Stolen Secrets

by L. B. Schulman

  “Who else?” he repeated, giving my sleeve another wrench.

  “No one! I swear! Please, can I call an ambulance now?”

  “It’s not the original,” said the bearded guy.

  “Shut up.”

  “But the deal …”

  “It’s good enough,” snapped Deep Voice.

  “Yeah? Well maybe she’s lying, did you—”

  “The story checks out, man. I said leave it!”

  To cut off their thought process, I jerked my head toward the door. “Did you hear that?”

  Bearded guy took the bait. “I don’t like this, man. We gotta go.”

  A wrinkled corner of a photograph stuck out from under his heel. I’d searched the whole house for pictures and come up empty. Where had it come from? The battered safe?

  When the bearded man moved to the door, the crumpled photo stayed behind. I looked at the woman in the black-and-white picture. A teenager, maybe eighteen or nineteen, a little older than me. She wore a white apron over a dress, and a nurse’s cap topped her severely combed hair. I squinted at the brooch on her collar. Was that a Red Cross symbol?

  The tall man came into the room. The three of them conferred about something, their backs to me. I scooted forward to get a better look at the photograph.

  The “cross” had the warped arms of a swastika.

  The picture in front of me was more than seventy years old, but I knew the intensity of the woman’s gaze. I knew the down-turned mouth, the thrust of the jaw. This woman wasn’t a prisoner; she was a nurse. A Nazi nurse. I flipped the photo over. Lillian Johanna Pfeiffer, February 1945, it said on the back.

  I am Adelle Pfeiffer, Oma had said, the first time I’d met her. Adelle, not Lillian. But Pfeiffer was the name she’d used.

  The photo slipped from my shaking fingers.

  My sister calls me Lazy Lillian.

  I didn’t want to accept what I saw. But visual facts were stronger than written ones, or even witness testimony. Visual facts were indisputable. I couldn’t deny it.

  How could I have been so wrong? I’d thought my grandmother was Anne Frank—an inspiration to many, a symbol of hope that people could live together regardless of their differences. I thought she was a lasting reminder of the horrors of war. In my own story, Oma had sacrificed her identity for a powerful cause, knowing there was more grace in death than in life.

  But everything I’d thought had been wrong.

  The handwriting on the photograph belonged to the same person who’d written out the shopping list that was now in a desk drawer on the floor.

  I’m a secret! she’d told me once. No one can know I’m here. They’ll kill me if they find me alive.

  My eyes pulled back to the photograph. The stubborn frown. The lower lip set in a pout. Oma wasn’t a secret to be kept away from the Nazis; she was a secret because of her role in the Holocaust.

  Oma wasn’t Anne Frank.

  She was a Nazi.

  I’m dreadfully sorry, she’d cried. I’ve been so bad.

  It hadn’t been fear that plagued her; it was guilt. My grandmother had built a life of lies to escape the justice she deserved.

  “Let’s go,” one of the men said to the other two.

  I swallowed hard. “Please, can you call the ambulance? I don’t have my phone.”

  The tall man reached into his Windbreaker and took out two cell phones, Vickie’s and mine. With a cursory check, he plucked out the right one and purposefully threw it a few feet behind me. This had to be Ryan. Who else would know the difference between identical iPhones, the only distinction being my teal case?

  The three men strode heavy-footed down the hallway. I held my breath until the door slammed behind them, leaving me with my tangled thoughts.

  My grandmother was a criminal in the eyes of the world. Some people would say she deserved to die alone, just as the Holocaust victims had. But life wasn’t so black and white. It was a gray fog that made it difficult to see more than a few feet ahead.

  All I had left was my conscience. It failed my grandmother, but it wouldn’t fail me.

  I reached for my phone and called for help.

  CHAPTER

  TWENTY-FIVE

  AROUND MIDNIGHT, I SCRAPED MYSELF OFF THE waiting-room couch. I wandered through the urgent-care ward, listening to the bells and beeps of hospital machinery, the suck of blood-pressure cuffs, the squeak of rubber-soled shoes on linoleum, and thinking all the time that the prisoners at Bergen-Belsen hadn’t been allowed to leave this world in such luxury.

