The American Lady(10)
Marie was flattered by the compliment and soon they began to talk of more personal matters. When Georgie found out that Marie was a glassblower and that she made Christmas baubles, her excitement knew no bounds.
“Steinmann glass—I should have realized right away! We have your baubles hanging on our tree every year! I love your pinecones and the little nuts, but my mother prefers the larger figures, like Santa Claus and the angels. So we always argue a little about which piece to hang where.” She laughed her cheerful laugh and her eyes grew even rounder. “Every year we go into Nuremberg, right after the first Sunday of Advent, and we go to the big department store by city hall and see what’s new from the Steinmann line. And of course we buy a few pieces every time. But tell me, how in the world do you get all those lovely ideas?”
Marie smiled. “Most of the time the ideas just fall right in my lap,” she admitted. “All I have to do is go for a walk in the woods or along the banks of the Lauscha—that’s a creek near our house—and then I’ll see a flower and notice that the blossom has a particular shape and there you have it, I already want to capture it in glass.”
“The way you say that . . .” Georgie’s eyes shone with admiration. “It’s as though you’re a magician.”
Marie gave a thin smile. “But I lost my magic powers long ago.”
When she saw Georgie frown, she added hastily, “But that’s enough about home! Why don’t you show me the clothes you bought for the trip to the big city?”
She didn’t want to talk about glassblowing, indeed she couldn’t talk about it. She didn’t even want to think of the last few weeks at her workbench, when she had felt like a mere beginner again. She had sat there looking at the rod of raw glass in her hand as though it were something from another universe. All her movements had felt clumsy and unnatural, and she hadn’t created any new shapes. She had blown a few standard globes just to have something to do but had felt the panic rise inside her until she fled from the room. Unable to bring herself to tell the others that she couldn’t bear her own shortcomings a moment longer, she simply said that the soup from supper the night before had given her indigestion.
She feigned interest as Georgie showed off her new dresses. Try as she might, however, she couldn’t find anything to like about the shapeless, mouse-gray tent of a garment that Georgie wanted to wear for her sister’s wedding. She had an idea and looked into her handbag, then fetched out a necklace of glass beads that she had made herself. She held it up to the neckline.
“Just look at that! The cloth seems to shine all of a sudden with your beads next to it. That’s magic!” Georgie said, reaching out and touching the necklace, awestruck.
“No, it’s just glass,” Marie replied, smiling. “It’s for you. A present!”
Georgie flung her arms around Marie gratefully.
Then Marie asked why Georgie was making the trip, rather than either of the two older brothers she had already heard about, or even Georgie’s parents.
Georgie grinned. “Mother certainly wanted to . . . but Father decided that the ironmongery business wouldn’t last a day without him. And Mother didn’t want to send my brothers. She was probably afraid that if she asked them afterward what America was like they’d just grunt ‘very nice’ and leave it at that. By sending me, she can be sure I’ll spend a week telling her all about everything.”
“A week? Will that be long enough?” Marie raised her eyebrow skeptically.
Georgie didn’t take offense at the joke but spluttered with laughter. Marie was surprised to find herself thinking that Georgie was actually a lot of fun.
“It sounds like your family is very nice,” she said.
“Oh, they are,” Georgina replied. “All the same I’m happy to be away from them for a while. They give me such sorrowful looks just because I haven’t a husband in sight! Is it my fault that the dear Lord made me broad in the beam?” She lifted her plump little fists and let them fall on her wide thighs. “If I were as slim and pretty as you are, I’d have been married long ago as well,” she sighed.
“But I’m not married,” Marie protested.
“Aren’t you? I thought that you and Magnus . . .”
“Well yes, we live together, but we’re not married. I know that must sound strange, and I suppose it is,” she added, seeing the confusion on Georgie’s face. “But somehow we never got around to marrying. I . . . never felt the need to marry Magnus.”
Georgie looked even more startled. “I’ve never heard of such a thing! Your neighbors must have a thing or two to say about that, don’t they? Well, if I had a man who wanted to—I’d say yes before he could count to three! But who knows, maybe I’ll find someone in America who loves me.” She shut her eyes for a moment, and for that moment her face was calm and still. “Do you know what I’m looking forward to most? For once I won’t be fat Georgina Schatzmann, who can’t get a man. I’ll walk along the streets of New York, and I’ll be just a woman out having fun! A woman like any other.”