Elina waited.
‘Do you think I could call her? Do you think that would be alright with her?’
Elina closed her eyes and wept for the friend that she had abandoned long ago, and felt Roz reach out for her hand and clasp it with a kindness and warmth that was unexpected.
42
‘What do you mean?’ Slava looked at the woman who had always been as true as rain. Despite her tendency to distance, she had always been quietly persistent, and had always said to her as a child, ‘lies are more painful than the truth.’ And now Slava looked at her face and saw a kind of pain that she didn’t understand.
‘I have been through so much, Slava,’ Julia said with a sigh. ‘I have been unlucky.’
Silence followed the word unlucky.
Slava wasn’t sure what she was getting at, and all she could do was wait for more. More from the woman who had always said less was better. Safer.
Julia stood up and walked over to the hallway, and then stopped, and then turned back, as if she had lost her way, or her thoughts, or something had reminded her. She walked over to the porch window and moved the gossamer curtains to the side, revealing the sky settling after the snowfall.
The grandfather clock moaned a slow chime.
Julia walked back to the table, her hand on her chest, fingering the gold necklace that she had worn for as long as Slava remembered. She sat down heavily.
Slava saw Julia’s face change, a sculpture being more defined by its softening corners, its cracks and edges. She saw survival. She saw love.
‘I don’t know how to start—’
‘Just try. Anything.’ Slava reached for her hand. Julia smiled and heard Henry’s voice. All we can do is try.
‘Slava, when we lived in Australia, we wanted more children. We had you, but it wasn’t enough. We wanted a large family. I wanted one like the memories of my childhood: noisy, full of faces around the table.’
Slava nodded. ‘Sure. I understand.’
‘And well, we were unlucky for a time,’ Julia continued. ‘Until something happened.’
Slava shifted in her chair.
‘It was so unfortunate. I— ‘Julia stopped and leaned her forehead into her open palm, her elbow on the table. ‘— he was a friend. Or so I thought he was.’ She looked up at Slava, noticing that her face had grown pale, her eyes staring. ‘I didn’t know what to do.’
‘Mama, were you— ‘
Julia lifted her hand. ‘I don’t want to hear that word.’ She hung her head. ‘I thought it was my fault. I thought I had welcomed the attention, I had enjoyed his company, and I didn’t understand what went wrong that evening…’
Slava placed her other hand on her mothers, now covering it entirely. ‘Did you tell anyone?’
‘No, because your father and I were happy, then, despite the difficulty of our life there. We had built a life, and this one thing would have felt like a mark on it; a shadow that would hover over us forever.’
‘Then, what did you do?’
‘I let it disappear. I kept it as something that would go away. And yet— ‘Julia moved a lock of hair over her ear, revealing a silvery scar, no bigger than thumbnail. ‘— a mark remains.’
‘Oh, God, Mama,’ Slava shook her head in disbelief. I can’t believe you had to carry that with you all these years.’ Slava leaned back, letting out a breath. ‘But I’m confused about what that has to do with the friendship, with…?’
‘Elina.’
‘Right. And she was…’
‘This man’s wife.’
‘Jesus. Did she know?’
‘She and I had become friends of course because Henry and I and she and that man, well, we had become friendly. She confided in me many things, and one thing was that she could not have children. That she suspected her body could not make any. I felt sad for her.’
‘Of course, but this… attack, happened…’
‘After we had become close,’ Julia clarified. ‘She didn’t know.’
‘So, if she didn’t know, how was the friendship cut off?’
Julia tented her fingertips above the table. ‘Well, that is part of what happened after. You see, another reason I could not tell anyone the truth was because I became pregnant.’
Slava inhaled sharply. ‘What??’
Julia nodded, her face reddening. ‘So, I told no one, and had to pretend that everything was at it should be.’
‘What about Papa?’
‘No one.’
‘So, Papa had no idea that this happened? None of it?’
‘No.’
‘Oh god, Mama.’ Slava stood up, rubbing her eyes and walking to the kitchen. ‘I can’t believe this is you.’
Julia looked over at her daughter, worried that she had said something wrong, her face contorted in panic. ‘In what way? Oh no, Slava,, I’m so sorry, this is all too much…’
‘— no, that’s not what I meant. The fact that you had to endure this, this…’ Slava threw her hands up. ‘I don’t even know what to call it.’
‘I know,’ Julia sighed. She patted the table, her clammy hands leaving a small imprint on the polished wood. ‘Come. Sit.’
Slava came back, sat down, and leaned on her elbows, facing Julia. ‘Okay,’ she breathed. ‘Tell me.’
‘I had twins, Slava. A boy and a girl.’ Julia’s eyes filled. 'Maksim and Lesia They were beautiful. Maksim was dark, Lesia was light. They were mirrors of one another, but also so different. Maksim was sweet and patient, Lesia was impulsive and fiery.’ She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. ‘I loved them.’
Slava sat, staring in disbelief. Twins. Dark and light. It was as if someone was reading her a story about a life that she knew nothing about. And yet, it was a story from her life. ‘I’m almost afraid to ask, but…’ she placed her fingertips on her temples and closed her eyes. ‘… what happened to them?’
