The Imperfects

by Amy Meyerson

  “This is Sara, no h,” Deborah said, stroking the fuzz on the baby’s head.

  Helen shuddered. “S-A-R-A?”

  Deborah didn’t understand her mother’s expression, so she nodded.

  “No.” Tears welled in Helen’s eyes. “You cannot call her Sara. Did I teach you nothing?”

  Deborah laughed nervously until Helen started to cry. At that moment, Kenny came in and took Sara from Deborah’s shaking arms.

  “Anything but Sara,” Helen had whispered as she left.

  When Dr. Feldman came to check on Deborah, she told the obstetrician the strange story of her mom’s reaction. Dr. Feldman’s grandmother had survived the Holocaust. Her name was Charlotte Ella Weisz—the Nazis had called her Charlotte Sara Weisz. It was the middle name they designated to Jewish girls whose first names did not immediately register as Jewish. The men were called Israel.

  Deborah was dumbfounded. As she looked at the crusted-shut eyes of her newborn, she imagined what that would be like, the rest of Helen’s life, having to see her granddaughter and think S-a-r-a.

  When it was time to sign for the birth certificate, Deborah named her firstborn Ashley.

  Now, Deborah hands the passport to Ashley. She never told Ashley about her intended name, but the Nazi insignia inked onto Helen’s identification card is horrifying enough, even without knowing about Sara.

  “I didn’t get to use the passport in the book,” Cheryl apologizes, studying Deborah’s and Ashley’s stunned faces. “You haven’t seen this before?”

  “No,” Ashley says, returning the passport to the table.

  “Sometimes it’s easier,” Cheryl says, “telling your story to people who are not family.”

  “Irma told you her story,” Deborah presses. “You knew everything.”

  “My grandmother got to tell it as a happy story. Relatively happy, anyway. Her parents and brother came over later that year, from Italy. They found an apartment in the Bronx. I can see how Helen might not want to talk about it, if the rest of her family didn’t make it over.”

  Make it over, like they were playing Red Rover. Sometimes, Ashley thinks, euphemisms are worse than the blunt truth.

  Cheryl continues to mine the box and shows them two photographs of Helen and Irma. They have already seen one from the cover of Cheryl’s book, on the deck of the SS President Harding. In the other, Helen and Irma sit on the steps of a white porch, an American flag hanging above them. Again, Helen has one arm gripping Irma close, the other clutching her doll closer. “That’s from Camp Shalom where they stayed temporarily until the Goldsteins could find more permanent housing for them.” In the photo, Irma smiles as she leans into Helen, who does not return the expression. Helen doesn’t look sullen exactly, or unhappy, just serious. Stricken. “They were the last two girls left at Camp Shalom after the other kids were sent to live with families, so they looked after each other. Helen was like a big sister to my grandmother.”

  Ashley remembers the anecdote from Cheryl’s book, how Helen was the last to leave the camp.

  “She was older than the other kids. So it was harder to find a home for her. Plus, the Goldsteins found her... How can I put this delicately—” Cheryl looks conflicted as she chooses her words carefully.

  “Helen could be a handful,” Ashley acknowledges. Of course Helen could be a handful. Look at everything she’d endured, a lifetime of guilt at surviving when her family didn’t. Instinctively, Deborah rubs her daughter’s back. Ashley stares at her mother’s surprisingly youthful face. Maybe there is something to her casual veganism, to the acupuncture, the yoga.

  Cheryl laughs. “She was a handful and proud of it. She said Mr. Goldstein had a savior complex. He never tried to understand why she would be anything other than overjoyed to be American. I think he expected more from Helen because she was older, but she had such a hard time leaving her mother. The Goldsteins use to console the children by telling them that their parents’ visas would come through, that they would follow. It happened for more of the children than you’d expect, but not Helen. I think she blamed them, in part. And it was worse, since she never found out what happened to Flora.”

  Deborah’s mind drifts to her teenage years when Helen would scold her for being too American, which meant too loose, too loud, too free. It had never occurred to Deborah that Helen did not feel American, that she did not feel free.

