Free When We Were Sisters by Emilie Richards Page A

sneak out of the house on a school night to be with my friends, I tiptoed shoeless to our creaky front door. Then I waited for some blast of neighborhood noise, a car passing with its stereo blaring, sirens or a truck rumbling along the main street a block away. The moment I had cover I opened the door just enough to squeeze through and stepped out to the porch, where I pulled on my shoes before I headed down the street.
    I was seventeen the first and last time I was caught. I returned from a night out to find my father in the living room reading a month-old issue of Lidové Noviny ,“the People’s Newspaper ,” sent by a friend from the country that was still called Czechoslovakia, although not for much longer.
    My parents came to the United States during the Prague Spring, when the Soviets marched into Czechoslovakia and stamped out budding reforms. My father, Gustav—Gus—was a leader in the artists’ community, and his paintings were political in nature, which meant he was in danger. He, my mother, Ida, and sister, Lucie, escaped and eventually made their way to Cleveland, Ohio, where I was born.
    On this night he looked up from that nostalgic taste of the country he had been forced to leave and pulled his glasses to the tip of his nose to see me more clearly. “You won’t do this again, Kristoff, correct?”
    I remember considering. Sneaking out was one thing, but lying to my parents another.
    â€œI would not like to buy a padlock for our door,” he said, while the moral implications were still racing through my mind. “In case of fire, that could be troublesome.”
    I made my case. “I work hard at school, Táta. I’m on the forensics team and the editor of the yearbook. I’ll probably get a college scholarship that pays all my expenses.” To my credit I didn’t add the obvious, that a scholarship was the only way I would get a higher education.
    â€œAll this is true,” my father said in his lightly accented English. Unlike my mother he had studied the language before fleeing the country of his birth. Her English came after intensive study here, and Maminka still speaks Czech at home and anywhere else it’s understood.
    â€œI need to have a little fun,” I whined.
    â€œIn a car coming home with other boys who have had too much to drink?”
    â€œI walked home.”
    He nodded. I remember thinking I was gazing into a mirror or a time machine, because someday I would look much the same. Except for straighter hair and darker eyes I strongly resemble Gustav Lenhart.
    â€œFun is good,” he said. “We need fun. I am too serious. I know this. I take life too serious. I take myself too serious. I am afraid sometimes I have passed this on to my children.”
    â€œLet tonight be proof you haven’t.”
    He laughed. He continued as he preceded me up the stairs. My father has a deep rumbling laugh, and despite taking the world seriously, he still laughs frequently.
    He wasn’t laughing a few minutes ago when I hung up from our transatlantic telephone call.
    This afternoon as I prepared to leave our suite of offices I didn’t have my shoes in my hand, but I might as well have. I was making a concerted effort not to alert anybody I was leaving before six. Robin had scheduled two housekeeper applicants to interview before dinner. She’d asked me to try to get home to meet them so I could tell her my preference. She’s already done all the footwork, checked references, conducted initial interviews.
    Frankly I couldn’t care less whom she chooses. I don’t want any stranger in my house. At the same time I want her to see I’m involved in decisions about our family. Robin has exaggerated my lack of involvement, built it up until it’s now an insurmountable wall between us. Not that she doesn’t have anything to go on. I work long hours, and the nature of my job means I’m at the mercy