Wunderland(118)
Ava blinks, close to tears. “I’ll come back later,” she manages. “Thank you.”
“Anytime,” says the cashier kindly. “I’ll keep an eye out.”
And then, as Ava turns away: “Hey. What’s your accent, baby?”
“Danish,” Ava says. She doesn’t turn back.
* * *
Outside she leans against the riotously painted wall. This is pointless. It’s like trying to find a lost earring on the can-littered Coney Island beach. What she really wants to do is to sink down onto the sidewalk, next to the homeless girl parked there with her backpack and a pit bull that looks nearly as drugged out as its owner. Instead, Ava reaches into her bag for the granola bar she has remembered she has and has no interest in consuming herself. “Here,” she says. “I’m sorry I don’t have more.”
The girl takes the green-wrapped square into a filthy-looking hand. She looks nonplussed.
“Thanks, Mom,” she says, her tone implying that this is perhaps the worst insult she can think up at the moment. Ava stares down at the brat, torn between slapping and hugging her before forcing herself to resume her search.
Heading back down Second Avenue, she passes a piano shop, a nail salon, another vintage clothing store with windows showing faceless mannequins in fur-collared coats, blankly oblivious to the summerlike heat. At the corner of Third Street a man urinates against a graffiti-scrawled wall while his German shepherd shits behind him on the curb. A young woman in a headscarf pushes her stroller past them both quickly, her green eyes fixed resolutely ahead.
As the light deepens, the streets begin to feel not like Ava’s beloved home city but a gauntlet lined by shadowy, sharp-edged edifices, structures whose sole purpose is to make her feel as small and worthless as she knows she is. She wends her way back toward Second, so tired she can barely see where she’s going. Stupid, she thinks again. Stupid to even have tried to find her. But what else can she do? She has to find her. She has to fix this. I’m sorry, baby, she thinks. I’m so sorry. The thought brings her back to one of the many desperate pleas in Ilse’s letters: Perhaps one day, she had written her former friend, just perhaps, I might summon the courage to come and see you and Franz in New York. I have so many things I need to tell you. But really, in the end only one thing that matters:
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
As her mother’s words fill her head there’s an overpowering urge to take the 1956 envelope out again, simply to prove to herself that she read its stunning contents correctly. Rummaging in her purse, Ava slows to a stop, frowning as she retrieves the yellowing missives. 1946. 1948. 1976. 1962…she pulls the whole stack out, shuffling through it like a pack of cards. She’s finally found the one she’s looking for and is about to open it when something makes her glance at the building she’s standing in front of, its title cheerfully pronounced in a hand-painted sign: Eldridge Street Baptist Church.
She peers up the block and then down it. Thinking: How the hell did I get here? Had her subconscious hijacked her as she stumbled along in her panicked daze? Because this is it: the very street where Renate Bauer lived, according to Ilse.
And for all Ava knows, she might still be here.
Feeling as though she’s in a strange dream, Ava stares at the top envelope, then looks at the brass-plated numerals on the building across the street: 163 Eldridge.
It’s most definitely a match.
She is crossing the street without quite realizing she’s decided to do so, drawn to the address like a fly to a flystrip. It strikes her suddenly that perhaps this is where Sophie came—after all, she’d read the address too. Is it possible that in her fury her daughter abandoned Erica and the park and went to find out for herself the truth Ava had denied her?
163 Eldridge is a cinder-block-style building of five floors and fifteen units. It is neat and well kept; through the window the tiled lobby gleams, and the brass trim on the banister looks newly polished. There is nothing unusual or even vaguely eye-catching about it. In fact, Ava has probably walked by it hundreds of times, never once suspecting that one of its residents might hold the answer to every question she’s ever had.
She tries the outer doorway to the vestibule, which is open. Inside it smells like floor wax and bleach. Spotting the building directory, Ava runs her finger down the list, her heart thudding so hard her vision vibrates. But not only is there no R. Bauer, none of the names listed look even remotely German. In fact, none—apart from a C. Benedict—even strike her as particularly Central European. There’s an L. Garcia in 1C, a J. Muhammed in 3B. Two Chans—K. and S.—in apartments 2B and 5A. The original name on 5B—I. Gruchowski—has been crossed out with black marker. W. Park is written in small black letters beneath it.
Transfixed, Ava watches herself press 5B firmly. A woman’s voice shrills from the speaker.
“Yeah?”
Static makes the voice sound an ocean away, and for a moment Ava’s English seems to disintegrate. She can’t think of a single phrase.
“Hello?” the woman repeats. “Who is it?”
Ava licks her lips. “Hello. I’m—I’m looking for Renate Bauer.”
“Who?” In the background, a child wails and is silenced by a rapid-fire comment in an Asian-sounding language.