Jeff Higgins climbed the stepstool and eyed the diminishing number of boxes stashed between the top level of the trailer's kitchen cabinets and the ceiling. It was odd, he thought, the things that brought memories from before the Ring of Fire back to him. He and his father used to tease his mother unmercifully for her tendency to buy foods by the case every time there was a special at the grocery warehouse in Fairmont. In the two months since he had married Gretchen, though, it sure had come in handy.
Grandma Richter was really the problem—the rest of them could and would eat almost anything that Gretchen defined as food. Even Wilhelm was doing pretty well on solids, if you considered canned yams to be a solid food.
Grandma had fewer teeth than Wilhelm. Grandma had no teeth at all.
It wasn't that Grandma didn't eat with enthusiasm—she ate instant oatmeal with cinnamon apples, instant mashed potatoes with gravy, cups full of instant ramen noodles with flavoring (add boiling water). After two months of eating twenty-first-century America's versions of dehydrated and reconstituted goo, in addition to the ever-present pease porridge and boiled cabbage, she was, according to Gretchen, just about back to her normal size (wiry but no longer withered) and strength (Jeff's best estimate was, "tough as an old gourd").
Above and beyond all other forms of sustenance, she had taken to StoveTop brand. By his count, there were only three more cases, with six double boxes per case, which figured out as thirty-six more meals. There's no doubt about it, Jeff thought. Grandma needs to get false teeth. She needs to get them right now, before Dr. Sims runs out of supplies.
* * *
"Grandma, we need to talk about your teeth." Jeff had prudently waited until the household was fifteen minutes into supper to bring the matter up—the first quarter hour of every meal, as soon as the blessing had been completed, was devoted to serious eating. He opened his mouth, pointed, said, "Zaehne," and pointed at her mouth. "You need to go to the dentist—to Dr. Sims—to get teeth, so you can eat regular food, not just soft food."
"What teeth? I lost my last tooth a dozen years ago. They say that you lose a tooth for every child. Wahnsinn. What did I have? Ten pregnancies, all my teeth gone, and not one living child to show for it: four miscarriages, two born too early to live, four that made it to the font but died before they were six years old." Grandma paused. "Not, mind you, that Annalise and Hans and Gretchen aren't as dear to me as if their father had been my own son."
Jeff eyed Gretchen rather warily as this spate of words descended upon him. His German had improved rapidly since being immersed in Gretchen's extended family, but Grandma's Oberpfalz accent resembled spoken Thuringian German only vaguely. After considerable participation by everybody around the table, he managed to determine three things. The first was that Grandma had been the stepmother of Gretchen's father, being too young by several years to be her actual grandmother. The second was that all seventeenth-century Germans defined the function of a dentist as pulling teeth, not repairing, much less creating, them.
The third thing that he determined was that Grandma thought he was making fun of her, which was not a good state of affairs—not good at all.
* * *
By the end of August, everyone in Grantville had learned to be wary of the high school library's collection of German-English dictionaries. The original Langenscheidt by means of which Jeff had proposed to Gretchen had been augmented by a ragtag collection of paperbacks formerly in the possession of private owners and a sizable number of travelers' phrasebooks, not to overlook the invaluable little picture book, See It and Say It in German, which had already been reprinted, the cartoons by way of woodcuts, and widely distributed, along with the companion volume created by substituting new subtitles Sieht das und sprecht das auf Englisch. The problems tended to lie in the way the language had changed during more than three hundred and fifty years.
The dictionary said that the term for dentures was "kuenstliches Gebiss." Cautiously checking further, he discovered that Grandma Richter, however, would hear "Gebiss" as a reference to the bit one attached to a bridle and placed in the mouth of a horse. That wasn't going to improve domestic relations if he said it to her . . .
Bridge? Well, the German word was "Bruecke," but in the seventeenth century, in both languages, the structure went across streams rather than between teeth.
"Kuenstliche Zaehne" would be understandable enough as applying to individual teeth, but would give someone who had never seen false teeth no idea how they might be set together on the plates to make dentures.
See It and Say It in German gave him an idea. See it . . . he thought. Now, who . . . ?
* * *
Henry Dreeson's bachelor Uncle Jim had come back from the army hospital after World War I with a glass eye. Jim had entertained the younger Dreeson relatives (including Henry) at family reunions and all-day-meetings at the church by popping it out and tossing it from hand to hand. He had frightened the more impressionable younger Dreeson relatives (not including Henry) by telling them that the eye could follow them around and report all of their misdeeds to their parents. On the theory that he wouldn't need it on the other side, one way or the other (if the preacher's conviction of a glorious bodily resurrection was right, it would be superfluous; if the argument of Robert Ingersoll and the other freethinkers that there was no afterlife was right, it would be unnecessary), Jim had directed that the eye be removed before his burial and given to his favorite nephew. Henry Dreeson carried it in his pocket as a good luck piece, often tossing it from hand to hand while he was thinking.
The more Jeff considered the matter, the stronger his conviction became that old Jim Dreeson's nephew was not a man who would mind taking out his dentures in public, mayor of Grantville or not. That took care of "who." "What" and "why" were already very clear in his mind, leaving only "when, where, and how" to be tackled. "When" was clearly ASAP, but would have to be pinned down. "Where" would have to be "not at home," because if he unexpectedly brought the mayor home for dinner, Gretchen and Grandma would skin him. As for "how," the most effective approach was bound to be the most direct approach. He set out for City Hall.
"Monday will be Labor Day—let's take the whole bunch to the Thuringen Gardens before it gets too chilly to have the kids out at night."
"What is Labor Day?"
"It will cost too much."
"Aw, c'mon, Mrs. Richter," protested Jeff's friend Eddie Cantrell, who, along with Larry Wild and Jimmy Andersen, lived in the trailer complex with Jeff and the Richter family. "All of us guys will chip in. You and Gretchen can feed the kids before we go, so they won't really be hungry—we'll just buy 'em a big bowl of pork rinds that they can snack on while they run around."
Jeff took care of the easy part. "Gretchen, Labor Day is an American holiday that celebrates the dignity of work and workers."