  Ashley feels a pinging at her temples and realizes she’s been furrowing her brow. If she were Helen’s mother, she would have made her go, too. No question she would have sacrificed herself for Lydia and Tyler. It was the only choice a mother could make, but that didn’t mean it was easy for the child to leave a mother behind.

  “Maybe I shouldn’t have said all that,” Cheryl confesses.

  “I’m glad you did,” Ashley insists.

  Deborah’s gaze returns to the picture of Irma and Helen beneath the American flag.

  “Do you know why they stopped talking?” Deborah asks. When Cheryl hesitates, Deborah continues. “My mom didn’t let a lot of people in. It was a big deal when Irma and your mom came down, then it just stopped. I should have asked Helen, but I never did a very good job of trying to understand my mother. I’d really like to know now, if you’ll tell me.”

  Ashley remains perfectly still throughout her mother’s rambling speech. She wishes Beck were here. Actually, she wishes Jake were here. He hasn’t done a good job of trying to understand Deborah, either.

  Cheryl crosses and uncrosses her legs. “I know it had to do with a married man Helen had an affair with. Irma was never forthcoming about it, and I didn’t dare ask Helen. Let’s just say my grandmother didn’t approve of what Helen was doing with someone else’s husband. Someone’s father, too.”

  Right away, Deborah knows she means the man from the photographs. There’s no denying it anymore. He was her father. He was married to another woman with another family. He was not a hero but a traitor. Helen was a traitor, too.

  “That ended years before we stopped seeing your mom and grandmother,” Deborah argues. She doesn’t actually know when Helen’s affair ended, but there are no photographs of the man once Deborah was walking and talking, once she could remember.

  Cheryl sucks in her breath. “That’s really all I know.”

  The grandfather clock in the corner ticks loudly, filling the otherwise quiet room with an unsettling countdown.

  “Mom says hi, by the way. She’s living in Boca now.” Cheryl laughs. “She said to tell you she still thinks of you every time she sees Revlon lipstick. I must say, it’s an honor to meet the woman who convinced my mother to shoplift. Sheesh, I don’t know if she’s ever broken another rule. She doesn’t even speed up at yellow lights, although that’s probably best at her age.”

  Deborah cannot hide her disdain for this woman who says sheesh, who knows more about Helen than she does. This woman, who dresses and acts like she is of a certain age, when she’s not even forty, not even deserving of pearls. This woman, who was not in the drugstore when Helen pulled Deborah out by her neck, who is misrepresenting history. “Your mother was the one who convinced me to shoplift. I got hell for it.”

  As soon as she says this, Deborah realizes she’s wrong. She always speeds up for yellow lights, and late at night, when no one’s around, she gets a thrill in running red lights.

  Before Cheryl can respond, Ashley’s phone buzzes. She has two texts from Lydia. The first, fifteen minutes ago: Where are you? And again, just moments ago: Hello? Earth to Mom? Did you forget about us? Across the room, the grandfather clock says it’s 3:15 p.m.

  “Shit. We’re late.” Ashley stands. “I was supposed to pick up my kids fifteen minutes ago.”

  “Here,” Cheryl says, holding out Helen’s passport, the photo of her with Flora. “I can make copies of the photos with Irma, too.”

  Deborah takes the passport. “I’d lik
e that.”

  At a traffic light, Ashley clenches the wheel, shaking it violently. “Shit. Shit. Shit.”

  “It’s okay. We’ll be there soon.”

  “It’s not okay. I know that’s probably impossible for you to understand, but it’s definitely not okay that I left my children waiting for a half hour.”

  Deborah feels the sting of Ashley’s words and fights to keep her tone impassive. “Blame it on me. Tell them I went for a walk, you didn’t know where I was and I came back late.”

  The light turns green and Ashley floods the engine. She glances over at Deborah, trying to understand the emotions behind her stoic face. “I didn’t mean that. I just—I have a lot going on right now.”

  “You’re a good mom. Try not to be too hard on yourself.” Deborah should have been harder on herself. She should have cursed when she was late.

