After she is gone I open my palm to look down at the miniature vase, and something about this small gift becomes the singular thing to crack open the reality of the history book I am standing in.
THAT NIGHT, AFTER DINNER with Michael, my father and I return to our hotel. It’s the nicest hotel in Olomouc, but even so it only runs about forty dollars a night. Our rooms are lavish, with large four-poster beds, vanity tables, and luxuriously heavy curtains.
I stand at the window for a beat, watching cars circle a roundabout in the town center. I know I won’t be able to fall asleep anytime soon, so I leave the room and walk carefully down the hallway and knock gently on my father’s door.
Not tired, kiddo?
Not really, I say. You?
Not at all. I’m too damned excited.
I smile at him. I’ll be right back.
I make my way down the hallway to a set of vending machines. One of them sells cans of beer and I feed a few heavy Czech coins into it.
Back in my Dad’s room I pop the lids on the cans, and we each take a seat at a little table near the window. We light cigarettes at the same time, and my father leans back in his chair, a look of satisfaction on his face.
I’m glad you’re here, monkey.
Me too, Dad.
I don’t know if your mom would have had the patience for this sort of thing.
I laugh and shake my head. She would have been shopping in Prague right now, I say.
My father chuckles.
I miss her, I say.
Me too, kiddo.
We banter lightly like this. At some point I go down the hall for more beer. My father empties the ashtray. And after a while, for some reason, we start telling each other secrets.
Did you know that I used to sneak your car out when I was in high school?
The Lincoln?
Yeah. Zoe and I used to take it out after you guys had gone to bed.
Before or after you had your license?
Before.
My dad laughs, shakes his head.
One time I thought I should put gas in it but I’d never gotten gas before and I ended up hosing Zoe down. We had to wash all her clothes when we got home because she reeked of gasoline.
My dad cracks up here, snorting into his glass of beer.
It’s his turn.
I went on a date the other week, he says.
I can’t hide my surprise.
What? With who?
This older woman I met at Costco. She works on the weekends, handing out those samples at the end of the frozen food aisle.
Dad!
I’m horrified, yet also amused.
Where did you take her?
Oh, just to dinner. Went back to her place afterward.
And?
And we slept together.
Oh my God, I say.
I can’t believe he’s telling me this. But then I realize that there isn’t anyone else for him to tell.
I take a sip of beer. And?
It was terrible, he says.
I start laughing so hard that I can’t swallow my beer.
We stay up for hours that night, trading secrets, stories, memories. Later, when I am finally back in my room, finally drifting off to sleep I start back awake with a simple realization.
As much as I miss my mother, I am glad she died first. Otherwise I would have buried my father without ever having known him.
THE NEXT MORNING we set out for Troubky. Michael has heard about a memorial there for a man named Tom West—a friend and fellow pilot in my father’s squadron who died the day my father was shot down. We follow the map and park on a quiet tree-lined street in the middle of nowhere.
The memorial is in the center of a high-walled cemetery, and before we have even crossed the threshold we understand why we were told to come here. It’s a small cemetery, the gravestones lined up in neat rows. The three of us pause in the entryway, taking it in.
In a few weeks, when he finds himself home again in California, my father will be unable to sleep for days and will stay up each night putting on paper the very things we are seeing right now.
He will write:
Upon entry, Michael asked if I could see the memorial. I looked around and against a distant wall was a very large edifice, the largest in the cemetery. It turned out to be what we had come to see. A huge vertical wall of granite about twelve feet tall and ten feet wide provided the backdrop. The granite itself was a beautiful gray color, polished to perfection.
On the face of the granite was mounted an extraordinary life-sized bronze casting of an airman wearing flight clothes and descending from the sky, the straps of his parachute stretching upward. His feet fall short of touching the ground by about eighteen inches and he gazes upward from whence he came, his left arm extended as if in farewell.
