Stowe, Vermont
July 1957
Georg stared as he watched his wife's shoulders shake uncontrollably in her hunched form, so completely disconcerted. He wanted to go to her, to grab her, to shake her, to hold her, but he did not want to hurt her. He realized that he no longer knew how to hold her and know that pain inflicted was not his fault.
It was sharp gasps of pain that finally propelled him forward, for the pitch was too high to be anything good. He grabbed her by the forearms and hauled her to her feet, then instinctually wrapped his arms around her and held her fast as she sobbed into his shoulder, completely lost to the world. As this continued, Georg had a vague sense that this outburst had everything and nothing to do with why he was standing before his wife on this summer morning, watching her unravel.
"I'm so tired," she finally gasped, "God, I am so tired. I can't do this, anymore. I can't, Georg, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry."
When her repetitions finally quieted, Georg asked in the lull, "What is it, Maria, this thing you cannot do?"
He did not think she would answer. It was merely an attempt to ground her, keep her here. The way she did for him. When she did answer, he was shocked.
"I can't go on fighting against an illness that wants so desperately to win, in a body so poorly equipped for the task. This sickness, it has taken my health, my strength, my marriage, my child, and I've let it cut me open for the opportunity to reclaim just one of those things, and now I'm so afraid that you won't want me and that you will hate my choice. I am afraid that anything I do is for naught. It will all end the same. Broken and alone."
Georg said nothing, trying to wrap his mind around the fact that what she said was not that she hated him and couldn't go on loving him, but rather that she was afraid he had decided the same of her, in the face of a sacrifice she had made for them, on the heels of a great loss, all intertwined with a constant, looming threat.
He truly thought, after the way they had parted, and after how long she had been away, that perhaps it was the end of them. Whether she would petition for divorce, that was unclear, but when he had stayed with her in Cambridge that week before her operation, there had been nothing between them but grief and resolve. He had thought, in his own pain, that he had not been strong enough to hold her up, and the shame of it had bound him into silence.
He had signed the papers without question, and there had been no discussion. He had assumed it would be easier for Maria if he simply complied and did not push, but now, he understood, that the week they spent in Cambridge had been an opportunity for him to ask her questions, and find out the truth of where she stood. From her demeanor, her carriage, and her attitude, he had ascertained that she was set in the decision to undergo the procedure, but now he saw that the entire situation was a representation of a missed connection, and it broke his heart to pieces.
"Maria," he said, looking up at the bright, early morning sky and trying to hold back his own tears, "my dearest love, can you walk? We should go to the house. Talk."
"Can we drive instead?" she asked. "To our lake?"
She was speaking of Lake Elmore. Located a half an hour away from Stowe, in the heart of a state forest, it sat upon breathtaking land with a mountain backdrop, and it was the place that she would always go to think. They picnicked there, having spent many happy afternoons with the children over the years, swimming and boating and playing and talking. If she wanted to be alone with him, she would ask him to take her there, and they would while away hours, sometimes with a packed lunch, sometimes a bottle of wine, sometimes a book, sometimes a swimsuit, and sometimes merely themselves.
"Yes," he said, utterly unable to deny her, even as he worried for her.
He led her to the car, assuring her that they would stop at the grocer in town for sandwiches and drinks to take with them, not to worry about gathering anything from the house. They would simply go. He held her by the shoulders, realizing for the first time in a long time just how aware of her movement he was. Where usually she moved with ease, light under his touch, or looped arm-in-arm, now she leaned heavily into him, despite being fully mobile.
He closed his eyes and swallowed, pushing away the thought that came to him of how this was not how it was supposed to be.
"I will drive," Maria said forcefully when they arrived at their vehicle parked in the small barn just behind the farmhouse. "I bound myself tight this morning, I will be fine."
Georg nodded, too exhausted to argue, and said as he helped her into the driver's side, "You will get strong more quickly if you stop binding your middle. It helps the muscles regain their strength."
"I know," she said softly. "I will once I am allowed to bathe again, which shall be soon. I am trying to be careful, I must be."
She waited for him to hand her the keys from the glovebox, and when she started up the car and backed it from the barn, Georg laid a hand on her thigh, and they shared a long look before Maria shifted the car into drive and turned it around the loop to leave.
