Florence Adler Swims Forever(48)
Anna dared not cry in front of Joseph. So, when she felt her chin begin to tremble, she pressed her lips together—tight—and tried her best to nod her head believingly.
In the bedroom, she kept the lights off, crawled into bed with her clothes on, and wept. After several minutes, the door creaked open and shut and the springs of the bed next to hers groaned.
“Anna?” Florence asked. “You all right?”
She tried to say yes but her words dissolved on her lips. It was as though this setback had released a torrent in her, and now she was crying for all sorts of reasons that had both nothing and everything to do with the content of her mother’s letter. She cried because Esther had barely spoken two words to her since her arrival and because she wasn’t in a university lecture hall in Berlin and because she was unlikely to see her school friends for years, if ever again. She cried because she missed the way her mother twisted her hair out of her face and the way the tobacco in her father’s cigarettes smelled when he rolled them at their kitchen table. And she cried for Germany. How was it possible to both pine for and resent a place so much at the same time?
“Do you think it’s so unlikely the visa application will be approved? Even with everything Pop’s working on?” Florence asked.
Anna shook her head, a signal she wasn’t sure Florence would be able to interpret with one side of her face buried in her pillow.
The springs under her own mattress rasped, the mattress bending to absorb the weight of a second person. Florence had moved to the edge of Anna’s bed and begun repeating a soft “shhhhh.” She stroked Anna’s hair, and Anna let out a whimper. The gesture reminded Anna of all the times her mother had tucked her into bed and soothed her to sleep. When Anna’s shoulders continued to heave, Florence lay down beside her in the dark, took hold of her hand, and waited.
Anna could feel Florence studying her in the dark, and eventually, that sensation—of being carefully considered—did calm her. Her convulsions became shudders and her sobs hiccups. She opened one eye and then the other, and was able to make out Florence’s features, so close that she couldn’t focus on them. Even the sharp line of her nose and the arch of her eyebrow blurred. Anna pulled back several inches so that she could view Florence properly.
Florence moved to brush a tear from Anna’s cheek, running her thumb along her cheekbone. Was it possible that, in only three months of living among strangers, Anna had forgotten what it felt like to be touched? Florence lifted her head off the pillow and stared at her as if she were awaiting the response to a question Anna hadn’t heard her ask. She leaned forward and kissed the spot on Anna’s cheek where the tear, fat with anticipation, had sat so recently. Anna held her breath as Florence scattered several small kisses across her cheek, like tiny seeds that might take root and grow into something sturdy. Florence brushed her lips against the corner of Anna’s mouth and pulled back slightly, as if watching for some signal. Did Anna want this? It was hard to know anymore. Without giving herself any more time to think, Anna lifted her head, ever so slightly, from the pillow and let Florence’s mouth, warm and inquisitive, absorb her heartache.
July 1934
Gussie
When Gussie pressed her ear to the bathroom door, she thought she could hear her grandmother crying. The noise sounded a bit like the call of a baby fox, or at least what Gussie imagined a baby fox might sound like. For a moment, Gussie allowed herself to imagine a small woodland creature, skating across the hexagonal tile floor and making its home among her grandmother’s bath salts and her grandfather’s foot powder. Both the existence of a baby fox in the bathroom and the idea that her grandmother might be crying seemed equally preposterous.
Gussie turned the glass doorknob and slowly pushed open the door. The bathroom had filled with steam, and it took Gussie a moment to locate her grandmother, who was lying in the big claw-foot tub. When Esther saw Gussie, she sniffed and wiped her eyes with the heels of her hands.
“Are you sad about Florence?” Gussie asked in a small voice.
Esther contorted her mouth into something that resembled a smile but didn’t make her eyes squint. “Yes, very.”
It was difficult not to stare at her grandmother’s breasts, which bobbed along the surface of the water, big and floppy with nipples the size and color of gingersnap cookies. Gussie wondered if her own chest would ever develop to such a degree. The thought of carrying something so large around with her, everywhere she went, was a terrifying prospect. When Esther noticed Gussie studying her chest, she shifted in the tub and submerged the buoys beneath the cloudy bathwater.
“Grab the stool over there,” Esther said. “You can keep me company while I finish up.”
Next to the commode was a small three-legged stool that Esther sat on when she gave Gussie baths. Gussie picked it up and positioned it close to the tub. She liked it when her grandmother took baths because it was easy to get and keep her full attention. Now, more than usual, she had questions she needed answered.
“What happens to people when they die?” Gussie asked when she was a few minutes into her vigil.
Her grandmother seemed startled by the question. After several seconds passed, she whispered, “Oh, darling. I wish I knew.”
“Do we go to heaven?”
Her grandmother cleared her throat. “It’s a good question, but Jews believe it’s not the most important question.”