by Amy Sorrells
“How is he this week?” Mattie asked.
“He’s okay. His hip is healing well—the doctors and therapists are really pleased with his progress. But his mind …”
“I’ve noticed the same thing during my visits. But I’m not surprised, honey. We’ve been losing him for a while now.”
“How long? I mean, Mom never let on to this when we talked on the phone. And when I was home two Christmases ago, I didn’t notice anything other than maybe a little forgetfulness. Certainly nothing that alarmed me.”
Mattie thought for a moment. “Probably the spring after you were home last for Christmas … when was that, two years ago? That’s when the noticeable decline began. Like you said, it was subtle at first, losing his keys, not paying the bills. But then he started to forget bigger things, including where he was at times.”
The waitress set their drinks on the table. “Have you decided on anything yet?”
“A few more minutes, please.” Mattie held up her hand.
“Of course. I’ll be back.”
“I wish Mom had told me.” Nel shook her head as she stirred a packet of sugar into her tea.
“The hardest thing for her were the nightmares … and the time she found him in his skivvies at three in the morning walking down the middle of North Shore Drive.”
Nel’s jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t laugh.” Mattie tried to suppress a giggle. “It really was mortifying to her at the time. And for him, once he realized where he was. Blamed it on sleepwalking when she told me about it the next day. But not long after that, Catherine began asking him to see a doctor. He refused for a good while. You know how men can be about seeing doctors.”
“Why didn’t she take him anyway back then?”
“Honestly? I don’t think she wanted to know what they’d say any more than he did. And she felt they were managing.”
“Managing?”
“When you’ve lived that long, been married that long, I think there’s a part of you that simply takes each day as it comes. Probably why she didn’t mention it to you too. She didn’t want to be confronted with the truth of how bad things were getting for the both of them … the possibility of having to sell their home and move to assisted living or someplace they didn’t want to be.”
“I guess I can see that. I only wish she’d told me so I could’ve helped. I’d have been happy to help pay for a housekeeper or for home repairs or whatever.”
“I’m sure your mother knew that. But I’m also sure she was determined not to be a burden to you.”
“It wouldn’t have been a burden.” Nel sighed. “You mentioned nightmares. Dad was having nightmares?”
“That was the worst part.”
“He had nightmares in the hospital, too, delusions that seemed to really scare him.”
“He’d been having a lot of those—night terrors, I suppose. Catherine told me he’d wake up drenched with sweat and screaming, but he’d never tell her—or he couldn’t remember—exactly what the dreams were about.”
The waitress came back and took their orders—they both ordered chicken-salad sandwiches and fries.
“Do you know if that’s why Mom was doing research into Dad’s past?”
“She never mentioned that to me, but I suppose it could be.”
“The day of the funeral, I found an envelope addressed to her from Ellis Island. Inside were papers about immigrants along with this really old photo of two adorable little boys.” Nel pulled the photo, the ship manifest, and the tarnished silver cup out of her purse and laid it all on the table in front of Mattie. “I was hoping maybe you could help me make heads or tails out of some of this.”
Mattie picked up the cup and traced the outline of the etched bucolic village scene with her fingers.
“I found that cup when I was moving things around in Dad’s lapidary room. There was an absolutely brilliant aquamarine inside it too, that I left at home, and a faceting diagram written in Cyrillic. A death certificate, too, for a young man named Peter Maevski Stewart. And Peter Maevski is the name on the ship manifest, see?” Nel pointed at the lines where the names of Peter and Jakob were written. “There. Peter Maevski, fourteen. And Jakob Maevski, five. It’s gotta be connected somehow.”
“It would seem so,” Mattie said, turning her attention back to the cup and sighing. “I’ve seen cups like this, but not for a long time.”
“You have?”
“Not since I was a little girl. Not since my last Shabbat.”
“Shabbat? Sabbath? You’re Jewish?”
“I know it probably seems strange. I haven’t thought about that part of my life for a long while. But yes, I’m Jewish.”
