WANDERLUST
Pamela Ryder
An anonymous tip has led to an arrest in the Lindbergh baby kidnapping case. German alien Rudolph Hauptmann was taken into custody at his Bronx, NY, home today, after police discovered ransom money on the premises. Hauptmann denies any involvement in the crime, stating, “I was home with my wife.”
-The North Jersey Journal
September 20, 1934
The missus is standing at the stove, basting the Rostbraten, salting the Spargel.
The mister sits, hoping for a foot-long Coney Island dog.
“No more Bismarck Schnitzel,” he has told her. “No more Rindfleisch in Bier.”
There is a sizzling of fat, a spattering that smarts. She looks for blisters. He suggests butter.
Where once she baked a Boston bean, now she stirs the Huhnersuppe.
Where once she filled a jellyroll, now she beats the Kirschencreme.
“This is not the old country,” he has told her. “This is not the Rhineland.”
She blots the grease. She rinses a platter.
“Goodbye, Hasenpfeffer and Leberknödel,” he has said. “Hello, red hots and hot tamales.”
She sets the table with her thick china dishes, a boat for the gravy, a cellar for the salt. In the center sits a tumbler with a sprig of something she picked curbside at the corner of Two Hundred and Decatur. The afternoons were long. The mister was usually missing. And she had taken to wandering a bit too far— a pioneer! she thought—in these parts largely unfamiliar: new territories of asphalt and broad avenues, of unclaimed properties and corner lots left to sprout weeds and wild yellow mustard, where, she thought, someone should be planting cabbage for Apfelkraut or cucumber for Gurken mit Kren.
But this is not that sort of city. There are no spaded places where someone has staked tomatoes, or sown spinach or beetroot or onion. There are no vacant lots planted with peas for Erbsen mit Schinken or green beans for Bohnen mit Dill. This is a city without cultivation. This is a city that grows broken glass and rusted parts; a city that sprouts damage and rubble, she tells him when he asks or does not ask what she has done all day. There are no shrubs and sundial gardens, she says, when the baby is already in bed and he pleads guilty. There are no backyards bound by privet hedges or gooseberry fences, she tells him when dinner is spoiled and she has been sitting by the window, watching for him to pass beneath the street lamp that lights the walk and shines in her kitchen. There are no flower shops along the street selling bunches of violets or Edelweiss for luck. No cheese shops selling Liederkranz and Limburger, or Tofen Käse for filling a strudel. No Fleischerei selling Bratwurst and Leberwursts so pink or white and firm and fragrantly herbed in their skins. No Kaffeehaus or Konditorei selling ten different torts uprightly sliced and papered under glass; no fish stores where the fish are placed on ice and stay so silvery. This is a city of scales scraped into the street and dull eyes; a city of strangers that see you sideways and step too close by or almost touching while you wait for bread or meat. This is a city of blood-soiled hands and stained aprons and sawdust that sticks to the soles, and sales with no standard of weights and measures. A city that smells of creosote on cold nights when the shiftless stamp and shrug around oil drum fires and stand silhouetted before the flames with their sooty palms upturned for a penny. This is a city of trash heaps and trolley tracks, she told the mister: no swept-clean streets or cobbled lanes that lead to woodlands where someone in Lederhosen might hike past with a rucksack of mushrooms, and a gutentag touch of his cap. No parks with flowerbeds. No fountains to sit beside with a hamper of black bread and cheese and a bottle for the baby. No outings in Loden and Dirndl with wine baskets and binoculars to the borders of the city where the roads become rutted and cozy and geese cross and quack and you climb to sunny vineyards and ruins of a castle keep. This is a city of open fireplugs that won’t let you pass, and boys with sticks and people you must step over on stoops. This is a city of squatters. Drifters. Loiterers. A city of boarded windows torn off by trespassers and thieves. These are the blocks of past-due properties and trampled paths where, she thinks, pioneering women like herself once must have walked—the ones whose recipes she read in “American Cooks” and “Successful Dishes.” The ones she saw in “Cakes Men Like” and “Colonial Kitchen” and picture books where women make Johnny cakes, flapjacks, hoecakes, and pone. She had sat between the stacks and turned the pages:
Sacagawea, headressed in feathers, smoking sockeye.
