‘I’d love to meet her when you feel it’s right.’
I am momentarily thrown, thinking of Ellie and all she has been through. Sean’s sense of entitlement over my life panics me. And, if I introduce them, and then he leaves me, it’s another abandonment for Ellie.
‘She has had a lot of changes lately,’ I say.
He studies the menu, and I try to read his mind. He had a bully of a father, I remind myself. A rocky childhood where he was the protector. He is making himself vulnerable to me, just as much as I am to him. He slaps the menu on the table and gets up to go to the bathroom. When he returns I tell him, ‘I am thrilled about us, Sean. Please don’t misunderstand or pull away. It isn’t that. I’m thinking about Ellie, that’s all. I’ve got a thing about her being abandoned.’
‘It’s why I said “when you feel it’s right.” There’s no hurry. I want what’s best for both of you.’
‘Thanks.’ I remind myself to listen to what Sean says, rather than reacting out of habit. I lean forwards and kiss him on the lips. ‘We could do a hike all together sometime.’
He smiles. ‘I’d love that. She is very lucky to have you as her mum.’
Sean leads me along the polished floorboards of the hallway, past a series of loose, coastal watercolours, and into his bedroom, where the head of a king-sized bed presses up against a large, round window. Outside, the long leaves of a young eucalypt caress the window glass, and, beyond the tree, the River Derwent shimmers.
‘Have you been here long?’
He laughs at my attempt at small talk. ‘A few years.’ He kisses me deeply and I feel a deep ache low in my pelvis, a wanting. He kisses my neck and collarbone, he pulls down the neck of my t-shirt and kisses me there. I am pleased Ian left me. I am pleased.
Dale calls a morning tea meeting at the university cafe where he invites a group of us to submit proposals to an upcoming conference in Munich. Sean winks at me.
‘Have a think about it. Show me what you’ve got,’ Dale tells us collectively, but he is looking more at Sean and the two other men in the lab than Sue or me. ‘We have some travel funding that needs to be allocated before the end of the year or it will be zeroed. Fucking university policy. Anyway, it’ll be good for the lab’s reputation if we have a strong contingent.’
Dale swills the last of his coffee back and forth between his cheeks. I dread his breath in an hour’s time when he will come into the lab to check on progress and lean in over my shoulder.
‘Anyway. Can’t swan around here all day. I’ve got another meeting with the VC.’ He turns to go and I see Sue roll her eyes.
Sean and I leave the cafe and head back up the hill to the lab while Sue peels off for the longer route back. I’ve told her Sean and I are seeing each other, but she’s the only one in the group who knows.
‘Thought he was going to praise our work for a second.’ Sean shakes his head.
‘I’m not even sure he was talking to me. I’m his research assistant, far-be-it-for-me to have a thought of my own. To write a proposal.’
He takes my hand. ‘Yep. I gave him five years of my life before I got first author on a paper. Don’t you do that.’ He bounces our held hands twice in the air between us to make his point. ‘Have you got any burning ideas for a paper?’
‘Maybe.’
‘Yeah?’
‘You sound surprised.’ I’m briefly affronted, and even slightly cautious about sharing my ideas. But Sean is not any colleague. ‘Some epigenetics stuff …’
It’s clearly not what he was expecting. ‘So, you like controversy. Still, if you pull it off, it’s groundbreaking … What area exactly?’
Ian would never have asked. He’d have nodded and changed the subject back to his own career.
‘The impact of environment on genes has always intrigued me, but I want to take it a step further.’
He bobs his head for me to continue.
‘The epigenetic inheritance of trauma. It builds on my earlier work with stress hormones … I thought I would focus on refugees. Arrivals from Afghanistan. Abdhul and his friends. If they give their permission.’
He stops. ‘Do it. There’s potential. There was the Holocaust survivor study. You know it? From Mt Sinai.’
I shake my head, worried I’ve been beaten to it and am again faced with the consequences of a collision between parenthood and career. When can a mother, a single mother, in particular, find time to not only do the laboratory work but keep up with the reading? I think of the comment Jude used to quote bitterly to me: ‘Women can be good, but only men can be geniuses.’
