Evil Breeding

pain. She wasn’t. And toward the end, a lot of the time, she didn’t know where she was. Or she did, in her own mind. She was in Germany, she was a little girl, she was in New Jersey.... You never knew where she was, how old she was. Sometimes she spoke English, sometimes she spoke German, so you’d get a clue that way.”
    “You speak German?”
    “A little.Enough. Christina taught me some. Before she got sick. I understood her pretty well, better than I understand other people, because I learned from her. She used to get so homesick for Germany, and no one else in the house spoke it except him, and he made everyone speak English. I mean, supposedly she was born in this country. And you wouldn’t have guessed, because she came here when she was young enough, so in English she didn’t have a German accent.”
    “The birth certificate,” I said.
    “Christina Heinck. I think he picked it because it sounded German. Christina looked German.” Jocelyn paused. “She looked like him. Christopher looks exactly like both of them.”
    I didn’t want to be the first to utter that phrase that Jocelyn had repeated so compulsively the night before: brother and sister, brother and sister. I hadn’t said B. Robert Motherway’s name aloud, either. I’d been waiting for Jocelyn. So far, she’d referred to Mr. Motherway only as he and him. A little exchange I’d had with him kept coming back to me. I’d remarked that his stepfather had had a major impact on what he’d done with his life. “With my wife ?” he’d demanded.
    “Her real name was Eva,” Jocelyn said. “She liked housework. She liked making things clean. She was beautiful. When she was old, she was still beautiful. If you don’t know him, if you don’t know what he’s like, he’s a handsome old man. Christina had that same look.” Jocelyn lightly tapped a hand on her face. “Those cheekbones. The very fair coloring. When he brought her to this country and sent her to that mansion in New Jersey, he made her dye her hair. That was the thing she minded most! He made her dye her hair red! With henna. She used to go on and on about that henna. It was the one thing she never really forgave him for. Funny, isn’t it?”
    “Christina was supposed to case the house for him,” I said. “Giralda, it was called. It really was a mansion. The woman who owned it was a Rockefeller. She was a major art collector.”
    “Christina was happy there.” Jocelyn managed a little smile. “The woman was nice to her. Mrs. Dodge. That was her name. She was crazy about dogs. They were all over the place. Christina didn’t mind. She liked dogs. Christina had her own room. She liked that. Except for the henna, she was very happy there. That’s why she kept that letter, because she wrote it when she was happy. She had this ‘treasure chest,’ she called it. That’s where that stuff came from. She liked to go through it, talk about it. It’s still there at the house. Under her bed. She used to get me to get it out, and we’d go through it together.”
    “Did the, uh, robbery take place?”
    “Not that I ever heard of. Not that Christina knew. She would’ve said something. She used to talk about how the old fascist bastard—my words, not hers—got mad at her because she didn’t find out anything. I mean, she didn’t find out anything he wanted to know. Christina was supposed to find out about a dog show there, and she didn’t because she couldn’t, could she? She didn’t have anything to do with the dog show. She was busy cleaning the carpets and washing the floors. And she was supposed to tell him about the paintings in the house, but all she knew was that there were a lot of them. She was no art expert. She dropped out of high school and went to Germany to be a maid. What was she supposed to know about art? So all she knew was about there being dogs all over the place, and I guess that security was pretty tight. Well, if the woman was a Rockefeller, it would be, wouldn’t it? I didn’t know that about her. I don’t know if Christina knew that. It wouldn’t have meant much to her. Christina was the kindest person I ever knew, but she wasn’t... He was always trying to get her to read, but he didn’t have much luck. Not that she was stupid or anything. She just wasn’t very complicated. She was very loving. And very friendly. Unlike him. I mean, that’s the main thing he was afraid of. No matter where she went, even at the end, like to a