At the very front of the memorial were two identically sized and shaped blocks of matching granite, each with the same message inscribed. I knelt on the left to better read the English version, the other being in Czech. Tears came to my eyes as I read the message: HERE REPOSE AMERICAN HEROES AFTER THEIR LAST START
WANDERER, READ AND ANNOUNCE TO ALL
WE GLADLY DIED FOR THAT YOU LIVE AND ARE FREE
DON’T FORGET US
Tears again mist my eyes as I type these words. I clearly remember looking up from my kneeling position, after reading the message several times. While viewing this heart-wrenching tribute in its entirety, I experienced a deep emotional experience. I was speechless.
For me, time had disappeared and I was back with these men over half a century ago. The images were, of course, as I had seen them last. I was brought back to the present by the knowledge that it could easily be Tom looking at a memorial of me.
Later we will all remark on the single most emotional moment of it all—the moment when we realized that there were fresh flowers placed on the memorial. A sweet bouquet of daisies, tied with a simple ribbon, had been placed at the foot of the airman. Clearly the war my father fought had not been forgotten.
My father slowly pushes his way to standing and turns to Michael.
I’d like to speak to someone about this, he says. But who?
Let’s try the mayor’s office, Michael suggests.
WE FIND THE BUILDING in the center of Troubky and, after Michael explains why we are here, the mayor’s secretary shows us into his office.
I fold my hands in my lap and take in the room, letting my eyes roam over the faded wallpaper and heavy draperies. After a few minutes the mayor enters. He is in his fifties, neatly dressed in a suit and tie. He shakes my father’s hand and Michael’s, gives me a little bow.
We all take our seats and Michael begins speaking in Czech, explaining who we are and why we are here. The mayor glances at my father while he listens. He is a serious man and his reaction to our presence is unreadable.
After a while the mayor begins to speak to Michael, who translates intermittently. He is telling us the story of the memorial.
It was actually built in 1945, the mayor explains, just a month after my father’s plane was shot down. The townspeople were so saddened by the deaths of so many airmen, in particular the crew of Tom West’s plane, which had crashed just outside the village.
Even though they knew the Germans wouldn’t approve, and that they could possibly be severely punished for it, they pooled their money together to create the beautiful memorial that we saw today.
My father is taking slow, audible breaths, and I can tell that he is riveted.
Finally it is his turn to speak. He sits up straight in his seat, moving to the edge of it so that he can directly address the mayor.
He is choked up before he begins, but clears his throat and tries again.
On behalf of every American family, he says firmly, I want to thank you.
He continues. I can’t tell you how much it means to me, to us, that you have honored our fallen men in this way. No one at home has any idea about this, he says. It will mean so much
to the families of the men who died here to know . . .
He gets choked up again.
The mayor leans forward then, and Michael translates.
But sir, the mayor says, we are the ones who must thank you. You and your friends and family . . . You fought for us, for our country, for freedom.
The mayor is crying now too, and Michael looks back and forth between the two, working hard to translate.
I lean back in my chair and it is here, right here in this moment, that I finally realize exactly what it was my father did all those years ago in World War II.
A WEEK LATER we are nearing the end of our trip. We have traveled across the countryside, sat in home after home, listened to stories from all kinds of people who were connected to that day in December 1944.
We have drunk cool, clear glasses of slivovitz on more occasions than I care to remember, and my father has fared better than I expected him to, making it in and out of the little Fiat and through each day without collapsing.
The day before we head back to Prague, Michael insists we stop one more time.
We wait outside a dilapidated apartment building for a long time before Michael beckons us to join him.
We make our way into the crumbling building, and then ever farther into a dark and sour-smelling apartment. An old man stands in a dimly lit and cluttered living room. He is clutching two weathered trash bags and he nods gruffly at my father.
This man has something he wants to give you, Michael says, and I watch as my father sits down on a grimy couch next to him.
The man fumbles around inside the trash bags, finally pulling out two wooden boards. He places one on his lap and the other on my father’s lap. The boards are each the size of the laptop I will one day type this story out on, and they are painted an old but still-bright yellow.
On each board are glued bits and pieces from fallen B-24 Liberators. The pieces are tiny, none of them bigger than a fist, some of them just bolts or screws, little dials and bits that still turn in their casings. Each one has been carefully placed on the board, and there are words surrounding them.