‘It got a lot of press …’ He types the key words into his phone and pulls up an article in The Guardian based on research published in Biological Psychiatry.
STUDY OF HOLOCAUST SURVIVORS FINDS TRAUMA PASSED ON TO CHILDREN’S GENES
HELEN THOMSON
Genetic changes stemming from the trauma suffered by Holocaust survivors are capable of being passed on to their children, the clearest sign yet that one person’s life experience can affect subsequent generations.
The conclusion from a research team at New York’s Mount Sinai hospital led by Rachel Yehuda stems from the genetic study of 32 Jewish men and women who had either been interned in a Nazi concentration camp, witnessed or experienced torture or who had had to hide during the second world war.
I look up at Sean, deciding to read the rest later. I had secretly been hoping the results would be the reverse. I do not want Ellie burdened with the traumas of the women who came before her. I think of Nina losing her father to hardline communists; I think of the war and everything that happened afterwards. I note there is a counter article in the margin, refuting the claims, criticising the sample size.
‘Read a bit more,’ he tells me. ‘The survivors’ kids inherited the stress effects. That’s the thing. And read the cherry blossom and mice study from Emory University.’ He points insistently, and I read that mice trained to fear the smell of cherry blossoms, by associating the smell with a small electric shock, produced offspring that also shuddered when they smelled the flowers.
I’m enthralled and experience the rush of excitement that comes with research and discovery, the drug that keeps all of us at the bench hour after hour processing samples.
‘Like I said, do it,’ Sean tells me again. ‘Tell Dale you’ll get the work done that he wants, but that you’d like to pursue your own research idea too. I’ll be your lab slave.’ He crosses his arms at his wrists and winks.
‘You’re on,’ I say, but there is a swirling uneasiness building in my stomach. ‘Actually …’ I pause. ‘I’m having doubts just talking about it. What if it’s true? What burden are we passing on to our children? Perhaps it is better not to know.’
‘It’s never better not to know.’ He looks at me intently, as if I, of all people, should understand this. ‘I know I told you that maybe it was better not to know who your father was, but, hopefully, you’ve proved me wrong in this case. And think about it, if epigenetic tags can be added to genes, affecting the way they turn on or off, they can probably be removed as well. Perhaps that’s where the good news lies. Not that science should be judged as good or bad. Knowledge is knowledge.’
I think it over, the contribution I might make to people like Abdhul if I provide proof of the importance of not amplifying their trauma.
‘I’ll write the proposal,’ I say.
My mother phones with the news. ‘I’ve spoken with Uli.’
‘Yes?’
‘He would love to meet you, Sara. Of course. It has all come as a bit of a surprise to him, but a happy one. He doesn’t have any other children.’
‘No?’
‘He told me he knocked on the cottage door when I was in Sydney and was met by Nina with you on her hip. Nina told him she had to put her daughter to bed and closed the door. He couldn’t believe she would lie about being your mother, or that I wouldn’t have told him about you.’ Helena sighs. ‘He never understood why I wouldn�
��t see him and took off interstate like I did. Without any explanation. It was cruel of me, and he is a good man to forgive it. I was traumatised and had to get away, and I was thinking of you, on Nina’s advice, but she was so wrong.’
‘But she had no idea I could have been Uli’s,’ I say.
‘No.’
Once again, I have a visceral reaction to my mother’s words, her suggestion that her concern for me when I was just a baby meant that she lost the love of her life. My old anger reignites.
‘Are you there?’ she asks.
‘It sounds like I was in the way of you being with the man you loved.’
‘Oh, that’s not how I meant it. You must know that. Shit. Sorry, Sara. I’m inept sometimes. It’s what you get for living alone.’
I am still quiet.
‘Sara. Look, cut me some slack, sweetheart. Please. I couldn’t be happier that I have you as my daughter. And Uli, I know for a fact, will be so delighted. The whole situation was complicated back then, and I was going on Nina’s advice is what I’m trying to say, not very successfully.’
