by Sharon Potts
Annette took out her cellphone to call Linda.
It was time to find her own family’s stories.
CHAPTER 18
Annette got off the train at the Dobbs Ferry station with a few other people. When Linda had called this morning to say she’d found letters Betty had sent her sister Irene, Annette had rushed to dress and catch the next train out of Grand Central.
It was colder in Westchester than in Manhattan. A sharp breeze blew in from the Hudson River. She pulled up her hood as she crossed the train platform to the exit stairs. Mounds of snow were piled up by the street where a few cars waited for train passengers, exhaust fumes rising from their tail pipes.
She saw Linda waving from beside an old yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Her mother’s first cousin was a grinning beanpole with orange wool mittens and ripples of long curly brown hair flying around her.
“Hey,” Annette said, when she reached the car. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Are you kidding? This is my pleasure.” Linda’s gray eyes beamed. “It’s around fifteen degrees and they’re expecting more snow or sleety rain. Hop in the car.” She still had a Boston accent from her childhood and pronounced the word ‘caaa.’
Annette got in, glad to get out of the chill, and rubbed her hands together. “How’s everyone?”
“Good.” Linda pulled into the street and started up a hill that had been recently snowplowed. “It snowed last night, so Kenny was up early shoveling out the driveway so he could get to a Corvair club meeting. You know Kenny. He’s more determined than a mailman. Neither snow nor rain nor heat nor gloom of night will keep my dear husband away from his old cars.”
“And what’s Jen doing?” Annette asked, to be polite.
“Still in L.A. Auditioning for a couple of commercials.” Linda stopped at a red light and tugged on a dropped stitch in her mitten with her teeth.
“Did she make it home for the holidays?”
“Not this year. Just me and Kenny.”
The light turned green. Linda continued past the main street, then turned down a hilly, winding street with white lawns, trees laden with snow, Christmas lights still up.
“How’s your mom doing?” Linda asked.
Annette looked out the side window at a snowman wearing a baseball cap, a broomstick over its frozen shoulder like a baseball bat. Its icy face had partially fallen off and it had only one button eye. “You know,” Annette said. “She’s sad. Always sad.”
Linda reached over and patted Annette’s hand.
A couple more turns, then Linda pulled into the driveway of their two-story brick house. There was a side entrance that Linda used for her practice as a psychotherapist, though recently, she’d cut back to a part-time schedule.
Annette got out of the car and followed Linda to the front of the house. She could hear a woman’s voice shouting. “Mail’s here. Mail’s here.” They stepped inside the foyer. From another room, the woman’s voice continued calling, “Mail’s here.”
“There goes Prettybird, again.” Linda shrugged her head in the direction of the kitchen as she took Annette’s coat. “You know, my mom’s been gone almost two years and I think Prettybird’s getting worse. She’s very old—close to seventy—and I wonder if it’s senility. The bird’s been talking more. Saying things in my mother’s voice I didn’t even know it knew.”
“Maybe you could teach it to say, ‘Quiet, please.”
Linda gave her a playful thonk on the head, then led the way down a narrow hallway, her long curly hair flying out around her from static electricity. Annette smelled fresh-brewed coffee and the sweet, buttery scent of recent baking.
The large eat-in kitchen was the same as when Annette had first visited as a little girl. Lots of oak cabinets, a brick wall with hanging copper pans, and a wraparound benchseat in the corner that overlooked the snow-covered backyard. Prettybird was on her perch in the center of the room.
Annette slid onto the benchseat.
“Here are the letters.” Linda picked up a faded blue stationery box from the counter and set it down on the table in front of Annette.
Annette felt a mix of excitement and dread.
“It took me hours to find them after you called.” Linda took the cover off the box, exposing tissue-paper-thin envelopes. “Wouldn’t you know it, they were in the last carton up in the attic?”
Annette touched the top envelope. “May I?”
“Of course. As far as I’m concerned, they’re yours.” Linda squeezed her hand. “Losing a relative is always difficult, so I understand why you want to have your grandmother’s things.”
Annette looked away, embarrassed. Although she did value these letters because her grandmother had written them, she hadn’t told Linda the real reason she wanted to see them.
Linda set two mugs of coffee and a platter of muffins on the table. “I read them all this morning. I hope you don’t mind.”
“I’m glad you did.”
“It was a painful time for your grandmother, but as you’ll soon read, she and your mother were able to move on with their lives.”
Annette studied the envelope. Par avion. Sent airmail to Mrs. Irene Lustig in Boston. She recognized the handwriting. It was the same as in Grandma Betty’s photo album. The return address was a hotel in Paris. The letter was postmarked September 1953, three months after her grandfather had been executed.
Annette removed the thin paper from the envelope, aware that her hands were trembling.
My dear Irene:
I hope you are well. Sally and I are settling in. My high school French is coming in very handy! You know how I always wanted to visit Paris, but I never dreamed it would be under these circumstances.
Sally and I are staying in a small hotel and the woman who runs it is very nice. She thinks I’m a widow named Elizabeth Gold and has no idea who I really am. She’s helped me enroll Sally in school. Sally is quiet and cries in her sleep, but I’m sure once she makes new friends, she’ll be fine. Eight-year-olds adjust quickly, or so I’m told.