"It will cost much too much. This household should not spend money on such things until Jeff is properly of age and is a master in his trade."
"I am of age, Grandma. I've been of age for over a year. I just had my nineteenth birthday."
"Nineteen is not of age—twenty-five is of age."
"Listen, Mrs. Richter!"
"Eddie, you also are not of age. I cannot imagine what this place can be thinking of, allowing youth to be treated as if they were adults. You should properly still be under guardianship, all four of you."
Gretchen's younger brother Hans weighed in. "If they were subject to guardians, Grandma, you and Annalise, and Gretchen, and the kids, would be sitting over by the power plant in the refugee camp rather than comfortably around our dinner table."
"Hans, sprich mich nicht so frech an."
Gretchen brought it to a close, to Jeff's relief. "Genug, that's enough. Labor Day would appear to be a worthwhile holiday. We shall go. Then no more extra spending until Christmas."
"Er, Gretchen . . . I don't think we've told you about Thanksgiving yet."
"Are we skipping Columbus Day this year?" asked Larry.
"Columbus Day doesn't count. We usually never even got off school."
"Are we doing Halloween?"
"That's Allerheiligen—the eve of All Saints' Day. It's a lot different here."
"We never got off school for Halloween, either. It's not even a federal holiday."
"We ought to have a Halloween party for the kids, at least. Andy Partlow has a pumpkin patch."
"Worueber sprechen Sie, Hans?"
"Amerikanische Feiertagen."
"Look, guys. Let's get through Labor Day first."
Before the Ring of Fire, the principle of taking life one day at a time, or at least one holiday at a time, had, somehow, never seemed so wise.
* * *
"Okay, Eddie, what's the plan?"
"Hans and Annalise say that once you get a couple of pints into Mrs. Richter, she really mellows a lot."
"So?"
"So Mayor Dreeson doesn't bring out the false teeth until she gets to that stage."
"But we need to have him take them out before it gets too dark for her to get a really good look. They haven't wired lights for the outside seating, and the kids make too much noise for us to sit inside."
"We can leave here earlier—get the first pint into her on an empty stomach, before Mayor Dreeson gets off work. Then we eat. Then it's bring on the dentures. Julie's bringing her dad. They're going to come in behind us and sit two tables away. As soon as Gretchen's grandma looks impressed enough, he pounces and goes off with her signature in his appointment book. He's bringing it with him. Just to make it official, he's bringing a stamp to plop down next to her signature. I've noticed that Germans would rather do almost anything than go back on something that's been officially stamped. Of course, it's a play stamp out of one of Julie's old toy boxes and has Tinker Bell on it—that's all we could find, but at least the appointment will be 'gestempelt.' If she does ask what it is, I'll tell her it's a heraldic bumblebee with a lot of symbolic significance."
"Eddie—I dunno. You're getting awfully devious these days."
"She'll just say that they cost too much, anyway," added Jimmy.
Jeff shook his head. "Anything that will keep Gretchen from having to put every bite that Grandma Richter eats for the next twenty-five years through the hand grinder is cheap, guys. I know that it's going to stretch things to the limit, but we'll manage to pay, on installments if we have to."
* * *
It took a certain political adroitness to get oneself elected mayor, even in Grantville. Henry Dreeson came into the Thuringen Gardens bearing a basket with two dozen freshly picked apples from the cherished Winesap tree in his backyard. After he had disposed of his share of the wurst and kraut, he distributed them, after which he made a point of mentioning his age, opening his mouth wide enough to show an unnaturally perfect set of teeth, and ceremoniously biting into one. (This was showing off, of course: ordinarily the course of prudence would have caused him to quarter and core it first. Luckily, the Fixodent held.) Then he paused and bent across the table solicitously.
"Would you like me to slice yours very thinly for you, Mrs. Richter? Thecla could take the slices inside and boil them for a few minutes to soften them down." He busied himself with arranging this, as the odor of fresh apple, with each thin slice, wafted from his pocket knife to Gretchen's grandma's nose. As her mouth watered, he pounced, "You really ought to see Doc Sims about getting a set of teeth, you know."
"How do you 'get' teeth?"
"Doc Sims makes 'em to fit your mouth—here, like this." Mayor Dreeson pulled out his teeth and handed them across the table. "See, uppers here, lowers here. They fit in like this." He took them back, demonstrated the insertion, and handed them across the table again.
Grandma Richter promptly popped them into her mouth.
The adolescent diners winced, flinched, or surreptitiously gagged, as best suited the temperament of each. The younger kids watched with genuine fascination.
Mayor Dreeson leaned across and said, "You won't have a proper fit with these, you know. They're made to fit my mouth and not yours. Here, wiggle those lowers a little." He stuck his finger into her mouth to reposition them a bit as he looked over his shoulder and called, "Hey, Doc."
As Julie giggled helplessly, her father, armed with the Tinker Bell stamp, advanced to clinch the deal. Mayor Dreeson retrieved his teeth and put them back in.
"That's really weird," Eddie said to Julie. "Isn't there a proverb or something about getting married to someone you wouldn't mind sharing a toothbrush with? What does it mean when you run into someone you wouldn't mind sharing your teeth with?"
Thecla emerged from the kitchen with a small bowl of boiled apple slices. Mug in one hand and spoon in the other, Grandma Richter settled down to consume mushy apples and beer. Mayor Dreeson was saying, "Your name's Veronica, is it? Mine's Henry. I used to be a big fan of Veronica Lake in my day."
"Really, Annalise. I mean, yeeecchhh. Ugghhh. Phewewww!" In spite of her status as a dentist's daughter and ad hoc dental receptionist, Julie was still thoroughly grossed out by her memory of the Thuringen Gardens episode.
"It worked. She's here." Annalise might have spent the last two years as a camp follower in Tilly's army, but, like Gretchen, she had absorbed the pragmatism that enabled people to survive in the small spot on the German map called the Upper Palatinate. She leaned forward, her chin on her hand, contemplating the rack full of back issues of National Geographic, Rod and Gun, and Parenting that adorned Dr. Sims's reception room. "Can I take a couple of these back for Grandma to look at while they're waiting for the mold to harden?"