The question that burned between them, Maria was very aware, was why. Why must she be careful? Did she know the answer? She knew that the question sat there, waiting and watching, because it pierced her mind as soon as she said it, and because the glance between them had been so heavy. The part of her that was so used to being ill was immediately angry, and defensive, and wanted to shout no! as loud and as long as possible, but it wasn't true. Maria knew why she must be careful.
"I want to get well," she said into the silence that sat between them.
She was coming upon the town as she said this, and Georg thought he felt the tight knot that sat in his chest twinge. He was afraid to say anything, in case it was the wrong thing, but the sense that overwhelmed him was bigger than fear, and it rang so loudly in his ears that he thought he must say something.
Opening his mouth, he said, "I want that for you, Maria, desperately. There has not been a day that has gone by where I haven't wished I could take this terribleness from you and bear it myself instead."
They were in front of the grocer now, and she nodded, staring straight ahead as she gripped the steering wheel tightly. Fighting tears, she nodded, and turned briefly to touch his face.
Reaching up to cup her hand, Georg asked gently, "Turkey or chicken?"
"Turkey," she answered, and he kissed the inside of her wrist before pulling away from her and exiting the vehicle to purchase their picnic supplies.
Within fifteen minutes, he returned with a basket, put it in the backseat, and dashing unshed tears away from her eyes and clearing her throat, Maria nodded to her husband when he glanced at her and they pulled away, driving away from Stowe and into the heart of the wilderness.
"It's so beautiful here," Maria said later, sitting with her legs tucked under one side as she sipped a soda and stared out at the expanse of forest and mountain and water before her. "I forget, sometimes, that such beauty exists."
Having gone in the early hours of a weekday, the place where they were now was devoid of people, isolated, only for them. Georg looked around, breathing in deeply of the mountain air, and listened to the sounds of silence around him. His own breathing. Birds singing. Wind whistling. A woodpecker somewhere was sounding a call. Geese floated on the water just off the shore to the left of them, squawking now and then.
"I can see why it would make a girl want to sing," he said, and when Maria looked over at him, they were both silent for a moment, then burst out laughing.
"Oh, God," Maria said when the laughter died down, "what a strange lifetime ago that was." She had set down her bottle, and put a hand to her head, shaking it disbelievingly, and in that fleeting second, Georg saw in Maria a moment of time in which everything was the same, and nothing had changed.
Everything about now was different, but in that pose she held, age meant nothing, and time had not come to claim its dues. Pain had not broken down so much to erect fields of thorns. The wrinkles and the furrows of her face had not deepened, and everything was as it should be. Georg wondered if this is what heavenly immortality looked like. He supposed it must, for the woman now held the spirit of the woman then, and that radiance almost sparkled. He hadn't known it had gone.
"Maria," he said hoarsely, "I love you."
She looked over at him, pensive. After a few moments, she tilted her head, lowering her hand, and sighed. "And I love you."
She had written her assurances, she knew she had, she had made sure she did. This, none of this was about the absence of love. But in that moment, it suddenly became clear to Maria that she did not know how long it had been since they had sat together, just the two of them, and said those three simple words to each other, and really felt the meaning of them.
They spoke in their native German, now, something else which she realized, they had not done in so very long. Everything was English, now, because everything that their lives revolved around was in English. Some things that Maria had to talk about, read about, know about, she did not even know how they were called in German, that was how deeply this entire nightmare that was her life now had penetrated. Her heart language had been rooted out, and the most familiar sound to her ear was Georg's nearly-perfect English, and her accented English, not their dialects of Austrian origin.
"How do we fix this, Maria?" he asked her.
"Search for the truth," she replied.
It was obvious from the expression on his face that he did not catch her meaning. Though her first reaction was irritation and exasperation, for it seemed so obvious to her, she immediately understood how she had been doing this exact thing to him over the past fourteen years. He had no way to know what she meant; he could not see into her mind. And so, suddenly, in place of anger, arrived compassion. She took a breath, and then tried again:
"Ich möchte ehrlich das Licht vor der finstersten Stunde vor der Dämmerung nicht nur im Auge behalten, sondern will ich mich auch an der Wahrheit festhalten und sie niemals verlassen."