Annie Oakley, standing on a mustang, gunning down her dinner at a full gallop.
Dolly Madison in the White House kitchen, whipping an egg white and dishing up desert.
Each a woman like herself, she thought—a woman with Wanderlust, a pioneering woman, a pilgrim in a new land, of the same sturdy breed as the women in books who passed through here on wagon trains: spooning up spoon bread and dressing woodcock and snipe.
Abigail Crocket in a coonskin cap, slicing persimmons and salting possum.
Pocahontas at Plymouth Rock mashing a pumpkin.
Annabel Boone skinning a grizzly. Women turning spits and tending fires; women fixing orange fool and hasty pudding; indispensable women who did what women must do when men are out doing: scalping, hewing. Taming broncos and tumbleweed. Staking claims. Striking it rich. Women heading out in buckboards and bonnets, suckling newborns and raising babies and dough cakes under the canvas of Conestogas that passed this way and went west and west again for another coast and another ocean.
No nonsense women following their noses and the smell of the sea, setting forth in prairie schooners long before these parts became pavement and potholes, avenues and alleys; before this city became sidewalks that slant and dip and jiggle her baby to sleep on afternoons she tucks him in his blue wicker buggy, picks a direction, and starts pushing. Before this became a city of boys who play with sticks, of men who spit in the street, of dogs in packs, pushcarts. This is a city of women who shout window to window over cindery sheets, and women who walk where women shouldn’t be walking, and men—she tells the mister— men who loiter where the crowds thin out, where you start to hear the echo of your steps on the sidewalk and the little squeal of springs on the blue wicker buggy; men who “sss” at her between their teeth.
There had been none of that, thank goodness. He was not that sort of man—the mister—not at all. He had been somewhat forward at first, and true—they had not actually been introduced. But he had made his own introductions. There was nothing improper, she recollected, in that initial “Hello,” he said when he first saw her, found her dusting the biscuit dough, her face plainly pale, cheeks not smartly rouged, but ruddy, her body largely boned beneath a dress wooly and Old World. He had noted the strength of her arms hoisting a tray of parker house, and the sturdiness of her hip where she toted a bowl. He watched her bagging baked goods, slipping in day-olds on the unsuspecting. Thin-slicing the rye. Skimping on string.
Hausfrau, he thought. A crumb-sweeper. A table-scrap saver. A woman of hardworking stock who would keep hearth and home, kit and kinder, and keep track of every Pfennig. Oh, goodbye, American women!—always in need of nylons and pin money. Here was someone who knew how to darn a sock and be sensible; someone not so twenty three skidoo. American women could turn your head, he thought, but here was a woman who would count change and keep accounts receivable.
He had taken a number. He had asked her name. Hadn’t they met in Neckarsulm? No? Then, perhaps it was Hanover or Heidelberg? What about Düsseldorf? Could it have been Bad Wimpfen? Wasserburg or Berlin? Ah, too bad—but he was sure he remembered her. “Certainly,” he did, he said.
But wait—yes—there was, it seemed, a friend of a friend that he finally remembered. There was the safety of an acquaintance that was, he said, “mutual” and “legit.”
She could see him where he stood on the sidewalk as she holed her final donut. She could see him re-cross the street as she filled her last filbert square. After all, she told herself, he was not entirely a stranger. Hadn’t he said he knew so-andso from Kübelstrasse in Heilbronn or was it Schneckenstrasse in Ulm? Hadn’t he been in and out all day? Meine Güte! One fudge-nut jumble, three peanut creams, two macaroons and a frosted snicker doodle!
He doffed his hat. He inquired. He helped her with her coat. He held the door open and offered her his arm. That very afternoon, as they strolled down the sidewalks of the broad avenue he said he would show her the rest of the town— but not just the Bronx, he said. There was more to life than the Bronx, he told her. Other boroughs. Harlem. Hot spots. Acruise down the Hudson. Brooklyn. Rockaway. Brighton. Coney Island. Massapequa. Amusements.
