The Things We Cannot Say(21)

Stani approached me as the tears filled my eyes. He kissed my cheek too, but he was silent, even as he embraced our parents. Father stood frozen, his muscles locked, his teeth set hard. Mama silently cried. Truda was clutching Mateusz’s arm so tightly her fingers were white, but her expression was solemn.

The boys gave a simultaneous nod, and they walked away to join the line to fill the train. They kept their chins high, and they both managed a smile and a wave back toward us just before they disappeared from our view.

I was awed by their courage and bewildered that even that moment didn’t seem to faze them one little bit. Of course, they must have been terrified—they were only boys, and all of the things that had scared me about the forced labor arrangement would have been equally overwhelming to them too. Neither one spoke much German, neither one had ever lived out of home before.

I knew the very act of hiding their fear was one of sacrifice, just like the decision to go in my place. They were good people—the best people.

I still think about my big brothers. I sometimes wonder if I would have done anything different that day, if only I’d known that within a year they’d both be dead—and that those quiet moments by the train station would be the very last time I ever saw them.



CHAPTER 6

Alice


Mom has turned Babcia’s retirement home unit upside down but she can’t find the box. Now she’s headed back to her house; she has some of Babcia and Pa’s things in storage. It’s been a few hours and she’ll be a while yet, but Eddie is pressing the lunch button on his iPad dozens of times a minute, and it’s driving me, Babcia and the nurses insane. I turned the sound down, but Eddie turned it straight back up—just like Babcia did earlier. One of the nurses quite gently asked if I could take the iPad off him, but it’s his voice and his ears, so I refused.

We’re actually lucky because now that it’s lunchtime, he’ll eat soup or yogurt—but also supremely unlucky, because given the fiasco in the store this morning, I have neither on hand. Eddie simply needs a can of soup, or better still, some tubes of Go-Gurt if we can find some with the right label. I have to call Wade. I have to convince him to come from work via a store, and to bring something Eddie can eat, or better still, to come and take Eddie home. The reason I don’t want to do it is that I already know how this conversation is going to go.

It’s an emergency, I’ll say. I wouldn’t have asked if I had an alternative, but I can’t leave Babcia alone—she’s distressed enough as it is. And I don’t know how much longer Mom is going to be, but Eddie desperately needs to eat.

Wade will make all the right noises, and then there’ll be some impressive reason why he can’t help. He did say he had meetings, so I imagine he’ll refer back to that premade excuse again.

I think about just putting up with the endless robotic demands for lunch, lunch, lunch and waiting, but Eddie looks so frustrated—like he’s about to explode, actually—and now that I think about it, it’s a bonafide miracle we’ve made it this far today with only one meltdown. I sigh and dial Wade.

“Honey,” he answers on the first ring. “I’ve been so worried. How are things going?”

“Things are terrible,” I admit. “Babcia can’t speak and I don’t think she can understand us. She’s been using Eddie’s iPad and she’s told us she needs a box of photos from home, but Mom can’t find it. And Eddie didn’t get his yogurt this morning because there’s new packaging on the Go-Gurt at the Publix and he had this meltdown and now he’s starving so another one is coming and I can’t do this by myself today. I need your help. I know you said you were busy...”

“I’m so sorry, honey. I have these meetings...”

“There is no one else I can call, Wade.”

I’ve raised my voice, and Eddie and Babcia both look at me in surprise. Even if they don’t understand the words, the volume apparently speaks for itself. I wince as I offer them an apologetic shrug, then take a deep breath to calm myself a little.

“I can’t take him home, Alice,” my husband says, a little stiffly. “I just have too much—”

“Don’t worry, Wade. I’m not asking for anything unrealistic like you spending an afternoon alone with your son,” I say, then I hear his sharp intake of breath, and I realize we’re about to argue. Again. Probably because he’s being an ass, and that comment I just made fell somewhere on the spectrum between “mean” and “bitchy” so it’s guaranteed to get a defensive rise out of him. I close my eyes and aim for a much more conciliatory tone as I say, “I’m only asking you to go pick up some tins of soup or some Go-Gurt if you can find the old packaging. Bring them to me here at the hospital. I’ll handle everything else.” My tone shifts, and now I’m begging him. “Please, Wade. Please.”

He sighs, and in my mind, I can see him in his office on the phone. He’ll be sitting stiffly because I’m irritating him, and he’ll have instantly mussed up his hair because he’s upset at how I just spoke to him. Even now, in the awful silence as I wait for him to speak, I know he’ll be repeatedly running his hand over his hair, and when the exasperation gets too much, he’ll rest his hand against the back of his neck and slump.

But just as I can picture this with perfect clarify after so many years with Wade, I also know he’s going to do what I asked, because if he wasn’t, he’d have snapped right back at me and we’d have wound up this call with one or both of us hanging up in anger.