“But you don’t observe your faith anymore.”
“My family abandoned their faith when they came to America. It happened with some immigrants. Times were much too dangerous for many to take the chance of someone finding out you believed in God. I was born in Germany, and I haven’t practiced the Jewish faith since I was a small girl there. I became a Presbyterian when I married my ex-husband. By then it was the fifties and we wanted to raise our children in the church.”
“So your family came to America during the Holocaust?”
“Shortly before the actual Holocaust, yes. Things had been horrid for Jews in Germany for a while, of course, and our experiences were no exception. We couldn’t buy food except at Jewish groceries, which were always in short supply. I had a friend, Katrina, from a Christian family who lived down the street. Her mother let Katrina bring us bread from their grocery every day. But it became more and more dangerous for Katrina and her family to help us. They risked their lives; I understand this now.”
“How’d you all get out of there?”
“Father explained to us later, when we were older, that he had saved a lot of money in cash. He’d kept it hidden in the walls, under floorboards, in teacups, wherever he could. I was too young to remember that, but I do recall we left in the middle of the night. Left everything behind except for the clothes on our backs. I didn’t have a chance to say good-bye to Katrina …” She paused and toyed with the corner of her napkin. “We took a train to Amsterdam and then boarded a ship to New York.”
“Did they make you wear stars?”
Mattie smiled sadly. “They did. My friend Katrina, the one who brought us bread? She wanted to wear a star too. She thought it meant we were special. She didn’t understand. Neither did I, until later.”
“It must’ve been terrifying for you.”
“Yes and no. It was hard to leave my friends, but I had my family. We all came here together. Only later did I realize what we’d escaped.” She picked up the photo of the two boys. “It was horrific for the Jews in Eastern Europe well before the Holocaust. During the pogroms. Judging from the year these two immigrated, they probably escaped something similar.”
“The stone I found, the top of it, the crown, has a six-pointed star, like the Star of David.”
Mattie raised her eyebrows. “Now that is interesting. Especially with this cup.”
“What do you make of it?”
“It’s a kiddush cup, usually used on Friday evenings before the Sabbath. The father in the family, the head of the home, fills it with wine when the Sabbath blessing is read.” She handed the cup back to Nel. “We may have to talk more about your heritage.”
“You think I could be Jewish? That Dad was Jewish? That Mom was researching that?”
“Could be …” Mattie sorted through the papers and looked at the boys in the photograph again. She met Nel’s gaze, her countenance appearing suddenly grave. “You know, some things are too painful, too shameful to speak of. The people who emigrated from Eastern Europe around the turn of the century, like this paper is dated … so many were Jews.”
1912-1915
Chicago, Illinois
CHAPTER 24
After Peter and Jakob settled into Saint Stanislaus Catholic School, the boys worked in Mr. Grünfelder’s jewelry store. Grünfelder and his wife were next-door neighbors of the Stewarts, and he’d noticed both Peter’s and Jakob’s interest in his work. The boys swept the floors, polished the counters and glass jewelry cases, and helped him lock up so he wasn’t alone at closing time in the evenings. Mr. Grünfelder had brought his family’s gemstone and lapidary business over from Idar-Oberstein, Germany, around the same time Peter and Jakob had emigrated. Peter, of course, thought it was a sign from Yeshua that they were supposed to work there, since Papa had studied in the same region for a time. Jakob was just glad to have a job to pay for little things at the market so as not to have to ask Papa and Mama Stewart for money—although they insisted the boys didn’t need to work.