I remember the promise I made to Nina to protect the memory of the women who came before me and the futures of those who will follow, and suppose my mother made the same one.
‘How’s Uli’s wife with all this?’
‘Bronwyn, her name is. A bit stunned. Not thrilled, I think. But he says she’ll understand in time.’
‘Right. Poor woman.’
‘She’s married a very fine man.’ Helena pauses. ‘I love you, Sara. That’s what I want you to know. I always have, even when I feared you weren’t his.’
Michael Forster is again tending his lawn. As I unlock Nina’s cottage door, I catch his eye and am surprised to see him smile. Or was it a grimace into the glare? He steps forwards, towards a pile of lawn clippings, and stumbles, and I wonder if his health is ailing. I think of all that I wish I could now ask Nina and can’t.
‘Ellie, you go inside. I’ll be back in a moment.’ I cross the street.
‘Michael, I’ve been wanting to ask you … You said my grandmother lied. Can you tell me more, please?’
He looks uncomfortable and clears his throat. Takes a handkerchief from his pocket and wipes it across his nose. Red sawdust clings to his cardigan.
‘There’s nothing to tell now.’ He turns to go inside. Through the window I see into the sparsely furnished house. There is a loaf of white bread and a stainless-steel teapot on the kitchen table. A few feet from the front door, he briefly looks back at me. ‘I saw Helena here. Visiting you.’
‘Yes. Did you know her well?’
‘We used to play, yes. When we were young.’ He points to the park down the street, his free hand now on the doorknob. ‘Our parents didn’t like it.’
‘I didn’t know you were friends.’
He faces me. ‘We were. The bullies at school used to pick on her. And when we got older, we still used to talk, sometimes. But she had a boyfriend.’ He goes quiet. ‘Say hello to her from me.’
‘I will.’
He opens the door and goes inside.
Walking away, I am struck by the layers of lying and wonder if I have misjudged this man.
25
Uli is a fine-looking man with thick fair hair, barely grey. He is broad chested and has a face accustomed to smiling. He meets my mother and me at the front door of his West Hobart home, the sparkling blue water of the River Derwent visible through a large window behind him. A patchwork of red and green corrugated rooftops and modest city buildings cascades to the wide expanse of water. Uli reaches out his arms for me and all of us cry.
‘I didn’t know,’ he tells me, his voice strained with emotion. He holds me close and I breathe him in, my father. He is warm and safe and I let go of all the layers of self-protection that I have built around myself, welcoming this moment and sharing some of the weight I have been carrying. I realise there has always been an aloneness in me that only this man could fill.
‘I loved your mother very much,’ he says, his German accent still thick. He puts an arm around Helena and draws her into our embrace. ‘I am married, as you know, and I love my wife, but it all could, very well, have turned out differently …’ He laughs, but there are still tears streaming down his face.
‘Come. Come inside. Sorry.’ He waves us in. The furniture in the house is exquisite and handmade. There are pictures of a yacht on his wall.
‘You sail?’ I ask, grasping the distraction and wondering where his wife is and how she might be feeling about us being here.
‘Yes. He points to the river. How could you live here, in paradise, and not sail? I will take you sometime. And you have a daughter. Ellie. Why didn’t you bring her?’ He looks hurt and confused.
I had not anticipated this. That he would be upset that I hadn’t brought Ellie.
‘Next time,’ I tell him. ‘She’s at school.’
‘I see,’ he says. ‘I am the luckiest man alive.’
‘Is your wife home?’ I ask.
‘No. She is out, but she will meet you another time. I am not saying it is easy for her, all of this. We were not able to have our own children. But, Sara dear, she is happy for me. That is what love is. And she will love you also.’
He rests a hand on my head like I am still a little girl, and I don’t mind that he can see the tears on my cheeks.
He leaves the lounge for a side office, where he reaches into the top drawer of a beautifully crafted myrtle cabinet and takes out a book. Inside the front cover he finds a slim envelope, which he brings across to me. The envelope contains a series of old photographs. I look at the first one, an image of my mother at a beach in a bikini, a young blond man beside her. He is strongly built and tall and has the same eyes as the man standing in front of me.
