The Things We Cannot Say(24)

“Mom,” I say softly. “Are you okay?”

“I need this hospital to get it together and figure out what’s going on with her. I can’t keep taking time off—I have a decision pending and it’s just...” She stops speaking abruptly, then raises her gaze to me and frowns. “It’s just all too much, Alice. You just couldn’t possibly understand.”

Any rare glimpse of vulnerability from Mom is always followed up by a reminder of how vitally important she is, and often, a little jab like that one—a reminder of how unimportant my role is by comparison. I do speak with my mom almost every day and by the standards of most of my friends, we’re particularly close—but it’s a difficult closeness, because “close” to Julita Slaski-Davis is a difficult place to stay. Almost every day, we end up raising our voices at one another. It’s just the dynamic of our family—she doesn’t understand this life of mine that revolves around my kids; I don’t understand her life that revolves around the law, but we love each other fiercely anyway. Mom was determined that I’d follow in her footsteps and at the very least become a lawyer, and until my late teens, I never even questioned that was to be my path. It was only the year before college that it occurred to me I didn’t have to go into law, but when I instead decided to “waste my life” and study journalism, my relationship with Mom changed forever.

It changed again the day I told her I was pregnant, two weeks before I was due to graduate, and then the final nail in the coffin was when I didn’t even bother looking for a graduate job. There didn’t seem any point, since I had no intention of working for several years after my baby’s birth, but to Mom—this was unforgivable. Didn’t I understand how hard my foremothers fought in the first and second waves of feminism for my right to a career? How could I betray them by accepting a life where I was dependent on a man?

Even ten years later, I still don’t have the guts to tell Mom that Callie’s conception wasn’t an accident, but rather the result of a carefully considered decision that Wade and I took that I would not follow in my mother’s footsteps, even in my approach to motherhood. Mom studied, built a career, and then at forty-three went into a panic and thought she’d probably better have a child after all. I do so love and admire my mother, but I’ve spent a lifetime coming second to her work, and I was determined that I would never let my children feel like an afterthought. Wade and I had our kids first, because we were both absolutely sure that I’d find my way into some kind of career once they were at preschool.

Then Eddie came along.

Life has a way of reminding you that you are at the mercy of chance, and that even well-thought-out plans can turn to chaos in an instant. That’s why now, when I might be tempted to condemn my mother for her desperation to return to her job during Babcia’s medical crisis, I instead force myself to be patient with her. Mom has been here for two days straight, on her own except for the limited time I’ve spent with her. She has no siblings; I’m her only kid. Dad is retired, but he’s on a golfing trip in Hawaii with his old academia buddies and she is far too proud to ask him to come home. My mom has the weight of the world on her shoulders right now. If she needs to retreat for a little while into her work for some emotional respite, so be it.

“Okay, Mom,” I say softly. “Eddie has school tomorrow... I can come straight to the hospital after I drop him off and sit with her if you want to go to chambers and catch up a little.”

“Good,” she says, snapping her chin upward. “Thank you, Alice. Yes, please.”

Babcia reaches for my hand and leads it to the box. I lift out a stack of photos and papers and then push the tray table away so I can rest it all on her lap. Her hands move slowly and clumsily as she sorts through this first stack of photos. They are a tumbled confusion of printing technology and eras—photos of Pa and Mom and me and my kids and Babcia herself over the decades, and a few scant photos of beloved dogs from the days when Babcia and Pa lived in their big house in Oviedo. But just a few layers into the stack, Babcia freezes on a single photo that I’ve never seen before—it’s a sepia print on thick, aged paper. The gloss over the photo is cracked, but the image is still clear.

It’s a young man, sitting casually on a boulder against the background of a forest. He’s wearing damaged boots, so well-worn that a tattered sock is visible at the toe of the left one. His clothes are equally tired, but he’s smiling broadly at the camera. He’s incredibly thin—but, despite the gaunt cheeks beneath his sparse beard, still handsome. There’s something striking about his eyes—he looks like he’s holding back a chuckle.

Babcia’s hands shake as she lifts the photo, and she sighs as she brings it to her cheek, cradling it against her skin. She closes her eyes for a moment and rests her head toward the image, then she turns to offer it to me.

I can tell this is precious to my grandmother, and so I try to take it from her with appropriate reverence. I stare down at the photo in my hands, and it strikes me that this young man is both a stranger and, somehow, familiar.

After a moment, Babcia reaches up toward the photo and turns it over. On the back, I see a scrawled message in faded ink—the tiny handwriting is tightly compressed.

Photograph by Henry Adamcwiz, Trzebinia Hill, 1 July 1941

I read it aloud to Mom, and then I pass the photo back to Babcia.