‘Everything was alright, when they arrived. Papa was happy. He had his son, and he never thought he would have one. We had a loud little family, and it was all we wanted. Life became quiet. In a good way, after everything that we had lost in the war. We felt as if we had survived, finally; we had fixed what had been broken.’
Slava opened her eyes. ‘Well, the obvious question is, since I don’t remember having siblings…’
‘— is what happened to them,’ Julia nodded. ‘Yes. Well, Elina’s husband still lingered, and Elina had suspicions about me. And maybe it was the anger at him, or the fact that she could not have children, but our friendship faltered. And when she told Papa about what she suspected…’
‘— that the man attacked you?’
‘— no, that we were having an affair, our friendship broke.’
‘And Papa believed her, and not you?’
‘He was a proud man that feared many things. And he feared somehow that I was unhappy in my life with him. He never gave me a choice to explain. And the day that I tried to fight for the truth, he gave me a choice: he told me to choose him and you, or the twins.’
Slava clapped a hand over her mouth. ‘And you chose us.’
‘Yes. I had no choice. I had to give them away.’ Julia’s tears spilled freely now, dropping onto the table faster than she could wipe them off her cheeks. ‘It was the hardest thing I have ever had to do in my life; it was, and still is, a pain that has never fully disappeared.’
‘I can’t imagine it.’
Slava thought Emilian, and then of their own daughter, now a young adult, with dark hair past her shoulders like Julia had as a girl, hazel eyes that are constantly shadowed by long lashes. She imagined her face as a child, and her chest tightened at the thought of leaving her behind. The idea of that kind of pain was unbearable.
‘Where was I in all this?’
‘You were young enough not to remember, or to understand. But old enough at the time to see a kind of sadness. But I want you to listen to something. The reason why I called you here.’
‘Surely there can’t be more,’ Slav
a shook her head. ‘That’s impossible.’
‘There is,’ Julia smiled. ‘And this is something that life has given me, a gift, that I can share with you, after all of this.’
‘What is it?’
‘I received a call from Elina a little while ago.’
‘What? Seriously? Why? She’s still alive?’ Slava’s voice popped with energy, unable to contain her questions.
‘She called to tell me something in her life that would affect mine. But it might not be good news, I’m not sure. But she told me a truth. She wants to help me.’
Slava frowned. ‘About what? With what?’
‘Many years ago, after the twins were adopted and you and Papa and I moved to New York, she left her husband and remarried eventually, and lived a happy life with her new husband, and… daughter.’
Slava pushed her chair back and squinted her eyes. ‘Wait. She adopted?’
Julia shook her head. ‘No. She gave birth to a daughter.’
‘But I thought she was…’
Julia looked up at the ceiling and closed her eyes, Fresh tears slid down her cheeks. ‘So did I.’
Slava turned her head to the right, then to the left, as if trying to solve a riddle. She looked at her mother and drew in a breath.
‘Oh my God.’
Julia covered her face with her hands. The grandfather clock struck eleven, the metal resonating after the muffled heaviness of the gong.
‘God will never forgive me.’ Julia’s voice sounded like a child behind her hands.
Slava wiped the tears from her cheeks and walked around to her, kneeling as she unpeeled her mother’s hands from her wet face. ‘Mama, don’t you see? You are loved. You have been found. He has already.’
That night, as the clock struck midnight, and later still, with her head bowed, Julia began to tell her daughter the stories that she thought she’d forgotten, that had haunted her for so long. Through the tears that pooled in the hollow of her neck, she told her daughter of the children she had wanted and had given to God, and the two children that had helped her heart heal after a crime that had broken it so badly, and the love that she’d had for all of them and then lost so painfully, so cruelly. She told her daughter that it wasn’t her father’s fault, and that she had forgiven him for the pain that he had contributed to, for he had also carried it in his heart to the end of his days.
She told her daughter about how she felt about love: that it is a great and complicated tragedy of joy and pain, for hearts can be broken and fixed again through hope, and still they break, and she told her that she had stopped resenting her husband and forgave him for the pain that he’d secretly had to endure, for a father losing his children is too great a sadness to bear.
They talked for hours, until their throats were scraped dry and the tears had dried in tracks on their faces. She wrung her hands and clasped them with her daughter’s and presented an unflinching grief that she had never allowed herself to feel fully.
That evening, they both fell asleep under night skies that were dark and quieted by snow, felled by an incredible truth: the lost can someday be found again.
43
Glen Cove
The bright green numbers on the clock flashed 1:30am as the phone rang and woke Julia immediately, as if she had waited every second of her sleep to be in that exact moment.
The phone stopped suddenly, and she thought that maybe she’d imagined it, so she waited, her body rigid.
It started ringing again, and she held her breath as she reached across for the phone.
It stopped before she could get to it, and she had a sense that whoever was on the line was either doubting they had the right number, or second guessing themselves, or even, that the line was faulty. She reached for the lamp and switched it on, and lay back in bed, waiting. Curious.
It rang again, and this time Julia retrieved it, and grabbed the receiver and sighed. 'Elina? Is it you?’
Static, and then a voice. ‘Hello? Is this Julia?’
