The Number 7 Page 18

  Rosemary laughed, clearly delighted with my happiness.

  “But Gabe is so cute!” I whined, exasperated. “And he definitely has less emotional baggage. I like that he’s confident in what he wants to do with his life. It’s a level of passion you don’t often find. He has good parents. Parents, I might add, he doesn’t mind hanging out with. And he always makes me feel like I’m the only person in the room. Do you know what that feels like?”

  I meant it as a rhetorical question, but Rosemary sighed loudly, leaned back, and let the couch envelop her.

  “Yes,” she exhaled.

  I knew she was sighing about my dad.

  “Well, I could go on for the next hour about things I like about them. What I want to know is who I should choose to be with.”

  “Who says you have to choose at all?” she asked innocently. It was a question I was anticipating.

  “What? So I’m going to go around kissing both of them all the time?”

  Never would I have admitted this to Dad. Maybe Greta. It was a new feeling for me, to share my emotions so openly. Rosemary had unknowingly introduced me to the world of female allegiance, where we could tell each other things that weren’t usually public knowledge. Girl secrets. Greta and I only recently started unlocking our secrets to each other, however cautiously. I knew Rosemary would keep our conversations in confidence. And it was nice to get some of it off my chest. Talking about it aloud made my feelings easier to sort through.

  And then the thought came to me: Rosemary could, for all intents and purposes, tell me which boy I should be with.

  “Rosemary, can’t you like, read people and all that? See their stars and know their futures?” I could hear my tone accelerate. I couldn’t hide my excitement.

  “What do you mean?” Rosemary suddenly looked uneasy. She rubbed her thumb on the side of her mug nervously.

  “Oh, come on! You could tell if Chris or Gabe is better for me. Or, even, tell me which one I should pick. You know, don’t you?” I clapped my hands together eagerly. All of her hocus-pocus astrology finally had a purpose.

  Rosemary shook her head. “I don’t go around constantly looking into people’s futures, Lou. Not even mine. It’s no way to live, really. It’s just a hobby.”

  She warmed her cup of coffee by pouring herself some more. I could feel she was ready to move off the subject, but I wasn’t ready to let it go.

  “Rosemary, I’m serious. I need help. I’m so confused,” the confession sounded pleading. “Can’t you do something? At least look into my chart and tell me? Or look up my birthday to see who I have a stronger connection with?” It seemed too good to be true. Rosemary could provide me with a definite answer.

  “I’ve looked at your chart, Lou. And I don’t know whom you should choose,” Rosemary admitted, looking frustrated.

  I couldn’t tell if she was disappointed in my request or her inability to help. I hoped the latter. I felt my shoulders slump. For a fleeting moment, I’d truly thought she could guide me. Or at least point me in the right direction. Now, I was no closer to figuring out which boy I liked better. And I needed to. I couldn’t juggle both of them for much longer without one of them growing impatient, and I didn’t like being caught in the middle of my own indecision.

  “I can tell you,” Rosemary softly encouraged, placing a hand on my knee, “I see you happy. I see you very happy, Louisa. Feel comforted knowing you’ll make the right decision, whatever you decide.”

  Surprisingly, those few words did make me feel better.

  Monday morning, Greta and I drove to our second semester at Wyeth High School in The Thing. Rather than park in our usual, indiscreet section of curb on one of the neighborhood streets a couple blocks from school, the engine growled loudly as we proudly pulled into the WHS parking lot. Heads turned. Jaws dropped. And all Greta could say as she checked the rearview mirror and powdered her nose was, “Isn’t it much better this way?”

  Allison caught up with me at my locker before classes. She’d cut off all of her pretty curly hair over break and tied a ribbon around it for her first day back: a green headband in a halo of curls.

  “Hi, Allison.”

  Mine was hardly an enthusiastic greeting. Ever since I first learned of Allison’s incessant desire to be in-the-know with the goings-on at Wyeth, I grew less inclined to make her a close confidante. And this morning was a perfect example of why that was a wise decision.

  “Gabe said you hit the slopes over Christmas.”

