“How are you doing, Krista?”
I hesitate for just a moment. I want to tell someone about Jake, but other than Lyla, who is there to tell?
“I have a boyfriend . . . sort of.”
Rachel looks up at me with surprise. I don’t know if she’s happy or shocked.
“That’s wonderful. Who is he?”
“His name is Jake Robbins. We go to school together.”
“Robbins . . . is that Robbins Electric?”
“Yeah, that’s his dad.”
“His father is a nice man. He did some work for us last year.”
Jake’s dad was right next door to me last year. But why would I have noticed . . . or cared at the time?
“Are you ready for this, Krista?”
“For a boyfriend? I think so. Why shouldn’t I be?”
“You want to be in a good place when you’re in a relationship. You want to be able to share things with each other . . . and make sure he treats you respectfully.”
“He does.” I laugh even though she hasn’t said anything funny. I guess I’m a little nervous.
“Well, I’m here for you—you know that. If you want to talk about him or anything else.” She looks at me meaningfully. “You know we’ve never really talked about what happened.”
“I don’t need to . . . do that.”
Now I’m sorry I brought up Jake. I didn’t expect this reaction. I thought Rachel, of all people, would be happy for me.
“Krista, you can trust me with your feelings. I share them and I want to protect you. I feel like I’ve lost both a sister and a daughter. I understand, I really do.”
A tear slides down her cheek. She cradles my face gently with one hand, but feeling me flinch, she withdraws quickly. The cookies are piled high on the plate and loosely covered with aluminum foil. Rachel hands the plate to me.
“Thanks, Rachel. Grandpa will love them, but I better get home.”
She looks at me seriously. “Please. You can’t shoulder this by yourself. If not me, then maybe Dr. Bronstein.”
“You’ve been talking to my dad,” I say, feeling betrayed by him once again.
“Your father loves you. I love you.”
The plate of cookies feels like a heavy weight in my hand. Rachel has ruined my high. Thinking about Dr. Bronstein makes me feel bad again. Nobody believes in me except . . . maybe Grandpa.
Grandpa. I’m anxious for him to finish his story. I need to hear the rest of it and write it down before he goes away.
“I have to get going. My grandpa and I have plans,” I say.
She hugs me with one arm and I give her a half-hearted peck on the cheek.
Cooing and gurgling baby noises float out of the monitor. The invisible string pulls Rachel back to Henry’s room.
Chapter | 24
Grandpa and I load up on picnic food at a Russian deli in town. It’s the closest thing to a Hungarian Jewish deli that I can offer him. Afterward, I’m tempted to drive to the ocean, one of his requests and the one I sense he would most like, but I’m worried about getting back in time for Jake, so we go to the Reservoir instead.
I spread a thick woolen blanket underneath the shade of a tree with pointy lime-green leaves that remind me of butterfly wings in the breeze.
“Your father talk to me this morning when you gone. He have test results from my . . .”
“Biopsy?” Now I know why my father stayed behind instead of driving Marie to the airport.
“Biopsy, yes.”
“And?”
“There are some cells in my bone marrow that look funny . . . I can’t remember how it’s called. My body doesn’t make enough of the red cells anymore. This is why I am tired and peel.”
“Is it serious?”
“No, I don’t think so. Anyway, life is serious.”
“What’s the treatment for it?”
“I think I will get some blood transfusion. And then some kind of vitamin and medicine. I will find a doctor . . . a hematologist when I go back to Venezuela.”
“I wish you wouldn’t leave, Grandpa. I wish you’d stay and live with us.”
“I will come back soon, but I have things to do before I get old, you understand.” He chuckles.
“I’m sorry, Grandpa. About your disease.”
He makes a tsk sound with the tip of his tongue and shakes his head.
“Don’t be sorry. I have good luck my whole life . . . so now I have a little bad luck, that’s all.”
“Do you believe you’ve had good luck?”
“Yes, of course. When others die, I live. So I’m a lucky man.”
“Did you ever see the gypsy boy again?”
__________
It wasn’t safe to stay in the village after that day, Grandpa said, but the Barnas hid young Gyuri in their barn for the next few months until life returned to normal, or what would become the new normal of the time. The day after Helen and the boys were taken away, Mr. Barna went to their home to fetch the horse. He answered the curious stares of neighbors when they saw him harnessing the horse to the cart by explaining that Helen had obligations to him and this would settle her debts. That seemed to satisfy everyone. Within a few weeks, all of Helen and Jeno’s remaining belongings would be pilfered by their former friends and neighbors. And the Barnas had an urgent need for the horse and moving cart.
Months later, Mr. Barna harnessed the horse to the cart once again and set out to visit a cousin in a nearby village. The cart was loaded with old furniture that would be reupholstered and refinished by his cousin for resale purposes—at least this was the explanation given to the Barnas’ nosy neighbor who was unaware that young Gyuri had been hiding for months in the barn only a few hundred yards from her home. Twisting his body to fit underneath the various legs of the chairs, my grandfather lay with his tender young cheek pressed hard against the rough wood of the bottom of the cart. Had anyone been suspicious enough to lift the protective tarp from the top of the chairs, both young Gyuri and old Mr. Barna would have met the same cruel fate.
