Wunderland(20)

“Sophie was sick last night,” Ava said, more abruptly than she’d planned to. “Really sick.”

“Krank?” Ilse seemed momentarily roused again from her fog. “Why? What happened?”

“She had a 39-degree fever. You weren’t here to help and I tried to get her to the hospital but then all hell broke loose and…”

“But she’s all right now.” Ilse’s eyes were cool and gray-blue in the morning light.

“Yes,” Ava said, unexpectedly stung by her mother’s sudden shortness. For all her prior doting on her granddaughter, Ilse sounded less concerned than impatient.

“Gut.”

Resting her cigarette on the ashtray, Ilse unsnapped her purse and slipped her passport, ticket, and traveler’s checks into it. Ava caught the glimpse of a silver compact, the same white folded paper she’d seen at the precinct. She tried again. “Can you at least tell me what part of the city you were in? And how you got there?”

Her mother sighed. “Why does it matter?”

“Because you’re my mother. Because I had no idea if you were safe.”

Ilse studied the cigarette in her hand. “I think I should not have come,” she said quietly.

Stricken again, Ava blinked. “Why would you say that?”

“I’m just better off back in Germany. It is where I belong.”

The words triggered a familiar surge of anxiety: She’s going to leave. “Nonsense,” said Ava stiffly. “You belong with us. You belong with your family.”

“You have no idea,” Ilse said tersely, “where I belong.”

Ava took a deep breath. “You’re right,” she said. “I have no idea about you at all.” She exhaled a stream of smoke, struggling to regain her composure. Just don’t let it go there, Livi had advised her. If you see a fight coming, change directions.

But it was already too late: Ava couldn’t have changed directions if she’d tried.

“All I understand is that it’s always been about you,” she said, her voice heating. “Your convenience. Your rules. Your private plans and…and secret stories that you never think to let me in on.”

Ilse gave her a hard look. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“I’m talking about the fact that even here in New York, and even after all this time, you still can’t be honest with me!”

The words seemed to finally puncture Ilse’s weary remove: “Nonsense,” she said indignantly. “I’ve practically been here from morning to night since arriving! I’ve taken the baby out and put her to sleep. I’ve rubbed my hands raw cleaning out your dirty firetrap of an apartment.”

The abrupt shift into attack mode caught Ava’s breath in her throat. “That’s not what I’m talking about!” she said. “I’m talking about honesty. You weren’t just wandering around last night—any more than you were wandering around for a whole damn year after the war ended.” And oh, the sheer, electric relief of simply letting the words fly—of aiming them right at Ilse’s rigid face. How many times had she played out this confrontation in her head? It felt so exhilarating that for an instant she was almost thankful. “You think a couple of air conditioners and a quick bathtub scrub makes up for it all?” she added. Her voice was rising now; for once she let it. She didn’t care.

“What do you mean, ‘all’?”

“All the secrets! All the lies!”

Did Ava imagine it, or had Ilse flinched at the word Lügen? If she had, she recovered quickly. “At least I had a real job,” she shot back. “At least I raised you in a proper home. Not some tenement in an urban war zone.”

“But you know what else I did here?” Ava’s pulse was beating in her throat; her voice shook as though disrupted by its rhythm. “I made a real, honest-to-God family. It may just be the two of us, but at least there are no boundaries between us. Not of the sort you always kept up between me and you.”

She held her breath, waiting for Ilse to deny this. But her mother merely tightened her lips. When it became clear that she had nothing to add, Ava allowed herself another slow exhale. There it was again: the icy certainty that if she pressed even a little, her mother would respond not by opening up but rather by shutting herself off completely—and very likely forever.

“Mutti,” Ava said, softening her tone again. “Bitte. I just need to know the truth. You always said that someday you’d answer my questions. For God’s sake. I’m almost thirty-seven. Don’t you think it’s finally time?”

Ilse’s eyes were fixed on her, as steely and unrelenting as the Atlantic in late afternoon. Ava watched as she plucked the Parliament from her lips and wordlessly stubbed it out in the ashtray.

“I was going to tell you,” she said. “I was going to tell you everything. It was actually why I came.”

It was so precisely what Ava had longed to hear for so long that for a moment she felt as though her heart stopped. Don’t fall for it, she told it.

“Und?” she asked, quietly.

“I can’t.” Ilse shook her head. “It’s—it’s too late now.”

Despite Ava’s own self-warning it still felt like a blow to the solar plexus. For a moment she couldn’t meet her mother’s eyes. When she did, she realized to her horror that her own were dangerously close to tears.