Promise Me (10 page)

But every once in a while, I felt a nudge of Suzy’s elbow, and she’d nod toward an alley where children played or a doorway where a couple paused to kiss. Because even in a horrid, rusty snow globe of a city, laughter and kisses can be found. In the midst of injustice, poverty, oppression—in the midst of cancer—small, sweet things take on remarkable proportion. This was my first inkling of that.

We made our way out of the city and sped west along the winding road. The speed limit on most stretches of the Autobahn was 100 kilometers (62 miles) per hour, but we were warned that some stretches were in ill repair, and lower limits there were harshly enforced by the Volkspolizei. This was a beautiful country. I wanted to love the thick woods and green hills, but it was impossible to see a single wildflower without thinking about the fear and sorrow that permeated the soil. It was impossible to feel anything but humbly grateful for the outrageous privilege of living in darling old Peoria in the Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave.

Along the hilly roadsides in Spain, we’d seen the layers of civilization one on top of the other. In Medina-Sidonia, Suzy had waved to me from the bell tower of an ancient cathedral that was built on top of a ruined mosque, which was built on top of a ruined Roman temple. On
the Autobahn, skimming over freshly repaired cement, then bumping over stretches of old road where the asphalt had buckled beneath the caterpillar treads of the retreating tanks, we saw those layers of history being laid down, a vivid illustration of old and new, destruction and construction, victory and defeat, on and on through circling years.

As darkness fell, we crossed back into the free world, and I was overwhelmed with a very grown-up love and appreciation for my own country. Never in my life had I ever been so piercingly aware of the pure sweetness of freedom, the magnitude of what it meant to me to be an American. Never for a moment since have I taken that privilege for granted.

One of the great gifts of our journey was the opportunity to view our own country through the lens of another culture. Surveying ages of creative process, knowing the history tangled up in it, Suzy and I could plainly see how the stirrings in music, art, and fashion both foreshadowed and echoed political movements. The world tilted with plunging necklines and shoes that showed a little ankle. Degenerate art kicked Hitler’s you-know-what and remained standing long after all the fallen armies of righteous Aryan wrath.

Seeing all this from the tourist’s perspective, I suddenly looked over my shoulder and saw the music, art, and fashion shifting in my own country. The skirts getting shorter and the hair getting longer. Jazz music and beat poetry. Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. There was a feeling of unrest, spirits on the move. It made some people uncomfortable, but I wasn’t afraid. Suzy and I were just beginning to understand where we fit in the world, wondering how—or even if—it was possible for our lives to make a difference. To my mind, the most exciting thing in the world was civilized dissent and the dynamic of change. It meant people were alive and fully engaged, that people
cared
.

If Germany held one lesson for me, it’s that apathy is more dangerous than any ideology.

O
ur survey of European men—I mean
art
, of course, art and culture—was a resounding success. Very educational. Back in West Berlin, we made our way from hotel to hotel, art gallery to museum, historic site to train station. It was unseasonably cold, but we
didn’t want to spend money on new coats, so we hustled down the drizzly streets huddled close together under one umbrella, my arm across Suzy’s shoulder, her arm around my waist.

Logistics, directions, and connections were a constant juggling act. Everything is so touch-of-a-button nowadays that we often fail to appreciate what a gift it is to be connected to the bank in the blink of an eye or to hear a loved one’s voice at the flip of a switch. Of course, what I failed to appreciate back then was that this would be my best, biggest experience of both Suzy and the world. This was truly the only time we spent together, just the two of us, as grown single women, and had I experienced the dramedy with anyone other than Suzy, it wouldn’t have been the grand falling-in-love-with-everything adventure that it was.

We had dates every night in Germany.

“Darling boys. Nice Jewish men,” Suzy reassured Mom, stretching that definition to include an Irish Catholic guy named Israel.

Our last night in Berlin, we had dinner in a restaurant where John F. Kennedy had eaten pig knuckles on the same famed trip during which he declared himself to be a jelly doughnut.

