Oy. “In the armchairs. Let me tell my boss I’m taking a break.” I hesitated, hostess instincts kicking in. “Would you like anything from the café?”
“An Earl Grey would be perfect, my dear.”
Blargh, old men calling me my dear. I gave him a pained smile.
When I returned, I placed his tea on the table beside him and settled into the opposing armchair, a green juice in hand.
He opened his eyes. “I wanted to tell you about the necklace.”
Did he, now. After avoiding the topic for months. I sipped my juice. “Okay.”
It took him a moment to start. “The necklace was Ruth’s, it’s true.”
I did not say No shit, Sherlock, for which I should have been commended.
“It was one of the few things she arrived with—the clothes on her back, a small case, and the necklace. She hid the necklace itself in the hem of her dress before she came to New York. She planned to sell it after the war, to bring her parents to America.”
I swallowed over a sudden lump.
His eyes were kind. “Yes. After the news, she wore it everywhere. She bought her whole wardrobe to set off the necklace—she only dressed in reds and blacks for a year.” He paused. “We decided to get married.”
My eyes widened. I wanted, instinctively, for Noah to be here—Noah, who I was so mad at. Yet he’d been part of uncovering this story from the beginning. “What happened?”
“My mother.” He sighed. “And before her, the collapse of the family fortune. Ruth knew, of course. She said we should sell the necklace and use the money to help the company survive. To help us survive. It wouldn’t be enough, but it would be something.”
He drew something from his pocket and passed it over to me. “Then she sent me this.”
I am going to try to explain, the letter started, and for the first time, I read one of O’ma’s letters, as she tried to set Edward Barbanel up for disagreement. She loved him, she said. She loved him, but romantic love was only one kind of love, and she prized other types equally as high.
Yesterday, your mother showed up at my apartment. I haven’t seen her in ages, and I threw myself into her arms right away and started crying. And she hugged me back, and Ned, it was—I don’t even know how to explain it. I feel stupid, since she’s your mother, and obviously you’ve always had her. But I barely see her now that I’ve moved, and I’ve missed her, and here she was.
We went inside and I wanted to die from embarrassment because the room I rent from Mrs. Schwartz was so cramped and small and messy, and I’d left clothes everywhere and didn’t even have tea to offer her.
But it didn’t matter and we talked for hours, and I felt like a sunflower reaching toward her, soaking in her rays. And then she said, “You know you can’t marry Edward.”
And I said we were in love.
And she said, “I know. But the company will go under if we don’t get help, and then where will the two of you be? We’ll have to sell Golden Doors and maybe even the New York house. And you’ll be poor and he’ll resent you and all our employees will be out of a job and the Barbanels will be done. So I’m asking you not to marry him.”
And the thing is, Ned—she’s the closest thing I have to a mother.
The page ended. I looked up at Edward. “That’s it?”
“Another page or two, but this is the important part. My mother asked her not to marry me. So Ruth decided not to.”
“She must have loved your mom a lot,” I said slowly.
He nodded. “I never understood. Or maybe I did, intellectually, but I never would have chosen my parents’ wishes over my own. I wouldn’t have put the family first the way she did.”
What would I do? If my mom asked me not to marry someone I loved? I wanted to say I would stick to my gut, but—my mom. If she asked me, she would have a reason. And my mom had put her everything into raising me. I owed her everything.
I cleared my throat. “So my grandmother gave you the necklace—but why didn’t you give it back?”
He stirred his tea. “Because I was foolish, and stubborn, and hopeful. I didn’t believe she’d leave the necklace behind. I thought if I had it, she’d have to come talk to me. I’d be able to make her change her mind.”
“But she didn’t?”
“No.”
Oh. “Then—then what? You decided to go along with her plan and marry Helen?”
He nodded, not looking at me.
Poor Helen. “Why didn’t you send the necklace back to my grandmother, then?”
“I don’t know,” he said softly. “I like to think I might have, if she’d ever asked again. But she didn’t. I guess . . . I thought if I still had the necklace, she might someday be forced to talk to me.”
But she never had. Why not? Had she just decided to cut her losses? Had she been too angry? Had she already been swept away by my grandpa?
Too late to find out the answer.
“And you gave it to your wife,” I said. “Why?”
He met my eyes, his own sad and calm. “I don’t know.”
What an unsatisfactory answer. But then again, maybe I could answer my question myself—anger, revenge, nothing pretty to own up to. I’d thought people grew up once they became adults, but maybe no one ever really grew up. Maybe people were always capable of being petty and cruel, even people with all the power in the world.
But maybe they were also capable of changing.
“I’m sorry,” Edward Barbanel said. “I came by to tell you, to apologize. I was wrong to keep the necklace; wrong to give it to Helen. It was unkind to both women. I’m glad you have it back now, even if I didn’t make it easy.” He hesitated. “I hope you won’t take it out too hard on Noah. He tries to do the right thing. More than I ever did. But he’s young, and young people make mistakes. What matters is how they handle them afterwards.”