  At one in the morning, the doctor found me at the All-Night Coffee Cart. She gave a no-news update, ending with the cliché “time will tell.” She seemed to be waiting for the hail of questions that typically came from concerned family members. I disappointed her.

  “Your grandmother’s stable,” she finally said. “Would you like to see her now?”

  “No,” I answered. Because I didn’t. I couldn’t.

  She glanced at her watch. “Well unless there’s a change, you won’t see me until morning. I recommend you go home and get some sleep.”

  I didn’t do that either. I carried my stale coffee back to the waiting room, sat across from a woman immersed in a People magazine, and stared at the muted television. I must’ve dozed, because when I checked next, it was three in the morning and the woman was gone.

  A voice jarred me from my zombie-like state. A patrol officer stood in the doorway, pad and pen in hand. “Hello, I’m Officer Nidra. We got a call from the paramedics that your grandmother’s stroke happened during a robbery at her home.” He gave me a sympathetic smile. “I know it’s late, but I’d like to get your statement if you’re feeling up to it.” My eyes skirted his badge. He wasn’t just a cop. He was a detective.

  I bit my lip. What could I say? “Yeah, some men broke into my grandmother’s house.”

  “How many?”

  “Three.”

  “Do you know why they were there?”

  I couldn’t tell him about the diary’s existence without explaining why Oma had it in the first place. “To get money or jewelry?”

  For all I knew, she’d stolen the diary. Oh, God, what if she, like the robbers, like the revisionists, had wanted to silence Anne’s account? She’d had plenty of opportunities to return it to Anne’s father, but she hadn’t. And something else that didn’t make sense: If Oma hadn’t wanted anyone to see Anne’s diary, then why didn’t she destroy it all those years ago?

  “Did you hear the robbers say anything?” Officer Nidra asked.

  I couldn’t mention the diary. It was too dangerous. I couldn’t subject Oma, or my family, to that kind of scrutiny. So I told him that I heard the men talk about possible places where my grandmother might keep her jewelry. I fumbled around, tripping over my explanation. From the empathetic expression on his face, he seemed to think that I was incoherent with grief over my grandmother’s stroke.

  “Did you recognize any of the men?” he asked.

  I couldn’t even mention Vickie’s boyfriend for fear it might lead back to my grandmother’s secret. “No.”

  “Do you know what they took?”

  As I tried to come up with an answer that seemed simple, I remembered the jewelry Oma had claimed was stolen by the Nazis. “Maybe her pearl necklace,” I said. The other day, Oma had claimed that another necklace went missing, too. I’d checked the house, in case the clasp had snapped, but it hadn’t turned up. “Also, my grandmother’s Star of David necklace.” I felt sick as it hit me that Oma had been hiding behind the same religion she’d once persecuted.

  “Who else, besides yourself, might know about your grandmother’s jewelry?”

  I dug my fingernails into my palm. “Vickie. She’s my grandmother’s caregiver. The house is a duplex. She lives next door.”

  “Is it possible she might be involved?”

  I don’t remember nodding, but Officer Nidra added a note to his report. I knew then that I had.

  When he fin
ished with his questions, he asked when he could stop by the house to investigate. I bit the inside of my cheek. Of course the police would want to see the damage for themselves.

  “Around one tomorrow?” That would give me time to scour the house for any important clues I might’ve missed.

  He thanked me for my statement and gave me his business card. “I hope your grandmother recovers,” he said.

  Tears collected in my throat. I smiled, or at least I hoped I did.

  When he was gone, I called Mr. Laramie. I left a detailed message, making it clear that with Oma in the hospital, we wouldn’t need Vickie’s help for the time being. Forever, really, but I didn’t say that. Not yet. Next I phoned Mom. I hoped they’d given her phone back by now. Still, it was six twenty in the morning in Vermont, and sometimes she turned her ringer off.

  “Hi there,” she said groggily. “Wait, what time is it?”

  “Mom?”

  “Liv?”

