Escape Artist

“She’s not allowed to talk to her friends outside of school. For four days now this has been going on.”

“And you didn’t tell me?”

“I thought you knew.”

“Maybe someone should talk to the drummer.”

Boys and girls we knew waved hello, chattered, strolled by. One girl, to be married that summer, told me she’d be having a china shower and expected a notice in the Crescent. When she left, I muttered, “Crockery for the crass at heart.” I was getting impatient; I had to get back to the city room. Yet Esther’s gossip intrigued me. Frana, always the giggly, vacuous girl, suddenly had become interesting-the captive maiden squired to and from school by her crippled uncle, who admittedly looked none too pleased with his task. I lingered on the bench, if only to watch the inglorious departure.

A noisy gaggle of girls rushed by and suddenly, emerging from the crowd, an animated Kathe Schmidt slipped onto the bench beside Esther. I frowned and thought of burnt roast beef.

Kathe was laughing as she spoke. “Esther, you should have seen Mr. Timm’s face when Mr. Lempke opened the front door.”

“What happened?”

Kathe spoke to Esther in a manufactured lisp. “He yelled, ‘Sir, you storm in here like Teddy Roosevelt charging up San Juan Hill.’”

“That’s not funny,” Esther said. “He doesn’t have a lisp.”

I shook my head. “Did he really say that, Kathe?”

Kathe smirked. “It was something like that. He wasn’t pleased.” The young girl rattled on and on, more drivel about Frana’s plight, driving me to distraction. I stood. Out of here. I was in the presence of a hot air balloon.

At that moment Frana and her uncle appeared in the empty doorway, the two of them standing there, frozen; and I felt sorry for the girl I’d never liked. For Frana, caught in the flickering shafts of sunlight, looked scared, her face pale and drawn. Dressed in a drab gray dress, with a bunch of lace ruffles gathered about her neck and the incongruous ribbons she always wore in her hair, she seemed a cadaver, her uncle’s fingers grasping her shoulder.

Then the tableau unfroze and Christ Lempke hobbled down the stairs, dragging the girl. Frana’s eyes moved left and right, caught sight of the three of us on the bench, and her body stiffened. Her uncle tugging her along, Frana attempted to move gracefully; but Lempke’s clumsy walk, the dragging of that bum foot, threw off her stride, and she kept stumbling.

When she neared us, she suddenly became defiant, twisting to face her uncle. He loosened his hold and seemed to spin, ready to topple.

“You’re embarrassing me,” she sputtered.

He followed her glance to Esther, Kathe and me. “You disgrace us, Liebchen.” A hoarse whisper.

For some reason, Kathe was amused, a low whistle escaping her throat as she watched the squirming Frana, a fragile rag doll, loose-limbed and buckling.

“I ain’t.” Frana then muttered something in German that I didn’t catch.

“The behavior of a whore,” he hollered.

Frana’s face turned scarlet and she tried to break away. Christ Lempke, furious, slapped her across the face. Frana screamed and burst into tears.

Lempke maneuvered the sobbing girl away from the school grounds until they were out of sight.

Kathe was laughing out loud.

“What, Kathe?” I snapped. “What’s so amusing?”

Kathe pouted. “Nothing. He called her a whore.”

I stood to walk away, but spoke directly into her face. “Doubtless it’s a word you’ve heard before.”

I sat in Pfefferle’s Elm Tree Bakery sipping thick black kaffee with rich cream and munching on a piece of Apfelkuchen that Greta, the plump German waitress, just served me. Late afternoon, the small room quiet, I’d settled myself into an alcove under a print of a helmeted and mustachioed Bismarck in regal uniform, his face perpetually at war. I was writing an account of a social tea given by the Ladies Auxiliary of the Knights of Pythias, at which the Reverend Mr. Bronson Peck spoke of missionary work he’d accomplished in Jaffa, near Jerusalem. What I wanted to write about was that one of the lodge members, ninety-year-old Ezra Platt, had slipped into a noisy slumber and kept blurting out the word “balderdash” at odd moments. I wasn’t convinced he was really asleep.

But my mind kept wandering to Frana and her abusive uncle-the awfulness of that scene. The fear in Frana’s face. The slap…

High-pitched laughter snapped me out of my reverie. Kathe Schmidt had walked in and took a small table by the front door. Was she laughing to herself? No, Kathe had said something to Greta. Not wanting to be seen, I pushed my chair back, blocked by the thick velour draperies, and sipped my coffee. The pastry was warm to the touch, perfect. The room had a few late-afternoon stragglers: two businessmen at one table, one of them deftly rolling a cigarette; two women at another, both reading the ads in the Post. Within seconds the door opened and Kathe looked up, expectant. She looked disappointed when she saw it was Mr. McCaslin, the drama coach and English teacher from the high school, who coldly nodded to her as he took a table at the back of the bakery where, unfortunately, he caught my eye. He dropped his eyes to his table. Within seconds he seemed fascinated by the strudel before him. An unpopular teacher, Mr. McCaslin made a point of not acknowledging students he saw outside school halls. He also famously liked Pfefferle’s legendary strudel.

A moment later Kathe’s boyfriend Jake Smuddie joined her, and the two huddled together. Loudly, in German, Kathe ordered a cherry-studded Schaumtorte. Jake said no, nothing for him. A glass of spring water, maybe.

Ignoring Jake’s plea that she lower her voice, Kathe breezily exaggerated the episode of Frana and her uncle, her voice loud and rich with laughter. Did she want everyone to hear? Frana, oddly, was Kathe’s friend. Supposedly they were best friends. Annoyed by the shrill young girl, the businessmen glanced over.

Jake Smuddie was a good-looking boy. On rare, vagrant occasions, I acknowledged to myself that I found him appealing. He was a footballer with wide shoulders and a broad chest. He wasn’t a bookish boy, an irony, given the fact that his father was the severe Herr Professor, Solomon Smuddie, lecturer on Biblical Archeology-or some such yawner-and also the man with the first automobile on Appleton streets, notorious for scaring the poor horses in town.

Now, with Kathe tucking her head into his neck, Jake stopped her flow of chatter. “Why are you always making fun of poor Frana? It ain’t nice.”

Kathe, jerking back, accused him. “I thought you were over her.” The brazen Kathe, oblivious of her surroundings, informed me plus the startled businessmen, the two women, and the frowning Mr. McCaslin that Jake had, indeed, seen Frana last year, had taken her to the Women’s Christian Temperance Union Dance at the Masonic Hall. “You obviously long for that girl who abandoned you.”

Frana and Kathe were alike in looks: the same Germanic fair hair, oval faces, cornflower blue eyes. Frana was delicate, doll-like, breakable. Kathe was coarse, rough mannered, and blunt, her pretty features unfinished, as though God had forgotten to tidy up the edges.

“I don’t,” Jake stammered. “It’s just that you’re always mean about Frana.”

Her German accent grew prominent now. “Because her very name makes you act so…so…strange.”

“Not true!” But listening, I understood that Jake Smuddie still had feelings for Frana Lempke. His whole voice shifted, the timbre softened. His voice was low-key and almost feminine with wistfulness, even hurt, in his tone.

“Well,” Kathe summed up, “she’s obviously playing with fire. She has that forbidden lover.” She said the last two words with bold capitalization fit for a stage melodrama. “I already told you some old man wants to take her away and marry her, no less.”

Jake shrugged. “She’s always wanted to leave Appleton and go to New York to be an actress.”

“Ha!” Kathe crowed. “She ain’t an actress. You know, one time she even dragged me along while she followed that actress Mary Allibone as she headed for rehearsals at the Lyceum. Kept