“I understand,” Eva said. Was she responsible? Because of Hansi? Now her face burned red, too. “I think I’ll order a schnapps.”
“This early?”
“Yes, this early. It’s very good for the digestion.”
Liezel looked at her watch.
“I need her address. Maybe even you can take me to her house?”
“I’ll give you her address. I don’t think I should go there with you.”
“Why? I need you!” Eva didn’t want a scene, but Liezel seemed not to care. She was being loud. “You know she likes you better than me.” Tears welled in her eyes. “And I’m scared of your neighborhood. It’s a ghetto.” Then, gathering herself, she said, “You’re used to it. I don’t want to go alone.”
Liezel, needing her. Rich, American Liezel. Pretty Liezel, what had she ever done for her? Besides fuck her husband? Coolly, she took out a small notebook from her purse and wrote down the address. “Here,” she said. “You’ll be fine if you take a cab. Have the driver wait until you are in the building.”
“What if she doesn’t want to go home with me?” Liezel asked.
Eva saw in her mind the dark hallway of the building she’d taken Maggie to so she could buy drugs, smelled the wet burning stink it omitted, a sharp, painful smell that stung her nose even from the cab.
Liezel continued. “I already know she doesn’t want to come back with me. But it doesn’t matter what she wants anymore. What is she going to do? Stay here and die? Have you look after her?” Liezel let out a short, mean laugh. Then she leaned across the table. “I’ll win. I’ve won. I was right, all along,” she said, shaking her head. “Children. They think they know everything. They’re all so stupid.” Liezel stared sharply at her, straight at Eva, taking a sip of her coffee.
Eva looked away from her sister. Hatred, that oily blackness—hatred was what Eva felt for this woman, this person her sister had become. She hated her for getting old and pathetic. For wielding her little bit of power so shamelessly. Eva sat back, holding her tiny schnapps glass. She downed it. And what did her sister think of her? Even less than what she thought of Liezel?
“I have a daughter too, you know.” She looked back at her sister. “You’d be surprised how quickly everything changes. Someday, you’ll need Maggie. You might want to consider that.”
Liezel leaned back. Eva could see her breathing heavily. “I think I’ll first worry about my daughter,” Liezel said. “Then she can worry about me when the time comes.”
And then it was as if Eva felt nothing. “I need you to pay me back for all the money I’ve been spending on taking care of Maggie. I took her on cab rides when she wasn’t well.”
“Cab rides?”
“Yes, it was then that I became suspicious something was wrong,” Eva lied. “Because normally she could take the U-Bahn.”
“How much?” Liezel asked.
“Two hundred marks.”
The two sisters looked at each other.
“Konnen wir zahlen, bitte,” Liezel asked the waiter as he walked by. She reached in her expensive, large bag with some logo on it that Eva didn’t recognize, and took two hundred marks out of her wallet. She put the bills down in front of Eva, and Eva took them.
“You have Elena’s number and mine,” Eva said. “Call me at either of those places and let me know how it goes. If you need us, we will do what we can.”
“I tried calling Maggie,” Liezel said, as they both stood. “The phone was disconnected.”
“Tom didn’t pay the bill as he was supposed to,” Eva said. “Bis später, Schwester.”
Chapter 30
After she returned home on the U-Bahn, Eva sat at her table, thinking, trying to quiet her breath. She drank a brandy, then she left, straight back to the U-Bahn, this time straight to Elena’s.
She had a key to Elena’s apartment—just in case, an emergency backup key. Elena had one of Eva’s as well. Neither had ever used her key to open the other’s door. This time, Eva let herself in, turned on the hallway light, went into the living room, and immediately went to the shelves holding endless boxes of film and thick stacks of photo albums, all meticulously labeled. Her daughter often acted and appeared as a sloven, dissolute bum—goodness, she begged on the U-Bahn for laughs—but she was actually a very organized person—a hardworking, dedicated craftsperson, a brilliant student of the arts. A talented, ambitious artist.
And so without much effort she found the photo album, and she took it out, dust free—Elena dusted all the time, kept everything so clean—and sat on one of the low cushions next to the low, round table with ashtrays and matches. She pulled out all of the photos of Liezel. Holding them was breathtaking. They stole her breath. They were of a lost time, a time of such beauty, of such horror and pain. Carefully, barely shaking, she lit a match and burned one, holding it up to the flame over an ashtray full of cigarette butts. It caught easily and turned purple, to orange with licks of yellow, then back to purple and disintegrated into ash. Ashes to ashes, Eva thought, with great satisfaction. She took another photo of Liezel and then she heard the door open. She hadn’t locked it behind her.
Elena came in, in her jeans, throwing her coat off, braless in a sweatshirt. “Mutti? Was ist hier los? Was zu Teufel! Was machst du da!? Stopp! Stopp, Mutti!” She ran to her mother, but Eva had already lit another photo, her mouth set.