‘We made a fine couple, didn’t we?’ He winks at me, and Helena looks over my shoulder at the photo. I hand it to her.
‘I didn’t know you still had these,’ my mother says, her free hand over her mouth.
The next picture is of my mother in an old-model Ford.
‘We had to sneak away. She’d meet me down on the highway and I’d take her driving in my car. Somewhere away from prying eyes. Either that or we’d see each other at night when my parents were out.’ He reaches out to touch Helena’s arm.
I look at the pictures of young love, the two of them holding hands at an ice-cream parlour, in some shots kissing.
‘Who took the photographs?’
‘Passersby. Strangers. Never anyone we knew,’ Helena says. ‘We asked them to.’ She meets my eyes and I see the teenage girl in the photographs. Just being here with Uli, her face has softened, the lines around her eyes and mouth appear less deep.
‘Your mother tells me you are a scientist.’ He taps his head, indicating intelligence. ‘You got that from her. She is the smart one.’ He smiles at Helena, takes her hand and kisses it.
I am starting to feel uncomfortable in their presence, like I am intruding. ‘And you’re a builder?’
He looks at me again. ‘Yes, yes. Mostly cabinet work now though.’ He dips his head in the direction of his furniture, the elegant designs in native timbers: sassafras, myrtle, blackwood and Huon pine. ‘Things I get to put my name to and sell. I’m getting smarter.’ He taps his head again.
‘It’s all really beautiful,’ I say.
‘Just some simple things.’
There is a coffee table with a chessboard built into the top, each square either blond Huon pine or red-brown blackwood. ‘How clever.’
He rests a hand on my shoulder. ‘If you say so.’
We take a seat on the lounge. Not even with Nina did I feel such instant acceptance and warmth.
‘Why was Nina so against you two? Just because you’re German?’
Uli bows his head. ‘Yes, I think it was simply that. She did not even stop to ask what our views were. In the war. Our family’s sacrifices.’
Helena looks at him sadly.
‘Uli’s g
randparents were killed for sheltering Jews in their home,’ she says. ‘The Jews were destined for Dachau concentration camp, outside of Munich. Just a train ride away. His parents escaped capture. Uli was just a small boy. I didn’t learn any of that until the last weeks we were together.’
‘Why didn’t you tell Nina that?’ I ask.
‘She refused to listen,’ Helena says.
‘But it’s the same story, sort of.’ I look at Helena. ‘She and your father had to flee Russia.’
‘It’s true,’ Uli says. ‘And she was called a communist here, just as she called me a Nazi.’
I cannot imagine my grandmother calling this kind man a Nazi. Did I really know her?
‘And your parents were also opposed to the two of you?’
‘Not as much as Nina, no,’ Uli says. ‘Actually, for them I think it was more a case of pride. The fact that they knew Nina was so against us meant that they didn’t want anything to do with her family either. I think it was more like that.’ He strokes a piece of polished cabinetry. ‘Not that the Russians didn’t also do terrible things to Germans in the war.’
I take it all in. The prejudices of old that have wreaked havoc to this day.
‘Do you think if Nina had known that I was definitely your child she would have felt differently?’ I ask Uli.
‘Of course you were mine …’ He appears confused again, then indignant as he turns to my mother. ‘Helena?’
Helena looks down at her hands, crossed in her lap.
‘Sorry,’ I say. ‘I thought you would have explained …’
‘No, not that.’
‘Helena?’ Uli asks again.
‘Do you remember the couple across the street? They had the boy Michael, who used to follow me around sometimes.’
‘Yes?’ Uli has an expression of such deep concern on his face that I have to look away. I focus on the yachts out on the river.
‘Michael,’ he says. ‘Did he?’
‘No … No. But his father … He used to do some jobs for Nina. Very occasionally, when the Hydro men couldn’t help out. Electrical work and so on. He used to leer at her at the same time as he made racial jokes. Slurs. She rejected him at every opportunity, more forcefully as the years went on. He must have thought I was her …’
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