"Sure. Can your grandma read English at all yet?"
Annalise grinned. "Better than she could a week ago. Mayor Dreeson climbed up into his attic and came down with a couple dozen Archie and Veronica comic books that his daughter Margie left behind when she married and moved to Ohio. We're making translations of the words for her. She reads them because the cover has her name on it."
"Well, I'm not surprised he had 'em. If anything was there when Mrs. Dreeson died, it's probably still there. I doubt that Mr. Dreeson ever does much cleaning in that old rattletrap of a place. He's always either down at City Hall or at the barber shop—or any place except his house. He keeps the yard and garden up nice, but inside . . ."
Attracted by the pictures of cute children, Annalise opted to supply Grandma with Parenting. "Some things are hard, though. What does it mean to 'enhance your child's self-esteem'?"
"In German? I dunno. I don't even know exactly what it means in English."
The outer door slammed. Julie looked up and shuddered. "But whatever it is, Maxine Pilcher has done it. Those kids of hers are the worst brats in town and here they come now. Two simple checkups, but we'll get tantrums."
Howls of fury echoed throughout the clinic as a thin, harrassed-looking woman forcibly dragged a five-year-old and a seven-year-old through the inner door. Julie added hurriedly, "She's the kindergarten teacher, too, of all things for her to be!"
Almost all the German women who came into Grantville had immediately seized upon the canvas-tote-bag-with-two-handles as a wondrous advance of modern civilization compared to the shallow-basket-precariously-perched-on-one-hip- and-likely-to-tip. Since this was an item that multiplied in American closets at a rate second only to wire coat hangers, the local housewives had been more than happy to supply the perceived need. Annalise dropped a couple of issues of Parenting into hers (which commemorated the eleventh annual conference of community-based Black Lung clinics) and backed down the hall toward Room B where Grandma was sitting.
Joshua and Megan Pilcher shrieked, sometimes in unison and sometimes alternately. Maxine Pilcher wanted to know why her dental coverage wasn't still in effect. Julie outlined the difficulty of submitting bills to an insurance company in Cleveland when the dental clinic was in Thuringia and displaced four centuries in time. Mrs. Pilcher protested that she had paid her premium for six months in advance just in June. If the company wasn't going to pay, she wanted a refund. With commendable restraint, Julie wished her luck in getting it.
Megan and Joshua continued to wail, but Julie foresaw from bitter experience that although their mouths might be open now, the minute she got either one of them into the examining chair, the lips and teeth would be clamped shut.
The door of Room B opened. Veronica Richter advanced into Dr. Sims's waiting room.
* * *
"That was awesome, Mrs. Richter." Julie's voice resonated with sincerity. Megan and Joshua, under the close supervision of an ogre who lived in the supply cabinet in Room A and two trolls whose preferred mode of transportation from the bridge over the river into Dr. Sims's office was the water pick, had submitted to having their teeth cleaned with really surprising docility.
"She is a fool." There could be no doubt that "she" was Maxine Pilcher. "Gretchen is busy, immer, always. Jeff and the other boys are busy, always. Hans is busy, always. Annalise must go to school, always, always, always. All of Gretchen's orphans go to school. Even little Johann has started school. All the parents work; they must. So what do I have? I have all the tiny ones in the trailer court who are not old enough for school. I have Wilhelm, but also I have Frans and Peter. I have Sofia, I have Hedwig, I have Carolina. Six children I have, all day, every day. Do I have noise? Yes. Such is the way of nature. Do I have that much noise? No."
"Ummm." Julie wasn't quite sure how to ask this. "Do you really think that there's an ogre in the supply cabinet in Room A?"
Grandma Richter snorted. "Of course not. I am not an ignorant woman. I am not a stupid, superstitious peasant from some remote village. I am a townswoman, the widow of a printer. My husband was a Stadtburger, a Druecker. But some things I know, and one of them is that if a child believes that there is an ogre in my cabinet, he will not open it and get sick by eating the soap. If he believes that there is a troll under a bridge that has no railing, he will not run onto the bridge and fall off the side. If he believes that there is a snake-monster in the carp pond, he will not wade too deep and drown. The world has dangers for small children, many dangers. By the time they are old enough to realize for themselves that there are no ogres or trolls or monsters, they are old enough not to eat soap or fall in the water."
Somehow, this seemed to make perfect sense to Julie (who had, of course, heard the stories about the alleged disciplinary powers of Jim Dreeson's glass eye all her life). She filed the news away in the mental storage compartment known as, "stuff I may need to try some day."
"Now," continued Grandma Richter, "How much does this 'set of teeth' cost? Too much, probably, but I have signed a contract. Jeff talked about installments. I do not want installments if they charge interest. I will be no party to the practice of usury."
For just such occasions, Dr. Abrabanel had written, and supplied to all of Grantville's professional offices and businesses, a nice prepared statement, in German, which explained in detail that the charges for installment payments were not to be regarded as interest on the money involved, but as compensation for any inconvenience caused by the delay.
Julie read it out loud.
Grandma Richter didn't buy it for a minute.
"I wish," she insisted, "to pay when I get my teeth. Also, I do not wish to be dependent upon Jeff. I brought a proper dowry into my marriage. I have a life estate in my late husband's property. Now that the king of Sweden has pushed out the Austrians, I have written to a lawyer to find out if anything is left. But I have no money now."
"Well," said Julie. "You're babysitting six kids already, just to be neighborly. Could you manage a few more? When both parents are working, they're happy to find reliable child care. They pay you; you pay Dad; everyone's happy."
* * *
On September 17, 1631, Grandma got her teeth. Although Grantville did not yet know that Gustav II Adolf had defeated Tilly at the Battle of Breitenfeld on that momentous day, Dr. Sims's decision to stay late at the office the night before in order to finish up the dentures probably had great allegorical significance. Veronica Richter would have considered the day to be one of momentous victory in any case. By combining her earnings from a week of completed sitting for eight additional paying children with a week of advance payments for eleven and the contributions from Jeff, Hans, Eddie, Jimmy, and Larry, she had paid for the teeth—without usury.