Annette felt an ache deep inside. She didn’t believe her mother had ever adjusted to the trauma of losing her father and relocating to a foreign country. “My poor mother.”
“I know,” Linda said.
The letters appeared to be in chronological order. Annette read through several. There were details about everyday life. Post-war Paris lacked many of the things Betty had once considered commonplace—toilet paper, silk stockings. She got a job at a hotel. She wrote very little about Sally other than an occasional remark. Sally still crying. Sally eating a little better this week. I wish Sally would make friends.
Annette tried to imagine what it was like for the eight-year-old girl to be so far removed from everything familiar. No wonder her mom was always sad and distant. If only there were something in these letters to help Annette ease her mother’s old wounds. Something to point to Isaac Goldstein’s innocence. But so far, Annette found no reference to Grandma Betty’s first husband.
A year after arriving in Paris, Betty wrote to her sister.
Please don’t judge me, Irene. I met a man. He manages the hotel where I work. His name is Simon Revoir and we’re going to get married. He’s a quiet man, but very nice to Sally. She seems to like him. Of course, Sally doesn’t talk much so it’s difficult to know. Perhaps you’d find him a little boring and not terribly attractive, but I don’t care about that. He’s devoted to me.
And no, I don’t love him. Love is poison. I never want to love a man again.
Annette took in a sharp breath. So Grandma Betty had loved Isaac. Of course she had. Her blissful face in the photos revealed as much. But what had killed her love? Was it because she believed Isaac was a traitor to his country or was there something else?
She read on. My heart was broken once. It isn’t strong enough to survive another deception.
Annette pointed to the lines in the letter. “This seems like an odd thing to say. That her heart was broken by deception. It so
unds like Isaac wounded her personally, not because he was executed as a spy.”
“Whatever she meant, it was an awful time for poor Betty.”
“Poor Betty,” the bird repeated, like a Greek chorus.
Poor Betty indeed, Annette thought. “Did your mother ever talk about him?”
“About Isaac?” Linda sipped coffee from her mug. “No, I don’t think so.”
“She must have been very angry about how his execution affected her sister and niece. Did she believe he was guilty?”
“Well of course he was guilty. The government doesn’t go and execute an innocent man.”
Annette looked down at the letter. Don’t they?
“He was a terrible person, Annette. Even your grandmother finally admitted that he was a cruel, heartless man.”
Cruel, heartless man.
Linda sat down on the benchseat next to her and picked on a muffin. “I never apologized to you for what Jen did.”
“No need. I was glad someone finally told me I was related to Isaac Goldstein.”
“But that was no way to find out. I just want you to know how sorry I was that Jen hurt you.”
“Well, thank you, but I’m okay now.”
“Are you?” Linda gave her one of those intense soul-searching looks that Annette imagined she used on her patients.
Annette stared back. “I am.”
“Well good.” Linda patted her hand, then got up to pour more coffee for herself.
Annette returned to the letters, fascinated to find tidbits about her mother, but also aware that the later letters took her farther and farther from Isaac Goldstein and his possible motivations. There were no letters after the mid-1980s, when the sisters probably began communicating through phone calls.
She jogged the letters into alignment and put them back in the box. She wanted to read about her mother’s childhood at her leisure. “May I take these with me?”
“Of course,” Linda said. “Like I said, they’re yours.”
“Did you find anything else?”
“What do you mean?”
“Other letters. These are all from Paris. What about the letters Grandma Betty wrote when she lived in New York and Aunt Irene was in Boston?”
“I didn’t find any other letters.” Linda went over to the sink and began running water over the muffin pan.
Annette was a little taken aback by the abrupt dismissal. Linda was usually more patient. She looked out the window at the backyard. It was still overcast and dreary. A bluejay settled on the edge of the birdfeeder that hung from a low-hanging tree branch. Annette noticed scattered bird feed and the confusion of dozens of crisscrossed marks in the frozen snow.
She felt certain Betty had sent Irene letters while Isaac was in prison. The sisters were close and from the later letters, it was apparent that Betty used Irene as a confidante. It seemed odd that Irene would have only kept letters from her sister’s time in Paris.
The muffin pan clanked against the sink as Linda washed it. What would Irene have done with those earlier letters? Could she have destroyed them? It seemed unlikely. Was there something in the letters that she didn’t want anyone to read? Something incriminating? Or was Annette letting her imagination run away with her?
She thought again of that day when she had passed Irene’s bedroom on the way to Jen’s room. Irene had been sitting on her bed going through letters. But they could have been letters from anyone, not necessarily from Grandma Betty in the early 1950s.
“Did you check her bedroom?” she called to Linda over the running water.
“What’s that?” Linda turned off the water and grabbed a dishtowel to dry her hands.
“Did you go through the stuff in your mom’s bedroom? Maybe the letters Grandma Betty sent while Isaac was in prison are in there.”
Linda gave her head a little shake, as she hung the dishtowel on a hook. “Don’t you think you’re taking this too far?”
