She paused, and answered for herself, the admission of love much easier when the dead had no answer. ‘We were happy, Henry. I know it. Despite it all. We tried our best.’ The uncertainty in her voice was met with her own confirmation of the past; the hindsight to her life was truthful, and it lent itself to a kind of peaceful acceptance.
Her knees ached, and she removed her gloves and placed her palms on the ground to shift her weight.
She moved to a tender spot in the earth where she knelt, left of the headstone, and her palm sunk slightly further and it felt as if he had given her permission. In her right pocket, she withdrew the trowel and placed it in front of her. In the left pocket, she withdrew two pieces of paper, and closed her hand around them, and with her other hand she pierced the soil through the grass until the handle almost disappeared.
She began to open up a bit of the earth and looked at the small, folded pieces of paper in her hand. Burying the past. The soil waited for her decision, like an open wound; she wondered if she could place them inside. But she realized that it would be letting them go a second time, so she placed them back in her pocket, and slowly her hands gradually covered the open earth: dark moist granules soft on her hands, spilling off, back to where they belonged.
Julia stood up, her gloves in one hand and trowel in the other, and walked away, leaving only the imprint of her knees on the ground in front of Henry’s name, forever imprinted in granite.
She walked the long path out of the cemetery--past the fences that bordered small gardens, past the paths that disappeared into thick woods, past the stone church that lay in wait for another marriage or funeral, past the small grocery store that had only just opened its doors and past the post office around the corner. Her patient steps took her along the familiar gravel road that narrowed gradually towards the small white house on the hill; the house with the yellow door, where hope still lived even still though life had been unkind, and where a widow with a secret had lost so many things she’d loved.
That evening, after Julia ran a bath and dressed for bed, she walked over to the coat she had laid on the chair by the door, and withdrew the birth certificates, wiping the soil off gently. She then took an old, thin cotton skirt that she had worn in her days in Australia and hadn’t worn since, and within the battered and worn cotton lining, she sewed the folded pieces of paper inside. It was a peculiar habit that remained, from years of wars and secrets kept.
She replaced the skirt on the hanger, the rails scraping as she pushed it to the back of the closet and closed the door.
36
Melbourne, Australia
The spire of the stone church pierced the cornflower blue of the sky that morning, and the hymns of the parishioners died down as the service ended. Slowly, the heavy, red- painted doors opened and a rainbow of silk skirts, pale shirts and ordinary trousers flooded the steps as everyone left, waving their hellos and goodbyes and shaking the hand of the priest as he stood nodding. It was Sunday, and the inside of the church would be quiet soon, resting in the air that had been filled with incense and perfume just moments ago.
In one of the empty, dark, pews sat a woman with her head bowed. Her neck was thin, her shoulders broad and delicate. Regal. Her body was tall, her grey-blonde hair scraped back and up, a single braid circling her head like a halo. She held a prayer book on her lap.
The echoes of leather shoes rang out crisply as the priest walked down to the woman, his form silhouetted by the light of the church’s open door. He collected prayer books along the way and stopped as he reached her. He sat in the pew in front of her. She raised her head in greeting her eyes wet as she smiled. ‘Hello, father.’
‘Hello again.’ He nodded to the altar behind him, resplendent in white linens in front of the intricate stained glass. ‘Third time this week. How are you keeping?’
‘Alright. As much as I can be, really.’ The priest cocked his head sympathetically. ‘Death is never a stranger for long, in this life. How long has it been now?’
‘Six months, just about.’
‘Still feels as if he could walk through the door, then?’
She smiled. ‘Yes.’
‘Do you have your daughter to help you manage for the time being?’
‘Yes. she has been wonderful, really, she and her husband. And I have my friends to lean on, it’s not that I need any help.’ She reached into her pocket and withdrew a handkerchief, dabbing her eyes. It had been her husband’s, and still smelled of his cologne.
The priest leaned in, sensing something unspoken. ‘I know you well enough now to know that your churchgoing isn’t entirely related to Walter’s death. You have always been a pragmatic woman. Never wavering. There is something else.’
She looked up. 'Yes.’
He nodded. ‘Is it something that we’ve discussed in the confessional?’
She looked back down.
The priest crossed his legs, placing his hands on his black robes. ‘The past can harm or heal, but the truth always heals a broken heart.’ He watched as the woman stayed silent.
‘Do you think it’s time?’
The woman handed the prayer book to him and looked up, placing the handkerchief in her pocket. ‘I’m not sure I can.’
‘This has been a heaviness in your heart for as long as I have known you, and that’s an easy twenty years.’ He sighed. ‘Did Walter know?’
‘No,’ she replied softly. ‘I never told him, and never told Irena. Only you.’
‘Do you think you can live with this any longer?’
‘No. I don’t think I can.’
The priest stood up and placed his hand on her shoulder. ‘We teach our children never to run away from the truth. We teach them to face it.’
