Vera by Carol Edgarian

Author:Carol Edgarian
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scribner
Published: 2021-03-02T00:00:00+00:00

* * *

Julia Schmitz was displeased. I’d neglected my mission to summon the mayor, and now she had no choice but to cut her own path through the huddle of men. Dropping chin to chest, her forehead serving as an ax, she didn’t stop till she’d reached her husband, till she’d placed her hand with its very nice ruby ring on his lapel and whispered in his ear that Pie Johnson, who’d lost her mother, her house, and her fiancé required a word. Did Gene Schmitz want to keep such a poor thing coughing in their hallway?

“Darling,” the mayor protested, “I can’t.” He smiled wearily at the men.

“Gene, Vera is right here,” Julia pressed, pointing to me.

My presence seemed to change the equation. Schmitz nodded. “Of course,” he said to his wife. “Lead the way.”

If he were merely an actor, he was a very good actor, for the anguish on Schmitz’s face seemed real. He marched to the stairs and in one swift gesture pulled Pie into his woolly grasp, her cheek turned to the side, her curls smashed. Then he searched for me. His hand came round my waist and brushed my breast. I froze. It happened so quickly; his thumb flicked the flesh, the heel of his hand on my ribs.

“Oh, girls, dear girls.” He looked into Pie’s watery eyes. “I am so very sorry.”

“Mayor Schmitz? My mother, we need to bury her,” Pie replied, her face flushed with tears. “There will be no rest for her soul until she’s—”

Julia Schmitz took over. “Of course he’ll see to it,” she said. “Of course. We’ll give your mum a proper burial. I promise you.” She led Pie up the stairs toward the quiet refuge of Eugenie’s room. At the top of the stairs, Julia turned back. Only then did she seem to realize that she had left the other motherless girl below, working beside the maid.

“Vera!” she called. “Please, dear, leave that tray and come.”

The thing is, I didn’t want to leave the tray. I didn’t want to leave Schmitz till I had asked him about Rose.

He took the tray from my hands and passed it to one of the soldiers.

“Vera,” he said, taking my hand and, God help me, pressing my palm to his heart. “I’m so sorry. We couldn’t save your house.” He winced. “So many of them we couldn’t save, not without water. North Beach, yes, but not—” His voice lost steam.

“You mean, our house, it burned as well? With Morie—” I shut my eyes.

“You must stay here, with us,” he insisted. “You and Pie. Julia won’t hear of any qualms.”

“Thank you, but we’re fixed, at least for now, up the hill.”

A vein above the mayor’s right eye twitched. He pressed his finger against his temple to quell it.

“Fixed? Whereabouts?”

“On Gough Street.” I thought that was enough of a clue to get him there. “Across from Lafayette Square.”

“Lafayette, you say?” He’d been awake all night, and his bloodshot eyes saw only the grids of his devastated city—what had collapsed, what had burned, what was about to burn.

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