by Bina Bernard
She was pleased when she found the bright orange silk Missoni dress she had not worn in years. “I can wear it now,” she said, laughing at the stranger in the mirror. It did not smell of stale smoke and was a perfect fit.
Robert and Hannah joined the crowd of revelers in the lobby outside the huge stainless steel elevator doors waiting to be taken to Windows on the World. It only took fifty-eight seconds for the express elevator to “fly” up to the 107th floor.
She cringed a little on take-off as she felt her ears pop. “Are you sure we’re not being beamed up into the Starship Enterprise?” Hannah said and squeezed Robert’s hand. But once the door opened, she instantly decided the breathtaking 360-degree view of the Statue of Liberty and the illuminated bridges to Brooklyn, Queens and Staten Island were worth the scary trip. Looking through the forty-foot windows that encased the room, it was easy to forget the chaos below.
Robert immediately got into the spirit of the occasion. As they maneuvered through the crowd to reach their host, Jack Lawry, and his wife Annabelle, Robert pulled Hannah from one guest to another, exchanging pleasantries.
Hannah happily mingled with Robert’s colleagues. She knew many of them by name only, rather than by face. Jack and Robert had both studied architecture at Yale. Now Jack was trying to convince Robert to come back to New York once his Amagansett projects were completed to join the small firm he and several of their peers were forming. For that reason alone, Hannah was predisposed to like Jack. She thought bubbly Annabelle might take some getting used to. But she listened attentively as Annabelle described life with their newborn baby.
“I love her to pieces, but she sure makes me tired,” Annabelle said, whipping out a picture of adorable Laura sucking on a teething ring. “I guess those exhausting days are long gone for you since Christy is a teenager.”
Jack shot Annabelle a stern look. She seemed perplexed.
“Christy is my daughter. I was married before,” Robert explained.
“Oh, sorry. I just run off at the mouth. Please forgive me,” Annabelle said, giggling nervously. “Jack never made that clear. He just told me you had a teenage daughter,” she said to Robert.
“It’s no big deal,” Hannah said. “Robert does have a lovely teenage daughter and maybe someday we will have a child together.”
To cover their momentary discomfort, each took a sip of their drink.
For almost six hours Robert was able to pull Hannah back into the real world. After a few drinks she found herself talking easily to people about something other than Harry’s illness. During dinner, as they watched the awe-inspiring Tall Ships sail around the tip of Manhattan and applauded the splendiferous Grucci fireworks bursting across the evening sky, it surprised Hannah how much she was enjoying herself.
I’m so happy. It feels good to be alive! she mused, squeezing Robert’s arm.
Afterward, Hannah and Robert joined a sea of celebratory New Yorkers and hand-in-hand slowly walked home. Hannah thought about her father only intermittently.
On Monday when Hannah and Molly visited Harry, he was sitting up in a chair talking animatedly to a Catholic priest.
“Father Murphy! I didn’t know you knew my husband,” Molly said. She herself had often spoken with the priest in the visitor’s lounge.
“We met when I came by to see Mr. Hughes,” he said, pointing to the now empty bed across from Harry’s. “Your husband is a very interesting man.”
Molly beamed.
Hannah was surprised to see her father talking to a clergyman of any religion.
“Have you converted my father yet?” she asked.
“Not yet, but I’m trying.” Father Murphy grinned.
“Listen, this priest has a better chance with me than that rabbi who stuck his head in, gave me his card and left. I haven’t seen him since,” Harry said. “Hannah, I told Father Murphy all about Lena. He has an idea for how you might be able to find out what happened to her.”
“That’s great. We can use whatever help you can give us, Father,” Hannah said. But she was skeptical. She had already contacted the Archdiocese of New York.
“You need to write a letter, explaining the whole story to Karol Wojtyła, the Archbishop of Krakow. If anyone can find out what happened to your sister, he can. I’ll give you the address and help you with the letter, if you wish.”
“Oh, my Hannah doesn’t need help. She’s a published writer,” Harry said.