  “Yeah.”

  “What’s wrong? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s not me. It’s Oma.”

  “Oh,” she said, relief coming through loud and clear in one little syllable.

  I told her how Oma had whacked her head on the dining room door and ended up in the Intensive Care Unit with a “cerebral vascular attack.” I wavered, deciding there was no point in telling her about the robbery right now. She’d find out soon enough. All she’d do was worry about me and fire endless questions my way, questions I didn’t know how to answer.

  “When can you get here? We’re at California Pacific Medical Center, in the ICU.”

  She hesitated, then said, “My flight’s scheduled to get in Friday afternoon. That’s only a few days away.” She cleared her throat. “I think it would be better if I completed my twenty-eight-day program so I won’t have to get into it all with an unsympathetic judge.”

  I was pretty sure an unyielding judge was a lame excuse. Mom didn’t want to put herself out, not for Oma’s sake. Forget sparing her the concern. “Actually, Oma’s house was robbed. We were both there. They scared her, and she fell,” I said. “I think that’s what brought on the stroke.”

  “Oh, Liv! That’s terrible. Are you hurt? What happened?”

  “I’m fine,” I said curtly. “Are you sure you can’t come home sooner?”

  “I don’t think so, hon. They’re pretty serious about me fulfilling my obligation here. Could mean jail time otherwise.”

  She waited for me to agree, but I said nothing.

  “Livvy? You there?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Can you handle this until I get there?” Her voice was perky now, sleep driven away, replaced by a familiar optimism in my ability to do everything and anything.

  “Did you know that someone in the United States dies from a stroke every four minutes?”

  “Liv, you know I—”

  “Yeah, Mom, I can handle it.” I cut the connection.

  It took me a few minutes to realize I wasn’t mad at her. Not exactly. Why would I expect a sudden change in behavior just because Oma was in critical condition? The person I was angry at was me. I felt guilty for not going in to see Oma. Didn’t she deserve to have one person in the world who cared about her right now?

  No, said a voice in my head. She was a Nazi. She escaped punishment because she lied to everyone she met.

  What Oma deserved was a daughter exactly like my mother. Someone who saw her for who she really was. I gasped as the truth hit me. My mother had known. She must have. Why else would she have walked out of Oma’s life all those years ago? That had to be the reason for the secrets. It might even be the reason Mom was in rehab at this moment.

  I had a sudden, desperate urge to leave the hospital, to get far away from this place where everything I’d thought about my grandmother had already died.

  At 4:20 in the morning, the cab pulled up in front of our Fillmore Street apartment. I went straight from the front door to my walk-in closet and lay down, too tired to stay awake and too wired to sleep. The walls, normally comforting in their proximity, seemed to expand and contract with a distant wheeze. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to shut down the echo of an image: Oma, lying still on the stretcher, a tube down her throat.

  I shook off the memory and considered my plan. After calling in sick to school, I would head to Oma’s. By the time the police arrived, the original diary would be gone, along with any incriminating evidence. I’d show Officer Nidra the newly installed lock on Oma’s bedroom door, and tell him that Vickie hadn’t shown up for her shift that night. Finally, I’d hand him the laptop and explain how she’d been on her e-mail right before the break-in. I’d even give him her password.

  Hopefully the police would connect Ryan’s e-mail to the break-in. If the men were found, I had a feeling they wouldn’t be dumb enough to tell the full story.

  Yes, that was my plan.

  I wanted them caught.

  You should never tell someone bad news in a text. I’d learned that lesson when Sean dumped me. Still, I couldn’t bring myself to tell Franklin D. about Oma’s condition in person. He’d take one look at my face and start digging for details, using pointed questions to poke holes in my story. And when he knew it all, every last detail, he’d never look at me the same way.

  So I scratched off a text about the robbery and Oma’s stroke, assuring him that I was fine, and sent it when he was in class, when there was no way he could call me back, when he wouldn’t have the benefit of seeing my face, or hearing my voice, or watching my hands tremble.

  When Franklin D. couldn’t possibly glimpse the ugly truth about my family.