Happy to oblige their interest in his work, Mr. Grünfelder allowed Peter and Jakob opportunities to cut on leftover agates, quartz, carnelian, and on rare occasions, amethysts. Even with only two fingers on his right hand, Peter was able to handle the cutting and polishing, faceting and setting as well as any man with a whole set of fingers intact. Peter opened up to Mr. Grünfelder about Papa, how he had worked with crude (by comparison) and often handmade lapidary tools to create his designs. In turn, Mr. Grünfelder told them stories of the lapidarists in Idar-Oberstein who had to lie on the floor and use the weight of their whole bodies to turn giant sandstone wheels mounted vertically to polish agate. By the time Peter was in his senior year at Saint Stanislaus, Mr. Grünfelder considered him an official apprenticeship, and Peter decided that gem cutting would be his profession. Some of his faceting designs were so perfect, Mr. Grünfelder placed them in the sale cases alongside his own. Demand for Peter’s stones increased, along with his reputation, and at the perfect time too. Mr. Grünfelder had to travel often to obtain diamonds and other precious gems, and he couldn’t keep up with the business alone.
One Saturday morning, as they often did, Peter and Jakob roamed through the neighborhood markets, buying fresh produce or bread or whatever Mama Stewart needed. Peter, who’d been losing weight, began to cough. He’d been complaining of a tickle in the back of his throat for weeks and constantly cleared his throat. Occasionally he had fevers, too, which quickly passed, and the family doctor dismissed them as a mild flu. But on this morning, as they passed a booth full of fresh-made sausages, Peter fell into a fit of coughing, and when he pulled his handkerchief away from his mouth, the cloth was covered with blood.
During the initial weeks afterward, Peter received the dreaded diagnosis of consumption, undoubtedly picked up on the ship to America and dormant for years. His future with Mr. Grünfelder was put on hold, and he was sent to live at the Edward Tuberculosis Sanatorium in nearby Naperville, Illinois. The Stewarts had learned that one of the foremost authorities on tuberculosis, Dr. Theodore Sachs, was in charge of the institution, and that the doctor believed in new and open-air treatments of the disease. Dr. Sachs was enamored with Peter the moment they met, having learned they were both from Ukraine. Dr. Sachs was born in Odessa in 1868 and received his medical training at the university there. But as much as Dr. Sachs doted on Peter, his condition worsened. Sachs recommended that the Stewarts move Peter to the Battle Creek Sanitarium in Michigan, the most respected and high-priced sanitarium in the region. Over the next year as Peter’s condition seemed to stabilize there, the Stewarts built the lake house in South Haven so they could spend as much time as possible with him in the summer, and on weekends and holidays as he recovered. But even the cutting-edge breathing therapy and the water and fresh-air treatments could not slow the advance of his disease.
A month before Peter’s twenty-fifth birthday, Jakob sat in math class at Saint Stanislaus, struggling to keep his eyes open along with most of the other students in the class that day.
“Jakob Stewart?” The principal’s secretary, Mrs. Truszkowski, jolted him out of his daydream. She was a spindly woman with a long neck and a thin nose perfect for looking down upon unruly children. Jakob’s teacher, a kind, wrinkled nun named Mother Rose, nodded at him to get his things and go with the secretary.
“Your father is waiting for you in the car out front,” Mrs. Truszkowski urged. “Hurry along.”
“He is not my father.” Jakob didn’t say this to be belligerent. He simply stated it as fact.
“I know, Jakob. I’m sorry.” Her sudden softness surprised Jakob, since it was so different from her usual stern and dismal countenance.
“Why is he here?”
She looked down at Jakob with eyes full of pity before saying, “It’s your brother. He’s not well.”
Jakob climbed into the backseat of the ruby-red roadster behind Papa Stewart, who steered the car to the train station faster than Jakob had ever known him to drive.
“I thought you might want to bring this to your brother.” Mama Stewart sat next to Jakob on the train as the conductors prepared for departure. She handed him the kiddush cup, the stone still wrapped and tucked inside it. Jakob looked at her in disbelief. As much as they were grateful to the Stewarts, he and Peter had always been careful to keep those things hidden, whether under their mattresses, in the corners of closets, or in their shoes. “How did you know … Where did you find it?”
“Never mind how I knew,” she said with a look that assured Jakob he was not in trouble for keeping it from her and Papa Stewart. “The important thing is that it brings comfort to your brother. And to you.” She turned forward, focusing silently on the buildings, then the factories along the east side of Chicago near the lake, and then farmland of northern Indiana passing outside the window. Occasionally, she wiped a tear off her face.