She had still to pay the Jungen back, of course—without usury. But that was household. That was what family was for.
* * *
She took on an assistant, but the three trailers, even when everyone else in the household was at school or at work, had room for only twenty paying children: no more. By early November, she had a waiting list as long as the list of those she had accepted.
"Think about it, Ronnie," Henry Dreeson said. "When you babysit kids out at the trailer park, all the parents have to go over there to take them and pick them up. You and Gretchen have a lot of mess to clean up before you can get supper and put your own kids to bed. If you take care of them downtown here, it will be a lot handier—Mom or Dad can just drop them off on the way to work, and there will be space for a lot more. You'll probably double your weekly income in no time. This old building isn't suitable for a store, because there's no street frontage—just a door. That's why it isn't rented. Can't imagine why anyone ever built it that way."
Larry Wild raised his eyebrow at Jimmy Andersen. It not only would never have occurred to him to address Gretchen's grandma as Ronnie—it would never have occurred to him that anyone might address her as Ronnie. Jimmy just shrugged.
The mayor pulled out his key ring. The building was one of those 1920s oddities that occur in towns without strict zoning codes. The street door opened into a corridor no more than three feet wide and a good twenty-five feet long, no stairway, no side doors opening into the neighboring buildings, no windows; just one bare lightbulb and another door at the back. That one, unlocked, opened into a single large room, about thirty feet by fifty feet, with a row of windows facing on the creek. Henry Dreeson stared at the contents with a broad smile. "Gawd, I'm glad I brought you guys down. I'd plumb forgotten that I had all that lumber I bought at George Trimble's auction sitting in here. I bet there's enough to frame a duplex."
At either end of the far side, there were doors opening out onto a landing and wooden steps leading down to a grassy area between the building and the creek. "It's flood plain down there—not buildable," said Dreeson. "Don't usually flood more'n about ten days out of the year, though. You can use it for a playground when it's dry enough.
"You won't have to pay rent if we go partners—no upfront capital involved. Set it up this way: I provide the premises and you provide the labor and do the bookkeeping. Get these fine, strong, young men here"—he slapped Larry on the back—"to clean it up for free. Divide the profits, fifty-fifty."
"No rent?" Grandma Richter pulled a spiral-bound tablet out of her tote bag and started to make calculations.
After the next Emergency Committee meeting, the mayor asked, "Becky, could I talk to you. Privately. Just for a few minutes?"
"Oh, of course."
"How does a man court a German lady? How does he do it right, I mean? Not helter-skelter."
"You put your money where your mouth is. No, better, you put your money where your mouth is going to be. You give her presents, proper ones, suitable to your rank, income and status; suitable to her rank, income, and status. For you? You need something valuable."
"I don't have anything valuable. I'm the mayor, but I'm the mayor of a dirt poor, scroungy, Appalachian coal town."
"Certainly, you must. Everyone in Grantville has things that are valuable. Look, tomorrow. Look at your house with all that you have learned about the costs of things in Germany while you have been arranging the supplies and provisions for this town. Just look."
* * *
"Would these work? They were never opened after Annie died. She'd bought them right before she had that aneurysm, just before Valentine's Day. They should still be fresh."
Rebecca looked at the little bottles he was showing her. Glass, with tightly fitting plastic screwtops, the three little bottles themselves were worth quite a bit. But the contents . . . cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger: there must be two ounces of each. "It is a gift worthy of being given by a prosperous merchant; truly it is."
"Maybe I could write a note to go with them in English. Paying my respects, and asking her to accept them in time for the holiday baking. If you could translate a copy of it into German? Ronnie doesn't read English very well yet, and I'd sort of rather not have her call on one of those boys to read it out loud. If she doesn't accept—well, I could always, say, I guess, that it was meant for all of them if they'd invite a hungry old bachelor to Thanksgiving dinner and treat him to some Christmas cookies."
* * *
Jeff had walked out to the road with the mayor, to engage in one of those interminable, "Well, I guess I should be going about now" conversations without which rural and small town America could not function. Grandma opened the little packet that Henry had pressed into her hand as the two men went out the door and gasped. "Maria Margaretha!"
Throughout Gretchen's life, the appearance of her full baptismal name had heralded events of portentous significance: she hadn't seen or heard it since she signed "Maria Margaretha Richterin" on the marriage register for Father Mazzare. She looked at what Grandma was holding and her eyes grew wide. "There's a note."
* * *
"We must discuss it with the whole household," Grandma was insisting. "It is a matter that will concern us all."
"No Grandma." Gretchen was also insisting, even more stubbornly. "We're Americans now. I decided for myself. You decide for yourself if you will accept Mr. Dreeson's offer to court you. Then, if it happens—then we can talk about how it will concern us all."
Dreeson offering to court Grandma Richter? Every one of Ms. Mailey's repeated, urgent, anxious lectures about cultural misunderstandings, repeated like a hammer throughout the summer at every available opportunity, came rushing into Jeff's head. This had to be a monumental mistake. This had to be a cultural misunderstanding of stupendous, humongous, proportions. This could not have been equaled by anything that had happened since the Ring of Fire. Oh, good grief, he thought. And it's too late to do anything about it tonight. He wasn't looking forward to tomorrow.
But first, to find out what had brought it on. He entered the kitchen. All this from three dinky little bottles of spices? Mom hadn't gone in for cooking from scratch, so there hadn't been any in the Higgins trailer, but he had seen them in the stores. Racks full of the things at what? He had no real idea. Two dollars a bottle, maybe? At least, he'd learned when to keep his mouth shut. He'd warn the mayor first thing in the morning. Then what? Of course, ask Becky. In a pinch, always ask Becky.
* * *
Jeff was the first one out the door the next morning. He was waiting when City Hall opened; he was in a chair outside the office before Mr. Dreeson arrived. "I thought I'd better flag this. Er—Gretchen and her Grandma got all excited about those bottles of spices."
His efforts were rewarded with a broad, relieved, smile. "Great, she's willing to consider the idea, then. I was afraid she wouldn't be. It'll be a big change for her, you know. If we can work it all out."
