Pictures of the Past

by Deby Eisenberg

  She was not. Emily had been pampered and coddled first by parents and adoring grandparents and then by a court of three older brothers, who playfully tormented and teased her, but protected her like knights in armor and put her firmly in place on her pedestal.

  Initially, all that Emily Kendall could concern herself with was the inconvenience of her father’s infirmary. She had just spent an extended period of time in the Chicago area, occupying herself with the gracious hospitality of her circle of friends, as well as the Woodmere family. She knew she was wearing on them all and had actually been thinking of returning home soon, but certainly not until after the next weekend with its full schedule of garden parties and with two new dresses waiting in her wardrobe for their debut. But, in truth, if she had known Taylor would have extended his stay abroad, she would have enjoyed the time back at Newport, Rhode Island, with her brothers and her friends, attending the whirlwind of summer parties there that continued, but certainly more limited due to the current economic conditions.

  Actually, it hadn’t been her idea to stay with the Woodmeres for more than a few weeks that summer, and certainly not to remain there once Taylor left for Europe. But her mother had insisted.

  “Emily, you just stay in Kenilworth and establish yourself as his intended,” she had instructed her. If this conversation had been in person, not on the phone, her mother would have witnessed the familiar pouty sulk of her twenty-one-year-old daughter.

  “Mother, there are so many other girls I know who are my age and not yet brides.”

  “Then believe me, my dear,” her mother continued, “they have mothers just like me scouting out prospects. Or maybe they have no concerns for their futures. But honestly, as my only daughter, I want to know you will be set and secure. Lord knows I will worry how the boys will establish themselves, but I have less control over that.”

  Her mother’s last statement caused Emily to pause and quizzically wrinkle her forehead. What did those words mean? Her father had said he would always take care of her—and her brothers—all of them. Why was her mother speaking so strangely now, she wondered, but she set aside those thoughts to challenge her mother’s instructions to remain. “I know you are already equating me with your spinster sister, Aunt Ella, but I think your concerns are unfounded,” Emily said, as she reminded her mother that before Taylor, even when she first started seeing Taylor, she always had a following of boys interested in her at school and at Newport.

  “Well, the same was true with Aunt Ella,” her mother continued. “You know that, Emily—pretty as you are today, when Ella was young she was a dazzling figure in the new fashion of dresses that were so slim and figure flattering after decades of puffy ornamentation. My God, when we were younger, I was so jealous of her—she could have had her pick of any of the boys. I would keep my boyfriends from coming home when she was around, as she would intoxicate them just by walking into the room. Well—you see what happened to her—she let her moment pass and then her debutante years—and then the next years. And here she is alone without a man because she let her prime slip away.”

  “Mother, you are truly exhausting,” Emily returned, picturing her smart, exotic aunt, usually dressed replete with a stylish hat and black netting covering one eye. She was always a commanding presence with her skirt suits and textured hose—and thick high heels that accentuated the curves of her calves. “Aunt Ella is not alone and you know it. Aunt Ella—well—she has a girlfriend. You know it, although you won’t say it; she is in a lesbian relationship.”

  “Now, I have told you not to speak like that ever, and especially not to me. You know how those kinds of rumors get started at girls’ boarding schools. They are vicious and unfounded lies. My sister shares an apartment in Manhattan with another female associate at her design firm and you need not read more into it. And if she had acted sooner on her many choices, she would not have found herself the subject of such malicious and unreasonable gossip that, frankly, I find at this time too unnerving to continue to discuss.”

  “Oh, Mother—you don’t become a lesbian because you kept turning down men—you turn down men because you want women.”

  “Emily—I am hanging up now. You just stay in Chicago and wait for Taylor to return.”

  And with that, Emily heard only the final slam of the phone on the receiver.

  But now that conversation was weeks in the past and Emily had been called back to Rhode Island before Taylor finished the final leg of his trip home by land from New York to Chicago. It was as if she was a young child again and could not or refused to comprehend the severity of the situation with her father. But perhaps this worked well for her, as she had a long, solitary trip back to Newport and would travel best if she were not in a distraught state.

  The news at home was not good, and so Charles, their chauffeur, chose to drive in silence from the Boston train station to the compound at Newport. This was not something that Emily had registered as unusual, as she always found him remotely proper (and he found her to be a snobbish brat). He had actually begun a conversation inquiring as to her health, but, as usual, she returned no such salutation, and so he let the silence fill the air.

  Taylor

  Newport

  October 1937

  It was only a few months after Taylor returned back to Chicago from Europe and his stop in New York that he received the desperate call from Emily and knew he was expected to be with her in Newport. In those months, Taylor had tried not to act distracted at home or at work, but had thought of nothing but being reunited with Sarah. They wrote letters with a far greater efficiency than either postal system could manage, and Taylor surprised himself with a talent for composing love sonnets. Although he had given his parents detailed accounts of his experiences abroad, they were mainly limited to business interactions. He struggled with admitting his feelings toward Sarah until he could resolve the situation with Emily. But with this call, he knew he could no longer simply maintain a phone relationship with her on the pretense that he was giving her time alone to be with her family.

