Ah. “Which is why you care so much about if our grandparents had an affair?”
He opened his mouth to respond, but we were interrupted when a girl bounced up. “Noah!” She settled the full force of her smile on him. “What’s up?”
Noah and I turned to her in surprise. “Uh,” he said. “Just talking.”
“About what?”
We exchanged glances, and I felt a familiar closing of the ranks, a keep-it-in-the-family emotion. “Nothing,” Noah said, and we both smiled at the girl. “This is Abigail.”
“Hey.” She barely acknowledged me before returning her attention to Noah. “We need you to settle something.”
“Oh.” He glanced at me. “Sure.”
I wrapped my arms around my waist, oddly bereft. “I’ll see you later, then.”
After Noah had followed the girl away, my friends came up to me. “What happened there?” Jane asked.
“To be perfectly honest, I have no idea.” I watched as Noah’s group enfolded him. “Just a little chat about preppiness and identity.”
“That’s super weird,” Stella said, then waggled her brows. “Are you going to keep his shirt?”
I pushed her shoulder lightly. “You’re weird.”
I kept the shirt.
Nine
June 20, 1955
Sometimes I miss you like the sun must miss the moon, locked in orbit but unable to move closer. It’s a physical ache. There’s a tension in my shoulder blades and my back, a stiffness in my neck. Being near you, touching you, relaxes me. But away from you I carry the entire world locked in my muscles and I never breathe as deeply as I do near you, as easily as on the island. Sometimes I wrap my arms around my body and pretend it’s you holding me, your hands on my back.
It never really works, though.
A few days later, I woke early. The island was hazy with heat, and the sun weighed heavily when I stepped outside. I splurged on a ride share, the only way to arrive at the Barbanel mansion without being a sweat-soaked mess. Birds warbled cheerfully when I climbed out of the car, and the ocean’s tide wove in and out of their song. Before me, at the end of the circular drive of crushed shells, loomed Golden Doors, gray and elegant and calm. This house revealed no weaknesses, gave up no secrets. Golden Doors would go proudly into the sea itself should the shore give up in its eternal battle against the encroaching ocean, with nary a word of complaint. It made me feel like riffraff, small and unwanted.
I climbed the shallow steps to the veranda and rang the doorbell. I should probably stop assigning emotions to inanimate objects, especially active dislike. (At least Sad Elephant loved me, despite his own internal struggles.)
“Hey.” Noah appeared in the doorway, dressed in sweatpants and a T-shirt, both branded with a high school crew team. Ah. Crew explained his perfectly sculpted arms.
Not that I paid attention to said arms. “Hi.”
“Want to come in?”
I nodded, shy, as though I hadn’t yelled at this boy multiple times. Different, I supposed, to be on his home turf after deciding to play nice.
“So what’s the plan, Abigail Schoenberg?” he asked as we stepped into the airy foyer of the mansion. I hadn’t been in the entryway before, and I paused to take in the high ceilings and massive staircase. “Where do you want to start your tour?”
I couldn’t get over the unease this house wrought in me. “How about outside?”
We cut through the living room where I’d served champagne a few weeks ago, and out the French doors into the lawn. It was no less impressive sans white tents and sound systems than it had been with them; better, perhaps, with just the undulating roll of green, the thick gardens, and the ocean on the horizon. “Can we see the rose gardens? And the gazebo?” At his sharp glance, I added, “I read about them in the letters.”
“Seriously?”
“You can read them, you know.”
“Why, when you’re already telling me the interesting parts?”
I let out a half laugh. “Not all the interesting parts.”
“What do you mean?”
I pressed my lips together and shook my head, my cheeks warming.
His brows rose up. “What?”
“Nothing.” One of the lines from the letters formed, unbidden, in my mind. I wish I could see you surrounded by roses, naked and drenched in moonlight.
Hard pass on sharing. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Flowers edged the lawn: romantic, soft-looking pinks against the dark green foliage; summer lilacs of all colors, vibrant magenta and pure white and gentle purple. A monarch butterfly landed on a plant with clustered pink-purple stars. “They like milkweed,” Noah said. “The monarch population’s declining like crazy, so if you want to help, plant milkweed.”
I glanced at him, impressed but unwilling to let him know it. “Pro tips from Noah.”
“Someone’s got to save the butterflies.”
“I take it your secret passion is entomology, not economics?”
He shot me a wry glance and led me through an arch in the dense privet hedge. We entered a winding maze of trees and bushes, covering the expanse from the lawn to the dunes. The trees here were spindly, salt-warped things, with peeling bark and thin, twisted trunks. Their needles looked hard and sharp, as likely to prick blood as Sleeping Beauty’s spindle. “What are these?”
“Junipers. Their berries are used to make gin.”
“And what about those?” I nodded at orange-red blooms at the base of the trees.
“Don’t you know, bookstore girl?” He plucked one and tucked it in my hair, and I stilled, utterly shocked. I also felt bizarrely afraid of startling him away, because it turned out I liked Noah Barbanel touching my hair, even if he was teasing me, throwing me off my guard because he could. But maybe he wasn’t. I’d never seen him so at ease. “They’re poppies.”