The woman stood up, smoothing her skirt and straightening her trench coat. ‘I fear that I will not be forgiven for the years that I have waited.’ They both began walking towards the entrance, the light flooding the space around them. The priest stopped and turned to her.
‘Elina, all you can do is hope. Forgiveness lives within hope.’
After the service, Elina walked slowly on the sidewalk towards home, her mahogany cane helping her navigate the hard ground. Her linen trench coat swayed behind her and her cotton skirt peeked out from under it. A rosary glistened on her neck over her cream blouse as she walked, the sun hitting its facets proudly. She was grateful that the church had not been too crowded, the small moments of peace that existed between the stone walls and the echoed hymns.
The sermon this morning was about forgiveness, which is why she lingered after everyone’s footsteps had receded. As she sat on the hard-wooden pew, her hands folded in prayer, she remembered a face from her past that she had thought about her entire life, but that featured more prominently in her thoughts, prayers, and dreams lately now that her husband was long gone. He had never known of her past, and now it seems the past had been catching up to her.
When she approached her house, she stepped onto the porch and unlocked the heavy door and felt the cool breeze from the front room spread across her face and her arms as she took her coat off. She hung her coat on the door, slipped her shoes off, and placed her cane against the wall that was covered in photos. As she walked down the narrow hallway to the kitchen, she touched every single one of them: ones of her husband, of the both of them on their wedding day, and of his parents, long gone. There were photos of Irena as a child, and then as an adolescent, then an adult, and also plates with red and black vishyvanka patterns displayed on wire hooks, and wood carvings of sparrows and wheat fields perched on the high shelves. Time had passed considerably.
Elina walked into the warm and bright kitchen, past a small metal table with a chair and a telephone, set the water to boil, and then walked through into the dining room and then up the stairs to the bedroom, where she sat down on the bed, the lace patterned white quilt sagging underneath her. She reached over and looked at a small picture in a silver frame, and it made her smile as she ran her fingers a
long the glass. The small face of the toddler grinned happily in her mother’s embrace, people milling on the boardwalk behind them on that summer’s day. Elina remembered that day with her daughter as if it were yesterday.
She placed the picture in her lap as she slowly unbraided her hair and let it fall. Her eyes filled with tears, the weight of the past flooding her heart, the memories of so many moments that had gone terribly wrong. And what now, she thought. What could she say now?
She put the picture back in its place on the table, and walked back downstairs to the kitchen, taking the kettle off the stove.
When the tea sat and the water became darker, she sat down next to the telephone pressing the numbers tentatively and lifting the receiver to her ear.
‘Hello my love... Yes, yes I’m fine. You? ... yes, yes... I was calling because, I was wondering...I will need you to use your computer for me. …Yes… yes, I know I should learn, but I have you. Why?’
Elina paused.
‘… I was wondering if you could help me find an old friend.’
37
Glen Cove
When the phone rang, Julia didn’t hear it at first, as she had just slipped into a beautiful dream. She was standing in a field, barefoot, the crisp spines of wheat bending between her toes. The air was mildly scented, sweet and familiar, but she couldn’t place it for certain. It reminded her of someone.
The sky was wide and the lightest shade of pink she had ever seen, the yellow of the sun mixing to create a warmth that settled on her skin like dew. Her feet stayed still, and yet her eyes saw perfectly across the field as if she was walking across it, and then suddenly her vision changed and rose and she could see the field as if it rested beneath her, and then her hands reached out and skimmed across the tops of the trees, above and towards the dark, meandering river and then back down its length to turn around and return, as the crane flies.
Her hair was dark again, and long, and it had been taken out of its plaits, as she used to do as a child before bed; the waves of it moving in the slight breeze like heavy silks. She looked down. Her dress was blue and soft cotton, and she recognized it only when she saw Henry in the distance, watching her; for it was her wedding dress. He was holding something on either side, his arms stretched down and slightly away from his sides, each hand clasping and attached to, what was it, she couldn’t see yet-- so she moved closer, curious, the square of his shoulders and the length of his body clearer at each step. And then she was there, looking at him, indulging in the heavy dark brown of his eyes, the way his cheeks protruded and rose as he smiled, the way his lips flattened underneath his moustache and his dark hair flopped lazily to the side, and the way the lines around his eyes proudly decorated the sides of his face. There was no smoke, no sugar, only the solid warmth of his body as he stood underneath her gaze. Oh, she loved him still, and their lives had fallen together and apart and back together again, and that was the point of love— the falling together again.
She lowered her eyes, remembering that he was holding something in each hand, and it was then that she saw them: one small hand in each of his large square ones, their bodies clinging to his legs, giggling as they looked up at her. He let go of them and she knelt down as they fell into her, slowly, burying their heads into her as she kissed their soft faces and smelled their warm skin. My babies, my babies, she repeated over and over again, her voice breaking, incapable of containing the flood that she had bottled for so long and so her veins untied and let love in, and she looked up at Henry and she saw his eyes, the tears collecting in his dark eyes. She was grateful, and though forgiveness was never something he had asked for, she knew now that he had kept it, there, in the locked place where grief resides with love and loss. For they were the same, their hearts. They had loved and lost and grieved in parallel, and it was only now that she understood.