Some of the words are in Czech, some in English. The phrase “I am alone” catches my eye. “We will never forget,” says another.
He collected all of these pieces as a young boy, Michael explains, and has carried these boards with him ever since. My father marvels over the pieces, gently running his fingers across them.
He wants you to have them, Michael says, and my father looks up.
The man is looking expectantly at my father and I realize that he is crying.
No one understands what they mean anymore, Michael translates. The young people don’t know what that time was like, what it all meant to us. I’ve carried these things with me my whole life.
I want you to have them.
He starts coughing then, and we all watch as his frail body collapses in on itself, each cough shuddering across his frame. My father places a hand on his shoulder, waits until he is done. He is crying again now too.
Thank you, my father says. Thank you for remembering us.
The old man nods. How could I ever forget?
THE NEXT DAY my dad and I part ways at the airport in Prague. I am anxious in the minutes before we do. I can’t shake the feeling that this will be the last time I will ever see him.
We draw out our good-byes, neither of us really wanting to go home to our lonely life.
Over the next four years my father will write about our experiences in Prague many times. He will contact the families of Tom West and of his fallen crew, and he will do his best to share the information he discovered. He will even participate regularly in a program to visit elementary schools, talking to kids about World War II.
I’ll go with him on one of those days, to a clean, modern elementary school in Southern California. My dad wears his bomber jacket and a hat emblazoned with the insignia of the 461st Bomb Group. By this time he carries an oxygen tank with him wherever he goes and the little container sits behind him hissing pleasantly.
The kids are fidgety and distracted as my dad talks, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He has brought the yellow boards with him to show them, and they stand up one by one to walk over and touch the old B-24 parts glued to its surface.
I lean against a doorway, the warm California breeze filtering past me, and I watch the kids. I know they just see an old man going on about a war they don’t understand, but I see so much more.
I see the man who swept my mother off her feet one warm June morning. The man who rubbed my back on the nights when I couldn’t sleep after she was gone. I see a man who learned how to fly an airplane at age twenty, a man who dedicated himself to fighting for something bigger than himself. A man who survived when so many others died.
I see a man who made his life worthwhile.
Chapter Twelve
2003, I’M TWENTY-FIVE YEARS OLD.
I GLANCE DOWN at the glass of red wine in front of me. It’s one of those squat tumblers and the wine inside is a watery crimson. I see the waitress emerge from her station, heading toward our table, and I quickly knock back the contents in one smooth swallow. I smile up at her as she refills my glass.
I’m at C & O Trattoria on Washington Boulevard, with my friends Holly and Kevin, and a guy I’m seeing named Ryan. C & O is one of those cacophonous family-style Italian restaurants that caters to the tourists who flock to Venice Beach each day. We like it because it’s cheap and the garlic knots are addictive.
I particularly like it because as soon as you sit down the waitress delivers a giant bottle of red wine to your table, encouraging you to pour freely throughout dinner. I fill my glass over and over again. By the time dinner arrives I’ve lost count of how many I’ve had. Five glasses? Six?
Kevin and Ryan are talking about books, and Holly and I lean conspiratorially into each other on our side of the table. I’ve known Holly since high school, and we always have more than enough to talk about.
How are you doing, dear? Holly’s eyes are wide and probing as she asks this.
I nod at her, taking a sip from my glass of wine. I’m good, I say. This is an utter lie.
I smile brightly, hoping to appear convincing, but Holly knits her brow and leans in closer. I take another sip.
Are you?
I nod again. The fact that I’ve known Holly for ten years makes it hard to be deceptive.
No, really. I’m good.
I take one more sip of wine and then I continue.
I’ve been writing a lot. Every morning.
Really? That’s great.
Again, this is a lie. A couple of months ago, right after my dad died, a large newspaper featured my blog in a list of the twenty best in the world. Ever since, I’ve had more readers than I know what to do with. An agent from New York even contacted me about writing a book, but facing the blinking cursor at the top of an empty Word document has been nearly impossible. I’ve written nothing.
The Rules of Inheritance Page 24