She's Up to No Good(12)

“It was an accident. She drowned.”

“In the ocean?”

“It wasn’t in the bathtub.”

There was a note of pique in her voice, so I tried to go for a laugh. “The bathtub with the fish on Fridays?”

That elicited a small smile. But when she didn’t keep playing with me, I realized I had touched a subject that wasn’t open for discussion. There was no outlandish lie. No equivocation. Just short answers and silence. The most un-Grandma answer I had ever received. So I steered the conversation back to the story she had been telling me.

“Your mother was onto you and Tony, then?”

“She had her reasons. I didn’t understand them until she was gone. But I took one look at Vivie when I got home and knew the jig was up. Mama had her so cowed. Vivie was . . . delicate. She couldn’t handle yelling and Mama was a yeller. I just yelled back. Maybe that’s why Mama didn’t like me.”

“I’m sure she liked you.”

“Oh, she loved me, don’t get me wrong. If she didn’t, she wouldn’t have bothered telling Papa. She would have let it go on and made it worse when he found out. I’m just not everyone’s cup of tea.” She chuckled. “Well, maybe everyone’s but hers.”

How do you get that level of confidence? I wondered. I used to be brave, but never like that. Not that I felt brave anymore.

“What did your father do when he found out?”

“Told me I couldn’t see him anymore.”

I rolled my eyes, changing lanes. “Because he wasn’t Jewish? I’ve never understood that. Like honestly, who cares? It’s just another reason to discriminate against people.”

Grandma threw up her hands. “Do you know what year I met Tony?” I shook my head. “Nineteen-fifty.” She looked at me expectantly, then sighed. “Do they teach you anything about history in schools these days?”

“Grandma, I’m literally a history teacher.”

“And you don’t know when the Holocaust was?”

I groaned internally. Everything was about the Holocaust with her generation. “It wasn’t like he was German.”

She didn’t reply quickly, meaning I was about to get a lecture. “Papa came from a village in Russia. The Russian army used to come through and take boys when he was young. The boys never came back. His mother hid him by shaving her head to make wigs for him and his brother and dressing them as girls whenever they came through.

“He tried so hard to bring his family over. He sent money. His mother didn’t come. Then after the war, he spent years trying to find his relatives, his friends. He never found anyone.” She was staring straight ahead and had pulled her sunglasses back down over her eyes.

I was just opening my mouth to say something—I didn’t know what exactly yet—when she continued. “I found them though.” I shivered involuntarily at her tone. “When the Holocaust Museum opened, I marched down there and met with their historians. I said I wanted to know.

“The village was in Poland by then, not Russia. Before the war, there were ten thousand Jews there. Seventy-three survived. The rest went to Treblinka. Everyone he ever knew—just . . . gone.”

She wiped at an eye under her glasses. I had never seen my grandmother cry. Not even at my grandfather’s funeral. “He knew. When he didn’t find them, he knew.” I found myself breathing rapidly and felt a sense of heaviness in my chest that I couldn’t explain. I hadn’t known any of these people. But I also hadn’t known my family had lost anyone. We were all here, on all four grandparents’ sides, before it happened. I thought we were untouched.

“When you experience that—well, you get a pass on some things,” she concluded.

“You’re not mad at him?”

“Darling, how could I be? I wouldn’t have your mother, or you or Joan or your uncle, your sisters, or your cousins if he hadn’t done what he did. And it was me who decided, in the end, to marry your grandfather. You think I would settle?”

I tried to picture her settling for anything. This ridiculous, indomitable woman. “Is that why you won’t ride in a German car?”

“Who says I won’t ride in a German car?”

I gritted my teeth. “You did. That’s why we took your car.”

“Oh. I lied. I just didn’t think you’d let me drive yours.” She grinned. “But if I was wrong, I’d be happy to take it for a spin when we get home.”





CHAPTER NINE


April 1950


Hereford, Massachusetts


“Did you have fun last night?” Miriam asked, setting a plate in front of Evelyn at the breakfast table. On weekdays, she served the black pumpernickel bread that she made herself, slathered thick with butter. Joseph had urged her for the last few years to buy her weekday bread and use that time for herself. Miriam simply looked at him and continued kneading the dark dough seeded with caraway. When the house was full of children, there would be pumpernickel on the table on Sundays too, but now that it was just four of them, there was challah, left over from Shabbat.

Evelyn glanced up at her suspiciously. Miriam disapproved of most fun, but she saw nothing amiss in her mother’s demeanor. “I did.” She smiled as she bit into the soft challah. Miriam saw the smile from the corner of her eye, and the edge of her mouth turned down.