The Sweetness of Forgetting (23 page)

When he finally came home, very late that Friday, he sat her down in the still, damp heat of the Cape Cod night and told her everything.

He had been to the synagogue Rose had grown up in. It pained her deeply when he told her the synagogue had been destroyed during the war, but that they had rebuilt it, as good as new. She knew then that he didn’t understand that when things were rebuilt, they weren’t the same. You could never get back the things that had been destroyed.

“They all died, Rose,” he told her gently, looking into her eyes and holding her hands tightly, as if he were afraid she’d float away, like a helium balloon bound for the heavens. “Your mother, your father, your sisters, your brothers. All of them. I am so sorry.”

“Oh,” was all she could muster.

“I spoke to the rabbi there,” Ted said softly. “He showed me where to find the records. I am so sorry.”

She didn’t say anything.

“Do you want to know what happened to them, Rose?” Ted asked.

“No.” She shook her head, looked away. She could not hear it. She feared it would break her heart in a million pieces. Would she die right here, in front of her husband, with her daughter upstairs, when it shattered? “It is my fault,” she whispered.

“No, Rose!” Ted exclaimed. “You can’t feel that way. None of this is your fault.” He took her in his arms, but her body was stiff, unwilling.

She shook her head slowly against his chest. “I knew,” she whispered. “I knew they were coming for us. And I did not try hard enough to save them.”

She knew she would have to live with that forever. But she didn’t know how. It was why she couldn’t be herself anymore. It was why she had found solace in Rose Durand, and then Rose McKenna. It was impossible to be Rose Picard. Rose Picard had died in Europe with her family long ago.

“It’s not your fault,” Ted said again. “You have to stop blaming yourself.”

She nodded, because she knew it was what was expected of her. She pulled away from him. “And Jacob Levy?” she asked in a flat voice, looking up at long last to meet Ted’s eye.

This time, it was he who looked away. “My dear Rose,” he said. “Your friend Jacob died at Auschwitz. Just before the liberation of the camp.”

Rose blinked a few times. It was as if someone had pushed her head underwater. All of a sudden, she couldn’t see, couldn’t breathe. She gasped for breath. “You are certain?” she asked after a very long while, when air filled her lungs again.

“I’m sorry,” Ted said.

And that had been that. The world became very cold for Rose that day. She nodded and looked away from her husband. She would not cry. She could not cry. She had already died inside, and to cry would be to live. And how could she live without Jacob?

Jacob had always told her that love would save them. And she had believed him. But he’d been wrong. She had been saved, but what good was she without him? What meaning did her life have?

It was at that moment that Josephine appeared from around the corner, wearing the long pink cotton nightgown Rose had sewn for her, clutching her Cynthia doll.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” Josephine asked from the doorway, blinking sleepily at her parents.

“Nothing, my dear,” Rose said, standing and crossing the room
to kneel beside her daughter. She looked at the little girl and reminded herself that this was her family now, that the past was in the past, that she owed it to
this
life to keep going.

But she felt nothing.

After she’d tucked Josephine back into bed, singing her a lullaby her own mother had sung to her so many years before, she had lain beside Ted in the dark until his chest rose and fell in slumber and she could feel him slipping away into his dreams.

She rose softly, silently, and moved toward the hall. She climbed the narrow staircase to the small widow’s walk atop their house, and she emerged into the still night.

The moon was full, and it hung heavy over Cape Cod Bay, which Rose could see over the rooftops. The pale lunar light reflected on the water, and if Rose looked down, she could almost believe that the sea was lit from within. But she wasn’t looking down. Tonight, she was searching the heavens for the stars she had named.
Mama. Papa. Helene. Claude. Alain. David. Danielle.

“I am sorry,” she whispered to the sky. “I am so sorry.”

There was no answer. She could hear, in the near distance, the waves lapping at the shore. The sky was silent.

She searched the sky, murmuring apologies, until dawn began to break on the eastern horizon. Still, she could not find him. Was this her fate? Was he lost to her forever?

“Jacob, where are you?” she cried out to the sky.

But there was no reply.

Chapter
Fourteen

T
he air in Paris becomes very still as darkness falls. First, the sky begins to deepen, from the pale, hazy periwinkle of late afternoon to the deepening cerulean of evening, streaked with tangerine and gold at the horizon. As the stars begin to poke holes in the blanket of dusk, the wispy clouds hold on to the disappearing sunset, turning shades of ruby and rose. Finally, as sapphire fades to night, the lights of Paris come on, as twinkling and endless as stars. I stand on the Pont des Arts with Alain, watching in awe as the Eiffel Tower begins to sparkle with a million tiny white lights against the velvet sky.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” I murmur. Alain had suggested a walk, because he needed a break from speaking about the past. I’m eager to hear the story of Jacob, but I don’t want to push him. I have to keep reminding myself that Alain is eighty, and these must be painful, long-buried memories.

We’re leaning against the railing of the bridge, looking west, and as he folds his hand gently over mine, I can feel it trembling. “Your grandmother used to say the same thing,” he says softly. “She would take me here when I was a boy, before the occupation,
and tell me that the sunset over the Seine was God’s show, put on just for us.”

I feel tears in my eyes and shake my head, trying to rid myself of them, for they blur the perfect view.

“Whenever I feel alone,” Alain says, “I come here. I’ve spent years dreaming that Rose was with God, lighting the sky for me. I never imagined that all this time, she’s been alive.”

“We have to try to call her again,” I say. We had tried her number before leaving for a walk, but there’d been no answer; she was likely napping, something she seemed to be doing more of lately. “We have to tell her that I’ve found you. Even though she might not understand or remember.”

“Of course,” Alain says. “And then I will come with you. Back to Cape Cod.”

