The American Lady(95)

Sometimes, when she was feeling especially softhearted, Wanda imagined that they would both burst into tears and fall into one another’s arms.

There was only one thing she hadn’t prepared herself for: that when she set eyes on Thomas Heimer she would feel nothing. Nothing at all.

The man who opened the door to her, dressed in a work smock and a faded old pair of pants that were going baggy at the knees, was a complete stranger. He was of middling height and pale with gray stubble. His eyes flickered just once when he saw Wanda standing there, and then it was as though two doors slammed shut. His expressionless gray eyes looked out at her from under bushy eyebrows that were creeping together to meet in the middle. There were fine wrinkles in his thin face that made him look rather ill. Nothing about this sickly, aging man even remotely resembled Ruth’s description of the good-looking youth she had fallen in love with once upon a time, the broad-shouldered fellow with the wicked laugh.

Wanda had recently read a novel about the American Civil War, in which the heroine meets her father again after having believed him dead for years. The author had described the moment by saying she “felt as though she were looking at her own reflection.” Wanda waited in vain for any such feeling; try as she might, though, she detected no familiar features in Thomas Heimer’s face.

Was this even the right man, standing before her? Or was this his brother Michel? She peered unobtrusively downward. This man had both of his legs, so . . . She had to fight back a nervous giggle when she realized how ridiculous the situation was.

“Why is your hair like that? Did you have lice, or what?”

Thomas Heimer jerked a hand toward Wanda’s short hair. Then he turned and shuffled back into the house, leaving the door open as if to say, Come in or stay outside, it’s all the same to me.

In a daze, Wanda followed him along a dark hallway, up some stairs, and into the kitchen. So this was the house where she had spent the first year of her life—the thought meant nothing to her. She cleared her throat to get rid of the feeling that her vocal chords were furring over.

“Thought you were never coming. You were ill, though.” Thomas Heimer sat down on the corner bench without offering her a place. Then he reached over to the stove where a pot was clattering its lid and pushed it aside.

“Eva!” he shouted, then said to Wanda in a normal voice, “What do you want?”

Wanda blinked. The air in the room was very stuffy, and there was an odd smell. She glanced over at the window involuntarily and saw that it was blocked by great drifts of snow that made it impossible to let in any fresh air.

“What do I want? I wanted to see you. Visit you, that is,” she said in a little-girl voice. She scolded herself the next moment for using that tone—she sounded like a baby, not like a grown woman in search of her roots. Without thinking about it, she sat down opposite him.

“You seem to know all about me,” she said in response to his last comment. “Yes, I was ill for a few weeks; otherwise I would have come earlier.” Even as she spoke, she was thinking desperately about what she could say next. All of a sudden things were very different from any of the scenarios she’d imagined. She certainly wasn’t going to blurt out that she’d only recently learned he was her father. She felt no desire at all to bare her soul to this man, with his chapped lips and rough manners. What she really wanted to do was get up and leave.

She had nothing to say to him, and he had nothing to say to her.

Coming here had been a hideous mistake—nothing more than that. Yet another of her silly ideas.

Just like the thought that she might be of some use to Johanna and her family—laughable!

“I know it doesn’t matter to you whether you see me or not. There’s no reason you should want to, so let’s not bother pretending. Let’s just keep it short.” She got up. “Here are a few things I brought. Christmas presents. There’s something there for the others too.”

The presents, all neatly done up in shiny wrapping paper, looked out of place on the shabby wooden table. Another mistake, Wanda thought with a sinking feeling. Her fingers were gripping the edge of the table so tightly that her knuckles had turned white.

Heimer was still sitting hunched over on the bench. Though his face was expressionless, he had a nervous air about him.

He looks like a stray dog, Wanda thought. He looks like nobody’s taken care of him for so long that he’s forgotten even the simplest rules for how to behave around people.

Her father.

A stranger. A man for whom she felt nothing, except a twinge of pity.

All at once her heart was almost bursting with love for the man who had taken Thomas Heimer’s place eighteen years ago. She saw her stepfather vividly in her mind’s eye—Steven in his elegant suits, Steven sitting at the wheel of his beloved new car, Steven surrounded by his business friends and rivals. Wanda’s cheeks flushed with shame. Steven had always been there for her, had always forgiven her silly mistakes. How ungrateful she had been! Ever since she had found out when and where she was born, she had treated him like dirt, ignored his feelings . . . yes, almost laughed at him for feeling hurt—as though she were asking, What right do you have to expect me to love you?