Poppies, a field of which lured Dorothy to sleep.
Once more I wondered if I’d wandered off the path, into Oz or Narnia or some strange world where the rules weren’t mine and I didn’t know when I broke them. I swallowed and lifted my chin, hoping to brazen through. “No roses, though.”
Noah smiled and led me deeper into the gardens, down a path of hedges, the ocean peeking in and out of sight. Flagstones occasionally dotted the path, more a suggestion than a demarcation. His voice floated back toward me. “Botany.”
I hurried after him. “What?”
He didn’t answer.
It clicked. “You’d study botany instead of business? Why?”
He looked back. “I want to work on preserving biodiversity. If we can understand why species are going extinct, we can try to prevent it.”
I nodded. “Thus, the monarchs.”
“Thus, the monarchs.” He smiled, a funny, almost sad smile.
“You don’t think it’s too late? I feel like everything I read about the environment is doom-and-gloom.”
“I don’t know.” He touched the trunk of the tree beside him. “I think we need to try, no matter what. I think everyone has a responsibility to do whatever they can.”
“We could just let the world burn.”
“We can’t.” He pinned me with an intense, searing glance, which slowly lessened. “You’re joking.”
I bit back a smile. “Yeah. I think that’s actually kind of a noble way to think about things.”
He scoffed, the color in his cheeks heightening, and turned away from me. “Come on,” he called over his shoulder, voice muffled as he ducked under a gap in the hedge.
I followed him into a wide, open space. Roses bloomed everywhere, a hundred kinds and colors, circling a gazebo in the very center of the clearing. I stopped. “It’s beautiful.”
“My grandmother’s a gardener,” he said, stroking the petal of a shoulder-high rose.
�
�Did she—make all of this?” But no—O’ma had been in this rose garden at seventeen years old, standing in the center of the gazebo. Unearned nostalgia filtered through me. How strange to walk through the same gardens she had.
“My great-grandmother—my grandpa’s mom—designed it. But my grandmother added some of the newer rose varieties.”
While Edward’s current memories of O’ma in this garden had to be blurred by years with his wife, children, and grandchildren, I could only see this place through the lens of his letters. I wondered if O’ma’s memories of being here had been crystallized, since she’d had nothing to overwrite them. Had they stayed with her throughout the decades, bright and clearly defined? I wish I could see you surrounded by roses . . .
It was too much—the setting, the inherent romantic nature of a rose garden and a gazebo. It made me strangely sad. I lifted my gaze, and it snagged on text carved into the inside of the gazebo’s wooden cupola. Quien no sabe de mar, no sabe de mal.
Noah caught me looking. “‘He who knows nothing of the sea, knows nothing of suffering.’ It’s an old Ladino proverb.”
“Ladino?”
“A combination of Spanish and Hebrew.”
“Very Jewish, a proverb about suffering.”
“We like to stay on brand.”
I smiled briefly, but it fell away. It was too bittersweet, the saying, this place, Ruth and Edward. “We should go back.”
“Should we?” He looked at me, dark gaze intense, not a hint of teasing humor in his voice or expression.
My breath shuddered. I couldn’t get a read on him today. Was he playing a game with me? But why? He had what he wanted; I’d promised not to talk to his grandparents for a month.
But maybe rich boys played games I didn’t understand, games with roses and gazebos and summer girls. Part of me wanted to play, too, but I didn’t know how, and I wasn’t sure I’d be able to stop if I started. “Yes. We should.”
And I turned away before I changed my mind.
* * *
Golden Doors rambled. Its interior reminded me of a Diana Wynne Jones book about a house whose many doors led to different places. We began in the modern addition, but quickly moved past it. It felt like we were winding back in time. The modern kitchen was connected to a semi-modern pantry, which led into a formal dining room from a much older era. A massive chandelier hung above a heavy oak table, and candlesticks decorated the sideboards.
“We almost never eat here,” Noah said. “Most of the time we’re in the modern section since there’s more light and it has the sea view. But occasionally we have formal dinners here.”
“Did your grandfather eat here? Growing up?” I tried to envision my grandmother sitting at one of the seats. Why hadn’t the two of them felt like siblings? Surely she’d been treated like one of the family, hadn’t she? “Or, wait, they were mostly in New York.”
“Yeah. My great-grandparents moved there in the 1920s. Before then, though, the family lived here full-time.”
For some reason, that surprised me. I’d imagined they’d started living on Nantucket, bought Golden Doors, in the 1950s or later—after accumulating their wealth in the modern era. “How long’s your family been here?”
“They came from New Bedford in the 1800s.”
“New Bedford? The . . . whaling town?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, I need help. How did Jews wind up in a nineteenth-century American whaling town?”
He laughed. “We’re Sephardic. My family moved from Morocco to New Bedford in the early 1700s.”
“You can trace your family back to the 1700s?” I asked indignantly “And you’re mad I’m trying to find out about my family history from sixty years ago?”
“I don’t object to your goals, but your methods,” he said loftily.
“How’d they end up here?”
