The Sweetness of Forgetting (114)

It is the cruelest thing I have ever done. Your grandfather never knew that Jacob and I had been married in secret, just months before I left Paris. He never knew that your mother had been conceived on our wedding night. When your grandfather asked me to marry him, he did not understand that if Jacob had returned, it would annul our marriage. I was prepared to do that to him, to your grandfather, and that is something I must always live with. I would have left him in a heartbeat if Jacob had come back, and that, of course, was terribly unfair to him. But marrying Ted before I gave birth to your mother meant that she would be born an American. She would have freedom. No one could take her away to a concentration camp. And this, above all else, was my greatest responsibility. I did not have the luxury to say no to a proposal from an American. I had to save your mother, both because she was my child, and because she was the last piece of Jacob I had left.

Your grandfather and I had a good life together, and I loved him deeply, although in a different way than I loved Jacob. I loved him most of all for the kind of father he was to Josephine, and later, for the kind of grandfather he was to you. He showed both of you the kind of love I was incapable of. I believe that my heart would have broken each time I saw him with you, had my heart not frozen solid so many years ago. Without meaning to, I withheld my love from him, and from your mother, and from you, and from Annie.

And that, I am afraid, is the legacy I will leave behind—that of a cold heart.

I know that is the only way you have ever known me. But I want you to know that I was not always that way. There was once a time when I was happy and free, a time when I loved without reservation, because I didn’t know how much love could hurt. I wish you had known me then. And I wish you had known Jacob, for he would have loved you with that sort of depth too. He would be very proud of you. Instead, I made all the mistakes I could have made, and in the end, I leave this world with nothing.

My deepest wish for you is a fate different from mine. I wish that you learn to open your heart. I kept mine closed for all these years, because I was frightened, and that was a mistake. Life is a series of chances, and you have to have the courage to seize them, before the years pass you by and leave you with nothing but regrets.

Your life still lies before you, as does Annie’s. Learn to let people love you, my Hope, for you deserve that love. Learn to love freely. Love is so much more powerful than you realize. I know that now, but it is too late for me.

What I wish for you, dear Hope, is a life lived fully. A life lived freely in this country that lets you be what you are. A life lived knowing that God exists everywhere you are; he lives among the stars. And I wish you a life lived happily ever after, just like in the fairy tales I told you when you were a little girl. But you must go after that kind of life with all the strength of your heart. For it is only by loving, and having the courage to be loved in return, that you can find God, who exists most of all in your heart.

I will love you always,

Mamie





Chapter Thirty-three



I’m crying by the time I finish reading the letter. I put it down, and with the blanket still wrapped around me, I pad to the back door and walk out onto the deck, breathing in the cold night air. I pull Mamie’s blanket tighter around my shoulders and imagine that it’s her arms, enveloping me in one last hug.

“Are you up there?” I murmur into the nothingness. In the distance, perhaps carried across the bay a block away, I can hear the faint sounds of people celebrating the last hour of the year that’s about to end. I think about all the things that can be started over, and all the things that can never be undone.

I look up at the sky and try to locate the stars, the ones Mamie was always looking for. I find them now—the stars of the Big Dipper—and follow the line formed by two stars in the bowl, just like she’d taught me, until I see the North Star, Polaris, glimmering overhead, due north. I wonder whether that’s the direction to heaven. I wonder what she was searching for all those years.

I’m not sure how long I’ve been looking at the sky when I notice a tiny motion somewhere between the Dipper and the North Star. I squint and blink a few times, and that’s when I see them.

Against the inky backdrop, so faint I can barely make them out, two stars are moving across the sky, just past Polaris, making their way deeper into the heavens. I’ve seen shooting stars before; after all, the nights on the Cape are black and deep enough that you can see farther into the darkness than most people along the East Coast. I spent many nights during my teenage years counting stars and wishing on the ones that fell from the sky.

But these stars are different. They’re not falling. They’re making their way across the blanket of night, shimmering and brilliant as they dance side by side across the darkness.

My jaw falls as I follow their flight. The sounds of the earth—the distant laughter, the faint babble of a far-off television, the lapping of the waves on the beach—fall away, and I watch in a bubble of silence as the stars grow smaller and smaller, and finally disappear.

“Good-bye, Mamie,” I whisper when they’re gone. “Good-bye, Jacob.” And I believe somehow that the wind, which is whistling around me now, is taking my words up to them.

I search the sky for another minute, until the cold begins to seep into my bones, then I go back inside the house, where I pick my cell phone up from the kitchen table. I dial Annie first and smile when she answers.