Never before in his life had Jeff Higgins understood the true depth of meaning signified by the simple word, "relax."
The license for the day care center was issued in mid-December. As soon as it was in hand, the great clean-up of the premises began. The grand opening was scheduled for January 1, to take advantage of the holiday and draw a bigger crowd.
"Do you ever get the feeling that we've been stung?" grumbled Larry.
"Shaddup and haul those two-by-fours out to the flatbed."
"D'you think he really forgot that he had this lumber here?"
"'Course not—he intended all along to get something extra out of this deal, and that was having his lumber carried down this stupid narrow hallway without having to hire anyone. I knew it the minute that he said 'plumb forgotten.' He only talks with that much local color when he has a reason to act like a good ole boy. He's the tightest man with a dollar anyone ever met. That's why they made him minister of finance."
"Oughta get along real good with Gretchen's granny, then."
"Lennox says that she's thrifty."
"Lennox admires thrifty. What d'you want to bet? If Dreeson hadn't beaten him to it, would he have shown up on our door with some kind of a nosegay?"
"Too late to bet. No way to find out."
* * *
But Larry had his revenge, both for the lumber hauling and for all the evenings for the past six weeks when he had cowered in the farthest corner of the third trailer while Mayor Dreeson entertained the Higgins household with his favorite 1940s videos on the VCR. Somehow, between the last inspection the night before the grand opening and the next morning, the entry door acquired an elaborate full-length exterior-enamel portrait of Veronica Lake with a lock of hair falling down over her eye and a sign on the wall next to the doorframe, in Gothic Fraktur, that proclaimed, "Ronnie's Day Care."
Veronica Richter was not amused. Neither, however, was she willing to pay for a completely unnecessary additional coat of fresh paint.
* * *
Guided by Becky, Dreeson had continued to be a punctilious suitor. For Thanksgiving, there had been a 1950s silk headscarf, all pink and turquoise flowers and paisley, found in its original box; then paintings suitable for decorating the day care center ("wonder why we never threw out these old calendars?"); for Christmas, which Becky had warned him was not a big gift-giving day in Germany, a pair of quilted, insulated, footwarmers with cotton knit tops and also two linen handkerchiefs edged with Irish crochet in variegated thread; for New Year's, two pair of knit knee socks, with all sorts of fancy cables and feathery sorts of stitches, that, O blessings upon us, stayed up without garters. Each offering had been accepted graciously. The courtship was progressing. On Epiphany, January 6, 1632, he presented his chosen wife with a hand mirror. (Heavens! Is the man made of money?) To the full satisfaction of the future spouses, the match was agreed between them.
"The woman is totally insane." Maxine Pilcher had not attended the grand opening, but had certainly heard enough about it. "I tell, you, Anita, I could not believe the things she said to Megan and Joshua. I was surprised they didn't have nightmares for weeks."
"They didn't, though, did they?" Anita Barnes asked.
Since Megan had passed through her first grade classroom the year before, the prospect of the arrival of her colleague's second offspring next year was not one of the experiences to which Anita looked forward with happy anticipation. The Pilcher children did not strike her as having fragile egos. Nor, she thought, were any children of Keith Pilcher likely to develop them. She'd gone to high school with Keith. He had not suffered from undue sensitivity.
Maxine pushed on. "How can they possibly allow her anywhere near young children? The city council is completely crazy to have given her a day care license. It must have been all arranged under the table—she's the grandmother of Higgins' wife. He's in tight with Stearns and they're all hand-in-hand with Dreeson."
"It wasn't exactly a secret, Max. It was on the council agenda for two meetings. They put the agenda up on that bulletin board in the City Hall lobby. They publish it in the newspaper. They announce it on the radio. Rebecca Stearns reads it on her TV show. You absolutely have to go out of your way not to know what they're going to be discussing."
"I go to my book discussion group on Mondays."
"Your book discussion group reads Harlequin Romances."
"Don't knock it, Anita. Kelley Bonnaro had three titles that no one else did. She's sold the translation rights to a press in Muenster for enough money to add a room to her house for each title."
"She what?"
"Well, the authors sure aren't here to collect the money, so we figured that the owners might as well. Publishers are absolutely grabbing for them. The only thing was to decide how to share it out. We decided that anyone who had the only copy of a title got to sell it; for the rest, we put as many titles on the table at each meeting as there are women in the club and draw straws for who gets to sell which one."
"You gals are in absolutely no position to call anyone else crazy, no matter what they do. Does the cabinet know about this? Has the committee on foreign currency exchange approved this?"
"None of their business." Maxine returned to the topic at hand. "We've decided to do something about Mrs. Richter, though. Next week, we'll sacrifice our discussion group meeting. We're going to the city council meeting instead. Someone has to speak out about this."
"You and who else?"
"Well, Darlene. Jenny. The rest of them didn't really want to come."
"You and your sisters, in other words? What did Keith say about . . . this?" Anita managed not to say, "about this latest nitwit fit and start of yours."
"Well, I haven't told him. He has so much on his mind, you know. I think I ought to spare him my own troubles if I can possibly bear them alone." Maxine looked virtuous.
Anita thought, You dwork! The only thing besides hunting that Keith ever had on his mind was his hair, and that's gotten pretty thin on top.
* * *
The entire Monday Evening Book Discussion Club was sitting around the table in the conference room, looking rather defensive. "Maxine," said Melissa Mailey. "Would you please just explain. You don't have to justify it. Just explain it."
"We've got a right. When they came around to collect for the National Library, or whatever the fancy name is now, they just laughed at our books and said we could keep them—a bunch of intellectual snobs, that's what all of you are out here at the high school."
"What on earth gave you the idea for selling the publication rights to them?" Melissa looked around the room and fixed her eye on a club member who had once been in her classes. "Kelley." Having undergone conditioning, Kelley scrambled.