* * *
After Edward Barbanel left, I stared up at the slowly moving ceiling fan. O’ma had chosen her mother over Edward. He hadn’t chosen money over love; she had chosen being a daughter over being a lover.
Why were there so many choices in life? Why couldn’t things be easy, one simple current carrying us along to our destination? But there were so many branches, so many opportunities to mess up or upset people.
Noah had chosen his family over me, and even though his choice had made me feel like he didn’t trust me, I understood why he’d done it, why he hadn’t known what to protect, his family or our trust.
Should I apologize for pushing him away? Should he apologize for keeping a secret? Should we both apologize for everything? If we both stood by our stances—mine being a relationship needed honesty, his being he’d been right to protect his family’s privacy—did it make us incompatible?
I had no idea. All I knew was I missed him like a phantom limb. I wanted to text him desperately.
But what good would getting back in touch do? He had lied to me. He’d said I was overreacting, though it had been my grandmother’s necklace and he’d known and this would never work, so why bother trying? How could I trust him again? How did you let go of something so painful? Even if you wanted to, how did you actually do it?
And he was gone to college, and of course a relationship between us wouldn’t work in the long run. Wasn’t this better, this clean break? So what if we did work out our differences—what if we gave us a second go? Then what? Then we were in a long-distance relationship and time and space would break our hearts all over again.
No. There were too many arguments against trying to get back together. It was smarter not to. Maybe this was why O’ma had avoided seeing Edward again: Because she knew if she saw him, it would be too hard not to be drawn back together. And then it would be even harder to separate, which she knew would happen in the end.
Twenty-Seven
July 12, 1952
Did I ever tell you about the first time I saw the house?
Some people will say I wasn’t old enough to remember arriving. But I do. I remember other scenes, too, scenes too sad to relate, and this was the first good memory in a long time.
The social worker held my hand. She must have been well-intentioned to have taken her job, but mostly I remember her as having a brash accent, square jaw, and little patience. She’d scolded me nonstop since we’d left the city, and had for some unknown reason become convinced I meant to foil her care by diving off the ferry.
“Usually, the family is at the New York house,” she’d told me. But not during the summer. They’d offered to have the nanny and chauffeur pick me up at the wharf, but the social worker wasn’t giving up her chance to see Golden Doors, so we loaded ourselves into a car and wound our way up the island. Past those trees wizened by salt and sea, past the Portuguese hydrangeas. I’d already been in so many worlds—New York City and Paris and home—and here was another one.
The house came into view. You know how it does, unveiled like the brass sounding their horns in Holst’s “Jupiter.” I’d never seen something so stately yet so undeniably American. These were the people who planned to take me in? What could I possibly have in common with them?
A woman opened the door. She crouched down, eyes at my level. “Hello,” she said, speaking in German, though her accent was poor and I could have understood hello, at least, in English. But she’d learned these phrases for me, to make me feel more comfortable. “You must be Ruth. I’m Eva. Welcome home.”
Mom showed up on the next ferry.
“You didn’t have to come,” I said as she descended onto the docks, but then I hugged her tightly and didn’t let go. She smelled like Pert shampoo and Tom’s soap, like home and safety.
“Of course I did.” She cupped my cheek in one hand while trying to smooth out a line in my brow with the other.
“But you don’t take boats.” She’d never taken boats, not once in my entire memory. She hated boats.
“I’m an adult, you know. I can take boats.”
“But you don’t.” My voice wobbled embarrassingly.
“Oh, sweetie.” She pulled me close again, and the tears shook out of me as I clung to her. “You poor thing.”
“I really liked him,” I whispered into her chest.
“I know you did.”
Mom’s presence salved the deep, constant hurt pulsing through me. She was better than chocolate, better than books. We went to the inn where she was staying and ordered pizza and watched 13 Going on 30 on TV.
She’d be staying for three nights, before we both went home. I wanted to show her Nantucket—show off Nantucket. In the morning, I led her from shop to café to beach. “I can’t believe you spent all summer here,” she said as we walked barefoot along Jetties Beach, the water lapping at our feet. She walked higher on the wet sand than I did, only occasionally getting licked by the tides, while I sloshed through the water.
“Isn’t it gorgeous?” It was a stunning late August day, with enough of a hint of chill in the air to be reminded fall would soon arrive. “Wasn’t it a good idea for me to come here?”
She scoffed and bumped me gently.
“It was,” I pressed. “But you were so against me coming. How come?”
“Oh, honey.” She stopped walking and stroked my hair. “You were so upset earlier this summer. I didn’t want you to be upset far away from me, where I couldn’t hug you when you got sad. You’re leaving so soon, anyway, for college—I don’t want you to leave me. I don’t want you to get hurt. I don’t want to not be able to protect you.”
“Oh.” I felt small and ashamed. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“Of course I do. I’m your mother. I’m always going to worry about you.”
I hugged her, quick and impulsive. “I love you.”
“I love you, too.”
