The Edge of the Earth by Christina Schwarz Read Free Book Online Page B

because a red flower had died, his mother found herself unable to look at him without weeping. Afraid of being banished myself, I vowed to be more careful around my own mother’s tulip beds. Oskar was a year or two older than Ernst, but a shorter and slighter boy with long girlish curls. He boasted a great deal about his father, who, he said, knew all there was to know about trains and kept beside his desk a big knife from Mexico for stabbing “like that!”—he’d thrust his arm suddenly forward like a fencer scoring a touch—“anyone who bothered him.” He also bragged about his older brother, who had skipped several grades in school. He refused to be amused by any of our games, declaring them “too childish,” but cried to Ernst’s mother when we hid the flannel duck with which he slept. I’m ashamed to admit that we’d meant to make him cry, because when he did, he said, “Oh, oh, oh!” which was odd and amusing and therefore to be provoked. During the scolding we endured afterward, I discovered that the flower had been a younger sister who succumbed to scarlet fever.
    “He isn’t little any longer, but yes, that’s the one. From Cincinnati. You’ll like him now, Trudy. He’s like you, always with his nose in a book.”
    “He’s working as a carpenter?” My mother was quick to spot the seams where the pattern didn’t quite match up.
    Ernst understood her meaning. He shrugged. “He left college, you know. He says he wants to follow his own path, although it’s a dead end, as far as I can see.”
    We laughed, and Ernst smiled shyly at his own cleverness.
    My mother pushed on. “Peter must be beside himself.”
    Ernst’s uncle Peter did something that required him to wear spats and travel to Washington a great deal.
    “I think Uncle Peter resigned himself to Oskar’s ways long ago. He has Manfred, you know.” Oskar’s brother, Manfred, I’d been led to believe, controlled all the shipping on Lake Erie. Admittedly, my understanding of business and finance was vague. “Oskar’s the artistic personality, more Aunt Bertha’s boy.”
    My mother sighed. “Poor Bertha.”
    My mother had lost children, too. Two infant boys before my parents had come to America, hoping for better luck. I knew that she and Ernst’s mother—whom I called Aunt Martha, although we had no blood relation—often clucked over Martha’s sister, Bertha, who, after her little daughter’s death, had closed the kindergarten she’d founded and in many other ways allowed, as they saw it, despair to steer her life.
    “Gustina!” My mother leaned back in her chair to direct her voice down the hallway.
    “Coming!”
    “I’m sure your papa will see that Oskar does very well as a shipbuilder,” my mother said, turning back to Ernst.
    “As a matter or fact, he’s been talking a lot about steam engines,” Ernst said. “Says he might like to learn to run a tug.”
    “Is that so?” my father said. “You bring him to the dock tomorrow afternoon, and I’ll take him out with me.”
    “Papa!” I set my glass with such force upon the table that wine sloshed dark red onto the bleached white cloth.
    My mother reached quickly for the salt and poured it over what was sure to be a stain. “Trudy! Was ist los?”
    “I’ve asked at least a dozen times to learn to run the Anna P.,” I said, ostentatiously addressing my father alone.
    “Oh, well . . .” My father looked helplessly at my mother.
    My mother closed her eyes and gave her head a little shake, as if to dislodge the whole scene from her consciousness. “You’re not going to become a tugboat captain, Trudy. For heaven’s sake.”
    I couldn’t honestly argue otherwise, but this seemed to be beside the point. “You don’t object that my other studies have no practical consequence,” I said triumphantly.
    “Perhaps in July it might be pleasant—” my father began.
    I interrupted him. “I’m not asking for pleasant. I’m just asking to broaden my