The Things We Cannot Say(127)

“What do you want to tell Julita and Alice?” I asked him. A shadow crossed his face, a glimmer of uncertainty that almost broke my heart to see.

“They are mine, aren’t they, Alina?”

“How could they not be?”

He smiled then, a relieved, grateful smile.

“We will tell them the truth, then.”

“They will understand.”

“How could anyone understand?”

“Then they will, at least, forgive us.”

But Julita is a busy woman, and she’d just started on the district court bench. Saul’s degeneration happened so fast from there—as if he had held off his demise until he retired, but then it became very real in such a rush. For a few frantic months, I was focused on trying to convince Julita or Alice to join me on a trip back to Poland while I could still go. Then, by the time I realized we really needed to tell Julita the truth, Saul was no longer up to such a conversation, and I simply could not bear to do it alone.

Tomasz’s last instructions to me were to care for Saul Weiss, and to Saul’s very last breath, I honored that promise. I came to love him very deeply—and I know he loved me too. That very different kind of love was inevitably the foundation of my life in America, and it was a beautiful life indeed. Even if, to my very last breath, I will long for Tomasz—my first love.

My true love.

I’m near to that final breath now, locked helplessly here within my own thoughts—which is why it’s utterly shocking that all I really feel in these hours is an astounding peace. It’s all because of my beautiful Alice, with those laughing green eyes she inherited from my Tomasz—those eyes that she has passed on to our special, perfect Eddie. It is somehow fitting that it was Alice who found Tomasz for me, because she has always reminded me of her grandfather, the one she would never meet. She shares that same love of learning and knowledge and story, the same sense of compassion, the same ability to dream big despite her circumstances—even if she sometimes forgets she’s allowed to do just that.

As I wait for the release of death, I look back on my life and I feel the one thing that has been missing for all of these decades. I am at peace, because I know that my Tomasz is waiting for me on the other side.

Soon, I will breathe my last and prove him right for all time.

We would always find our way back to one another.

Always.



CHAPTER 40

Alice


I wake up in my own bed to the sound of Wade’s cell phone ringing. He’s lying beside me, spooning me tight against his body, but as the call wakes him he rolls away to answer it.

“Hi, Julita,” he says gruffly, and my already-racing heart kicks it up a notch as he passes me the phone.

“You need to come, now,” Mom says stiffly. “It’s another stroke, a big one. They’ve moved her to palliative care. Throw some clothes on and come. Don’t waste a second. The doctor said we might not have long.”

I’m at the hospital by 6:15 a.m. The staff have turned the lights down low, but even so, it’s obvious that Babcia’s skin has taken on a gray pallor, and her breathing is shallow. I’m crying before I even reach the bedside. Dad approaches me, then pulls me into a tight embrace. He doesn’t speak, but at long last, that’s because there’s nothing left to say.

Babcia takes her very last breath right at 6:30 a.m. Mom is holding her right hand, and I’m holding her left. There’s no struggle at all—no tension in her features, no fight against its hold as death takes her away from us. She slips from life so peacefully that it’s hard to accept at first that she’s even gone. The doctor joins us and he calls her time of death quietly, reverently. Mom is calm as she washes Babcia’s hands and her face, and then we have one last moment with her all together.

Dad is, typically, more emotional about it all than Mom, who remains dry-eyed right up until the time comes to leave the hospital room. Then she turns back to the bed for one last glance, and she suddenly runs back to her mother’s body and begins to wail—an animalistic, out-of-control cry that startles me. I’m stunned by this, but Dad offers me a gentle smile and murmurs, “I told you I’d need that vodka.”

“Is she okay?”

“I knew this was coming, sweetheart. Your mother has a tough exterior, but her mother was her sun and her moon.”

When I hesitate, Dad nods toward the door.

“Go home, sweetie,” he murmurs, and he returns to the bedside. “Mom and I will need some time here, and you have your family to tend to.”

As I head home, I’m sad of course—but mostly I’m grateful. I’m grateful to Babcia for every moment I shared with her—everything she taught me about motherhood—every hug and every loving gesture and every damned meal she ever cooked me. And most of all, I’m grateful that she entrusted me to uncover a little of her story, because I can’t help but feel that in finding her past, I found a lost little piece of myself too.

I hesitate on my doorstep. I can hear activity inside, and I know they’ll all be awake. It belatedly occurs to me that I’m going to have to break the news to my family. I’m trying to remember—how exactly does one communicate death to a nonverbal autistic child? When Pa died last year, we had time to prepare—we talked to Eddie about it with his psychologist there to help us. I wish we could do the same this time, but I need to tell Callie and Wade now, and that can’t wait.