The journey didn’t end in the nearby village—that was only the beginning. From there my grandfather was moved along from stranger to stranger—people willing to risk their lives rather than turn their backs on civilization and humanity.
After some months, he found himself in the capital city of Budapest, which was elegantly draped along both banks of the Danube River. The stately beauty of the city hid its most vile secret—a walled ghetto that served as a massive prison for seventy thousand of Budapest’s remaining Jewish citizens. Within these walls, people lived like filthy animals—food was not allowed in, garbage was not collected, rats scurried brazenly down sidewalks where raw sewage flowed alongside the curbs. Typhoid and hunger claimed life after life, leaving behind corpses to be tossed like peanut shells into vast pits that served as mass graves.
My grandfather was a lucky boy but he didn’t feel that way. Were you lucky if your whole family was dead but you were still alive? If he hadn’t disobeyed his mother, he would be dead too. And many times, he thought that’s exactly what should have happened.
Until the Russians liberated Hungary, he posed as a doctor’s assistant—a young lad from the countryside who worked to help his family out financially. After the war ended, he stayed on with the doctor and his wife, who housed him and fed him and taught him the art of healing during the days, and the stuff of schoolboys at night.
But as kindly and well-meaning as they were, they didn’t have the medicine to heal his heart, and so that cancer of hate ate away at him day by day, month by month, and finally year by year. At the age of seventeen, after several close calls with the Russian soldiers who became Hungary’s newest cruel masters, the doctor and his wife encouraged my grandpa to leave. Not just the city, but to leave Hungary behind forever and make a new start in a place where h
e had a chance at happiness, a chance of forgetting.
There was one final thing that Gyuri, a young strapping man, had to do. He returned to his village which by now was unrecognizable to him. Not a single Jew had returned, probably none had survived. Strangers now lived in his old family home. His homecoming with the Barnas was bittersweet. He loved them for what they had risked for his sake—but he knew he would never see them again once he left. He spent a few months with them, making plans for how he would escape from Hungary, which had become a giant prison behind the wall of the Iron Curtain. And then a few days before he left, he went to the place where he knew the gypsies of his childhood had lived in a more or less permanent campsite.
He knew the Roma boy was not capable of causing death and devastation through a childish hex. He didn’t truly believe in curses even when he was a young boy of ten. And yet, for some reason, he couldn’t completely shake the episode from his mind—it was always with him, like a headache you wake up with every morning and go to bed with every night.
This day, when he went to find the gypsy boy who would now be a young man himself, he found, as he suspected, nobody . . . and nothing. Just like the Jews, the Roma had vanished—erased from the landscape by the Nazis. Right then and there, my grandfather realized he hadn’t come to this place looking for revenge; he had come hoping to find life.
__________
“Do you still think about your family, Grandpa?”
“Every day.” He leans back on one elbow and looks out at the glittering blue water where white pelicans float into each other like bumper boats in an amusement park. “I think about them every day. You? Do you think about your family?”
I start to say I miss my family, but the word sticks in my throat. Miss? I miss Lyla. Next week I’ll miss Jake until he gets back. But I’m going to see them both at some point. Miss doesn’t seem to be the right word. And because I can’t find the right word, I just nod my head.
“Do you still hate them? The Nazis?”
He doesn’t answer right away. He looks like he’s thinking hard about this question and about his answer. As though he’s never considered it before, although I know he has a thousand times.
“I couldn’t hate everyone—there were too many to hate. Where would I stop? Hate doesn’t hurt the hated person . . . it only hurts the person who hates.”
“I wanted to go back to see the boy—Omar Aziz.” I can’t believe I’ve said his name out loud, maybe for the first time. “But everyone stopped me. Everyone made me feel bad about myself for wanting to do that.”
“I think you should go see him, Kicsi,” my grandfather says quietly.
“What would I say?”
“You will know what to say . . . but don’t go with hate in your heart.”
Chapter | 25
I’m disappointed when Jake calls to tell me he’s going to be late. Something about an emergency job that came in for his father, and he has to help because his dad couldn’t round up an assistant in time. It means extra money for the family because it came in after regular business hours, so they can charge more.
Dad is also working after regular business hours. He was called in tonight to admit one of his patients to the hospital. Dad traded with his partner to be on call this weekend since Marie is out of town. So it’s just Grandpa and me for dinner.
We get Chinese take-out of course. Then we play with Charlie for a while and my grandpa gets an idea.
“Let him fly around the house,” he suggests.
Which we do. Charlie finds a place on top of the curtain rod in the living room, and he’s probably making quite a bird mess up there, but we don’t care. We’re just happy to see him happy. And the pink flesh of his chest is beginning to look like a pin cushion full of little spikes that will soon unfurl into brand new real feathers.
We sit outside in the darkness and I pull my hair away from my face and fasten it into a ponytail. The warm, cozy breeze tickles the back of my neck and shoulders. I think about Jake and am so filled with anticipation that my stomach has flutters. I think about what Grandpa said earlier and the anticipation turns to dread. I’m on a rollercoaster for sure.