‘Yes?’
The line crackled and then a voice emerged. ‘Hello...’ The voice sounded elderly, but clear.
‘Yes…? She was losing patience.
‘I don’t really know how to say this,’ he began, still timid.
‘Listen, it’s late, whoever you are, and if you’re trying to sell me something, I’m not interested, thank you.’ She was about to replace the receiver to a now curious Emilian when he said, ‘Wait, please, Mama’ and then she knew.
She placed the phone to her ear again. ‘Maksim?’
Timid laughter. ‘It’s Maksim, this is Maksim.’ It was said in a rush, as if to ripping the tape off a parcel and revealing its contents. Maksim. it sounded strange, this name that should be familiar to her, because it was said without the thick tongue of the Slavic k and m, and so her initial reaction was confusion, along with wondering if this was real. She looked around at the dark room, and reached for the rosary by the bed, her fingers lightly finding the facets and then pressing them into the pads of her fingers. It was real.
She mouthed his name to herself, silently. Maksim. Both her hands held the receiver to her ear now, as she leaned forward and closed her eyes. She felt his small body on her lap as she had done so long ago, his warm arms around her waist, his dark hair against her chest as he slept.
Her throat caught as she inhaled. ‘Oh my God, I cannot believe it’s you. Is it you?’
‘Yes, it’s me.’
She saw the memories of her life like the pages of a book, fluttering to an end before it closed. She couldn’t speak for fear of losing track of these memories that had been left cold for so long, now warming her entire body, and she wanted them, craved them, adjusted to them with fresh authority.
She covered her eyes with her other hand whilst she held the receiver tightly to her ear, as if in a state of panic, not wanting his words to disappear into the crackle of a broken line again, but also because she wanted to digest every soft morsel of this voice, his voice, the voice that she had only ever known when he was a child; she heard it there still, faintly, despite the gravel of age changing it. He was there. He had found her.
They spoke until they couldn’t speak any more, Julia listening to her son tell her so much about his life, or at least whatever he could fit into the next few hours. He would ask if she needed to sleep, and she would encourage him to continue, the minutes and hours passing swiftly, until the first hints of light spread across the morning, like a watercolor painting. As they ended the phone call, Ed promised that he would call with his sister on the line next time. His sister. Her daughter, Julia thought. She placed the receiver down like a piece of glass that would break. She was in shock and spent the rest of that morning walking in a slow and cautious pace, finally sitting outside on the porch that she had once shared with Henry. She sighed and leaned her head back, her face ruddy with tears, the sun drying them slowly.
The light, now. She felt the light come through, and smiled, a relief settling across her shoulders. She thought of her mother’s words: there is always hope left in a broken thing.
44
2013
Autumn had settled in green and gold, on Glen Cove, and after landing 24 hours earlier, Ed and Roslyn had taken a walk through the quiet streets of the sleepy town, just as it was coming alive in the crisp morning. The houses and shops on the streets had small porches and peaked roofs, with manicured gardens and mailboxes with painted numbers on them. The postal workers were clutching their coffees and delivery men were starting their trucks to start their routes.
It was as if they’d taken a step back to someone else’s life; an old memory that hinted at a sense of peace, a foothold in safety.
They walked out of town, on East Drive, past the pile of stone that represented an old monastery, past the park by the golf course, and found their way to Prybil Beach, a small spit of sand shaped like a crescent moon, with benches along the edge of the water.
Ed zipped his sportscoat against the ch
ill and sat down. ‘Wow. I can’t believe we’re here.’ He looked over at Roslyn, who was clutching a scarf around her neck, the orange strip of sky reflected in her bright eyes. ‘What’re you thinking?’
‘Honestly? I don’t know.’ She let out a sigh. ‘This all seems a bit surreal.’ She looked at Ed. ‘If I was ever a smoker, maybe now would be the time to do it.’ The corner of her mouth lifted.
‘What did you tell Martin?’
‘Everything. And both girls too. I told him that I needed to do this first, with you, and that if it goes well…’
‘— Of course, it’ll go well.’
‘— You know what I mean. If it feels right, then we can all come and meet each other.’
Ed nodded and folded his arms. ‘Fair point.’
‘What did you say to Helen?’
‘Same. But I mean… what could go wrong, here?’
‘Do you think it erases our past? That’s what it feels like.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, not entirely, but you know, our life with Mum and Dad.’
‘It made us who we were. And so will this.’
‘In what way?’
‘Well, isn’t that the million-dollar question.’ Ed chuckled. ‘It’s a story about who we were, then. We’re the same people, still, but our lives went in different directions. And we had more than one mother who loved us. That’s something pretty great.’
‘What about our real father?’ Roslyn clasped her hands in her lap tightly. ‘I mean—’ she stopped, her voice apologetic.
‘No, I know what you meant. I mean, we had a father.’ Ed shrugged. ‘And now we have two. Or, had, anyway.’
‘More than most.’
‘I wonder what he would have been like,’ Ed looked across at the Long Island Sound, the water lapping the shore.
‘We’ll learn about him through Julia. And pictures, I guess.’
‘What do we call her?’
‘What do you want to call her?’
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