He took her on a trolley and a train—”crosstown,” he said when she asked which way they’d come and she feared they’d come too far. “Nonsense,” he said, everything was just a whistle stop away. “Nearly walking-distance,” he said when they reached the borough and the boardwalk where, he said, the food was famous. He talked, and she was grateful. He was going places, making a go of it, he said. He spoke of investments, funds, brokerage, and bootstraps. He spoke of rising rung by rung up the ladder of success.
He would be his own boss, self-made and self-sufficient.
He shouted an order.
They shifted with the crowd toward the counter—steam tables in midsummer: the grit and sizzle of fryer and grill. She found herself nearly pressed into him: his American shirtsleeves; his American trousers. Her damply flowered dress. She watched as her food was handed hand over hand and over their heads: watery beer in paper cups; bread pinched and printed; wurst wrinkled in its skin. She had never held such a thing—such a damp and beaded-in-grease of a thing—in her fingers. She opened her mouth. The mustard was stinging; the kraut was limp. She found something in the meat she could not swallow. “America!” he said.
“America!” he said, that first day out together, waving his arm above the beach far-and-widely patched with blanket and blanket and hardly the sand when they swung on the seaside ride, miles—it seemed—above the boardwalk and just below the moon. The parachute, he assured her, always opened. There was nothing to fear—they were well protected: there was the strap, the buckle, the tightening in. There would be a slow, easy rise—a lifting. She would experience a mild centrifugal spin and finally a rapid descent. A bit frightening perhaps, but then, that was the whole idea, wasn’t it? It would just be a matter of seconds—a quick thrill—and then it would be over. Perfectly safe, he said, checking what kept her in for slippage, for give. Painless, he said, slipping a finger under a strap and ever-so-slightly brushing past her breast. Easy, he said, when he kissed her where the sand was wet and hard packed under the boards.
Above them: the sound of walking on wood. The light slanting down so she saw only horizontal slits of him: mouth, chin, open collar, notch of his throat, crest of his shoulder as he leaned in, and beyond him the other lights of Loopde-Loop and Luna Ride—rising and failing on the sea. Screams, undulating and distant. The surf hissing. “Shh,” he said, when she opened her mouth to speak, to say just, “Oh!”—she wanted only to say—”Oh!” when his hand came up and covered her mouth and she smelled what smelled like herself. “Shh,” he told her, and then telling her how to do it, how American girls do it and what he wanted done. After all, this was America. She had come to be an American and now she must adjust, fit in.
He pushed the sand beneath her hips. He pulled. Lifted. She was ashamed of her underclothes: coarse and thickly crotched—if only she had planned! she thought—she would have shopped—there was that store—the one she passed each morning, selling corsets, fine cotton, silk. She should have found something silk, edged in lace, something new and pretty...but he seemed hardly to notice. He seemed not to hesitate, sliding his hand along her back, finding not the hook and eye he often found, but a buttoned camisole of sorts, a coarse shift of linen—the kind his mother wore. His hands, she felt, were soft and hardly used, not calloused at the tips like laborers or someone of a certain class. That was a comfort, certainly. And, after all, she thought that she had those friends in Ulm who knew him, or was it friends that he knew, and was it Ulm or New Ulm, or Weinsburg or Neckersulm? “Remember?” he was saying, the mutual acquaintance where she had worked in a bakery before coming over, floating over on the boat on the same sea that now sounded louder. Or was it Bremerhaven? Yes, Bremerhaven and the boat yards. Yes, the small office near the academy, or the weigh station, or was it on the way to the bank? Yes, it was there, where he said there was that trouble with the Bürgermeister’s wife and that business with the Polizei. A scrape, he called it, leaning in, bracing into the Atlantic sand. Nothing serious. Slightly more than a misdemeanor. Certainly less than grand larceny. Not quite a felony, he seemed to recall, holding her wrists with his uncalloused hands. Of course, he was younger then, he said. It would have been easy: a window left open, an opal brooch and a fine silver goblet once used by an aide to the Kaiser. Work fast and give them the slip, was what he was saying and what he always said, working faster now ahead of the sea and something that must have scuttled too close for comfort, crab-wise ahead of the foam and ahead of the print of the foam on the sand, and finally, she felt, must have pinched.