  I turned into my locker, reaching for a book I didn’t need to hide an annoyed eye roll.

  “Sure did.”

  Allison blew a purple bubble of rubbery chewing gum. I watched her as it grew too big. Pop!

  “That’s like, a big thing, you know,” she informed me as she regained her composure.

  “Allison,” I sighed, trying to sound tired, not annoyed. “Does it really matter? At the end of the day, do you really care that I went skiing with him?”

  For ten seconds, Allison chewed and blinked. Like she couldn’t understand what I meant. She looked me up and down, trying to figure me out, analyzing me like Darwin and his Galapagos.

  “Yeah,” she smacked her gum loudly, her face illuminating with self-realization. “I do.”

  I let out a surprised snort. I suppose other girls appreciated her skills as an informant; Allison clued other people in when they were this week’s hot gossip. I assumed she considered herself a public servant, and that I was a rare breed to her: the indifferent. Somehow, my ski trip with Gabe validated something in Allison. Her place in the teenage high school caste system? I silently wondered if this was how Diane Sawyer or Oprah heard their callings.

  Sighing reluctantly, I shut my locker and turned to my classmate.

  “What do you want to know?” I surrendered. I decided to give Allison the abbreviated version of events. My official statement. I didn’t doubt it would be public knowledge in less than an hour. “I met his parents. He taught me to ski. We like each other. No further questions.”

  Allison didn’t know about Chris. As one of the outsiders, he was completely off her radar. To her, he wouldn’t have been important enough to talk about. And I didn’t volunteer to introduce him to the public. I figured he liked being where he was, and maybe even made a conscious effort to stay there.

  I met up with Gabe in Photography. It was the first time I’d seen him since the ski trip. He winked at me as I sat down at the table. My heart instantly swelled and I felt that same rush I got when he first challenged me with his coffee-canister chrysanthemum. I fought the stupid smile I could feel creeping onto my face. I bit the inside of my lip, losing the fight. And Gabe knew it. He grinned from ear to ear.

  It was finals week. All around me, the other students in my Photography class fidgeted, squirmed, and drummed their fingers too loudly on plastic binders. I expected at any moment the entire room could implode.

  Gabe and I were the only ones sitting still. Our eyes locked on each other, unaware of the chaos surrounding us. It made Mr. Franz uneasy.

  “Louisa, Gabe, heads down, keep your eyes on your own papers,” he looked at us suspiciously, handing us our exams as we grinned back at him. He raised an eyebrow, contemplated separating us, then shook his head and continued to the next table.

  Ninety-five minutes later, after properly labeling the various components of a 35mm, after defining terms like “ambient light” and identifying the common missteps in ruined photographs (overexposure, dust on the lens, and shutter speed too slow), I turned in my exam. One down, four to go. The bell rang at the exact moment I quietly handed Mr. Franz my paper. As students eagerly grabbed their backpacks and elbowed their way out of the classroom, Mr. Franz came to the table where I stood, gathering my books.

  “Hey, Louisa,” Mr. Franz pulled up a stool and took a seat next to me. He folded his hands in his lap casually. “Could you meet me after school? There’s something I want to talk to you about.”

  I looked at Gabe waiti
ng by the door. He looked concerned but left me alone in private conversation with our teacher.

  “Is everything okay? Is this about my exam? I kept my eyes on my paper—” It was compulsive worry-speak spewing from my mouth.

  “Louisa,” Mr. Franz chuckled and held up his hand for me to stop. “Everything’s fine. I just want to talk to you about an opportunity that I’d like to share with you. Listen,” he checked his watch, “I don’t want to get into it now, and you have to get to your next final. Come and see me before you leave for the day.”

  Gabe wanted to go back to the photography room with me after school, but he had to get to Weaver’s instead. He was on the schedule until close. “If you need anything, stop by the store.”

  I walked out with him to his car, looking around for Greta to let her know I’d be held up for a little while.

  At the far end of the parking lot, I spotted Chris sitting on the hood of his Volvo with a group of friends. Without looking, I could feel his eyes following Gabe and me. And the only thing I could do was hope Gabe didn’t kiss me. The whole thing made me feel awful but not as awful as I felt when I saw my sister’s car.