Georg considered this statement carefully, turning it over in his mind.
I want truly not just to see the light in the darkest hour before dawn, rather I want also to grasp onto that truth and never leave it.
How often had he thought of truth as something that came and went? Maria was proposing here and now that truth was something that a person came to, and a person chose to cleave to truth or to leave it. Slowly, haltingly, he nodded.
"I cannot fight against this thing in my mind anymore that says the losses are what is now left of me," Maria said, explaining herself unprompted, reflectively. "I think the truth that I have come to is that what remains is not lesser, and what has changed is not corrupted. I am so tired, I have so little left to give to this, and the truth is that it is time to do things differently. Go around, over, so that I can go through."
"What does this look like?" Georg asked.
"The ligation, for one thing," Maria said, "I did it to stay alive, but the truth behind even that is that it took so much less from me than a hysterectomy would have. I can no longer conceive a child, therefore we can be together again, maybe the way it was once. The truth beyond that is that I miss you. The truth is beyond that is that I want to be close to you." Here, she paused, taking a steadying breath, for her voice began to shake. "In short, the truth is that not everything can be about my illness anymore. It cannot permeate everything, not the way it has. I did not know how to not let it, but I think now I am finding out."
Georg's brow had been furrowed as she talked, explaining herself, and gradually it came to him, what it was that she was attempting to say. She was saying, at its core, that she was learning how it might be possible to create some give, to make small—though certainly not insignificant—concessions to gain a lot more back.
"The truth is, that the pain is always here. I don't know if it can be stopped. I don't know if it will ever stop draining me, if it will ever not be present in some way or another every day. It has done its best to strip me down to nothing, and has taken so many things from me, and somehow I still stand. So if that is true, then I will try to look beyond the fear to seek answers. The fear is, I think, meant to protect, but it tells so many lies, Georg."
Georg swallowed, reaching out to take Maria's hand. "I know."
Looking down at the checkered blanket upon which they sat, Maria said quietly, "I am glad I lost the baby. If having a baby meant I would die from it, I am glad." She looked up, so close to him that Georg could count the freckles on her bare, worn face. Tears were in her eyes, and as she bit her lip, they fell, and she said, "I always wanted a child of ours, but not like this. I am so sorry."
The tight knot of pain in Georg's chest constricted, then loosened, and he reached out to stroke his wife's face, holding her chin up with his hand. He shook his head. "I am sorry, too, Maria, but I am sorry that this happened to you, not that you are relieved, and alive. What a horrible, wretched thing it was."
Aware of the feel of her husband's hand holding her chin in a way she had not been in a long time, Maria leaned into that awareness and bent her head to kiss his skin, the tears falling freely. "I lost something precious," she whispered. "It hurts my heart so. But the relief is so much bigger than the grief. I think that I have to make that loss worth its weight by seeing Brigitta's specialist friend, Georg."
Looking intently at his wife, Georg nodded. "Okay, Maria. If that's what you want, that is what we will do. But love, please remember that just because the grief is smaller than the relief, it is not a reason not to let yourself feel it."
Maria swallowed. She understood what he meant, and she knew that he spoke from a place of earnest, catastrophic experience to give her this warning. "I… I think I want to. I have to. But I… Georg, I am so afraid—what if I see this man, this doctor in Boston, and he says that he does not know anything, or if he does know, that I can never be well, no matter what I've done or might do still?"
Leaning in, Georg shifted himself so that he could take Maria in his arms, and he said, "Then we'll face that, then. Not now. Not before we know. What is important is to be here, now."
Burrowing into her husband, relishing his warmth and this strength, Maria laid her head down upon his shoulder and whispered, "I used to know exactly how to stay in the present, but I've forgotten."
Georg squeezed his wife tight, sighing. "I think we both need to learn how to remember."
