The Summer of Lost Letters
Page 18
Oh my god. I was straight-up staring at his mouth. Just focusing on his lips. His very nice lips.
He popped the cherry back out, a knot threaded in the center.
I started laughing and couldn’t stop. “Oh my god. Where did you even learn that?”
His lips tilted up the tiniest bit. “I’m very good with my tongue.”
“Noah!”
“What?” His eyes danced. “Just stating facts.”
“Sure.”
“I can’t help it if you have a dirty mind.”
“I don’t have a dirty mind.”
He raised his brows. “No? What’s in your mind right now, then?”
I buried my head in my hands, blushing furiously. “Noah.”
He laughed.
“Ugh!” I scooped up some more ice cream to drown my woes in.
“You have some—uh—” He reached out and brushed at my nose. “Some whipped cream there.”
Strange, you’d think my blazing-hot face would have melted any cream. “Oops.”
“It’s cute.” He was looking at me again, but this time without the wicked humor of before. His gaze softened.
I wanted this boy.
No avoiding it. No pretending otherwise. Every nook and cranny, from my heart to my ribs to my fingertips, wanted him. Madly. Desperately. Unavoidably.
Of course I’d noticed a ridiculous crush growing. But I’d thought I’d had a hold on it. Crushes could be shunted aside and kept under wraps. This—this full-body desire—threatened to knock me over. I didn’t have the time for complex, giant emotions: those were scary and difficult and blotted out reason. I didn’t want to deal with them, not this summer, when I wanted to focus on finding out more about my grandmother. Sure, I’d been prepared to have a fling, but a fling was very different than obsessive longing.
So I couldn’t handle Noah Barbanel looking at me the way he was right now. I couldn’t handle opening up to emotions capable of consuming me.
I pushed my chair back and stood. “Time to head out.”
He blinked. “We don’t have—”
“I feel like walking a bit.” I pitched my sundae cup into a nearby trash can. “Let’s go.”
* * *
Nantucket’s Unitarian Universal meeting house didn’t look too different from the UU church where my Girl Scout troop had met growing up. It had red pews and white walls and, every Friday night during the summer, held services for the island’s small Jewish community.
I usually found temple boring in a familiar way, like eating oatmeal or unloading the dishwasher—occasionally tedious, rarely exciting, sometimes pleasant. At services, I’d see my friends from Hebrew school, and sometimes we’d sneak out to wander the halls and examine artwork by the little kids or the entry hall’s Tree of Life mosaic. We had a massive congregation, made to accommodate five towns’ worth of Reform Jews, at least on the High Holidays.
This congregation had to be tiny, which made me think texting wouldn’t fly, nor would silently singing the songs in the back of the siddur, which was how I’d spent far too many hours entertaining myself instead of paying attention to sermons. (“My Country, ’Tis of Thee,” verses 1–4, looking at you.)
Noah led me into the back halls, where Rabbi Leah Abrams had her office. He tapped lightly on her open door.
“Noah!” She rose from behind a desk piled high with books, and came forward to hug him. She was tall and on the skinny side, with a pretty purple scarf tied around her bald head. Placing her hands on the sides of his shoulders, she leaned back to see him better. “You look so grown-up!”
His cheeks pinkened and I bit the inside of my own so I didn’t smile too hard.
“Your grandmother tells me you’re going to Harvard next year.”
“Yeah. I am.”
“How exciting! Do you think you’ll get to work at the Arboretum?”
“I’m actually studying econ, not botany.”
“Oh.” She sounded surprised. “Well! Very useful.” She turned her smile on me and lowered her voice confidentially. “I studied theater. Not the most lucrative career.”
“I’m thinking about history,” I said, which surprised me, since I almost entirely tried to avoid talking to adults about college. “I’m Abigail.”
“Yes, of course, come sit. It’s your grandmother’s past you’re interested in?”
“Yeah.” We sat in two matching chairs across from her. “She came over from Germany in 1939. She was only four, so she didn’t remember much about her family . . .”
The rabbi nodded thoughtfully as we filled her in. When we finished, she pressed her finger tips together, hands splayed wide. “All right. Interesting. I do have a theory of where you should look next. Have you two learned about Kindertransport?”
The only kinder I knew was garten. I shook my head, as did Noah.
“Kristallnacht?”
This time we nodded. I’d learned about Kristallnacht in history class, taught about the event coolly and emotionlessly, like it was just one more bullet point to memorize—and perhaps to most people, it was. 1938, Kristallnacht, Night of Broken Glass: Jews were murdered and arrested throughout Germany and its territories; businesses were smashed; and almost three hundred synagogues were destroyed.
O’ma had never explicitly said she’d been sent away from Germany because of Kristallnacht, but the dates lined up.
“Kristallnacht made the international community sit up and take note. A lot of things can be brushed under the rug—but not rampant murder. Jewish, Quaker, and British leaders went to the prime minister, requesting England allow in Jewish minors. A bill was prepared the next day. It passed Parliament quickly, and three weeks after Kristallnacht, the first transport of children from Germany to Britain arrived. All in all, ten thousand children under seventeen came from Europe to live in the UK.”