  Ashley reaches out and squeezes Deborah’s hand. She cannot lie and say that Deborah was a good mom, too. “You okay?” she asks instead. “Everything Cheryl said about Helen, the married man?”

  Deborah looks out the window at the storefronts they race past. “I don’t like that woman.”

  Ashley laughs. “The look on her face when she was, like, That’s really all I know. Like she just loved knowing something she wasn’t telling us.”

  Deborah laughs, too, until they stop at a light and fall silent. “It’s all true. The married man—he must be my father.”

  “Well, you’ll know when you get the birth certificate. We’ll know,” Ashley corrects. “Whoever he is, we’ll get through it together.”

  By the time they pull up to the school, it is 3:40 p.m. Tyler comes barreling out of the building, but Lydia lumbers toward the car. As Deborah watches her grandchildren, she’s stunned suddenly that she’s here with her daughter, that after a few days together, she already knows Lydia and Tyler better than she ever imagined she would. It makes her feel guilty that she’s never tried to be part of their lives before, that if it weren’t for Helen’s death, the fifty children, the Florentine Diamond, she wouldn’t be trying now. It makes her think of all the family that came before, the family she’s never investigated, not just her father.

  “Ash?” Deborah asks. Ashley turns to her, flustered by Lydia’s scowl as she approaches the car. “We need to find out what happened to Flora.”

  The children climb into the backseat, but Ashley remains focused on the pleading across her mother’s face. She’s right. Finding Deborah’s father is one thing, but Flora... Flora was Helen’s ghost.

  “We’ll find her, too,” Ashley promises.

  * * *

  Beck is expecting a follow-up letter from the Italians, one that will threaten a lawsuit, possibly sweetening the deal with more money. What she does not expect is a knock at her door.

  When Beck answers, she’s wearing her striped terry cloth robe, her hair still wet from the shower. She’s not sure who’s more startled, the three men outside with a search and seizure warrant or Beck, self-consciously tightening the robe around her waist.

  “Can you give me a minute to change?” Beck asks, trying to remain calm. The appearance of the FBI means one thing. Evidence of a crime. And a federal one at that.

  They wait, in the foyer, as Beck digs through her closet looking for an outfit that reads innocent. They are here at eight in the morning to catch her off guard, if not in her bathrobe. She wonders who let them inside the building, whether the tenants upstairs realized they were FBI. She wonders if they would be waiting patiently outside her apartment if Beck weren’t white, if this was over drugs instead of a centuries-old diamond.

  The eyeliner pencil is shaky in her hand, causing her to put it down and stare intently at her face in the mirror. “Relax,” she commands. “You have done nothing wrong.” Only the guilty tell themselves this.

  Somehow, the black pencil rims her eyes, the mascara ends up on her lashes, the scarlet lipstick bloodies her lips. In her collared white shirt and fitted lightweight black pants, it’s the closest she’ll look to the femme fatale.

  The agents follow Beck inside, accepting her offer of coffee.

  “I assume this is about my grandmother’s brooch?” Beck asks. They look mildly confused, and momentarily she fears they are here to ask her about Ryan.

  “Only if your grandmother’s brooch had the Florentine Diamond in it.”

  Beck explains that her grandmother’s diamond is in a safe-deposit box at Federalist Bank, careful not to call it the Florentine. There’s no proof she knows it’s the Florentine Diamond. Sure, the Italians sent her that letter, but she never wrote back. She could argue that she thought it was a practical joke. And the colored diamond report never identified the diamond. How is she supposed to know how rare a 137-carat diamond is? It’s not like she’s a jewelry expert.

  All this rationalizing has the opposite of its intended effect. Her palms grow sweaty. Her knees won’t stop shaking. When the men ask for the bank’s address, her voice wobbles as she tells them, “The branch on Market Street.”

  Can they really just swoop in and take the diamond away? Don’t they need proof that it was stolen? Do they think she stole it? Are they going to arrest her? Everything feels like it’s happening too fast and she needs a moment to think, a little time to determine her next step. Then she remembers—“You’re going to need a separate warrant to search the safe-deposit box.” They cast her a skeptical look. “I’m a paralegal,” she explains.