  “Taylor, I thought you’d never come.” Emily glided toward him, smiling and holding out her arms, as he stood at the opened front door of her home. Watching her advance, he felt a turning pitch in his stomach. What was he doing here? He shouldn’t be here. But now that he was, he knew he should be meeting her approach halfway. He was willing his feet to move forward, willing his hands to reach for hers. But his brain was no longer controlling his actions—his heart was. And his heart was still with Sarah Berger of Berlin.

  Luckily when Emily fell into his arms, she buried her head into his broad chest and did not search out his eyes.

  “Don’t even look at me. I’m a pitiful mess,” she said. “Please, say you won’t go away. Please say you won’t leave me. Papa is gone. I am alone.”

  “You’ll be OK. You’ll be OK,” he said, gently smoothing the fullness of her hair—but he made her no promises—though at this point that did not register with her. He had come to her immediately upon news of the death of her father, as it would be his perceived duty to be with her during the mourning period. But as much as he would have liked to have told her the truth right away and lift the burden from his shoulders, it was not about him feeling comfortable; it was about comforting her. It would be cruel to be totally forthcoming about his new relationship right now.

  “Emily, you know I am so sorry about your losing your father—I’ve said it on the phone—but I am glad I can say it to you now face to face. I know that is something we both valued—closeness with our fathers.”

  When Emily finally withdrew from Taylor’s arms, she still kept her head directed away from him, for it was memories of her father that were her focus now.

  “You know, Taylor,” she began, barely audible through short breaths and sniffles. She was leading him to sit with her on the front veranda. “It doesn’t seem that long ago that I was at my Presentation Ball. We did the Father-Daughter dance—and even then I was remembering backwa
rd in time—dancing on his patent leather formal shoes at my older cousin’s wedding when I was about eight years old. Always looking up at him—always envying my mother for her handsome husband. Wishing someday I would be as fortunate. Do you know what my dad said to me at the debutante dance? In the middle of our dance, he told me I was even more beautiful than my mother. For so many years I kept that a secret—I didn’t want to hurt Mother’s feelings. But I knew how immature I could be and that one day when she was controlling me and I wanted to wound her that I would toss it in her face.

  “And you know what—I did. We were fighting over some silly thing—probably a dress I wanted to buy—and I was frustrated by her—criticizing the fit—and so I let go of the trump card I had been holding. ‘You’re jealous,’ I said, ‘because father said I was more beautiful than you.’”

  Emily paused now, finally looking up at Taylor. “And you know what she said?”

  “Was she hurt?” he asked.

  “Oh, no. She had her answer as quick as a split. ‘Poor dear, don’t you know that all fathers say that to their daughters. Silly girl—so vain.’”

  Despite his determination to withhold overt affection from her, so as not to mislead her, he felt the great compassion for her that connects all human beings and he had no heart to withhold a hug. He put his arm around her, lay his cheek on hers, and smoothed back her hair. This was not about them—their relationship. This was about consoling someone at the time of a devastating loss.

  Again, Emily was sobbing softly. “As she said it, my eyes grew wide and my chest heaved, and then, just like she had hoped, my whole body deflated like a balloon that had a slow leak.” This Emily explained without looking up, and then she raised her head once more. “And now I am abandoned by the parent from whom there was nothing but unconditional love and left to ‘parent’ the remaining immature one.”

  “No,” Taylor insisted, “I know your mother adores you—I have seen that—she was always negotiating what was best for you.”

  “Best for her,” Emily shot back. “And one more thing—and this is what my father said next as I curtsied and he bowed at the end of the debutante dance—‘One day I will dance with you at the Father-Daughter dance at your wedding’…But it won’t be so—he will never see us wed—and one of my brothers will be recruited to take his place—oh, nothing is as it should be. I feel like Alice in the book—Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland— where nothing is normal and you have to adjust to a new reality.”

  His head jolted immediately and he snapped at her in response. “What did you say?”

  She did not understand his sudden hostility and so she repeated cautiously, “I just meant it’s like I’m Alice shrinking in the rabbit’s house—or maybe boys aren’t familiar with that story.”

  He became hardened to her again. “You are not like her. You are not like Alice.” And there was a coldness in his eyes that she had been hearing in his voice these last weeks.

  “OK,” she said. “I don’t know what I said that disturbed you. I’m sorry.” And she ran back into the house, reiterating in a soft cry under her breath, “Everything is wrong.”

  He silently berated himself. Certainly, her comment was innocent and did not deserve his strong retort. But he knew for sure that he now needed distance between them. At this point he was envisioning no such future with Emily—no wedding—no brothers walking her down the aisle. He had eyes only for Sarah, and in his dreams it was always Sarah walking toward him in a white dress, and it was her father, Emanuel Berger, to whom he returned a slight bow as he “gave away” his daughter in marriage.

  Finally, the next day, he decided to tell Emily about the Berger family of Berlin and his fears for them, explaining that he was especially concerned for their daughter, Sarah.

  “Oh, how sad, a young child,” Emily responded, seeming empathetic and forgetting for one moment her own cares. “How old is the girl?”

  “Well, I believe she is seventeen or eighteen,” Taylor said cautiously.