They sat together in silence for a while, watching a pair of birds swoop in and out of circles over the water before them. When one bird finally succeeded in catching itself a fish, they found themselves laughing lightly. That bird flew off with its food. The other tried for a while to catch its own fish, but eventually flew away, and when it did, Maria spoke again:
"I'm sorry that I blamed you. For Christmas. It… it wasn't your fault any more than it was mine. I shouldn't have placed unsaid expectations upon you, or insinuate that they were there when they were not. I did act of my own volition, and I could have stopped it of my own volition. You were right."
Placing a kiss on the top of his wife's head, Georg let out a big sigh, choosing not to say anything because he did not trust himself in this storm of feelings her words stirred up in him. "I was so sure that you would not have invited it… if it wasn't safe."
"I beg your forgiveness for that foolishness," Maria said, "but I felt so well for those few weeks that I convinced myself that just a day or two's difference was as good as safe, thinking of all the other times before where it did not matter, where we did not even know the chance was present, and I did not become pregnant. I forgot—I forgot that every other time before was not now, and that now, things are always different."
Georg digested this, and then asked, "Would it be gauche to say that I think it might have all been worth it?"
Maria considered this, pondering, and said, "If we can move forward, not at all."
"I think I agree," Georg said. Then, after several minutes' silence, he said, "Thank you, Maria," and when she lifted her head to look into his eyes, he took her chin in his hand again and bent his head to kiss her.
Maria leaned in after a moment's hesitation, sharing this moment, and tamped down the fear that rose up in her so quickly, the fear that had kept their passion extinguished, telling her that fear would keep her alive. But what was alive, if she could not have this man, she asked that fear now, and stubbornly deepened the kiss.
Georg emitted a small grunt of surprise, but tightened his grip around his wife, and he hoped against all hope that if he reciprocated this ferociousness, she would continue to climb the scaffoldings of desire.
Closing fists against the fabric of her husband's shirt, Maria focused on the realness of his body beneath her, beside her, around her, and shutting out the voice in her head that said there was yet so much more to discuss before things could be good again, she pushed herself against his body. Already against her belly she could feel hard warmth, and that forgotten pull of desire lurched somewhere deep inside, and she thought she could feel passion spark back to life and burst into flame.
After all, she thought, we have to start somewhere, and we can't well start at the beginning.
"Maria," Georg breathed against her skin, "love, we shouldn't, we can't, your incision—"
Growling with frustration, Maria rasped, "I just want to touch you, please let me touch you."
So, he did. He let her touch him, kiss him, tease him, anything she wanted that made him feel on fire. It was the reprieve he so desperately needed from the demons in his mind, the sensory stimulation he needed not just to shut them out, but to heal the wounds they caused. He did not have words for it, did not know how to explain it, knew that he would have to because the nights were now so dark, but for now? For now, he did not have to, and he let passionate hunger burst once more into life.
When Maria grew too tired to continue, Georg made a pillow from the light jacket she had long divested him of and encouraged her to lay down. He lay down beside her, and in the warmth of the sunlight and breeze of the open air, he traced his fingers gently over her skin. Unbuttoned her blouse, unzipped her skirt, and found trails upon her body that though long untrodden, were well worn in memory, and he pressed his lips to every inch he could find, marveling that somehow, in spite of her sickness, somehow her body worked a miracle so that she was still warm and alive and with him.
He stayed clear of her bandage, which she wore more as protection and as a brace, now, but he supposed that he would find beneath the layers that her body, older, weaker, and more fragile now, needed more time to heal. But it was no matter, because he found himself determined that the next time they joined together, it would be in full assurance from both sides that this was the thing to do.
For now, he wanted to learn to remember. He wanted to touch her, and to whisper to her, and to ask her and hear her answers. He wanted this now so that later, he would take nothing for granted.
"Maria," he breathed, listening to her gasp as his fingers lighted over the skin of her inner thighs, so close but so far. "Maria, love, we will find the way forward."
"This is a good start," she said. "We have to start somewhere. There is no beginning to go back to, because we've gone too far for that."
Maria was resting in their bedroom when the children arrived home from their various undertakings that afternoon. A gentle knock on the door brought her back to full alertness, and sitting up in bed with care, she called out, "Come in."
It was Rosemary.
"Mama," she said, breaking into a big smile. "Mama, you look so well!"