She picked away the fronds of rubbery weed. There was grit in the folds, and around her the flotsam of butt, rind, the core of an apple. Her hem was wet. “America,” he said, where it’s rags to riches and stay out of the red.
He had bought her strawberry pop, after. And a cardboard cone of pink spun sugar. She felt a stickiness, a seepage, and she wondered if what she felt wet was just something left from where they had scrambled from the tide. She wondered if what was on her lips was the salty sea.
He ate caramel corn and something called a knish. He was not talking now. He was eating now, he said. He ate a pretzel. Candied apple. French fried potatoes. Sugared peanuts. Lemonade and a frozen custard. She wished that she could put something cool where the sea had stung. He was eating. He was digesting. He said he was assimilating, getting American, giving up Schinkenspargel, fed up with Rollmops and Pumpernickel mit Käse and anything mit Schlag.
From now on there would be butter on his bread instead of goose fat. He would have black bottom pie instead of Nusstorte and Waldorf Salad instead of cabbage. He was giving up Schnapps for whiskey and soda and trading Bockbier for light.
This was America, not The Fatherland. Coney Island, not Oktoberfest. Why was she asking so many questions? Why was she holding his arm like a girl who was holding on? Nothing to cry about. Shh. There was nothing to cry about. He’d have money to burn someday, and that someday was coming. American women hold down the fort. The men go out and bring back the bacon. You had to think big. You had to stay in the black. When opportunity comes knocking, he said, there was no need to wait your turn, take a number, get in line.
They went once more to the boardwalk. He threw softballs at a stack of rubber bottles and won a kewpie. He shot BBs at a row of pressed tin turkeys and won a bamboo cane. He took her to the steeplechase. He had her straddle something mechanical that pawed and pitched. He took her to the beach. Her attire, he told her, was unfit for public bathing. This was not a boat ride down the Necker. This was not the Blue Danube or Baden-Baden. This was the home of the brave. He could see the big picture. Stocks. Futures. Bonds. Commodities. He would make a killing
The courtship was brief. The wedding was less than expected.
She wanted a bouquet of baby’s breath and calla lily. She wanted invitations, calligraphy, garlands of tuberose hung pew to pew. Instead: a bunch of yellow mums and bracken; city hall and the municipal seal.
They stood on the steps while someone took their picture. There was wind and just enough rain to be splattered in the street. She lost a hairpin. She snagged a stocking. Someone she didn’t know took them home. There were no porcelain place cards and Riesling punch to greet them. There was no reception dinner she had dreamed of: no Orangen und Endiviensalat and thin buttered bread with Westphalian ham. No Champignons mit Erbsen. No Mandeltort. No peppermints.
Instead, friends—his friends—came over. Someone called for a toast and poured out whiskey. Someone suggested a game of poker. “Business associates,” he called them. There was one named Fisch. Another named John. Lenders. Backers. “Investors,” he called them. The market was bullish. Possibly an Otto. Possibly an Italian named Pete. Possibly a Viennese called Joe.
They spoke of bankrolls and c-notes. Out of state real estate. He had offers. He could get in at the ground floor. There were options in New Jersey, Port Jervis, New England. They could cross the Hudson. He has gone west and if he had to, he could go wester. New York. Philadelphia. Chicago, if necessary. So long, hard times, said one of them. Hello, greenbacks. Gold notes. An economy of guns and butter was coming. Sawed-off or Smith and Wesson. This was America: cowboys and bank robbers. Gangsters. G-men. Who didn’t have one? It was only a matter of know-how and who you know. Tell them, “Joe sent me from Belmont.” Mention a friend in Melrose. Or Highbridge, Kingsbridge, Williamsbridge. Try Pelham Park at sunset, past the big rock at the duck pond. Or Hunts Point after midnight. Or Woodlawn Cemetery after hours, third stone, second row. Riverdale. Sputen Duyvil. Hoboken. Ohio. Nevada. California, if need be. Go for broke and bottom dollar. The rush, he said, was on.
She served coffee. They stayed late, and then later. She went into the kitchen and baked a Himbeerkuchen. But he said he wanted blueberry buckle, key lime, or Boston cream. “Make something upside down with pineapples,” he told her. “Fix something American as apple pie.”
She learned about the dangers of over-braising. (T-bone instead of Sauerbraten.)