In the afternoon, I took her to the Prose Garden, and introduced her to Maggie and Liz. Then Jane met us for ice cream, and we told Mom a curated list of the best summer moments. Sans Noah, of course.
Mom let my boy-exclusions pass until dinner. The two of us ate at one of the bougie restaurants I’d eyed all summer, with tables on a deck overlooking the ocean. Umbrellas provided shade and flowers twined up against the railing.
“Why did you two break up?” she asked. “You seemed so happy.”
I buttered a yeasty white roll. “It’s complicated.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Her hopeful, sad eyes made me feel obligated to tell her. “He knew his grandmother had O’ma’s necklace the entire time. And he didn’t tell me—what?”
Mom looked appalled. “You broke up with him over a necklace?”
“No! Not over the necklace. It was more—he didn’t tell me. He lied.”
“Did he lie, or did he not bring it up?”
“Mom, it’s the same thing!”
She cut into her salmon. “Well, honey, I think it’s a shame if you end something so important because of a necklace.”
“Mom!”
“Did he want to break up, too?”
I stared at her, furious. “You’re supposed to be on my side.”
“I am! Of course I am. But you liked him so much.”
“It doesn’t even matter. I’m being practical. He’s going to college.”
“Don’t be practical! When did I ever teach you to be practical?”
“Um, I’m literally only allowed to go to a state school or somewhere I get a full ride because you refuse to let me graduate with student loans.”
“Okay, yes, but—”
“Practical!” My voice rose a little too high.
She stared at me, then held up her hands. “Okay.”
“Okay, we can move on?”
“Of course.”
Of course, we couldn’t really. Several hours later, when we’d retreated to her hotel room and were watching TV, she brought it up again. “We should talk about why this necklace matters so much to you.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t understand how you became so obsessed with an object. Why do you care so much about material things? Did I make you? How? It’s not one of my values.”
“God, Mom, it’s not about material things. This necklace—it was O’ma’s.”
“But it’s just an object.”
“It was an important one! She cared about it! Why can’t I care?”
“Of course you can care. But you care so much, I worry you’ll hurt yourself. You throw yourself so hard into something like this, and it ends up upsetting you. Why can’t you let it wash over you instead of fixating on it? Why would you let a necklace ruin a relationship?”
“It was the principle of the thing. It was because he lied. It was because—”
Because I was too damn proud?
Because he hadn’t fought for me, while he’d always made it clear he’d fight for what mattered to him?
I shook my head, trying to clear it of Noah. “I wanted to do this, Mom. I wanted to find out about O’ma’s past. So I got a little hurt—it’s worth it. I wish you could get that.” I could feel the tears welling up. “I wish you could be proud of me for finding out everything I did, instead of thinking it was messed up. I found out where O’ma was from! I found out who her parents were, and got their records. I found out about O’ma’s entire childhood. I found a family heirloom from Germany.”
“I am proud of you!”
“Are you? Because all summer all you cared about was about whether or not I was interested in Noah.”
“Well, Abby, that feels a lot more real. That’s the future. O’ma’s history is the past.”
Her words rang in my ears.
I swallowed. “Well, I care about t
he past. I wanted to know about it. Besides,” I said, setting my jaw. “Now this is the past, too. So can we move on? I don’t want to talk about Noah.”
She studied me. “Okay, honey.”
The worry in her voice effectively deflated my anger.
She forced a smile. “Do you want to show me this necklace, then?”
I did. I hadn’t looked at it since I’d come home from Golden Doors, when I’d stashed it in a sunglasses pouch, but I’d put the pouch in my purse this morning. I’d always intended to show it to Mom today. Now I pulled the pouch out and handed it over.
Mom loosened the drawstring and poured the necklace into her palm. It landed in a pile of glittering rectangle stones. She held it up, her brows raising. “It’s very pretty.”
“Right?” The sunlight glinted off the cut pendants.
“What are these? Glass?”
“Probably. Or what’s it—cubic something?”
“Cubic zirconia? That’s synthesized—I’m not sure they’d even figured it out in the thirties.” Her eyes twinkled. “What if they’re diamonds?”
I laughed, relieved our tension had dispersed. It was always like this with Mom; highs and lows, anger, then calm. We were cyclical tides, the two of us—or maybe the ocean and the moon, tided together, eternally inseparable even when out of sight of each other. “They’re not diamonds.”
Except.
I cleared my throat. “I mean—Edward Barbanel, Noah’s grandfather, did say they considered selling the necklace for money.”
“He did?” Mom turned the necklace over, peering at the main pendant—twice the size of the others, and oval in shape. “How do we even tell what it’s made of?”
I shrugged. “I don’t know, try scratching something?”
We looked around. There was nothing to scratch, except the glass tabletop of a coffee table. I didn’t think the hotel would appreciate such a choice.
“I’ll google it.” A moment later, I read from my phone: “‘Breathe on it—a real diamond will fog only briefly, then disperse the heat instead of remaining misted like glass would.’”
The Summer of Lost Letters Page 30