“So we also did this?” Noah asked. “Took in kids?”
She smiled wryly. “Not in quite the same way. Americans did try to pass a similar bill to England’s, but it got shot down.”
Welp. “Why?”
“A lot of people thought the refugees were someone else’s problem—they were Jewish, and the States didn’t want more Jews, and the Nazis were a European problem. However, some people refused to sit by quietly. These people started an unofficial American Kindertransport program, privately bringing kids to the States. They placed children with foster families until they were twenty-one. These private citizens saved over a thousand kids, who’ve become known as the One Thousand Children.”
One thousand children. A huge amount, though not as many as ten thousand. Still, one thousand children, saved, without government intervention. One thousand lives saved though the acts of ordinary people.
“I thought I’d put you in touch with my friend, a postdoc in modern Jewish history,” the rabbi said. “She’ll know how to find out if your grandmother had any connection to the group.”
“Yes, please,” I said. “Thank you so much.”
“Great.” She glanced at the clock. “Time to start getting ready. Are you staying for services?” She read our expressions and laughed. “You don’t have to.”
I opened my mouth, and Noah kicked me under the table. “I think we’re going to head out. Thanks so much for seeing us.”
“Of course. Come by anytime. Very nice to meet you, Abby.”
We left, and I glanced at Noah as we walked through the halls. “So what’s the Arboretum?”
“It’s a park in Boston.”
“A . . . tree park?”
His lips quirked up. “I mean, you’re not wrong.”
“The ‘etum’ part gave it away,” I teased. “What an overused synonym for park. People are always running around saying, ‘Etum the cah in Hahvahd yahd.’”
“You’re ridiculous,” he said, laughin
g and pushing open the door to outside. He shook his head at me as I beamed up at him, thrilled with my terrible joke.
Noah stilled.
“What?” My head swiveled in the same direction—and I saw his parents walking directly toward us. I, too, froze, deerlike. “Oh no.”
“Abigail!” Noah’s mom paused as we reached each other. “How nice to see you again. And Noah. How unexpected. What are you doing here?”
“Abigail’s concerned for my spiritual well-being.”
His mom smiled nervously.
“He’s joking,” I said quickly. “We’re . . .” Oops. I didn’t actually want to bring up my grandmother. “Stopping by.”
“Are you staying for services?”
Noah shook his head. “Nope.”
His father spoke for the first time, tone rich with disapproval. “Why not?”
“We have plans already,” Noah said. He took my hand, and I wasn’t sure if it was for support or to pull me along if he started running.
“Hm.” Harry Barbanel’s focus landed on me. “And how is your . . . research . . . going, Abigail?”
I didn’t like Harry Barbanel calling me by my full name. It felt like an attack, instead of sweet, as it did when Noah used it. And my research? Well. I didn’t want to talk about it with him at all, not with the memory of how he’d beckoned Noah back into Golden Doors after the disastrous dinner, the way Noah had gone stiff and retreated into the Barbanel ranks. I gave Mr. Barbanel a closed-lipped smile. “Good.”
Mrs. Barbanel tucked her hand around her husband’s elbow. Possibly she, too, was prepared to pull her partner along. “Have a nice night, you two. We’ll see you later.”
We waited until they’d disappeared into the meeting house and we’d walked a minute before talking. Even then, I kept my words low-pitched. “Did your parents say anything about the dinner last week? What do they know about my, um, research?”
He shot me a side glance. “Pretty much everything now. We had a family discussion.”
“Are you serious?” My voice rose several levels. “What does a ‘family discussion’ entail?”
“Not much. My dad pulled me into my grandfather’s study with my mom and grandma. My grandfather told my parents about how Ruth grew up with him, but not much else. Afterwards, my dad asked me why Grandpa had been so upset and Grandma so—weird—and—” He shrugged.
“And what?”
“I told him about the letters. About Edward and Ruth. About how I’m trying to help you find out about your family history.”
Emotions muddled together in my chest, baking soda and vinegar, the collision an explosion I didn’t know how to deal with. Of course I wanted Noah to talk to his dad. But I didn’t love Harry Barbanel knowing about my search—maybe because he so obviously disapproved of me, and I hated the squicky, dirty feeling being disapproved of gave me.
I guess Noah felt the same whenever he faced his dad.
“What does he think?” I asked. “About you helping me?”
Noah shrugged. “Want to get dinner?”
“Noah!”
He sighed. “He doesn’t love it.”
“I suppose he thinks you should stop me from digging any further.”
He nodded briefly.
“So he probably wasn’t thrilled to see us together here.”
“Probably not.” He grinned at me. “Though on the other hand, my last girlfriend was Catholic, and they were half convinced I’d marry her, so maybe they’re thrilled.”
Two bolts to the chest. One: being compared to a previous girlfriend, as though I might occupy a similar status (why did I overthink everything?). Two: Who was this previous girlfriend? When had they broken up? How could I subtly learn everything about her? “Oh?”