Slightly embarrassed, Hannah was nevertheless warmed by her father’s obvious pride.
“I would really appreciate your help,” she told Father Murphy, and immediately took out her note pad.
Hannah and Father Murphy huddled in the corner of Harry’s room while Molly fluffed her husband’s pillow and combed his hair. Having sketched out the letter, Hannah cut her visit short and rushed back to her office. She wrote and rewrote. At that moment Hannah viewed the letter to the Archbishop of Krakow as her most important writing assignment. It had to strike just the right tone. The carefully crafted final draft enumerated everything the Archbishop and Harry had in common. They’d grown up in the same city, both played soccer, were both Polish patriots before the war, and both of them had suffered under the Nazis. She explained how Lena was left with the nuns, and that Harry was unable to find out what happened to her when he tried to get her back after the war. Hannah made the urgency clear. Harry’s health was failing, and he desperately wanted to find his long-lost daughter before it was too late.
Hannah rushed to the post office. Seeing the clerk stamp the letter “Special Delivery” gave her a reason to feel optimistic. For the first time since her father asked her to find her sister, Hannah actually felt they had a shot at tracking Lena down.
While Harry’s congestive heart failure was now better controlled, the underlying cause was still a mystery. Hannah had considered taking him to another hospital by ambulance for a second opinion until Robert ran into Dr. Frederick Baines, a friend from Yale who was an internist at the hospital. He was willing to offer a second opinion.
After examining Harry and studying the echocardiogram the technician had had so much trouble administering when Harry first arrived, Dr. Baines was certain the problem was inside Harry’s heart. He recommended an angiogram. Admittedly an invasive procedure, but Dr. Baines insisted it was worth the risk. It would finally provide an answer. Surprisingly, Harry agreed.
While the angiogram was in progress, Hannah and Molly awaited a diagnosis in the visitor’s lounge. As her mother chatted amiably with a group of her lounge pals, Hannah mindlessly flipped the pages of an old magazine. When Dr. Caulder motioned for her to come into the hall, she ran out and braced herself against the wall.
“Your father has a tumor inside his heart,” Hannah heard the doctor say, and she reached into her bag for the unopened box of Marlboros. Dr. Caulder pointed to the yellow and black sign that clearly said: “No Smoking.”
Overnight, Harry became the hospital’s star patient. Dr. Martin admitted that in all his years of practice he had never treated anyone with a tumor inside his heart. Harry has always been unique, Hannah thought. Doctors from all departments came to peer at his chart. The med students, the surgical team, they were all looking forward to an unusual operation. Harry again resisted. Until one evening, in the middle of August, he agreed to sign the consent, even before Dr. Caulder finished making his pitch. Harry told Hannah, “I need more time. With Father Murphy’s help, maybe I’ll be lucky and live to see Lena. It’s worth a shot.”
The operation was scheduled for the following day. After almost three months, the hospital visits with her father were her new normal. He could be touched, stroked, kissed. He was alive. She needed him to stay that way. Were Harry’s chances of surviving heart surgery as great as advertised? Hannah prayed Dr. Caulder could deliver on the miracle he’d promised.
Harry made it through the surgery. The staff was jubilant. His heart was strong, with a new mitral valve in the place where the tumor had been. There was no
mention of the biopsy results or need for further treatment. Harry’s scar was healing rapidly. The doctors reassured him he was on the mend and would be out of the ICU as soon as he started breathing normally. Harry practiced diligently. Both Molly and Hannah took turns timing his breaths off the machine.
He did it again, Hannah thought. Just like his close calls during the war.