  Someone had scrawled “Brandywine Witch” in thick smudges of red lipstick all over the exterior. The crimson words gleamed on the green paint in blaring juxtaposition. It was horrible. Gabe stood speechless.

  “Who—?” he began, but he already knew the perpetrator.

  “You know who,” I replied angrily.

  “Jenn,” he sighed. “I’ll take care of it.”

  Mr. Franz was sitting on the corner of his desk when I entered and he motioned for me to take a seat at the closest table.

  “A friend of mine has a gallery in Philadelphia. He’s asked me to prepare a show for the end of the month.”

  “What do you mean ‘prepare’?” It was probably rude of me to interrupt, but I was trying to figure out my role in his story before he got to the end.

  “My friend wants me to put together a small portfolio of my work for display. It will run through February. Why do you look confused?”

  “I—”

  “Believe it or not, Louisa, I’m a photographer, too. Schoolteacher by day, photographer by weekend. Like Spider-Man, but not as cool.”

  I stared blankly back at him, not sure what he was getting at.

  “Anyway,” Mr. Franz cleared his throat, recovering from his joke. “I graded your project over the break. You did an excellent job, Louisa. Really, it’s one of the best photo essays I’ve seen. I’d like to ask you if you’d be interested in showing it with my work at the gallery. Occasionally, I like to share my students’ work alongside my own. You’d get full ownership of your project, of course. I’m not trying to show it as a piece of mine. I just thought it’d be nice to show some student work at the gallery too, and yours is exceptional.”

  For a moment, I only stared at my teacher as he leaned back casually with arms crossed, waiting for my answer. And then it finally began sinking in. My photography project would be on display at a real art gallery in Philadelphia. I shook my head and opened my eyes wide with elation.

  “Yes! I’d love to!”

  “I’d understand if you had some hesitation. Your project was intimate and special . . .”

  I immediately thought back to the snapshots I’d included of my mother and smiled.

  “Mr. Franz,” I said graciously, “I’d be honored to show my work next to yours.”

  “Great!” He clapped his hands together. “I’ll send you the details about when and where as the time gets closer.”

  I gathered my things and started heading for the door, feeling euphoric.

  “Oh, and Louisa?”

  I stopped in the doorway and turned back to face my beaming teacher.

  “You got an A.”

  XXV.

  Gerhard reported for his day’s work earlier than necessary, left his engine clean, and kept a strict adherence to departure and arrival times. He was compulsive with his pocket watch and obsessive about time. The first thing he did before getting out of bed each morning was sit up, swing his legs over the side of his mattress, and wind his watch, cleaning its face with an old cloth and polishing the gold casing.

  At the train station, Gerhard performed his usual routine. He signed in. He picked up the key for his train, engine car Number 7. He drank a cup of tea and tried to believe it was coffee. Trelleborg Station had a single office. It was actually a converted broom closet nestled in the back alongside the toilet. On the wall hung a calendar, a telephone, and a thorough chart of the train lines and timetables. Gerhard had visited this office only three times: the first when he was hired as a mechanic at the age of sixteen, again when Kjell promoted him to steam conductor two years later, and the last time on a warm Wednesday in June 1940.

  Gerhard stood in the office’s doorway and noticed how tired Kjell looked. The heat and humidity lingered like thick smoke in the small room, and the old man constantly wiped his forehead with a dirty rag.

  “You wanted to see me?” What was this all about?

  “Yes. Right.” The two men stood looking at each other, both visibly uncomfortable. “Let’s take a walk,” Kjell finally suggested. “Tea?”

  “Nej, tack. No, thanks.”

  The older man ran his dirty hands up and down the front of his vest, wiping dirt and grease on his chest. Gerhard knew that his employer missed the hard labor of the men beneath him. He wore regret openly on his face. Kjell was never meant to wear a suit. Strangers to the station would never guess he directed it all.