Grandpa looks up in the sky at the smoothly gliding owl that has just passed overhead. Then his attention turns to the stars.
“So many stars. In the old days, people used the stars to guide their way at night. When I left my beautiful Hungary, I used them too.”
Our night sky is all the more dramatic with no street or city lights to compete.
“Millions . . .” he says softly.
__________
By the time Jake arrives, Grandpa has already turned in for the night, and even Dad is back from the hospital and in bed reading. I go into Dad’s room to say goodnight, but he’s sound asleep, glasses still on and the book laying on the floor by the side of his bed. I turn off his light and carefully remove the glasses from his face. He mumbles something and turns over on his side, snoring within seconds. My heart fills with a love for him I haven’t felt for a long time.
I’m doing everything I can to distract myself when I hear a quiet knock at the front door. I’m so excited that he’s here, it almost feels like I’m flying on winged feet. But then the sad part. It’s really late and Jake still hasn’t had a chance to pack for his week-long trip. He only has an hour—sorry about that.
So we only have an hour; that’s better than nothing—what shall we do? After snuggling and kissing and breathing tickly whispers into each other’s ears about how much we missed the other, I have a thought.
“Let’s do speed dating.”
Jake smiles and shakes his head. “Whatever you say. You’re the boss tonight.”
We go up to the tent for privacy, just in case my dad or grandpa happens to wake. We crawl inside and lie down with our heads near the opening so we can look up at the sky, and we hold each other.
“So, what’s speed dating?” he asks, his lips a fraction of an inch from mine.
“Well . . . what do we really know about each other? We get to ask each other questions.”
“You first. I know everything I need to know.” He pulls me closer to him.
There’s so much I don’t know about him that I can’t think where to start.
“What’s your middle name?”
“Everett. What’s yours?”
“Helene. Um . . . How many girlfriends have you had?”
“Whoa!” Jake laughs and pulls back to look at me. “This is speed dating?”
“You have to answer.”
“Okay . . . two. No, three.” My heart sinks. “But one of them was in second grade and another only lasted two weeks.”
“How about the third?”
“One of those summer camp kind of things. I wouldn’t technically call her a girlfriend. Okay, how about you?”
“None. Just you . . . that is . . . if you’re my boyfriend.” I’m glad it’s dark because I know my cheeks are burning bright red.
“I want to be.” His eyes defocus like that first time he kissed me, and he kisses me again.
I’m tingling inside so much it’s like someone filled me up with peppermint oil, but I pull myself together. Our time is running out. Time. It’s not dependable. It can’t be relied upon. I have a sudden urge to come completely clean with Jake but, of course, I can’t. He’d run away so fast before I ever had the time to really know him. And time is what I need and want the most.
“What’s your favorite food? And then you have to come up with the next question instead of just repeating mine.”
“Pizza. Okay . . . let’s see.” He pretends to look deep in thought, but I know he’s exhausted.
“What was your worst day ever?” He scrunches his face so tight his eyes shut. “Sorry. I’m an idiot.
Uh . . . What do you want to be?” I should get used to questions like that if I plan
on rejoining the world. I squeeze his hand to let him know it’s alright and give myself a virtual pat on the back for being able to handle it.
“A famous author. How about you?”
“The starting quarterback of the 49ers,” he laughs.
“Do you know I’ve never been to a football game before? But I’ll definitely go watch you play.”
“Do you know I’ve never read a book that hasn’t been assigned by a teacher? But I’ll read yours when you write one.”
We know a little bit more about each other, but Jake has to leave. He leaves me with more kisses and promises to text.
Our time has come to an end.
__________
After Jake leaves, I’m so wound up that I can’t sleep. I want to call him or text him but it’s already midnight and he hasn’t packed. He’ll only get a few hours of sleep tonight so I can’t do that to him. I feel like I’m ready to tell Lyla about Jake but it’s three in the morning where she is. I can’t focus on a book or TV. This is what I get for basically having only one friend—two now with Jake. And maybe Chad counts for a half because we have an understanding but he’s too young to talk to about important things.
I think about how Mom would drive me around at night when I couldn’t sleep. Right now, I wish I had someone to drive me somewhere, but I can still drive myself. And once I’m in the Hornet, the car seems to drive itself . . . straight to 758.
I know I’m not going to talk to Omar. That’s not the point tonight. What is the point then? Maybe a dry run. I’m going to do it sooner rather than later. Grandpa said not to go with hate in my heart and this is the closest I’ve come to that state of mind in two years. The timing seems to be now or never. Tomorrow. I’ll do it tomorrow.
I roll down all the windows and crank up the music, and when I’m driving on the freeway I feel brave and strong and capable of anything. The wind rushes through one side of the car and out the other, and I’m caught up in a vortex of adrenaline.
But as soon as I signal to get off the freeway at the exit which will lead me to 758, my confidence drains like a pin-pricked water balloon. By the time I’m cruising through the streets I feel shaky inside and I wonder what madness brought me to this area at this time of night. Every house I pass seems to shout out at me.
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