Hannah was on her way to getting her life back. She came to the hospital only in the evenings. The yellow pads on her office desk were once again filled with future story ideas. No longer limited to talking to subjects on the phone, Hannah arranged in-person interviews. Possible subjects: Lee Radziwill, about to start an interior design business, eighteen-year-old Sandra Irwin, now a midshipman at Annapolis since women were admitted in July, Jane Pauley, a transplant from Chicago, scheduled to join the Today Show in October, and Françoise Sagan was about to visit New York to publicize a book about Brigitte Bardot. But the story that interested Hannah most had haunted her since before Harry’s operation. The .44 Caliber Killer who was terrorizing New York City had killed Donna Lauria and wounded her friend, Jody Valenti, as the young women were sitting in Jody’s mother’s 1974 Cutlass Oldsmobile after a night of dancing at a disco. Hannah wondered how Jody was dealing with being a survivor, and how Donna’s family was coping with the loss of a daughter.
“What are you going to do once your life doesn’t revolve around visiting hours with your father?” Robert asked when Hannah announced Harry was about to leave the hospital.
Although he was laughing when he said it, Hannah thought Robert’s question was an implied complaint.
“I’m sorry. I know the last few months haven’t been easy on you . . . on us.” She hoped he understood how important he was to her very existence. “I couldn’t have made it without you,” she said solemnly.
“Hey, lighten up,” Robert said, as he put his arms around her. “Freud’s assessment aside, it was just a stupid joke. We’re okay!”
Intellectually she believed Robert loved her and wasn’t about to leave, but there was still the problem of getting pregnant.
“Maybe we can work on making a baby?” Hannah said.
Robert grinned, and with his index finger and thumb he lifted Hannah’s lips into a smile. “I like the way you think,” he said.
CHAPTER
13
Poland
THE MOMENT SHE HAD GOTTEN off the train from Krakow, Lena vowed to educate herself about being Jewish. Even before launching her search for her family. Since then, as exhausted as she was, Dr. Malińska still spent her evenings reading into the night. Subject of choice: Jewish history, past and present.
One Sunday while Stefan was playing soccer, Lena decided to visit the Jewish Historical Institute at 5 Tłomackie Street. With trepidation, she walked up the five front steps and through the mahogany door into what in pre-war days had been the Main Library of Judaica. Inside the boundary of the Warsaw Ghetto, the building had been damaged on May 16, 1943, when the Germans blew up the Great Synagogue next door. Miraculously the Library building survived. Thirty-three years later, parts of it were still under renovation.
There was much for Lena to see and learn. Reading all the testimonials from Holocaust survivors made her weep, which she expected. But as she meandered from exhibit to exhibit, she was surprised to learn how expansive Jewish life and culture had been in Poland. As if by osmosis, Lena felt herself borrowing other people’s history to make up for the lack of her own.
Scanning the other visitors, Lena noted they looked very much like her. Still whenever she made eye contact, instinctively, Lena shielded the gold crucifix around her neck with her hand. It was a treasured gift from her proud father after her first communion.
Before she headed for home, Lena decided to take a walk along Plac Grzybowski and wandered over to the Nożyk Synagogue, the only Jewish house of worship in Warsaw that had survived the war. Damaged during an air raid in ’39, it had been used afterward by the Germans as a stable. Surveying the work that had already been done to the neo-romantic structure, Lena mused, “It still needs serious restoration. Just as I do!”
Lena periodically checked in with Nadia Rustycka in Krakow. But as the days became weeks, she feared Ela Wyszyńska might not be found, or worse, could be dead. Nadia called with good news at the end of August. Ela was back in her apartment and ready for a visit. Lena was overjoyed. This time when she took the train to Krakow, she brought her son along.
“Lena, Lena, my baby,” Ela said as she welcomed her and Stefan into her tiny apartment.
“You knew me?”
“When you were a baby. You’re the spitting image of your mother now,” she said and touched Lena’s cheek with her gnarled hand. “And you’re a doctor, just like your father!”
The pleasure of seeing Lena seemed to illuminate Ela’s wrinkled face. The joy of having made a connection with someone who knew her parents made Lena weepy. The two women embraced. Leaning on her cane, Ela, tentatively, led the three of them into her living room. The women sat, side by side, on the tufted red loveseat. Stefan picked a chair opposite them. He was there as a witness.
Ela tried to engage the boy. “I knew your mother since she was born!” she told him, expecting to answer a flood of questions about his mother’s early years. Stefan nodded, then sat quietly and listened. There was nothing he wished to ask.
