The Sweetness of Forgetting (50)

It was at that moment that Josephine appeared from around the corner, wearing the long pink cotton nightgown Rose had sewn for her, clutching her Cynthia doll.

“What’s wrong, Mama?” Josephine asked from the doorway, blinking sleepily at her parents.

“Nothing, my dear,” Rose said, standing and crossing the room to kneel beside her daughter. She looked at the little girl and reminded herself that this was her family now, that the past was in the past, that she owed it to this life to keep going.

But she felt nothing.

After she’d tucked Josephine back into bed, singing her a lullaby her own mother had sung to her so many years before, she had lain beside Ted in the dark until his chest rose and fell in slumber and she could feel him slipping away into his dreams.

She rose softly, silently, and moved toward the hall. She climbed the narrow staircase to the small widow’s walk atop their house, and she emerged into the still night.

The moon was full, and it hung heavy over Cape Cod Bay, which Rose could see over the rooftops. The pale lunar light reflected on the water, and if Rose looked down, she could almost believe that the sea was lit from within. But she wasn’t looking down. Tonight, she was searching the heavens for the stars she had named. Mama. Papa. Helene. Claude. Alain. David. Danielle.

“I am sorry,” she whispered to the sky. “I am so sorry.”

There was no answer. She could hear, in the near distance, the waves lapping at the shore. The sky was silent.

She searched the sky, murmuring apologies, until dawn began to break on the eastern horizon. Still, she could not find him. Was this her fate? Was he lost to her forever?

“Jacob, where are you?” she cried out to the sky.

But there was no reply.





Chapter Fourteen



The air in Paris becomes very still as darkness falls. First, the sky begins to deepen, from the pale, hazy periwinkle of late afternoon to the deepening cerulean of evening, streaked with tangerine and gold at the horizon. As the stars begin to poke holes in the blanket of dusk, the wispy clouds hold on to the disappearing sunset, turning shades of ruby and rose. Finally, as sapphire fades to night, the lights of Paris come on, as twinkling and endless as stars. I stand on the Pont des Arts with Alain, watching in awe as the Eiffel Tower begins to sparkle with a million tiny white lights against the velvet sky.

“I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” I murmur. Alain had suggested a walk, because he needed a break from speaking about the past. I’m eager to hear the story of Jacob, but I don’t want to push him. I have to keep reminding myself that Alain is eighty, and these must be painful, long-buried memories.

We’re leaning against the railing of the bridge, looking west, and as he folds his hand gently over mine, I can feel it trembling. “Your grandmother used to say the same thing,” he says softly. “She would take me here when I was a boy, before the occupation, and tell me that the sunset over the Seine was God’s show, put on just for us.”

I feel tears in my eyes and shake my head, trying to rid myself of them, for they blur the perfect view.

“Whenever I feel alone,” Alain says, “I come here. I’ve spent years dreaming that Rose was with God, lighting the sky for me. I never imagined that all this time, she’s been alive.”

“We have to try to call her again,” I say. We had tried her number before leaving for a walk, but there’d been no answer; she was likely napping, something she seemed to be doing more of lately. “We have to tell her that I’ve found you. Even though she might not understand or remember.”

“Of course,” Alain says. “And then I will come with you. Back to Cape Cod.”

I turn and stare at him. “Really? You’ll come with me?”

He smiles. “I’ve spent seventy years without a family,” he says. “I do not want to waste another moment. I must see Rose.”

I smile into the darkness.

When the last rays of the sun have seeped into the horizon and the stars are all out, Alain loops his arm through mine and we begin to walk slowly back the way we came, toward the palatial Louvre, which is aglow in muted light, reflecting on the river beneath us.

“I will tell you about Jacob now,” Alain says softly as we begin to cross through the courtyard of the Louvre, toward the rue de Rivoli.

I look at him and nod. I realize I’m holding my breath.

Alain takes a deep breath and begins, his voice slow and halting. “I was with Rose when she met him. It was the end of 1940, and although Paris had already fallen to the Germans, life was still normal enough that we could believe it would all be okay. Things were beginning to get bad, but we never could have imagined what was in store.”

We turn right on the rue de Rivoli, which is still crowded with people although the stores have closed. Couples stroll through the darkness, holding hands, whispering to each other, and for a moment, I can imagine Mamie and this Jacob walking the same street seventy years ago. I shiver.

“It was love at first sight, something I have never seen before or since,” Alain continues. “I would not believe in it if I had not seen it for myself. But from the very first moment, it was as if they had found the other half of their souls.”

As corny as it sounds, there’s something in the gravity of Alain’s voice that makes me believe him.