The Sweetness of Forgetting (98)
“Of course I can, my dear.” Rose sat down in a deck chair facing the ocean, and Hope scrambled up onto her lap, slinging her tanned legs over the side of the chair and snuggling into Rose’s bosom. Soon, she’d be too big to do this. Rose wished these moments could go on forever, for as long as she could hold her granddaughter in her lap and tell her stories, she could keep her safe and protected.
“Once upon a time, in a faraway land, there lived a prince and a princess, who fell in love,” she began. As her mouth moved with the familiar words, her heart ached and threatened to overflow. This, she knew, was why she’d done what she’d done. This was why she’d run, why she’d fled Paris, why she’d turned her back on everything. This little girl in her arms wouldn’t be here now if Rose had stayed and accepted her fate. And in that, she knew she’d done the right thing. It was just that in life, there were no clean decisions. Not the big ones, anyhow. To give life to Josephine, and then to Hope, she’d had to trade other lives away. There was no way to justify a tariff like that, no way at all.
“Tell me more, Mamie, tell me more!” Hope demanded, bouncing up and down on her grandmother’s lap, as Rose paused in the familiar story.
Rose ruffled her granddaughter’s hair and smiled down at her. “Well, the prince told the princess that she must be brave and strong, and that she must do the right thing, even if it is difficult.”
“That’s what you always tell me, Mamie!” Hope interrupted. “To do the right thing! Even when it’s hard!”
Rose nodded. “That’s right. You must always do right. The prince told the princess that he had to save her, that it was the right thing to do. But in order to save her, he had to send her far, far away, to the shores of a magical kingdom. Now, the princess had never been to this magical kingdom, for it was far, far across the great sea, but she had dreamed of it often. She knew that in his great kingdom, there reigned a queen, who shone her light over all the world.”
“Even at nighttime?” Hope asked, although she’d heard the story a hundred times.
“Even at night,” Rose assured her.
“Like a night-light,” Hope said.
“Yes, very much like a night-light,” Rose said with a smile. “For the light kept everyone feeling safe. Just like your night-light keeps you feeling safe.”
“The queen sounds nice.”
“She was a very kind queen,” Rose assured her granddaughter. “Very good and just. The princess knew that if she could make it to the kingdom of the queen, she would be safe, and that one day the prince would come to find her there.”
“Because he promised,” Hope said.
“Yes, because he promised,” Rose said softly. “He promised he would meet her just across the moat from the queen’s great throne, where the light shone down. So the princess went across the sea to this kingdom of the wise queen. And there, she was finally safe. While the princess waited for the prince, she met a strong and kind wizard, who recognized her as a princess, even though she was dressed as a pauper. He told the princess that he loved her and that he would protect her all the days of his life.”
“But what about the prince?” Hope asked. “Is the prince coming?”
Rose knew to expect the question, for Hope always asked it. Hope was being raised in a country that believed in happily ever after. And five years old was far too young to learn that happily ever after existed only in fairy tales. But this was a fairy tale, Rose reminded herself. And so she answered the question the only way she knew how, because every now and then, she needed to believe in fairy tales too.
“Yes, my dear,” Rose said as she blinked back tears and pulled her granddaughter close. “The prince is coming. Someday, the princess will see him again.”
Chapter Twenty-six
Where are we going?” Gavin asks as he follows me out onto the street. I break into a run down Whitehall, attracting curious stares from passersby. One couple, tourists with “I Love New York” T-shirts on and cameras slung over their necks, point and begin taking photos. I ignore them all and dart right on State Street. Gavin comes up alongside me. “Hope, what are you doing?”
“Jacob’s in Battery Park,” I say without slowing. We pass a brick colonial building on the right, and I notice that it’s a Catholic church. I wonder fleetingly whether Jacob could have imagined that Mamie took on a Muslim skin, and then a Catholic one, that all her images of God had become wrapped together in one beautiful entanglement.
“How do you know that’s where he is?” Gavin asks. We stop and let traffic pass before we dart across State into the brilliant green space of Battery Park.
“It was in my grandmother’s stories,” I say. I’m itching to run across the street, but Gavin, perhaps sensing this, puts a hand on my arm until there’s a gap in the flow of cars.
He looks confused, but he leads me across the street, and then he slows to follow me as we jog past strolling tourists, sketch artists, and food vendors, toward the thick black guardrail that separates the edge of the island from the water. I put my hands on the cool metal and stare across the choppy harbor to the Statue of Liberty, who faces southeast toward the entrance to New York Harbor. Hers would have been the first face immigrants saw as the island of Manhattan came into view.