"Ms. Mailey, it was when that guy from Amsterdam came to talk to Dr. Abrabanel. You know Susie Castalanni here. She has a complete set of first edition Betty Neels—real collectibles, valuable—all the ones about English nurses who marry Dutch doctors, more than forty titles, I think. Susie's awfully proud of it. She invited him to come see it. He was real happy to find out that in three hundred fifty years the Dutch and the English would still have their countries and their languages and their churches and live in peace and have good hospitals and not be harried by the Spanish Inquisition like the remnants of the Waldensians. Susie hasn't found out what a Waldensian was yet, but whatever happened to them, it wasn't good."
Kelley was forced to pause for breath. Maxine interrupted. "They're real respectable classics, too—not like some of the newer ones. No sex at all until the nurse and doctor get married and not very much after they do. Lots of descriptions of houses and furniture and landscapes. Shopping trips for new clothes. Pictures of ancestors on the wall. Being nice to your stepchildren. He thought that the Calvinist preachers would OK them just fine."
Kelley regained the initiative. "When he went back to Holland, a publisher up there sent a guy down to copy her whole set. They're going to publish them in English for export to London and translate them into Dutch. So we thought, if Susie can sell those, why can't we sell the rest of them? And we did. To the highest bidder. That's all there is to it."
"We reported it on our taxes, too," added Susie. Then, looking at the expressions of her fellow club members, she added in a more doubtful tone of voice. "Well, at least I did. You can look it up."
* * *
Nobody blamed Anita Barnes, of course, for dropping the news to everybody she met that Maxine was going to make a fuss about the day care center at the next city council meeting. She hadn't campaigned about it or said anything that a person could call criticism of another teacher. There sure was a big crowd, though—as city council meetings went. All the chairs around the sides of the room were full, with SRO in the back.
"Face it, there's no one in this town over forty whose grandma didn't say something of the sort to them. We all turned out all right." Karen Reading finished her thirty seconds at the microphone. Darryl McCarthy turned to the man next to him and whispered, "Hell, there's probably no one in this town over twenty whose grandma didn't say something of the sort to them."
"Will the audience please maintain silence. Everyone will be given a chance to speak in turn. If you want to speak, and didn't take a number at the door when you came in, please see one of the ushers now." Quentin Underwood was acting as chairman pro tem, since Henry Dreeson, as a partner in the business, had recused himself.
It surely was not to be interpreted as a comment on the dialogue that Mayor Dreeson pulled his glass eye good-luck piece out of his pocket and absentmindedly started to toss it from hand to hand. He did that all the time.
Nat Davis expressed the opinion that kids these days were too full of themselves anyway and didn't need their self-esteem enhanced. The German apprentices he had taken on paid more attention to him than the ones from West Virginia families. Ollie Reardon seconded him. The Baptist minister got up and read part way through a pamphlet on the importance of discipline, but ran out of time.
Maxine had spoken first. When she realized how many people were there, she had sent Darlene and Jenny back to trade in the low numbers they had picked up by coming-early-to-make-sure-they-were-on-time for higher ones, so they would have a chance to comment on the comments.
"We don't want our children exposed to it. It's not modern. It's not progressive. Disciplining children that way is cultural regression." Jenny glanced at the three-by-five card in her hand. "Er—I was supposed to say next that it's un-American, but I guess that I really can't, though, because Karen Reading was telling the truth: my grandma was always frightening us with ghosties and ghoulies and things that go bump in the night. You should have heard what she could make out of an acorn hitting the shingles or a squirrel in the chimney." Maxine's glare at her sister indicated that Jenny's contribution had not been up to the standard of debate she had hoped for.
"I guess maybe Maxine has reason to complain about what Mrs. Richter said at Dr. Sims's office," began the manager of the Dollar Store (who didn't sound very sure, even about this qualification, because Maxine Pilcher had brought her children into his territory on many occasions). "But that doesn't have anything to do with the center. If you don't want to send your kids there, you don't have to. Send them somewhere else. Find someone who's running a day care center that you like." He sat down.
"Actually, I mean, you know, well, when you come right down to it. It's not such a bad thing to have kids do what you tell them to." If Jenny had gotten a glare, Darlene got the kind of look that signified the beginning of a major family bone of contention—the kind with reruns at every holiday dinner for the next fifteen years. Darlene, of course, did not have an education degree: she had gotten married right out of high school and gone to work for the Grantville veterinarian. Veterinary assistants develop considerable respect for the value of discipline, even though they don't always articulate its theoretical basis very well.
By a unanimous vote, the city council reaffirmed the day care license that had been issued to Mrs. Veronica Richter.
Jeff had discovered that there was a big chasm that gaped between the stage when a match had been agreed upon by the parties involved and the stage when it was a done deal. There were a lot of conversations. Negotiating the marriage of a widow and widower of such prominence in the town bore more resemblance to a corporate merger than a proposal, even when both of the parties concerned were heartily in favor of the project. Necessarily, there would be feelers and tenders; offers and counteroffers; exploration of the options. Eddie, of all unexpected people, was invaluable—he was learning esoteric diplomatic arts from Becky and her father almost faster than they could teach him.
* * *
"It's hard for a man to maintain a proper housekeeping without a wife to manage things—there's a lot of scrubbing and stuff that ought to be done first. We could get a maid. My income runs to that."
"We will need a cook, also. To cook, with the business, I do not have the time. My own income, now, runs to paying the cook."
"It might be that I should help with the cook. It sort of contributes to a man's position to have a wife. Because I'm mayor, people have asked me to have dinners when we have out-of-town visitors, but I've put them off."
"It's only proper for you to host dinners, considering your office."
"I'd need to get a new suit if we gave dinners."
"Leonhard Kalbacher is a tailor of respectable quality. He opened a shop about three doors down from the museum a couple of months ago. A nice black worsted, with velvet facings?"
"Velvet facings? Er—Ronnie!"
"Velvet facings are very fine. America used them, too. I saw them on Professor Ferrara's suit the day the faculty came from the university at Jena to visit our Hochschule."
"Hell, that wasn't a suit. That was the academic gown Greg had to buy when he got his M.S. degree."
"It was a very fine robe, indeed. Dignified."
"Velvet facings?"