The phone rang again. And again.
Julia opened her eyes and squinted at the clock by the bed. It read11:35. She turned the knob on the light, and it flooded the room, as she covered her eyes with her hand and placed the receiver to her ear. ‘Hello?’
There was an intake of breath on the other end. And then silence.
‘Hello? Who is there? Slava?’
‘Julia?’ The woman’s voice was thin. Reedy. It sounded like sand coated in honey. It was vaguely familiar. ‘Hello?’ she said again. ‘Julia, is that you?’
‘Who is this.’
‘Please don’t hang up when I tell you.’
‘What?’ Julia frowned. ‘Who is this?’
‘It’s... it’s Elina.’
Julia felt her heart grow cold. Her hands began to shake. She squeezed the receiver as if it were the only thing that would keep her tethered to this world, and it would soon melt in her grip. ‘Why are you calling me.’ She hissed.
‘Wait. Please listen.’
‘Just like you listened to me. How dare you.’ With her other hand, Julia gripped the bed sheets and pulled them to her. ‘Why would I entertain anything that you say?’
‘Because I needed to tell you something. Something important. Please don’t hang up.’
She could so easily end the conversation. She could place the receiver down and never answer it again. But Elina’s voice had ignited something inside her, and she wasn’t entirely sure if it would be pain or joy, or both. So, she listened.
‘I honestly don’t know what to say to you, Elina.’
‘Then don’t say anything. Hear me out.’
‘Fine.’
Elina took a breath. ‘I’ll start from the beginning. And I promise you, you will be glad you listened.’
38
She repeated it over and over in her head, but it was as loud as if she were shouting.
Mine. His. Ours. They were ours.
‘No. This is impossible.’ Julia’s thoughts ran in circles in her head, her chest felt on fire, and her hands shook as she listened to Elina’s voice, not wanting the truth to settle.
‘They were yours, Julia. They were always yours,’ Elina spoke, her voice breaking with tears. ‘I am so sorry…I didn’t even realize it until I became pregnant. And then, I was too scared to reveal any of it to anyone.’ She repeated it over and over again. It was a bomb detonating with the fresh smell of fire and metal.
Julia had been listening, her eyes wide, body as still as a statue. At points in the conversation, she stood up and told Elina to stop and wait, because she needed to catch her breath. She paced, she walked out of the room softly, shaking her head, tears falling, and then would come back to her voice, asked her to continue, and then asked her to stop again. This went on for three hours, until the entire story was revealed. She had told Elina about the assault, and Elina had finally told her the truth.
They had been Henry’s. Her entire life had changed course because of an assumption. An unknown. And now she had to come to terms with it.
‘Elina, I can’t begin to explain to you the amount of life I have lost,’ Julia whispered, tangling her fingers in the phone cord over and over. ‘I’m not sure I needed to hear this now, did I?’
‘Of course, you did. You had been wronged your entire life because of a lie. And I was a part of it. I couldn’t live a life knowing that I had this secret.’
‘What good does it do me now, Elina. You are doing this to ease your own guilt, maybe.’ There was anger in her voice.
‘I know you feel so much anger and sadness right now, Julia, but you have to understand that I did this because I knew that I might be able to help you. To give you something, anything, after so many years.’
‘Elina, it’s too much, I don’t even know where to begin. What do I do? Or say?’ She sighed. ‘Why now?’
‘Because we are mothers. And our children need to know our stories.’ She paused. ‘Why don’t I help you?’
‘How?’
‘I am in Australia still. Do you have anything that could find them?’
‘No. I only kept their birth certificates.’
&
nbsp; ‘Alright, well, that may help. Can you send them to me if I give you my address?’
Julia hesitated.
‘Julia, you can trust me.’
‘Yes, but that’s all I have. I have nothing else.’
‘Think. Are you certain?’
Julia looked around her room, nothing was out of place, she knew the contents of every drawer, practically. ‘Hang on,’ she replied and placed the receiver on her bed. She walked out of her bedroom into the dining room, and stood, looking at the pictures on the walls, the sideboard groaning with old china plates and heirlooms. She walked downstairs into the basement and switched on the light, and saw chairs stacked on top of one another, dress bags hanging on a clothing rail, boxes labelled ‘Henry’, and ‘House things’, and ‘Paperwork’. She turned to leave and saw a box in the corner, next to an old doll house that had a layer of dust on its red-painted shutters. The box said ‘Slava’ on it, and it reminded Julia of the time she’d moved into the apartment on 71st street and Julia had moved to Glen Cove with some of Slava’s things, prompting Henry to laugh that a mother and daughter always had a complicated connection.
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