  And then Emily changed her body language to a more posturing pose and a wary look came to her eyes, as she leaned back and looked directly at his face. “Is there more that you are not telling me? Is this why you stayed longer in Europe? Is this behind your new coldness?”

  Again, Taylor was too harsh. “Emily, there is a big world out there, not just your little existence. This is about terror and the plight of persecuted people.”

  Again, Emily cried. At this point, Taylor recognized that his presence was not serving the needs of either of them, and at the end of the mourning period, he packed his bags to return home to Chicago. But he still did not have the courage to be totally honest with Emily, and he hated himself for that.

  Taylor

  Kenilworth, 1938

  Almost weekly, letters were exchanged between Sarah and Taylor, although sometimes what seemed like an interminable amount of time would pass and then three letters might be delivered in a bunch as a welcome surprise. They were careful to exclude specifics of any future plans, cautious that censors or spies might be editing their words and reporting to superiors. So they were only able to write freely of feelings, emotions, and dreams, as if they were simply forlorn lovers like Romeo and Juliet, separated by warring families, not national ideologies.

  And then suddenly there was no communication. In the first weeks of desperation, he would make lists, resources he could use to track her down. Embassies, the Red Cross, the HIAS Jewish Agency he had learned about through his research. He would search newspapers, place cables to contacts in Switzerland and all over Europe. It was as if she had simply vanished into thin air. He was nervous even about his efforts to find her—could it hurt her in some way? Would he be opening a hornet’s nest if she was using her status as part Christian to disappear into the countryside, to masquerade as a pure Aryan?

  Sarah Berger

  Germany

  1938–1939

  For the Berger family, luck and time were running out. It seemed almost a distant memory now to eighteen-year-old Sarah—the sweet words, caresses and dreams she had shared with her American love. In the year following Taylor’s departure, Sarah’s family slowly began making arrangements to leave Germany, as laws against Jewish business owners became stricter. Communications with Taylor were extremely difficult, but he worked from his end to facilitate their transition to America, postponing commitments to Emily, covering his actions as humanitarian efforts. And then the unimaginable happened. Whether from lack of strong motivation on Emanuel’s part to leave the business or an inability to arrange their departure from Berlin, the Berger family was caught in the horrific devastation of Kristallnacht.

  It had been one more night of chill to add to the calendar that November, and the chill was not just a product of the cool temperature and the brisk breeze of the late fall, but it was the chill that Taylor had perceptively described in midsummer almost a year and a half before. Sarah called it the shadow, the disruptive, unsettling feeling that had become part of her very existence. The shadow had eclipsed her immediate world. Her parents reflected a pall of fear; the young schoolchildren, no longer interacting in spirited outdoor play, were becoming increasingly thin and anemic looking, and were one by one escaping the cloud with their families.

  Sarah and her mother were on a mission that evening. Their elderly neighbor, Hanna Sagan, barely able to climb the stairs to her second-floor apartment, had been wracked by the weather with arthritic bouts. And so, the Bergers scraped the pots and pans of their more than ample dinner so that they could offer her nourishment along with company.

  On the way, they passed Officer Miller who was standing at the corner once again, but he no longer had his nonchalant pose of boredom and seemed rather to be pacing to and fro in an agitated manner. They walked past him quickly, careful not to catch his eye, keeping their heads down, Inga holding the dinner cache with a firm hand on the lid, so that none of the pleasing aromas would invite him nearer. Wilhelm Miller was more than aware of
their obvious shunning, and, surprisingly, it was hurtful to him. When he was a policeman in ordinary times, he always felt he was a favorite of Sarah and her friends. He was adored; there were smiles all around. But now he understood that he was perceived as a conduit of the SS. Now that his uniform markings were more boldly offensive to the residents of his district, things had changed. Others in his patrol had risen to the occasion and they wore their elevated status proudly, taking pleasure in executing any new orders sent from the headquarters of the Third Reich. But Wilhelm was different. He was wounded by the loss of the melody of Sarah’s giggles, by the denial of her mother’s captivating greeting and her succulent strudel treats. He wished he could say, This is not my doing. He wished he could recapture the elegant Mrs. Berger’s favor. But, especially in front of his colleagues, he knew he must appear distant and even offensive, and he would try to present facial expressions to the residents that would mimic the return of an unfavorable gift of spoiled meat. Eventually, he was no longer surprised by their rude demeanor. From the charming young Sarah and the beautiful Mrs. Berger, he knew to expect only piteous looks of betrayal and scorn.

  All that may change on this night, though, he was thinking. With the onset of evening, he would try one last act to redeem himself in their eyes, and to cautiously distance himself from his post. He would warn them of what was ahead. He knew where and when his fellow officers were gathering to begin a marauding night of destruction to the Jews—where they lived, where they worked, where they prayed. He saw the directives; there would be intensified roundups for the work camps. Inside the police station only hours before, there was a party atmosphere as orders were dispersed along with so many wooden batons and metal bars. Outwardly, he had joined in the rally, but in his mind he was actually formulating treasonous thoughts. Oh yes, he whistled along with the others who were singing the songs of the motherland; he raised his arms in victory yelps and supportive salutes.