Talk of the Town Read Free Page A

it?”
    As the women trooped back into the dining room, Ethel retook her seat and eyed the remains of her baklava. “My hips do not need one more bite of that,” she said. “But my willpower is nonexistent where Jane’s cooking is concerned.”
    “I know just what you mean,” Louise said, chuckling.
    Alice said, “So where did you learn to speak German so well, Aunt Ethel? Did you study it in school?”
    “No.” Ethel sighed, picked up her fork and took another bite of baklava. “When I was in grade school, the girl who lived down the road from us spoke German. Her parents were immigrants. Annelise and I spent a lot of time together.” Her smile took on a faraway quality. “We were at her house a lot. It always had people coming and going, laughing and arguing, the way I thought a real family would be. The way I thought my family might have been if my brothers and sisters had been closer in age to me.”
    “I sometimes forget how much space there was between you and Father,” Jane said, “even more than between Louise and me.”
    “Seventeen years,” Ethel said. “And the other five were even older than Daniel so I barely knew most of them.”
    “Perhaps that is why Father never mentioned that you spoke German.”
    “He may not have known. He was grown and gone from home while I was still just a tot.” She paused wistfully, and then seemed to shake off the moment of introspection. “At any rate, Annelise and I were great friends, and when her family realized I was picking up some of their language, it became their mission to make me a proper German-speaker.”
    “Apparently, they succeeded,” Louise said dryly. “I can’t believe you remember it so well after all these years.”
    “Well, I had more practice than simply those childhood years,” Ethel told her. “When Bob and I married, he spoke the language fluently because his mother had been German.” She laughed. “Although his accent was from Cologne and mine was from Munich, so we sometimes had to repeat things.”
    Alice laughed. “I suppose I never thought of other languages having local accents, but American English is sprinkled with accents—”
    “Southern, Midwestern, New England …” Jane interrupted.
    “Exactly,” Alice said, nodding. “So why shouldn’t there be a variety of German accents?”
    “Aunt Ethel, did you teach your children to speak German?” asked Louise.
    Ethel shook her head. “No, and I regret that. It was part of Bob’s heritage, and we should have passed it on. But we didn’t. We went to Germany on our honeymoon, and we spoke it to each other a bit during the early years of our marriage. And then I suppose life got hectic and we let it lapse. To tell you the truth, until today I had no idea I still would be able to speak it so well.”
    “Tell us about your honeymoon, Aunt Ethel,” Alice requested. She could not remember her aunt ever speaking much about her marriage, although Alice knew she had loved her husband very much.
    “And your courtship,” Jane added.
    Ethel giggled girlishly, and Jane grinned at Alice. “My courtship and honeymoon. Let’s see … I was still in high school when I met your uncle. He was older than I, and he lived in a neighboring town. I married your uncle while he was home on furlough. My father wouldn’t hear of my getting married right out of school, so I went to business school for a year.”
    “You said on furlough,” Louise said. “He was a soldier?”
    Ethel nodded. “He was in the Eleventh Airborne. He joined the army shortly after VJ Day.”
    “So he never actually had to fight?” Alice shuddered.
    Ethel shook her head. “No. He was sent over during the Allied occupation of Japan. Oh, gracious, I still remember how desperately I missed that man.”
    Alice was shocked to see tears rising in her stalwart aunt’s eyes. “Oh, Aunt Ethel, you don’t have to talk about this. I’m sorry we pried.”
    “You’re not prying, dear.” Ethel patted Alice’s