The Sweetness of Forgetting (46 page)

“Did you marry my grandmother because she was already pregnant?” I venture.

“No.” Jacob shakes his head vehemently. “We married because we loved each other. We married because we feared the war would tear us apart. We married because we knew we were destined for each other. The baby, I believe, was conceived on the night of our wedding, the first time we were together in that way.”

I close my eyes and absorb this. My mother hadn’t been the product of an affair between teenagers; she’d been conceived in marriage. She’d been the result of the consummation of the love between Mamie and Jacob. She, and then I—and then Annie—were all that remained of the ill-fated union between two soul mates.

“Don’t you see?” Jacob asks after a long silence. “I was right all along. Rose has been alive. I knew it in my heart. And now, finally, I will see her again.”

Jacob falls asleep just after we pass through Providence, and in the waning evening light, Gavin and I sit in silence, each lost in our own worlds.

I don’t know what’s going through Gavin’s mind, but his face looks sad. It’s how I’m feeling too. I’m not sure why, mere hours away from a reunion that’s been nearly seventy years coming, I
feel emptiness instead of jubilation. I suppose it’s because all that was lost seems to overwhelm what was gained. Yes, Mamie had a life of freedom and safety. Yes, she gave birth to my mother, who gave birth to me, carrying on the family she’d promised Jacob she’d protect. And yes, Jacob had survived all these years, all these miles. But they had each carried their burdens alone, when they didn’t have to. Because of misunderstandings, or perhaps lies, they had each lost the kind of love that I’d never believed in before.

But now I do. And it terrifies me, because I know I’ve never known that kind of love. Not even close.

Gavin pulls over for gas just past Fall River, and as Jacob continues to sleep in the backseat, I step away from the car and call Annie. I tell her we’ve found Jacob and are on the way back with him in the car. I smile as she squeals and goes to tell Alain. I can hear his exclamation of excitement in the background too. I assure her we’ll be there in two hours or less and that Jacob will tell her the whole story then.

“Mom, I can’t believe you did it,” she says.

“It wasn’t just me,” I say. “It was you, honey. And Gavin too.” I glance over to the car, where he’s pumping gas, his back turned to me. He reaches up absentmindedly to scratch the top of his head, and I smile. “It was Gavin too,” I repeat.

“Thanks, Mom,” Annie says anyhow. There’s a warmth in her voice that I haven’t heard in a long time, and I’m grateful for it. “So what’s he like, anyways?”

I tell her about finding Jacob in Battery Park, and about how he’s kind and polite and has loved Mamie all these years.

“I knew it,” she says softly. “I knew he’d never stopped loving her.”

“You were right,” I say. “See you in a few hours, sweetheart.”

I hang up, and as I walk slowly back to the car, I look above me, where the first stars of twilight are beginning to poke holes through the sky. I think of all the nights I saw Mamie sitting at
the window, waiting for the same stars, and I wonder whether this is what she’s been looking for, the love of her life, who’d been here all along.

As I come up beside Gavin, he looks down and smiles gently at me. “You okay?” he asks. I watch as he removes the nozzle from his gas tank, replaces it back on its lever, and screws the cap back on.

“Yeah,” I say. I glance into the backseat, where Jacob is sleeping soundly. I’m suddenly overwhelmed, and there are tears streaming down my cheeks. “It’s real,” I say. “All of it.” I don’t expect him to understand me, but somehow, he does.

“I know,” he murmurs. He pulls me into an embrace, and as I rest my head against his chest and wrap my arms around him, I can feel myself letting go. I cry as he holds me, and I’m not quite sure whether I’m crying for Jacob and Mamie, or for myself.

We stand there for a very long time without speaking, for no words are needed. I know now that the prince is real, and that the people who love you the most
can
save you, and that fate might have a bigger plan for all of us than we understand. I know now that fairy tales can come true after all, if only you have the courage to keep believing.

Chapter
Twenty-eight

Rose

The water Rose was swimming in had begun to turn colors now—muted, milky colors that reminded Rose of the paintings by Claude Monet that she’d loved so much as a girl. There were water lilies and weeping willows in the murky deep, and sometimes poplars casting shadows across the surface, far above her too.

When she was a girl, Rose had always longed to go to Giverny, the place where Monet had painted many of his famous works; she had believed it must be the most beautiful place in the world.
It was only when she was older that she’d understood the place itself wasn’t more beautiful than anything she’d seen; it was the way Monet had captured it with his paints and his canvases. Once, she and Jacob had gone to Argenteuil, just outside Paris, where Monet had lived and painted for a time, and Rose had been disappointed to realize that the town, while beautiful, was not as extraordinary as Monet had made it seem.

Beauty, she had realized then, was all in the perception. After the war, she’d found, with a bit of shock, that she was no longer able to perceive that sort of beauty in anything. Although she was dimly aware that the world was still beautiful, it was as if the edges were suddenly blurred, and all the light was gone.

And now, as the silken colors swirled around her in these mysterious depths that she couldn’t seem to escape from, she floated and listened. There were voices again, far away, above the surface of this great and gentle sea. She tried to will herself toward the surface; it suddenly felt very important to know who was there. Had she heard something different this time?

As she floated slowly up, closer to the surface, cradled by the soft waters, the colors suddenly reminded her of the dress she’d made for her secret wedding day. April 14, 1942. A Tuesday, a date she would never forget. She’d gotten the fabrics from her friend Jacqueline, the only one who knew what she and Jacob were planning. But Jacqueline had been taken away the first week in March, arrested for daring to be foreign and Jewish. It was just a sign of the horrors to come, but Rose hadn’t known that yet. Not on the beautiful day of her marriage.

The dress was many layers of gauzy material, and it had taken her more than a month to sew it in the darkness of her room at night. When her sister Helene would ask what she was doing, she would hide the dress beneath her blankets and make an excuse. She’d always believed that on some level, Helene knew. And although Helene’s tight-lipped disapproval of Jacob bothered her, Rose also felt that in the blacked-out darkness of night, Helene was glad that
one of them, at least, had found an escape from the sadness that swirled around them.

Rose had not wanted to wear white to her wedding, although she was, of course, still pure. But white represented innocence, and there was nothing innocent in Paris anymore.

And so she had arrived in her dress of many colors, all of them shades that reminded her of the sky at dawn, which was then her favorite time of day. Milky blue. Soft rose. Buttery yellow. Pale apricot. Foggy lavender. A thousand layers, it seemed, that swirled around Rose with a lightness that reminded her of clouds.

“You are the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen,” Jacob had told her when she entered the room. And from the way he’d looked at her, she’d known he meant it with all his heart. Their eyes had met then, and in his gaze, she could see everything that lay ahead of them: a life together somewhere far from Paris, and of course children, many children. They would laugh and tell stories and grow old in each other’s arms. Life stretched before them, endless and happy in that moment. And Rose allowed herself to believe in it.