  They take another sip of coffee before they leave.

  “I trust the diamond will still be in the bank when we get our warrant?” one of them asks her, and she assures him, as steadily as she can, that the diamond isn’t going anywhere.

  By the time the feds leave, Beck is late for work. Still, she cannot bring herself to get off the couch, to head to the office as though everything is normal. She considers going to the bank to say goodbye to the diamond, certain that the moment the feds seize it, it will never belong to the Millers again. If she does, there will be a record of her visit, which will surely look suspicious. Suspicious of what exactly, she isn’t sure, but if the FBI is involved, then the diamond must have been reported as stolen, which leaves her family as the primary culprits.

  She needs to be productive, to do something to get ahead of the FBI. Her mother and Ashley have already met with Cheryl Appelbaum, but they haven’t called her yet. She’s read every article she can find on the Florentine Diamond, every case and deposition involving the Habsburgs. All dead ends. Still, there must be something she can do, something to keep herself busy. She makes a mental list of all her leads, coming up with two points still unexplored: the maker’s mark on the back of the orchid brooch, which Viktor has been looking into for two months, and Kurt Winkler’s books on the fall of the empire, equally unpromising.

  First, she calls Viktor, who assures her, “My dear, the moment I find it, you’ll hear from me. You sound stressed. Do you want to come over for lunch? I’m making coq au vin.”

  The image of Viktor preparing an elaborate meal for himself makes her impossibly sad, so much so that she almost says yes. “I’d love to, but I have to sort through some work. Thank you, Viktor. For everything, really.”

  For the first time, it strikes her as odd, how willing he is to help her, until he says, “For the woman who saved my penthouse, I’d do a whole lot more.”

  After they hang up, Beck still doesn’t want to go to work. Peter Winkler, Kurt Winkler’s son, never responded to her emails, asking to see his father’s private collection. So, she sends another follow-up email, feeling momentarily satiated before the restlessness settles in again. Can the FBI really just take the diamond? Can the Millers lose it that quickly? She checks her phone, hoping Peter Winkler has miraculously written her back. It’s evening in Europe. He’s not going to return her email today, if ever—if he can even read it. So American of her to assume everyone speaks En
glish, when she can’t read a word of German.

  German. Suddenly, she remembers something the librarian at the Central Library said when she asked about Winkler’s books. He told her they might be at the German Society on Spring Garden Street. “You need to be a member,” he’d cautioned about checking out books. Since Beck wasn’t certain what she was looking for and had no interest in becoming a member of any society, let alone one dedicated to a language Helen refused to speak, she quickly put it out of her mind. Now, it’s the last lead she has. Beck changes into a sundress more appropriate for the humid afternoon and races out of her apartment toward the society’s address on Spring Garden Street.

  The reading room in the German Society is two stories, with a high ceiling and cherry hardwood floors. A few readers sit at the long, regal tables that line the room. When she walks up to the counter, she expects the librarian to be reading Nietzsche. Instead, he’s skimming an Avengers comic.

  She hands him the titles of Winkler’s books, and he looks up at her with disdain. “You have to be a member of the society to check out books.”

  “How do you know I’m not one?”

  He says something to her in German before returning to his comic.

  “Rich, you’re going to scare off the natives if you aren’t nice to them.” Beck turns to see a pale blond guy smiling at her. His eyes are piercingly blue, and his dimples carve crescents into each cheek. She can’t help but smile back.

  “That’s the point,” Rich says.

  The blond guy takes the piece of paper from Beck and reads the names of Winkler’s books aloud. “Die ungekrönten Habsburger and Das Vermächtnis des großen Imperiums.” His eyes grow wide. “Are you studying the Habsburgs?”

  “Trying to.”

  “That’s my expertise. Franz Ferdinand, anyway.” He hops behind the reference computer to type something, then bounds up to the second floor, returning moments later with the two hardbacks. “The official biographer to Karl,” he says, flipping through them. “This Winkler guy is a total sycophant. You can’t trust any of this.”