  He led Gerhard to the station platform where two young boys sat and waited for the 7:10 to Malmö. Kjell took a deep breath and looked around, lost as to what to say next.

  “Let’s go look at your Number 7.”

  When they reached the train, Kjell at last turned to his young worker. A lock of white hair fell loosely onto his forehead.

  “Listen, Gerhard, you’re one of my best conductors. You’re dedicated to what we do here. I’ve noticed how, for the most part, you keep to yourself.”

  Gerhard nodded in agreement. Other than speak with Robert, his assistant, Gerhard mostly kept to himself.

  “Something’s come to Trelleborg, something I’ve been put in charge of directing. And I’m going to ask you to assist me because I trust you. You’re earnest and hardworking, and you don’t meddle with the things the other boys do.” Kjell spoke slowly and lifted his hand to shield the sun from his eyes. The creases of his forehead and the cracks around his eyes brimmed with dirt. A single drip of sweat ran from his brow to his chin, streaking a line of soot as it rolled. Gerhard said nothing.

  “I’ve been asked to set aside a daily train, a round trip route from here to Kornsjø. We’ll transport German troops each week across the Norwegian border. I want you to run it. I want you to run it and I want you to keep your mouth shut about it. Say nothing to no one. If anyone asks, direct him to me. You understand what I’m asking, don’t you?”

  Gerhard nodded stoically. He’d do anything for Kjell; he’d built his life around following orders.

  “Good.”

  Later that morning, Robert, Gerhard’s young apprentice responsible for stoking the coal in the firebox, leaned against their engine car and rolled a cigarette as Gerhard approached.

  “Morning, Robert.”

  “Morning, Gerhard.” The young boy lit his cigarette and inhaled. “Nice weather.”

  Gerhard agreed.

  “The switch at mile two is sticking. They’ve got men out there trying to grease it up,” Robert informed him.

  “Sounds good.” Gerhard began his habitual inspection of the Number 7. He looked for flaws: divots in the wheels, loose screws, obstructions, jams, or rust. As usual, his train looked perfect—the epitome of human ingenuity in raw steel.

  “Did you hear about the boat from Germany?”

  Gerhard looked up at Robert briefly before turning back to his work. He’d heard nothing.

  “It wasn’t
in the papers, but everyone down at the docks is talking about it. I was down there last night.”

  Robert was an Artful Dodger: too young to know he was too young to know it all.

  “Some Germans tried to forge the 100 kilometers across the border, but their raft sunk. They all drowned. All but one. The only survivor made it to shore around four o’clock this morning, mumbling nonsense. The boys and I couldn’t really make out most of it. Said he’d been trying to escape from Sassnitz. Said there had been twelve of them.” Robert took one last long drag on his cigarette. “You should have seen this guy. Skin and bones. Couldn’t have weighed more than forty-five kilos. Anyway, the old man kept crying the same word: Vernichtung. Vernichtung. Do you speak German, Gerhard?”

  “Not well enough.”

  “Me either. So I asked a guy.” Robert paused and looked beyond Gerhard to where the distant land met the sky. “It means extermination.”

  The morning of the first transfer was electric. The sky was a muted, washed-out purple—the color of veins under a pale forearm—and a strangeness hung in the air. White noise? Gerhard arrived at the station early and met Robert on the tracks. His young companion was restless; it was obvious he knew what they were about to do. Gerhard suspected all the men at the station knew what was going on. How could they not?

  It made Gerhard nervous, and he wanted to tell Robert to settle down. The wind whipped the boy’s hair back and forth across his forehead as he struggled to lick a cigarette paper. The sun rose slowly in the sky like a white slab of damp clay.

  The German train arrived from the shipyard quietly, crawling its way onto the foreign soil as if it knew it wasn’t supposed to be there. This train was a sly fox in a chicken coop. Gerhard didn’t like it.

  He never forgot the first face he saw from behind a little window in one of the cars. It was small and white and round, surrounded by shadows. The soldiers crammed into the cars, standing in the pitch dark. They appeared innocent and naïve. Some looked like children. They certainly didn’t resemble the beasts Gerhard had imagined them to be.