Smiling softly, Maria patted the bed next to her and indicated that her daughter should join her. "I feel quite well, actually. Tired, but well. It was a good day."
Rosemary did not hesitate, and climbed on top of the bed to lay down with her mother.
"It's been a long time since I've held you in my arms," Maria said, reaching out for her daughter's hand. "My first baby, leaving me in mere weeks."
Rosemary had never been a shy child, and though sometimes a little rough around the edges, she seemed to have a heightened awareness of the need for tenderness these last few days, thus she heard her mother's words and curled up next to her without hesitation, allowing Maria to wrap an arm around her and begin to stroke her hair.
"I have missed this, Rosie-Posey," Maria said with a little laugh, feeling her heart jolt as she said the long-forgotten nickname. "I did not realize back when you were small that there was a day where we would do this for the last time. That one day I would pick you up in my arms for the last time and never do it again, because you did not need me to."
"I'll never stop needing my mother," Rosemary said, her voice muffled in Maria's embrace. "I'm so nervous about college."
"Let yourself feel that, and do it anyway," Maria said quietly. "You'll only ever regret the choices you didn't make, that way. There is so much yet to learn."
They remained this way for a while, and Maria thought she might even have drifted off for a bit, when Rosemary said, her voice thick with emotion, "Papa didn't tell me about the baby. I want you to know that, so that you're not mad at him for me knowing. I heard the fight you had before you went away to Boston. I had come to get something from the kitchen. I didn't mean to eavesdrop, but once I realized… I really am sorry, Mama. How awful."
Maria closed her eyes, overwhelmed with gratefulness for this information that she hadn't known she needed. She squeezed her daughter tighter in her arms and said, "Thank you for telling me, my love. And I thank you too for having such grace in the face of my failings."
"It's alright," Rosemary said. "Really, Mama." Then, for the first time, she hesitated.
"Hmm?" Maria prompted, encouraging her daughter to speak.
"The operation you had—will it help?"
"In a way I suppose it will," Maria said. "I had an operation done so that I cannot have a baby again. It is too dangerous."
"Was it like the one Liesl had?" Rosemary asked, shuddering.
"No," Maria assured, "this one was much safer, and easier, and simpler."
"Oh, oh, thank goodness," Rosemary sighed. "She still bellyaches about it, you know."
Quirking a sad smile, Maria explained gently, "It was a scary situation, and a very serious surgery. The consequences are not easy to live with, especially if you are as young as Liesl is."
"I think it's better than dying of cancer, though," Rosemary said.
"Yes, of course," Maria agreed. "But that does not make the hard things you have to do to be well any easier."
"I understand," Rosemary said. She was quiet for a while, and then asked, "Mama? Did the baby have a name?"
Maria asked herself for what had to be the millionth time in the eighteen years she had been a mother to this child of hers if the questions would ever run out. Exasperation was the name of the game, with this girl, but these questions were so different; they were tender, they were complex, they were observant, they were deep. And so, in spite of herself, Maria deigned to answer.
"No, love, it did not. I had only missed a few cycles, two or three. It was early days."
"You might name it anyway," she said, craning her head to look at her mother's face. "You and father, you know? So that you have a way to talk about him or her. The baby was real, after all. Not just an idea. Brigitta told me you can see what they look like, that far along, even if it's sad. I saw some pictures in her medical books, once, and she explained."
When the words first came out of her daughter's mouth, Maria's inclination had been to think of the concept of naming a baby that had barely developed inside her for three months as bizarre and a bit odd, but as Rosemary continued to talk, Maria warmed to the idea, and she promised to think about it.
Her daughter soon got up to leave, asking if her mother needed anything. Maria refused, promising that she would soon get up to join them for dinner.
"Mother?"
"Yes, Rosemary?" Maria asked, expectant. Rosemary rarely called Maria "mother." It was cause for her to pay attention, for this tenacious, precocious daughter of hers to say something quite serious.
"I love you," her daughter said.
Maria smiled, feeling tears prick her eyes as her chest filled with that strange, foreign, warm feeling that she had first felt flicker in her chest inside Brigitta's garden house.
"I love you, too, my darling," Maria replied. "With my entire heart."