The Things We Cannot Say(126)

“I can’t go through it again. God forgive me, I can’t.”

“We will keep it to ourselves until we know this place is safe,” I promised him. “It may be some time until Tomasz arrives. You deserve a few months’ rest.”

We embraced there on the deck—witnesses to a vow to hold on to a secret that we thought we could simply reveal one day. We had no idea of the gravity of that lie. We didn’t realize that time has a way of racing past you—that the long hard days sometimes make for very short years. Before we knew it, I was holding my daughter, who was always somehow our daughter because Saul took his vow to care for her very seriously from the moment of her birth. And as soon as his English was up to the challenge, Julita’s beloved “Da-da” was studying and certifying and working so damned hard to support us all, and he was doing it all under Tomasz’s name.

The day Saul was recertified as a physician in the American medical system was the day he applied to complete a program to become a pediatric surgeon. We didn’t talk about the twist on the specialty he’d achieved at home, but we both knew why he’d chosen it. And by then, we were hopelessly trapped within the prison of a lie that had seemed so sensible and so altruistic at the time. My false name was one thing—a small detail I’d eventually adjusted to, something I could have undone at any time if the need arose. Saul’s situation was so much more complicated.

It was Tomasz’s name on his certificates—Tomasz who was employed, Tomasz who held a lease for our home and later the finance arrangement for the car we purchased.

Tomasz who took a residency at the hospital as a pediatric surgeon.

Tomasz who climbed the ranks at the hospital until he was a consultant, and he was training dozens of medical students, saving hundreds of lives a year.

Only Saul and I knew that the real Tomasz was the man with the laughing eyes, the man captured in the photo I found while helping Sally in the days after Henry’s death, when we sorted through the enormous collection of duplications she’d amassed from the film he sent home over the years.

And only I knew that the tiny shoe Saul kept hidden in the top of our cupboard had actually belonged to his first daughter, his desperately loved Tikva Weiss.

It was Saul I shared my home with, Saul I shared my parenting highs and lows with. Saul who shared my bed, because we had grown so used to sleeping side by side since our “wedding” at Buzuluk. The few times we tried to establish separate bedrooms I’d wake to hear him shouting and sobbing in his sleep. Eventually, we accepted the reality of our situation. In some absolutely unique way, we were bonded to one another in spirit, if not in body.

I could not be Eva for Saul, and despite what every person in our lives thought, Saul would never be Tomasz for me. Instead, we were the very best of friends—partners in every way except that one which usually defines a marriage. We pined in company somehow—each of us eternally dedicated to our lost loves. And we were happy, and the life we built never stopped astounding me. I reveled in providing my daughter a life where she never had to learn what hunger or oppression meant. I watched as Judge Frederick’s yearly visits with books and toys at Christmastime spawned hero worship in Julita. By the time he passed away, she hadn’t yet hit puberty, but she’d already announced her intention to go to law school one day—and even more miraculous than that, she had the opportunities to make that dream a reality.

But as blessed as Saul and I were, I always waited. Every night, I’d look to the window as I fell asleep, and I’d let the hope flicker for just a second, like the flare of a match that doesn’t quite take. I’d imagine some unlikely scenario where Tomasz had been imprisoned somewhere, but even after all of these months then years and then decades, he would soon be free and would come for me like he’d promised. Perhaps he’d lost his memory? Perhaps he’d been injured and could not travel.

In my heart of hearts, the only thing that I knew to be true was that Tomasz had promised me we’d always find each other. Distance, time—these things were surely irrelevant against a love as big as ours—one day, he’d appear without warning just like he did last time, and life would begin again in earnest.

I never stopped longing, and I never, ever stopped waiting.

Perhaps it sounds foolish, but the strength of hope I held in Tomasz deceived me. I didn’t even think of Saul and I as old until we were very old indeed. I had an adult daughter—a strong-willed, furiously ambitious daughter—but in some ways, I felt like through all of the hard years and all of the hard work, I had clung to the last artifact of that childish version of myself, and the innocent girl inside me was still waiting for her hero to return.

Saul stopped working as a surgeon when his passport said he was seventy, but he and I knew he was seventy-five. He taught at the university for another decade. He loved his work with a passion—that’s why I was bewildered when he suddenly decided to retire. He’d hidden the signs so well, but as we climbed into bed after his retirement celebrations, he asked me to join him for a neurological consult. Just a few days later, we had the diagnosis: vascular dementia.

We wept together, and then he took my hands and he asked me to go to the synagogue with him.

“It would be an honor,” I whispered, and he smiled sadly at me.

“Thank you, Alina,” he whispered, because he had always called me that when we were alone.