* * *
"It still doesn't seem just right to me for a boy as young as Jeff to be the head of a household. Probably, sometimes, I don't give him quite the deference that his position deserves."
"He's American, Ronnie. He isn't expecting your deference—not the way a German might."
"Well. Remind him that if we ever do get my late husband's property back, I only have a life interest. After that, it will go to Gretchen and Hans and Annalise, so there will be no harm to his children's inheritance. What will your family say?"
"I don't have any really close relatives left here—just a couple of my late wife's nephews and their families. Technically, they don't have anything coming from my side of the family, but I thought—if you don't mind—I'd just divide Annie's personal things between them, half of the trinkets for Lila and half for June. They weren't worth a lot back home, you understand, just some costume jewelry and such. But if we make it, if Grantville makes it, they'll all turn into 'valuable, irreplaceable antiques' in another twenty-five years. Which the boys know—they've seen as many tourist traps as I have. It's probably more than they'll have been expecting. And if we don't make it . . ."
"Ja, wohl. You ought to make sure that they understand that it will not hurt their prospects in the long run. It's always best to be on good terms with your kin."
"Yep. No matter what else comes and goes, family stays with you."
* * *
A few days later, Henry Dreeson had reason to reflect more deeply on his comment that family stays with you. "Hoo, boy, did it ever!" Or if it went away, it came roaring back in spades. It appeared that he had traded a deceased wife and one married daughter with a husband and two children in Ohio for . . . what? Well, Ronnie appeared to think that it would be his first duty as an adoptive step-step-grandfather to provide moral support, wise advice, useful contacts, and at least some financial backing for launching Eddie, Larry, and Jimmy into their careers. It did not strike him that Ronnie was the type to let a man shirk on his duty. And that's not all, he thought with a quirky grin. No, that's not all.
* * *
"It's a big old Victorian house. You'll have a lot more room than you do now, and fewer people."
"Certainly, but with the new baby coming, we should make more room for Jeff and Gretchen."
"You could bring Hans and Annalise along."
"It would certainly save time for Hans if he were living downtown, now that he's working for the newspaper. It would also improve Annalise's prospects, I think. Those boys are not doing her manners any good at all—she's becoming very outspoken, almost frech—fresh."
"Do you have any idea what Gretchen would say if we suggested this? I've sort of felt Jeff out about it. It seems okay with him."
"Gretchen is their sister. But under our old law, I would be their guardian. She was under age when their parents were killed. I would not fight her, though. Still, with a second baby . . . and they will be with us, right here in town. Without the war, they would both have gone by this age, Hans to an apprenticeship and Annalise into some form of service."
"So let's count on having them."
"I think that we should probably take the two oldest of the other children, also. It's a lot closer to the elementary school here. They can help me at the center when they get out of school in the afternoon."
"You will be closer to the center, too—not the long walk home after dark on winter evenings."
"Have you ever thought that we might expand to another location? There's plenty of need, and a good place would be over by the power plant. Appollonia Hirsch could be manager. She's learning fast."
"Well, I have an old garage on a lot over that way. If we tore it down . . ."
"I may have already done a few figures here, just thinking about possibilities."
* * *
There was a formal betrothal, of course: everything was to be done in the most proper order, suitable to the age and standing of the parties. It took place in late March, presided over by Father Mazzare and the Calvinist minister whom Henry Dreeson shared with Mike and Rita, who both solemnly accepted the words of promise de futuro (after cautiously looking up the significance of the rite in advance and finding to their surprise that both Mazzare's completely up-to-date ritual and an 1894 Manual of the Presbyterian Church in the USA once bought at an auction provided for such a contingency). For the preparation of the marriage contract, Jeff and Dr. Abrabanel represented the bride; Mike Stearns and Quentin Underwood represented the groom. All parties emerged with greatly heightened respect for the negotiating abilities of the others.
All of the parties: even Grandma, who for the first time referred to Jeff as "Herr Higgins" after his triumphant, if mischievous, insertion of a clause according to which, when Hans married, he and his wife should receive the right to occupy an apartment to be constructed on the third floor of the second day care center building for five years at a fixed, very modest, rent, with option to renew. Hans was not old enough to marry yet, of course; Grandma was certain of that. But he was also now of age by the American laws, so it was best to be prepared.
* * *
The day care center had held a grand opening. Henry Dreeson's house received what the entire Higgins/Richter household came to think of as the Grand Inspection.
o Soap
o Rags
o Whitewash
o Furniture polish
o Floor wax
o Laundry
"Oh, all those curtains and draperies; oh, that smell of tobacco smoke; Henry, what is this?
"We cannot possibly marry until September. Everyone in Grantville is so busy, always, immer, immer. It will take a while to organize a cleaning crew to bring it up to the standard that will be properly, yes properly, expected of a Herr Buergermeister and a Frau Buergermeisterin."
"Nobody's ever objected to my house the way it is so far."
"Did your first wife keep it like this? I ask you?"
"Well, ummn, no."
"So. I am a townswoman, not an ignorant peasant. I know what is due to your position. I may never have expected to be a Frau Buergermeisterin, but I certainly know what is expected of one."
Every morning for several weeks, when she came down to open the center, she had spent a few moments glaring at Veronica Lake on the door. Then, for several more weeks, every morning, she had carefully ignored the door. On Monday of the eleventh week, the day after the signing of the marriage contract, she backed across the street to look at it more carefully, and came to a decision. While keeping most of the picture intact, thus saving on the expense of hiring an artist, a modest amount of overpainting could transform Veronica Lake into Saint Veronica and she would have her very own respectable patron saint for her business. A headdress, with a bit of the linen falling forward to cover that hair. A halo. Drapery fluttering across the neckline and arms; drapery down the bottom of the skirt. There was bound to be someone among the Germans in town who could do it. Almost the first thing any apprentice artist learned to paint was drapery. It should be done. There would henceforth be a pious matron of Jerusalem on her door.
She could reuse the sign. Whichever of those three young rascals put it up (and she had her suspicions), he had made it from nice cured wood with shaped edges, far too good to waste. "Ronnie's Day Care" was not suitable for Saint Veronica, but with a little sanding, she could turn it over and use the other side.
