The Writing Retreat(48)

“How did they die?”

It felt good, maybe more than that, to be the object of Roza’s intense focus.

“My grandmother had cancer,” I said. “Lymphoma. And my grandfather… he got hit by a car two weeks later. My mom thought it was on purpose. A suicide.”

Mom had told me this on her father’s birthday one year, drunk and maudlin. Those were the times I pushed, when I knew I might be able to get a few more crumbs about our past.

“That makes sense.” Roza watched the ever-present fire.

“The suicide?”

“No.” She absentmindedly pulled at a lock of her red hair. “All of it. I could sense that there was a sadness in you. Suffering attaches itself to people.”

“Oh.” I winced.

“It makes for the best writing, dear.” It was bright in the room, the pale daylight streaming in. A few dust motes danced between us. “Everyone suffers, of course. You can’t be a person and not suffer. But there are deeper traumas. Generational. They’re encoded in your DNA. The Holocaust. Slavery. Genocide. A reminder of the human depths of depravity. You should be grateful for it.”

“Grateful?” I echoed.

She smiled. “You have a reaction. Tell me.”

“Well…” I didn’t want to sound petulant, but I also wanted to be honest. “My childhood wasn’t the worst, but in a lot of ways it was messed up. My dad disappeared when I was nine. My mom dragged me around from place to place. I never had a real home.”

“And now she has one. And the happy, stable life you always wanted. With her new kids. Hmm?”

To my horror, tears welled up. How was Roza so good at making me cry?

“What’s the worst part?” she asked softly.

“The worst part?” I sucked in the building mucus. “It’s probably that now, whenever I see her—usually I go back around Christmas, now that everyone’s celebrating it—she acts like I’m this gross reminder of the past.”

“How so?” Roza’s brow knit.

“I don’t know. She doesn’t say anything. It’s just how she acts.” Last Christmas, I’d walked into the kitchen to see her casually embracing Emma, my stepsister. Her eyes had met mine over the top of Emma’s head. For a second she’d looked startled and vaguely disgusted, like I was a gnarly spider that had appeared on the wall.

“It’s like she wishes I would disappear.” The tears spilled over onto my cheeks. “So I wouldn’t remind her of everything. It’s like I’m this ugly ghost.”

“Oh, darling.” Roza jumped up and came back with a silk handkerchief from her desk, as she had last time. And once again I felt bad about blowing into it. But the fabric felt smooth and gentle against my face. Therapy with Roza, indeed.

“I understand now.” Roza touched my knee. “Why Wren was so important to you. And why her betrayal was so cruel.”

“Yeah.” I relaxed back against the cushions. “Well, her childhood was bad too. Much worse than mine, actually. Physical abuse, that kind of thing. So it felt like a big deal for us to have each other.”

“You need to compare?” Roza asked. “Physical abuse versus emotional neglect? Some might say the neglect is worse. Because it negates your very existence.”

“Well.” I shrugged, confused. “I don’t know. I guess it felt less intentional. Less punishing. But both are bad, right?”

Roza brooded for a minute, gazing down into her lap. Finally she looked up at me. “I’m going to tell you a story, dear. Is that all right?”

“Of course.” Anything to stop thinking about Mom.

“It’s about my own best friend. Mila.” She looked up at me. “She was the one who died when I was writing Devil’s Tongue. I’ve talked about her plenty, but something I don’t share is that she was half-German. I found out in the sixties, long after the war. One day she just decided to share that her late father had been a Nazi officer. He had become drawn to her Jewish mother and started a relationship with her, protecting her throughout the war.” Roza took a thoughtful sip of tea. “Now, my mother’s first husband died in a camp. My mother survived because she was beautiful and very lucky. She was an expert seamstress and sewed and fixed uniforms for the officers. And provided other services to them, too, of course. But Mila’s mother had been lucky too. Or unlucky, depending on what you think of Stockholm syndrome. Mila’s father had made up fake papers for her mother. She was blond, so she could pass as a German. After the war he’d taken her to Berlin, where they’d had Mila. He left the army and went back to being a lawyer. When he died of a heart attack, Mila’s mother took her back to Budapest. Anyway. Mila showed me pictures and told me about the atrocities he’d committed. I never even knew if they were real or if she just made them up. But as she spoke, there was a little thrill in her voice. She felt shame but also excitement, even a strange kind of pride.”

Roza was quiet until I finally prompted: “That must’ve been a lot to process.”

“Yes. But I processed. And then you know what I decided to do?” She looked up with a smirk. “I decided to punish her. I didn’t speak to her for weeks. She would show up outside my house every day just waiting for me to come out and talk to her. And you know, it made me feel so much better. The power imbalance shifting back. It was very cathartic. And I realized it was possible to change things.” She set down her cup. “Eventually, I allowed her back into my life. We were friends again. But when she got sick, I realized my punishment hadn’t been enough. There was still more reckoning to be done, for the sins of her parents. I don’t know who or what decides these things. But it was very clear to me what was happening.”