“Lena, my dear, you’re so like your mother. It’s hard to believe you’re not your mother,” Ela said.
Looking at Lena brought back memories of the days before the war when she was young and life was good. Widowed for many years and hobbled by arthritis, Ela missed her friend and pined for the life they once shared.
“My God, there is so much I have to tell you,” Ela said, and sighed. “I wish Janek was still alive,” she added, as she explained how she and her husband had taken her younger sister, Hannah, to live with a childless couple in Kielce. “When that didn’t work out, I brought your sister to Warsaw. Once your father got false papers for her, I took her to live with an elderly woman. In those days traveling for me was easy. No arthritis. I didn’t need a cane then to get around.” As she remembered her former self Ela’s face brightened.
“I was going to bring you to the nuns at the orphanage near Radom, but your father thought it would be less suspicious if he, a doctor, made the arrangements. He expected to get you back after the war. But they wouldn’t tell him where you were!”
“I know!” Lena said.
For a split second she allowed herself to think about the life she might have had if Stefan had told Sister Marianna the truth. Not wanting to be disloyal to him, Lena quickly banished all thoughts of what might have been.
“Your parents didn’t know where to start looking for you!”
Lena cleared her throat, then nodded. She could not bring herself to reveal Stefan Jankowski’s deception to Ela.
“Tell me about my parents,” she begged. “What were they like?” Lena hoped Ela’s stories could reawaken some childhood memories.
“They were wonderful people. You come from wonderful people,” Ela assured Lena. “I have pictures to show you.” She reached for the leather-bound photo album resting on the end table.
“They had such a beautiful wedding!” Ela said as she opened the album.
As soon as she looked at their wedding portrait, a torrent of tears flowed down Lena’s cheeks. She immediately recognized her mother. Now finally she saw her father’s face.
Until that moment, the only memory Lena had of her father was of his thumb.
She listened intently as Ela regaled her with stories about her family. Although eager to recapture her past, Lena hoped to get help with the present and future. The two questions she needed Ela to answer were: “Do you have any idea where my parents went after the Soviets arrived? Where do you think they might be now?”
Ela’s answer to both questions was, “I wish I knew.” She dabbed her eyes. “I saw your mother only once after the war was ove
r. She came back to Krakow with Hannah for a few days. They were all living in Radom, still as Christians.”
Lena felt a pang of jealousy. She took out her picture of the two little girls and fingered Hannah’s face. They got you back!
“I gave your mother some things your grandmother left with me. . . . It was a bad time. A very bad time!” Ela said, remembering.
Lena recalled that Nadia had used exactly those same words.
“We lost touch soon after that. I don’t know what happened to them.” Ela pressed her eyes closed to keep her tears in. She only knew that Hershel and Malka had hoped to smuggle themselves out of Poland after the Russians closed the border.
“They wanted to go to America to be with Hershel’s three brothers,” Ela said. “But I don’t know where in America the brothers lived. I don’t know if they ever got there. How could I know? We lost touch.” She sighed.
For several hours as Ela and Lena talked, Stefan watched their emotional reunion. He was relieved this woman could not tell his mother where her parents were, or even if they were still alive. She said she wanted to find out the name of her birth parents and where she came from. Now she knows, he told himself. That should be enough. Losing his father and grandfather was traumatic enough. Suddenly being told he has Jewish blood was hard to deal with. Stefan didn’t want his life upended any further.
When her guests stood to leave, Ela asked, “Lena, would you like to see where you used to live?”
Lena pulled the piece of paper she found among Mr. Turowski’s negatives from her purse. “Was this the address?”
Ela nodded.
“When I went there the woman who answered the door wouldn’t even talk to me. She won’t let me inside.”
“Don’t be silly, child,” Ela said with a chuckle. “I’ll make sure she lets you in.”
With the top of her cane, Ela banged forcefully on the massive front door. The same woman who had slammed the door on Lena stuck her head out. Ela pushed the door wide open.