity and sewed it up as shown inThe Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.I’d bought the book with my first paycheck, and very proud I’d been of being able to do it! It contained photographs of each step with the chicken, which was clever. Americans truly suffered no shortages, if they could afford to use so much paper in a cookbook. I roasted carrots, potatoes, cabbage, onions, and garlic in the same pan—this was Susie’s suggestion, and not mentioned in the cookbook—and it was really quite successful, although the vegetables were a bit overcooked and the chicken a bit burned on top. I’d also mistaken the amount of salt to put on the outside of the chicken, but Joe said he liked it that way. Which I was sure was untrue, but I appreciated the lie.
He also ate all the potatoes, so I didn’t have to.
For dessert, I’d taken my courage in both hands and attemptedPflaumenknödel,plum dumplings. How often had I watched Frau Heffinger, our cook, prepare these? I knew how to make a sweet, rich yeast dough, and if I hadn’t, my beautiful new cookbook gave the recipe. This time, I even remembered to take out the plum stones! Of course, this was necessary anyway in order to put the sugar cube into the plum’s cavity before wrapping the thinly rolled sweet dough around each half-fruit. After that, it was merely a question of the length of time for which the dumplings should remain in the almost-boiling water, and on this, Susie had been most helpful, for she’d asked her professor. (A professor who taught cooking; this was something new.) Toasting the breadcrumbs in butter and tossing the crumbs with a cinnamon-sugar mixture, I’d done from memory, and rolling the dumplings in them was ease itself. The wonderful cookbook even had a recipe for vanilla sauce!
None of it was the least bit perfect. That charred top on the salty chicken, the mushy potatoes, the slightly doughy dumplings, and the vanilla sauce with a bonus feature of lumps that no cookbook would have suggested … no, none of this was perfect. And as Sophie had pointed out, we had no china and no crystal, and certainly no Spode dinnerware with a Christmas tree painted on each piece. For that matter, we had no Christmas tree, for where would one find such a thing in Palo Alto?
What wedidhave was an old white sheet—Susie’s suggestion—cut to size with pinking shears, so one didn’t have to hem—which was fortunate, for my sewing was truly atrocious—doing duty as a tablecloth, and a candle stuck into a Chianti bottle that I’d pulled from the garbage can of the Italian restaurant. And our very own apartment, and a wedding ring. I’d been raised in a palace, but I’d never felt more fortunate than I did that night.
We ate dinner rather later than I’d planned, in a kitchen that looked as if a hostile army had invaded Palo Alto and started the sacking with our apartment, but I turned out most of the lights once I lit the candle, and if you didn’t look around you too much, it was really quite romantic. Joe must have thought so too, because when he sat down to dinner, he took my hand across the tablecloth with a smile that went all the way to his eyes and said, “Merry Christmas, Mrs. Stark. And happy birthday. Nineteen.”
“Quite an old lady,” I said. “But to your parents, remember, I am twenty-one.” He saluted, which made me laugh, and ate his salty, rather dry chicken and mushy potatoes as if they were his favorite. One should always marry a soldier; they have such low standards.
Afterwards, hewashed the dishes while I dried, and we rolled up the carpet. “Practice,” I said, “for when we entertain.” And, yes, we danced to the radio. Just now, we were swaying to the sound of Bing Crosby singingWhite Christmas,which caused my eyes to mist over every time.
“When I hear this,” I confessed, my head on Joe’s chest and my hand in his, “I think, somehow, of that first Christmas, when it all went wrong, when I was so lonely and so sad, sleeping on Dr. Müller’s floor and thinking I’d lost you as well as my job and my home and my friends. Which is a very foolish …Gedankenassoziation?”
“Association of ideas,” Joe said.
“A foolish association of ideas, for that day was very cold, and it’s much better to be here with you now in California, despite the lack of snow. It wasn’t the white Christmas I was missing at all, was it? This is common, though, I think, to be lonely at holiday times for those we’ve lost, for I missed my parents and the servants very much on that day also. I believe this is why this song is so popular. Perhaps also for the men who were in the war, for you must have been lonelyas well on your first Christmas away, despite not being a Christian.”
Joe said, “Not sad or lonely so much. Scared, more like. The day after Christmas was the first action we saw, but we knew it was coming soon.”
I stepped back enough to see his face, but he looked away, so I nestled back into him and said, “It’s very different, I think, to be in battle, even if one has trained for it.”
“Yeah,” he said. “It was the SS. Christmas night, they crossed the Rhine and surprised us. We didn’t have much of a hope, but we did our best. Too many guys wounded and killed, though. Even after everything else, I still remember that day. The SS coming at us in their tanks through the snow, and how red the blood looked against all that white.”
He’d never said anything of this to me before, had never addressed the fighting at all, in fact. I continued to hold him, continued to dance, and said, “That sounds very frightening. I believe I would have wanted to run away.”
“You?” he said. “No. Not possible.” His arms tightened around me. “There isn’t much choice when they’re shooting at you. It’s your buddies out there with you. How could you live with yourself if you left them to fight it out without you? And I didn’t like the SS. Even then. Now, I?—”
I waited, but he didn’t go on, so I said, “It’s very hard to think of so many going free. Even for me it’s hard, when I think of Dr. Becker and his children. The fear in his eyes!”
I wanted to say something about all the other Jews, too, but was that right to do? I didn’t know. How much did Joe live with these thoughts? He’d woken me with nightmares three times since that first night, but I’d hit on a way to address them that seemed to work. He was always drenched in sweat, so the next time it happened, I’d taken him into the shower bath and let the hot water soothe him. Washing his body with a cloth, my strokes slow and rhythmic; this seemed to providethe best comfort, for afterward, he would sleep. Susie had commented on our middle-of-the-night showers in a teasing sort of way, and I’d felt a bit guilty about waking her up, but nottooguilty. For whom had Joe fought, after all, but his fellow Americans?
All he said was, “Yeah. But say—that was your first Christmas without your folks, wasn’t it? Marguerite—I never thought, that day. I never?—”
“And why should you have thought?” I said. “When I’d lied to you about so many things?” Another song was playing now, and I was glad. Glad most of all not to be spending another Christmas alone in Germany, for now even Dr. Müller was gone. I didn’t want Joe to know how my optimism had faded during those months alone, wondering if I’d ever be allowed to join him.
Joe said, “Oh, I don’t know. Because I was supposed to love you? I have a present for you, by the way. Well, two presents, because of that birthday.”
“But we said we wouldn’t,” I protested. “And I have only a very small thing to give you.”
“So youdidcheat,” he said. “I knewit. Thank goodness I got you something, or I’d have felt like a heel.”
“When you so manfully ate my rather deficient Christmas dinner?” I said. “Never.” And he laughed, which was better.
After another song, I said, “Now we must present our gifts, I think. This is most important, for it’s our first time as a married couple. Here, I’ll go first, because I can’t wait. Sit on the couch—I should have made coffee—and I’ll go get it.”
When he unwrapped the package, he stared at the black-and-gold cufflinks. “These are great. But how?—”
I said, “With my discount from the store, and my first paycheck. Of course the first thing I bought had to be for you. How else should it be? And you see, the Art Deco design is very like that of the train, the 20th Century Limited, so whenyou wear them, you will remember that day, when I put my foot wrong with your parents—this is the saying, I think—in every way, and then we made love with such banging of elbows and knees on your part and I almost slid off the bed when the train went around a curve, and I felt the … the special feeling for the first time.” I blushed when I said it, but Joe liked it when I spoke of our intimacy, and I was beginning to suspect that he liked it when I blushed, too.