Jakob knew death was coming. He recognized the shadow of it, which had followed him since Chudniv, and all he could do was wait for it to strike again and again and hope that it would take him, too, someday. Gently, though. Jakob hoped death would take him gently.
Later, Mama Stewart tried to make small talk to break the silence, but the conversation fell flat about school and Mr. Grünfelder, new shows at the theater and the latest books that had arrived at the library. They each could only think of Peter.
Once the trio reached Battle Creek, Papa Stewart paid a driver to take them to the sanitarium, the emerald lawns spreading wide like endless winter wheat fields in Ukraine. Residents in white gowns sat in wheelchairs or hammocks reading, light shining dappled and ethereal upon them through the budding spring trees. On an upstairs terrace, beds were lined up outside like dominos, patients in various states of respite visible in each of them. Mama and Papa Stewart plodded up the concrete steps ahead of Jakob, and the smell of bleach and lard soap greeted the three of them as they walked through the front doors. Papa Stewart talked to staff in white coats while Mama Stewart and Jakob sat on a bench by the front desk, which was manned by a very large woman in a white nurse’s cap, a white dress, buttons pulling against the bulge of her bosom, and a navy-blue cape across her shoulders and tied at the neck. Coughs and retching came from every direction as they walked up the stairs and down the long hallway toward the room in which Peter lay. Jakob sat on a bench outside Peter’s room while Mama and Papa Stewart visited with him first.
Finally it was time.
“Yakob … ўdit’ … syudy …”* Even from the doorway, Jakob saw Peter’s chest heaving with the effort of gasping out each word. The finger of his right hand curled as he motioned to Jakob to come sit beside him. In his left hand, he held Papa’s tattered tzitzit.
“He mostly speaks in Ukrainian now,” Papa Stewart said over Jakob’s shoulder as he passed.
The starched sheet felt stiff and cold as Jakob sat on it. The thought of Mama splayed out on the hard kitchen table … of Zahava, as white as the sheets, curled up on the hard kitchen floor with a sea of blood beneath her—the memories brought the taste of bile to his throat. He realized t
hen that even on a mattress in a bleached room surrounded by tidy nurses and staff, death would come no more gently for Peter than it had for the rest of their family. The blow of it was different but no less painful. And for certain, no more merciful.
Jakob took hold of Peter’s pale hand, feeling the empty spots where fingers should have been. Blue veins showed through his skin, as visible as the blue stripes of the mattress beneath the sheets. As blue as the aquamarine stone in Jakob’s pocket. Jakob gently traced the veins under Peter’s skin like roads on a map and considered how far they had journeyed together.
“Jakob, listen to me.”
Jakob stared into Peter’s eyes, still fierce with life.
“What is it?” Jakob was surprised at his own use of Ukrainian. He had not uttered a word of it since they left Chudniv.
“Did you bring the stone?”
“I did.” Jakob was immensely grateful to Mama Stewart now, first for respecting the “secret” he and Peter shared, and second for bringing the stone for them. He pulled the cup and the stone from his coat pocket, unwrapped the stone, and placed it in Peter’s hand.
Peter barely had strength enough to grasp it, but he managed to hold it in his hand and pull it to rest on the center of his chest. “Say it for me,” he gasped.
“What do you want me to say?”
“The Kaddish.”1
“And promise me”—Peter choked—“that you’ll say it when I’m gone.”
“But it doesn’t mean anything. And besides, you aren’t dead yet.”
“Say it … Say it always. The words in your head will help the truth return to your heart …”
Jakob shook his head in disagreement.
“Don’t argue … Forgive them … Forgive yourself …”
Jakob grasped Peter’s hand tighter, reluctant to let death gain the victory over his brother but powerless to fight its advance. There was no cupboard where he could hide, no table he could run beneath. And for once he was sure he wouldn’t have, even if there were.