  Back at Oma’s, I forced myself to take stock of the damage, careful not to touch anything. Officer Nidra would be here in a few hours. It couldn’t look like I’d cleaned the house.

  I found Oma’s jewelry box upside down at the foot of her bed. I searched the six tiny drawers for a pearl necklace, but it wasn’t there. Had it ever been more than a figment of her imagination? The Star of David with the diamond edging had been real, but that wasn’t in there, either. It was as likely to turn up in a box of Cheerios as to have been stolen.

  I went into the living room and winced at the porcelain cat, reduced to rubble. A few seconds later, I realized the laptop was missing. Why hadn’t I thought to bring it with me last night? Vickie had the key to the house. I was stupid not to think of that. The only evidence I had linking her to the break-in was now gone.

  In the library, the shredded cushion was still on the floor. My fingers burrowed through foam until they found the original pages, safe in their hiding place. I tucked the entries inside my math book and searched for the kind of evidence I didn’t want Office Nidra to discover.

  That included three more photographs. In the first, Oma and a Nazi official were shaking hands. A swastika band snaked around the man’s arm. The others were snapshots from her life after she’d come to the United States. Oma and Herbert on their wedding day: her, in a lacy white gown with long sleeves, and him, in a cummerbund and bow tie, shoulders at attention. He looked proud of his bride, and perhaps, I thought, protective. This was not the look of a man who’d knowingly brought the enemy to his homeland.

  I read the back of the last photograph before turning it over. With Gretchen, 1971. And there was Mom, a wide-eyed toddler with a mess of curls, clinging to Oma’s leg and gazing at her mother with fierce adoration. Oma rested one hand on Gretchen’s head, while holding a cigarette to her lips with the other. I slid the photograph into the pages of my math book, beside the entries.

  I was thinking about whether or not to clean up all of the papers from the file cabinet when I spotted a typewritten page sticking out from under the armchair. I pulled it out, and within a sentence or two, I knew what it was. Page 210 described Oma’s mixed feelings when she learned that she was pregnant with my mom.

  Crawling around on my knees, I swept aside bills to search for more pages, and there they were, abandoned in the corner, a
snapped rubber band lying on top of them like a Christmas ribbon.

  The missing memoir.

  My grandmother’s secrets were right in front of me. Maybe they weren’t the ones I’d been hoping for, but they were truths all the same. I skimmed the first fifty pages, which mostly covered her childhood in Germany. Her mother ran off with a shop owner when Oma was six. Her father lived at the office, leaving her and her brother under the care of a housekeeper named Gertrude, who was loving and kind when they were good and beat them with a thorny branch when they weren’t.

  An hour later, I found what I was looking for. Oma, a nurse, was on her way to her next assignment. A place called Bergen-Belsen. It didn’t take long for a familiar name to jump out at me: Anne Frank. I closed my eyes for a moment, pressed a hand to my stomach, and turned the page.

  I can’t forget the day when the girl first came into the infirmary. She looked to be a few years younger than me, slight, with eyes made bigger by her gaunt face. She reminded me of a bird, delicate in her bones, yet she moved with ease and determination. It was something I was unaccustomed to seeing in this place of the walking dead.

  She had a child of three or four with her. He failed to rouse as she carried him in and laid him upon the cot. Having completed her mission, she slipped back out into the morning like an apparition.

  Over the next three weeks, the girl returned several more times, always with a new child. One day she arrived with a toddler, his left arm stamped with flea bites. The boy screamed hoarsely as I completed the superficial exam. The girl stayed a few minutes longer that day, inventing a story of water sprites and mermaids that had a hypnotic, calming effect on the boy. This made my job easier, and so the next time I saw her, I requested she stay longer to tell her tales to the youngest patients as I completed my rounds. Of course, she did not object. In such a place, no one ever objected.

  I will admit, the exams lengthened as I listened myself. The girl’s stories were like a bubble of air at the bottom of a dark ocean, carrying each of us to the surface. It was a welcome respite from this wretched world, where death was a constant companion, where a nurse was forbidden from saving anyone.