She served eggs and scrapple. (“Over easy,” he told her, instead of Gefüllte Eier.)
She learned safe substitutions for brown sugar and buttermilk. (Devil’s food instead of Dobostorte.)
She became sensible about blanching.
She learned the history of macaroni. (“Elbows,” he said, instead of Spätzle.)
She was smart about pans.
She rolled out a pastry for two-crusts and custards. She crimped and saved for fresh cherries in February. She put aside her pennies for pancake and rouge and once found the same sort of shade she found on his collar in the toiletries aisle at the five and dime. The same flowered scent she smelled on the sheets.
She observed him with the ladies.
A stroll down the block with the baby bundled for a Sunday brought neighborly waves from neighborly wives, from waitresses and girls who waited in the shops, from ladies who stopped to chat with them—no, just with him—she was invisible, she was a presence, a strength, she thought, she was the steady hand on the handle of the blue wicker buggy when he stood and spoke and was pleasant, was kind, really. She was the one who knew he was just being sociable with women he’d rather not introduce. Wasn’t she, after all, the one he had married? Amother, a wife, he’d remind her—that’s who she was, and a fine one, at that—raising his boy, so strong and sturdy and so above that sort of thing, he’d later explain—he’d always explain when he’d explain about those ladies whose heels were a bit worn in the rear and whose stockings were seamed and of spurious means of support.
He had offered his hand by way of assistance—a stranger’s hand, an unexpected presence, presenting her with help as she pushed her baby in his blue wicker buggy.
He had come up behind her quietly, here where the slabs of sidewalk tilt and split or she would have noticed that the sound of his steps was not the same as the sound of the mister in the hall or on the stairs.
She had not seen him come up behind her, here in the late afternoon stillness of the outskirts of the city, as she pushed the blue wicker buggy through this unwelcoming district of warehouse and disrepair.
She had not heard him come up behind her here where the bricks lay in pieces and saplings grow in roof gutters and the wind spins little funnels of dust, and she almost expected to see tumbleweeds—she had seen pictures of tumbleweeds and pictures of cactus and prairie homes of sod stacked by strong-handed women, and cabins of logs split by women who lived with their sleeves rolled up.
She had not noticed him until he was nearly upon her in this disused part of the city, this tract of failed factories and undeveloped parcels where the wind swings signs from rusted hinges, and she had been thinking about the pioneering women, the women like herself who struck out boldly and beside their men. Sustained them with black bread and roast goose and turkey stuffed with sage. Sutured their wounds with grizzly bear sinew and dug out buckshot and gave them babies.
She had not been paying attention, her mind elsewhere, as she pushed her baby onward in his blue wicker buggy, here where the city becomes out-of-bounds and she was sure that what she smelled on the wind was the smell of the sea, or the boardwalk or of water at least: Eastchester Bay, or Edgewater Park or perhaps the East River—she wasn’t sure which, but everything, he had told her, was within walking distance. Every way led somehow to some bay or sound or point or bulwark or beach.
She had not noticed his shadow ahead of her.
Had not seen it moving along the walls of the warehouse.
Had not seen it bending along the planks of the fence here in the afternoon light.
Had not heard the echo of his steps and was taken by surprise, distracted by the symmetry of the long and empty street, the glint of light on the shards of broken bottle glass, the walls of brick and breaking sky that stretched out ahead of her, the loneliness that stretched out ahead of her. And feeling the breeze, felt it must be from the sea and if she walked on a bit more before sunset she would be in earshot of the boardwalk or at least within view of some water somewhere, possibly the sea.
She had drifted. She had let down her guard, and now here he was—here, beside her, holding out his hand, having noted her moment’s hesitation at the curb.
Here is the puddle, pothole. Here is the gutter. “May I?” he is inquiring, and then without further inquiry he takes the handle of the blue wicker buggy before she can speak.
Oh, she had come too far!
Too, too far, here in this lost end of a city of butchers and ransackers. This city of cinders and sidewalk dips and cracks that turn your ankle and sprout weeds for the dinner table. Oh, what had she been telling herself? Why had she come so terribly far? Wasn’t she a woman who should have known better? Wasn’t she strong? A pioneer. A pilgrim. Wasn’t she sensible? The baby sleeps. The man tilts the blue wicker buggy. The springs make their little squeak. He is careful not to joggle. The front wheels come up. They clear the curb.