Annette was rankled by her tone. The psychotherapist soothing a hysterical patient. But Annette wasn’t hysterical and she wasn’t taking this too far.
Then it occurred to her that she’d been insensitive to Linda’s feelings about going through Irene’s things. “I’m sorry,” Annette said. “I appreciate that you slogged through all those cartons in the attic, but I’m sure there are more letters. Please let me have a look in her room. I promise not to upset any of her things.”
Linda sat down on the benchseat beside Annette. “I’ve already been through my mom’s room. There are no letters from your grandmother.”
“But...”
“Annette. I know you’re disappointed not finding what you were hoping to, but I’m afraid those letters just doesn’t exist. If they ever did.”
She opened her mouth, ready to argue, then closed it. Linda didn’t have the letters. Maybe Irene had destroyed them, after all.
“I understand what you’re doing,” Linda said. “You feel a burden in being descended from Isaac Goldstein. You want to believe he wasn’t as terrible as history portrays him. But you need to face the facts. Your grandfather was a horrible person who did horrible things.”
Annette flinched.
“But that has nothing to do with who you are.”
Annette picked up the box of letters and clutched them against her chest. “You’re wrong, Linda. Who my grandfather really was has everything to do with who I am.”
CHAPTER 19
The charging theme from The Dark Knight awakened Julian. He hit the ‘off’ button on his cell phone alarm interrupting the pounding of the drums. Sephora’s half of the bed was undisturbed, but he felt no remorse that she was gone. He was no longer that person who had lived a false life with a woman he didn’t even like. He was just an ordinary guy who wanted to understand where he came from.
He leaned back against his pillow, noticing it was damp with sweat. He vaguely remembered having disturbing dreams. Exploding bursts of red. Had someone been bleeding or was he thinking about the geyser in Saul’s painting?
He rubbed his neck and shoulders as he got out of bed. Several of his drawings were scattered over the floor where he’d left them last night. He gathered them up along with the wrappings from a sub sandwich and the four bottles of beer he’d drunk as he had examined his early attempts at art.
He dumped the beer bottles and garbage in the wastebasket and put the drawings back in his old portfolio.
When he’d gotten home after saying goodbye to Annette last night, he had been filled with nostalgia. The conversations with her about his father, his childhood, and how much he had loved painting had brought on an urge to look at his old art work, so he had searched every closet for the carton he had stashed away when Sephora wrinkled her nose at the contents. He had found it at the back of the hallway closet beneath a couple of tennis rackets and some canvas tote bags that Sephora had accumulated at conventions.
In the carton were old, worn favorite clothes of his, an outmoded phone and computer, assorted art supplies, and a pile of comic books. There was also his portfolio.
He had spread the drawings and paintings out on his bed and on the floor, arranged in the order he had made them, starting from when he was around five. The neon green figures bore a striking resemblance to Ninja Turtles. The later drawings were from his Star Wars period, and the last ones he made, when he was around ten, were of Batman and Superman. By then, Julian could see that he had developed a strong technique, but of greater interest to him was that the style—the shading, the three-dimensionality, even the blending of colors—was very similar to Saul’s in the painting that hung in Julian’s childhood living room.
Saul and Julian had a lot in common. Their fathers had died when they were young, their mothers worked all the time, and they had older sisters. They were both smart and they both painted. But as similar as their art styles were, there was something notably angry and black in Saul’s work that wasn’t present in Julian’s. Whatever had sent Saul over to the dark side seemed to have affe
cted Julian’s mother and indirectly, Julian. He needed to find out what that was.
He gobbled down a couple of frozen waffles and a banana, showered, dressed and headed out to see Nana before Annette arrived for lunch. His grandmother had been reluctant to speak about Saul the other day and Julian figured she’d be more likely to tell him whatever she was holding back if Annette wasn’t there.
He walked crosstown through a steady drizzle and got to his grandmother’s apartment just after eleven. She seemed delighted by his early arrival.
“Would you like something to eat?” she asked, as he stepped into the foyer. She was wearing an old faded man’s shirt, which hung on her small frame, making her look like a child in her father’s clothes.
“I’m good, thanks.” He kissed her head, then hung up his wet jacket and took off his hiking shoes.
He noticed the living room was in a slight state of disarray. The record box beneath the old Victrola was open and there were records scattered over the carpet.
He crouched down to examine them. Big, heavy 78-rpm records. Bing Crosby. Irving Berlin. Ruth Etting.
“What a mess I made,” his grandmother said. “It’s a sign I’m in my dotage, I suppose.” She held out her hand for the record he was holding, then squinted as she examined the label. “Button up Your Overcoat. This was one of my favorites.” She teetered over to the Victrola. There was a record lying on the turntable. It was much smaller than the shellac ones on the floor. Nana picked it up, handling it as though it was rare and precious.
“What’s that?” he asked.
“Oh, nothing.” She put the small record in a plain brown paper wrapper, set it aside on the credenza, then placed the record by Ruth Etting on the turntable.
A bouncy voice sang over the scratches about eating an apple a day and taking care of yourself.