I turn and stare at him. “Really? You’ll come with me?”

He smiles. “I’ve spent seventy years without a family,” he says. “I do not want to waste another moment. I must see Rose.”

I smile into the darkness.

When the last rays of the sun have seeped into the horizon and the stars are all out, Alain loops his arm through mine and we begin to walk slowly back the way we came, toward the palatial Louvre, which is aglow in muted light, reflecting on the river beneath us.

“I will tell you about Jacob now,” Alain says softly as we begin to cross through the courtyard of the Louvre, toward the rue de Rivoli.

I look at him and nod. I realize I’m holding my breath.

Alain takes a deep breath and begins, his voice slow and halting. “I was with Rose when she met him. It was the end of 1940, and although Paris had already fallen to the Germans, life was still normal enough that we could believe it would all be okay. Things were beginning to get bad, but we never could have imagined what was in store.”

We turn right on the rue de Rivoli, which is still crowded with
people although the stores have closed. Couples stroll through the darkness, holding hands, whispering to each other, and for a moment, I can imagine Mamie and this Jacob walking the same street seventy years ago. I shiver.

“It was love at first sight, something I have never seen before or since,” Alain continues. “I would not believe in it if I had not seen it for myself. But from the very first moment, it was as if they had found the other half of their souls.”

As corny as it sounds, there’s something in the gravity of Alain’s voice that makes me believe him.

“Jacob was with us always from that first moment,” Alain continues. “My father did not care for him, for he was from a lower class. My father was a doctor, while Jacob’s father was a factory laborer. But Jacob was kind, polite, and intelligent, so my parents tolerated him. He was always taking the time to teach me things, and to play with David and Danielle.”

Alain pauses, and I imagine he’s thinking about his little brother and sister, lost so long ago. We stroll in silence for a while, and I wonder what it’s like to entirely lose one’s innocence at such a young age, to never be able to retrieve it. We pass the Hôtel de Ville, Paris’s palatial city hall, which is bathed in pale light. Alain takes my hand as we cross the street, and as we make our way north into the Marais, he doesn’t let go. I realize I don’t want him to. I’ve been missing a family too, now that my mother is gone and my grandmother’s memory has all but vanished.

“When the anti-Jewish laws began being imposed, and as things became worse for us, Jacob began to become more vocal about his opposition to the Nazis, and my parents were concerned,” Alain continues. “My father, you see, wanted to believe that we would be immune, because we were wealthy. He wanted to believe that people were blowing everything out of proportion, that the Nazis did not truly intend us harm. Jacob, on the other hand, understood exactly what was happening. He was part of an underground movement. He believed the Nazis
were coming to erase us all from the face of the earth. He was right, of course.

“I look back now, and I wonder why my parents could not see things more clearly,” Alain says. “I think they didn’t
want
to believe that our country could turn its back on us. They wanted to believe the best. And when Jacob spoke the truth, they would not hear it. My father was outraged and accused him of bringing lies and propaganda into our home.

“Rose and I were the only ones who believed him.” Alain’s voice is hollow, almost a whisper. “And that is what saved us both.”

We walk in silence for a little while more. Our footfalls echo off the stone walls around us.

“Where’s Jacob now?” I ask finally.

Alain stops in his tracks and looks at me. He shakes his head. “I do not know,” he says. “I do not know if he is still alive.”

My heart drops in my chest.

“The last time we spoke was 1952, when Jacob set off for America,” Alain says.

I stare at him. “He moved to America?”

Alain nods. “Yes. I don’t know where in America. But of course that was nearly sixty years ago. He would be eighty-seven now. It’s very possible he is not alive anymore. Remember, he spent two years in Auschwitz, Hope. That takes a toll.”

I don’t trust myself to speak until we arrive back at Alain’s building. I can’t fully wrap my mind around the idea that my grandmother and the apparent love of her life have been living in the same country for sixty years and never knew the other had survived. But if Jacob had found her during the war, my mother might never have been born, and of course I wouldn’t have been either. So had things worked out the way they were supposed to? Or was my very existence a slap in the face of true love?

“I have to try to find him,” I say as Alain punches his code into the keypad to the right. He holds the door open for me.

“Yes,” he agrees simply.

I follow him up to his apartment. I feel like I’m in a fog.

“Shall we call Rose again now?” he asks once he’s locked the door behind us.

I nod again. “But remember, she has good days and bad ones,” I remind him. “It’s very possible that she won’t understand who you are. She’s different than she used to be.”

He smiles. “We’re all different than we used to be,” he says. “I understand.”

I check my watch. It’s nearly ten, so it would be nearly four on the Cape, late enough in the day that Mamie is probably sundowning; it’s common for dementia patients to be less lucid as the day wears on. “You sure you don’t mind if I call from your phone?” I ask. “It’s expensive.”

Alain laughs. “If the cost were a million euros, I would still say yes.”

I smile, pick up the receiver, and punch in 001, then Mamie’s number. I listen to the line ring six times before I hang up. “That’s strange,” I say. I check my watch again. Mamie doesn’t participate in the social activities at her home—she says bingo is for children—so there’s no reason she shouldn’t be in her room. “Maybe I dialed wrong.”

I try again, and this time, I let it ring eight times before I hang up. Alain is frowning at me, and although there’s a bad feeling in the pit of my stomach, I force a smile. “She’s not answering, but maybe my daughter took her out for a walk or something.”

Alain nods, but he looks concerned.

“Do you mind if I try her?” I ask. “My daughter?”

“Of course,” Alain says. “Please.”

I dial 001 and then Annie’s cell number. She picks up after half a ring. “Mom?” she asks, and I can tell from her voice that something’s wrong.