The baby sleeps. The man keeps pushing the blue wicker buggy. An untanned hand. A silk knotted tie. A suit. Not a day laborer, she sees. No derelict or down-and-out. Now she sees. Not a someone to fear, she says to herself, and hopes to herself as they cross—so long is this crossing! The length of a prairie. The width of a desert. The breadth of an uncharted forest where savages hide behind ponderosa pines and boulders. The gutter is a canyon. The puddle is river. He tilts them up to the curb again, and ever so slightly does the baby now squirm and coo.
“May I?” he says again, and says so pleasantly, and saying so tugs down the blanket—”Just a peep,” he says.
Oh, now it is done and there is no doing it over—no turning back, no one to call to, no one to hear her, no help to be had. But it does not matter. She will do what ever she must: kick her way away from him, tear at his suit and his silk knotted tie. If only she had bought a gun. If only she had been to Melrose and spoken to Joe from Highbridge. Or Kingsbridge. But was it Williamsbridge? Or Williamsburg? Jamestown. Or Plymouth. The big rock? The third stone? Was it east of West Tremont? Or west of the Mississippi?
But it does not matter. She will subdue him with whatever is at hand: a stick or rock or broken bottle or piece of brick. She will leave him wounded. She will leave him bashed in and damaged here in this desolate part of the city. And he will lie bleeding into the cracks of the sidewalk where the weeds sprout while she runs with her baby against her breast. She will run far, and far: fleet as any Indian guide, sure as a scout.
But he is saying goodbye now. He is walking away before she has a chance to fight or lift even a finger. He is glancing back at her—a slight smile!—touching his hat and bidding her a good day. There would be no commotion. There would be no slaughter or felony occurring. No kidnap or ransom. There would be no bloodshed. Not today.
He is off now, heading down the deserted street.
And he is gone now, having turned a corner and turning down an alley. Retreating. Withdrawing. Going who knows where.
It is a long way back. Sunset has come and gone and the shadows have gone longer, darker. The wind has died, and when there was a wind, she thinks, it wasn’t from the sea. There is no smell of the sea, she knows now. There never was. Not in this direction. There was never any sound of the waves or shouts from the boardwalk. There were never any smells of French fried potatoes or popcorn or foot long dogs.
There would be no more quick breads or casseroles.
There would be no more pandowdy or corn bread or lemon meringue. No more watching the clock and watching for the mister from the window.
No more nights of trying to keep the baby awake and waiting for the sound of the mister’s key in the lock, and listening for the front door to open.
There would be no waiting up and keeping supper hot. No more dried-out dinners.
No chicken potpies and chicken-ala-king and chowder.
There would be no more salad molds or sandwich loaves or tomato surprises, she thinks as she straightens the blanket that covers her baby. She is done with succotash and deviled eggs and New England pepper pot, she thinks as she turns the blue wicker buggy and walks in the twilight time of the city as street lamps and kitchen lights come on and the evening fires are lit. Unafraid as she heads for home and the sounds of the nighttime city just starting up.
There would be a roast tonight. A goose if she could find one—oh, but she would never find one. A chicken at least—for a Hühnersuppe or Huhn in Spinat. Or a Rostbraten—even better. A fine roast of beef with red potatoes and onions. And Rot Kraut mit Äpfeln served on the side, and asparagus—yes—a dish of Spargel, garnished with parsley and Kress.
And with it, a beer. Yes, he would like that: a Schwarzbier or Bockbier—something strong or even slightly bitter—poured down the glass, brimming with foam.
He will take his place at the table while she stands at the stove and chops the parsley and the Kress.
He will sit while she salts the Rot Kraut and arranges the onions.
He will be there while she bastes the roast.
He will sit while she stands beside him and sets the table with her thick china dishes, and while she fills his glass and waits for him to drink, and fills it once again.
And he will reach up around her waist and pull her down to him, and take her by her wrists in his soft, uncalloused hands.
And his mouth will taste of the warm, dark Bock.