“There’s a place on Main Street named after Moby-Dick I’ve been meaning to try,” Noah said. “Let’s go there.”
So much for the girlfriend-prying. I went along with him into town, our hands still lightly held. “So you told your dad about the romance and the letters—did you also tell him about the necklace?”
Noah glanced at me and briefly paused. “No.”
“No? You hesitated.”
He half laughed. “No. I didn’t think it would be helpful.”
“Because he’d think I was prying even more?”
“It would have gone over really poorly, yeah.” He paused in front of a restaurant’s awning. “Here we are.”
And we went inside, leaving lost necklaces and old girlfriends and disapproving families behind.
* * *
Later, sitting on Mrs. Henderson’s porch as the cicadas sang and the moon shone down, I called Mom.
Mom already knew about Kindertransport, because moms knew about things like Kindertransport and taxes and the ins and outs of health care and whether or not the weird bump on your arm meant you were dying. But she’d never heard about American Kindertransport.
“What qualifies you as being one of these one thousand children?” she asked. “How’s it an organization? It sounds like a loose collection of people with similar stories.”
“I dunno, maybe it’s a broad identifier.”
I could hear her frowning. “But then it could be much more than a thousand, and what would they call it?”
“Maybe it’s about a specific time period or they came over a particular way. I haven’t looked it up yet, but the rabbi gave us the email of her friend who she said researches similar stuff. It sounds sort of like O’ma, right? O’ma’s parents sent her away for safety, right?”
“True.”
I listened to the cicadas for a moment. “Hey, Mom?”
“Mm?”
“Why don’t you ever talk about O’ma?”
“I talk about her.”
“No, but like—about what she was like as a mother.”
Mom was silent a long moment. “I don’t know. I guess it was sort of . . . difficult. It wasn’t fun.”
“Why do you think that was the case?”
“I think she had a lot more to think about than American parenting norms. I don’t blame her. And she didn’t really have a model.”
Except for Edward’s mother, I supposed. “Why do you think O’ma didn’t try to learn more about her parents? I mean, I know she knew they died at Auschwitz, but why didn’t she talk more about them, or try to find out if there were other relatives still alive?”
“I think it was too hard for her to think about it. It was too sad.”
“Did you try to get her to talk about it?”
“I did,” Mom sounded forlorn. “It never worked.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me too.”
“What about O’pa? Did he talk?”
“Sometimes. He wouldn’t talk about it if you asked, but sometimes he’d mention a story in relation to something else—almost always unexpectedly.” She almost laughed. “Once, I told O’pa I hated rutabaga turnips, and he said he hated them, too, because the Germans took all the potatoes for the last two years of the war and all they had left to eat were rutabagas.”
“Wait, they took the potatoes and left the turnips? Why? Turnips are much better for you than potatoes.”
She snorted. “I guess they tasted better.”
“Hm. The Germans were making some real bad nutritional choices.”
She laughed. “I miss you.”
I gripped my phone tightly, overwhelmed by a sudden surge of love for her, and for Dad, and for how much they supported me and never, ever acted disappointed in or distant from me. “I miss you too. You’re a great mom.”
“I am?” She sounded surprised. “Thanks.”
“Love you.”
“I love you, too.”
Who would you rather have, Mom liked to ask. Niko’s mom or me? Haley’s mom or me?
Sixteen
July 25
Dear Dr. Weisz,
My name is Abigail Schoenberg, and Rabbi Leah Abrams gave me your email. I’m looking for information about my late grandmother, who came to the US in 1939. Her name was Ruth Goldman, and she was born in Germany in 1934. While we know her parents died at Auschwitz (here’s their record in the US Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Holocaust Survivors and Victims Database), their birthplaces/residences aren’t listed.
Rabbi Abrams suggested my grandmother might have been part of American Kindertransport, and thought you might have some ideas on research I could do to find out more about her history (I’m particularly interested in finding out what town she was from and if she had other relatives). If you have time to give me any pointers, I would really appreciate it!
Thanks so much,
Abigail Schoenberg
The next day, Jane and I and half a dozen others wound up touring the Hadwen House, a Greek Revival built by a whaling merchant in 1846.
We were doing this because Jane had showed an extreme amount of interest when Pranav started talking about the house, and now we were stuck here, me and Jane and Stella and Lexi and the rest (Sydney, Pranav’s actual girlfriend, had passed). We drifted about the rooms, looking at paintings and ceramics and miniature ships. Occasionally I would get sucked in (I loved miniature ships! And learning about an all-Black whaling crew during Nantucket’s whaling heyday was pretty cool).
Unfortunately, I kept thinking about other things.
Like O’ma.
And the necklace.
And what the hell I was going to do about this horrible, terrible, no-good crush on Noah Barbanel.
I knew the difference between casually liking someone versus diving into love. I had no interest in the latter. When I’d fallen for Matt, it’d been slow and easy: he’d asked me out and eventually we’d kissed and I’d thought, Oh. I like this boy. I’d never been madly passionate about him, never obsessed. Even so, breaking up had almost ruined me.