The German Revolution
By Jane Snyder
I’d had a miscarriage in July, in my eleventh week, gotten pregnant again in October. We won’t tell anyone yet, Jon and I decided, not till we have to.
In the meantime, there was Tad, who crawled in bed with me during the darkest, coldest part of the night, when I was already awake, say, as if the idea had just occurred to him, “we depend on each other for warmth, don’t we, Mommy?”
In September we’d learned my father was dying. By the end of the year, my mother said, but she sometimes got things wrong, I told myself.
In summer Tad’s favorite thing had been pouring buckets of water on the back yard dirt pile, digging canals, tamping down the displaced dirt for levees, making bridges from sticks tied together with long blades of grass.
He loved watching the muddy water go down the drain when we took our shower. Quickly, because we waited too long to leave off playing. When I pushed him in his stroller to the day care I’d have to run and we’d yell, “Make way for the Marquis of Carabas!”
When it got cold we found other things he liked. Calling himself a history professor, making up stories about his Play Mobile figures, especially one he named Eye Patch, the leader of the German Revolution. Three inches tall under a tricorn hat, a black patch colored on where his right eye would have been. The loss of his eye in a sword fight turned Eyepatch cruel, Tad said, so cruel he performed his own executions. “He always said if you want it done right do it yourself.”
I couldn’t make myself eat eggs then. For breakfast I spread jam on Saltines, told Tad we’d have tea in his study, his room. That’s what they do at the university, I said, remembering Charles and Sebastian in Brideshead Revisited. I wasn’t as authoritative as Tad, who’d drink his milky sweet tea, say if there was one thing Eye Patch could not stand, it was poor posture. Why, if a soldier didn’t stand straight during inspection, he’d crack him on the head with the side of his sword. “The soldiers just hated that,” Tad said.
I expressed concern for the soldiers.
Tad smiled tolerantly. “You don’t understand the way things were during those times.”
Patronizing, I thought, like a real professor, like my father, who also valued good posture.
If he was here, I thought, though I was trying not to think about him, he’d want to know why I didn’t tell Tad about the real German Revolution, instead of listening to his made-up stories. Which one, I asked him in my head. There were two. One between 1848 and 1849, and the more famous one in 1918, after Germany lost the war and the Kaiser had to abdicate. See, I’m not so stupid.
My father is nothing like me, I told myself smugly. He’d never put himself out for a child.
But maybe I was wrong. My father thought Tad was smart, paid me a stiff compliment once about how I encouraged him. He might get a kick out of hearing Tad talk about Eye Patch.
My sister Suzie called me when I wanted to be with Tad, said she couldn’t believe our father would really die, not be here any longer. “It seems as if at least he could talk to Mom on the phone.”
Tad and I had made a toy steam wheeler from rubber bands, popsicle sticks, plastic lids. I’d filled the kitchen sink with water, put towels on the floor and the seat of the chair I’d pulled up for him to stand on, stood behind him while I was talking to Suzie so I could catch him if he slipped.
I imagined my father sitting in a room, talking on a big black phone to my mother. The room would have a window looking into the room where the other dead people sat waiting their turn to make a call. When I told Suzie this she said yes, that’s how she thought it would be.
But maybe the dead wouldn’t want to call, Suzie thought, because they’d feel how far away you were and lose interest.
Even if I made it through the first trimester, Jon and I didn’t know if we should tell my father about the baby. When I was pregnant with Tad he was nicer to me than he’d ever been.
He was so excited when Tad was born. “A boy,” he said, “think of that.”
Suzie and I had always known we were a disappointment to my father but Amanda, our youngest sister, was hurt.
“I was a fool when I was younger,” he told her, “didn’t know a good thing when it dropped in my lap.”
Look at the shoulders on that kid, he said. He’ll be in the NFL.
My mother wasn’t sure what we should do. It might make him sad knowing he wouldn’t live long enough to see the new baby.
“So I guess it’s going to happen,” Suzie said on the phone.
Tad was pleased when I hung up, turned my attention to him. The water had gotten too cold to be pleasant and I drained most of it, turned the warm water on.
Tad stuck a hand under the boat. “We’re going through a lock. The captain must keep the boat stable during an abrupt drop in the water level like this one.”
So serious.
But he smiled at me, a baby’s smile, the eyes a little unfocused, all the delight in his mouth’s wide grin. “Eyepatch was also a skilled pilot.”
Not a professor at all, just a little boy who used big words.
Jane Snyder’s stories have appeared in Two Hawks, Frigg, Red Rock, and Cabinet of Heed. She lives in Spokane.