“They were accountants—they’d been accountants in Fez, too—and New Bedford had strong Nantucket connections, because of the whaling trade. So when Nantucket boomed, my family opened a branch of the firm here. And built Golden Doors.”
As he spoke, he led me into the next rooms—two parlors with no real purpose, and a music room. A baby grand showed signs of recent use, sheet music scattered around, the bench tilted out. “Do you play?” I asked.
“My dad does.”
“Not you?”
“Tin ear,” he said lightly.
I remembered mentions of piano in the letters. “Your grandfather plays, too?”
“Yeah.”
“But you didn’t want to learn?”
“Come on, you’ll like this.” He moved into a hall and pushed open another door, gesturing for me to enter first.
Okay. So this boy had zero desire to talk about his family.
“Oh.” Books lined the walls. A fireplace stood on the far wall, a painting of the sea above it. Cozy couches and brocaded armchairs were scattered about the thick carpets. Foggy glass obscured the windows. A biography of Mark Twain sat on the round table beside one armchair, along with a box of Stoned Wheat Thins.
“It’s wonderful. I always wanted a library.”
A smile tugged at his lips. “I’m not surprised.”
“What can I say, I enjoy being a stereotype.”
Next, he led me upstairs, to a large, elegant room whose modern couches and entertainment system couldn’t disguise its original grandiosity. Board games and books stacked shelves. “This is where the cousins hang out.”
“How many of you are there? Where’s everyone right now?”
“Anyone ever tell you you’re nosy?”
“Literally my entire life.” I crossed to the large windows overlooking the grounds and distant, crashing sea. I couldn’t image my grandmother growing up here. “This view’s stunning.”
He came and stood behind me, shoulder only a few inches from my own. “There’s twelve cousins on my dad’s side.”
“And you’re the oldest.”
He nodded.
“Must be a lot of pressure.”
“You never give up, do you?”
“How would I learn anything if I did? Is it?”
He hesitated for long enough I thought he might stay silent. Instead, he gave a tiny nod. “It’s not not pressure.”
I waited, but he didn’t say anything else. “I just don’t get it,” I said. “I mean, I understand how your family would want you to go into business if you wanted something they considered fluffy, but biodiversity? No one could stay that’s not important.”
“Sure,” he said, an edge of bitterness in his tone, “but why should I be the one to do it? Other people will become scientists. Not everyone has a family business they’re expected to join. Weren’t we just talking about how rich people can raise awareness of causes? If I’d be better at making money than at being a botanist, shouldn’t I make the money and donate it? Isn’t it selfish to do what I’m interested in if I could do something else and have a bigger impact?”
I’d never had to think about my own future quite so intensely. “I don’t know.”
“Neither do I,” he said, the bitterness stronger now, like it’d been brewing for a very long time. “Though my family has a definite opinion.”
Then he took in a deep breath and exhaled it slowly, forcing his shoulders to relax, like he’d spent years teaching himself to calm down and dismiss his frustrations. He gave me a practiced smile and a firm nod. “Let’s look for your grandma.”
* * *
We wound back downstairs, into the wide hall between the old and new additions, where Edward Barbanel’s study lay. I hovered on the brink of entering. “Will your family get mad if we go through this stuff?”
“Only if they find out.” He shot me a lightning-fast grin. “My grandparents are at the club. They’re not going to catch us.”
We pushed open the heavy velvet curtains shielding the deep window alcove, letting light flood the room. Then we pulled the scrapbooks from the shelves and sat on the red carpet. “If she came when she was a kid, we probably want to start with the late 1930s.”
“Let me find the one where I saw her picture—then I can show you what she looks like.” I pulled out the 1947–1951 album. My fingers tingled as I opened the green cover. Had O’ma listened to Edward play piano in the music room? Had she ever been in this study with his parents, being disciplined, being disappointed?
Noah sat on the floor beside me, so close our knees brushed. In the silence, I could hear the sounds of our breaths, the turning of the pages. I scanned each black-and-white photo until I paused at the still I’d seen before. “Here.”
She looked up at us, laughing with parted lips, frozen in time.
Noah bent forward, curls falling into his face. “You look a little similar.”
“It’s the eyes, isn’t it? I hadn’t realized we have the same eyes.” I took a picture of the photo. “Do you think your family has any papers about her?”
“What do you mean?”
“Like how she came here? How she was placed with them? I want to find out where she was from, if she had any relatives who survived. I want to be able to trace our family back as far as you can.” I turned the page, hoping for more photos. “We know her parents’ names, and they’re in the database of people killed at Auschwitz, but there’s no other info. If you google my great-grandmother, nothing comes up. Or, like, one German girl’s Instagram account. Nothing else. The records say they were deported from Luxembourg, so they must have gone there from Germany after sending O’ma off, but there’s no records of where they’re originally from.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “I’ll see what I can find.”
“Thanks. Oh, look.” I paused on another photo of my grandmother, maybe fourteen, sitting on a sofa next to a grown woman.
Noah peered at her. “I think that’s my great-grandmother.”
The Summer of Lost Letters Page 9