She paid extra to have the door taken off the hinges and carried to the back room of the store next door to be repainted. She was prepared to say that it needed to be repaired, if necessary, but always, immer, immer, everyone was so busy here in Grantville. Nobody asked.
Carefully, very carefully, she drew the letters. A printer's widow, that she was. A calligrapher she was not!
It was the first thing that she'd said when Jeff brought them there, she thought. She'd said that the building couldn't be a school—that there weren't enough noble children in all of Germany to fill it. She'd known at once that it couldn't be any ramshackle village school for peasant children, nor even such a one as they had in town. It had to be a great Akademie, a Gymnasium, for those who could pay and those lucky few who had scholarships. It was too late for Gretchen and Hans. They were too old. But her little Annalise, she would graduate there. Her granddaughter would be a member of the learned professions, like Ms. Mailey. Anna Elisabetha Richterin, Lehrerin. Maybe even Professorin. She would introduce her grandmother to her colleagues, "Meine Grossmutter, Veronica Schusterin verw. Richter, verh. Dreeson." Pride was a deadly sin, yes, so they said, but Veronica would have pride in her, no matter how many eons she must repent it in Purgatory. And she would have pride in all the children who followed her.
Carefully, very carefully, she placed the stencils for the letters on the wood.
"St. Veronica's Preparatory Academy."
She had made her letters a little too small. There was still a space at the bottom. Should she do them over?
She decided to give it more thought, and put the stencils for them back in the folder until such time as they would be needed.
The new sign did not escape notice. The first morning it was up, the center scarcely open for the day, it brought Maxine Pilcher through both doors and into the center itself.
"Preparatory Academy, Mrs. Richter? Preparatory Academy! Don't you think that's maybe a little pretentious?"
Grandma's answer was blank incomprehension of the last word.
"I mean it's too fancy. You're just being a show-off, calling a day care center a preparatory academy. What do you think you are doing?"
"Herr Higgins found it for me—the name. It is right."
"Listen to me."
"No. You listen. You can let the children in your class not learn. You know that whether they learn or not, they will still go to Mrs. Barnes in the first grade and then they will learn what you did not teach them. Or the year after. Or the year after that, perhaps. For American children, there will always be another year, it seems. You are all rich, so rich. My children have no such promise that they will have another chance."
"Mrs. Richter, the best modern theories of early childhood learning indicate—"
"Akademies we have in Germany. Or the Gymnasium, if you call it that, but it is the whole school and not where the young people play sports. Only through an Akademie can a boy of ordinary family advance, to become a member of the learned professions, to became an official in the chancery of a ruler. There are few scholarships, so few can advance. Most of the places are only for the children of the nobles, or the great families—the Geschlechter—the bankers and the wholesale merchants in the Imperial cities. And all of them boys, boys, boys, boys, boys. Immer die Jungen. Immer die Knaben."
"Well, naturally, I don't have any objections to coeducation."
"I learned well in the town school. Could I go to an Akademie when I was ten? No. Could I become ein Beamter? No. Ein Gelehrter? No. I loved my schooling; I loved my reading. My parents wasted the money on my brother, wasted it. Hopeless, he was; spoiled, lazy too. All of his opportunities he frittered away. He came to no good end!"
"Mrs. Richter, just what do you think that you are doing?"
"I am making a Preparatory Academy. I am preparing children for Akademies, and to do it I must use my ways, not yours. Boy children. Girl children. Poor children, of peasants and artisans. All of them! I shall take them when they are so little, the tiny ones. I shall teach them. They shall have no choice but to learn, to be ready when they are ten. The Akademies shall drown in children. It will be like the play-yard down by the creek that no one can build upon because the powerful water comes down from the mountains and would push all the buildings off their foundations. I shall flood them. They will take my children when the time comes, all of my children. Or they will be washed away."
"Well, no, Henry. I wouldn't mind being married by your and Mike's Calvinist preacher. I was baptized a Calvinist, after all."
"You were what? Ronnie, you had a saint painted on the door of the day care center."
"I was born the year before the old Calvinist prince died. Then his son inherited. He was Lutheran, like his mother—so I grew up a Lutheran, like the king of Sweden. Lutheran is how I learned the catechism. Lutheran is how I was confirmed and married to Stephan."
"Umm-hmm."
"But then he died, and the heir was Calvinist. But it took quite some time to decide and there were many fights between the Calvinist regent and the Lutheran Adel—the nobles. Finally, the ruler won. That wasn't so long ago. Maybe twenty years, or not quite that."
"I see."
"But when we were taken away from the king of Bohemia after the Battle of the White Mountain, the Emperor gave us to Bavaria, so we all became Catholics a few years later. Gretchen and Hans remember a little bit about being Calvinist, but Annalise isn't old enough."
"So Calvinist is okay for the wedding."
"Yes. I was Lutheran longer than anything else, but Calvinist is fine. The American freedom of religion is much simpler, really. Sometimes it was quite hard to remember what answers a new pastor wanted to hear, from one year to the next."
It was bad, that Croat raid, but she lost no more of her children. Not even—Gott sei Dank!—Gretchen's foolish young Jeff, wounded though he may have been as a consequence of his stupid bravery. Dashing right out to get yourself shot at does not lead to having many descendants, no, not at all. But he was defending the children, so perhaps it was not so stupid after all.
As for her, she had seen nothing of it. After all, what could one old woman do to fight in a raid? With her little tiny ones, who had been dropped off early by working parents, already safe inside, protected by the stores in front and by the intercession of Saint Veronica, she had simply locked up and placed tables as barricades. The day care center had proceeded with its accustomed daily schedule throughout the gunfire.
The wedding took place, as planned, in September—on Labor Day. The feast included a basket of Henry's Winesaps, uncooked.
But already, the day before, the bride had come to another decision. She knew what to do with the extra space on the sign she had left unpainted. Carefully, very carefully, she drew a few more letters.
She thought they fit nicely, next to the bullet-ridden door where Saint Veronica proudly bore her battle scars.
"School Number 1."