“He should have said
Ich bin Berliner
instead of
Ich bin ein Berliner,
” Boppie had explained to me at the time, but later I read that, while certain members of the American press romped on the alleged faux pas, Berliners themselves didn’t bat an eyelash, since they actually call the pastry
Pfannkuchen
. And if one wanted to parse the minute nuances of German grammar, Kennedy’s usage was correct, anyway, because he wasn’t literally “from Berlin.”

Sitting in the pig knuckle place less than two years after JFK was assassinated, I wondered at how one small word (not even a verb or a noun, but a mere article!) could balloon into an embarrassment and in the context of another moment
—pop
—it was rendered small again, almost endearing. It made me think about the power of language and legacy, how one could be so swiftly transformed in public perception from king of Camelot to jelly doughnut to martyr and then to a memory that digested all of this efficiently but reflected none of it accurately.

When I tried to express all this to Suzy on the way to Copenhagen, she sighed and pressed her fingertips against her temple.

“Nan. Calm down. You’re either raging about politics or chasing everything in pants.”

“Why do you have to be such a prude?”

“Because I’m the big sister. You don’t how difficult it is. But so be it.” She made a magnanimous gesture. “As long as my strength holds, I’ll watch out for you.”

The boys dropped us off and went to Brussels. We’d missed our check-in time at the hotel in Copenhagen, so the clerk referred us to a pleasant family home for $4 a night, including a grand, starchy breakfast, after which we trooped off in search of Hans Christian Andersen’s
Little Mermaid
.

“I wish we’d known sooner that we could stay in someone’s home,” said Suzy. “You learn more about the local sights and meet these interesting people. Europeans are so grown up. Culturally, I mean. Everyone here knows at least three languages. Nan, let’s study French and German together. Let’s speak at least three—”

Suzy froze in the middle of the sidewalk and pointed to a sign above the storefront.

Uhren & Schmuck
.

We died laughing. Not very cultured of us, I know. Suzy consulted her phrase book. It means “watches and jewelry.” We couldn’t help ourselves; every time we saw another
Uhren & Schmuck
sign, we went to pieces.

The family in Copenhagen referred us to the Barton family in Amsterdam. They welcomed us warmly and fed us another lumberjack breakfast. During the thirty-five-minute tram ride into the city, we met two darling Danes, who escorted us to the Anne Frank House and Rijksmuseum. After dinner, we strolled down Canal Street, where the ladies of the night waved from their windows. Somehow, in the context of all that Vermeer and Brueghel, even the prostitutes seemed as rosy, plump, and healthy as apple crisp with powdered sugar.

The next day, we went to the Jewish Quarter around the Water-looplein. Jews from Portugal, Poland, and Germany had taken refuge there in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Rembrandt and his wife had lived there, and we visited the home where he spent his happiest, most productive years, painting scenes from the Bible and re-creating
the simple loveliness he saw as he walked along the canals. Before the war, about 140,000 people populated the quaint neighborhood, flourishing in pleasant shops and busy businesses. After the Holocaust, about 28,000 remained, and now a wide swath was being razed to make room for a modern expressway.

Suzy and I were somber as we made our way back to the Bartons.’ She’d worn out another pair of walking shoes and needed a new flight bag, so we stopped to buy a serviceable beige satchel and a pair of loafers with square toes and a thick, matronly heel.

“These are even more hideous than the ones you bought in France,” she said.

“On the bright side, they match your hideous bag.”

Out on the crowded sidewalk, I lagged a few paces behind her, laughing my head off. Here was Miss Susan Freda Goodman, connoisseur of all things pretty and delicate, tromping down the street in her cast-iron loafers with that tan monstrosity on her shoulder.

“Excuse me, Miss?” I called. “Miss, I couldn’t help noticing those
smart
shoes you’re wearing. And that darling bag! Wherever did you find that little gem?”

“Very funny.” Suzy looped her arm through mine, and we fell into step side by side, plugging one ugly shoe in front of the other, laughing harder than we did over
Uhren & Schmuck
.

Mrs. Barton was such a dear hostess, we bought her a dozen sweetheart roses on the way home, and when we presented them to her, she invited us to have dinner with the family. Their daughter would be coming with her fiancé, she told us, a wonderful man who spoke fluent English and held degrees in government and law from Tel Aviv University. She didn’t mention that he was black. When the happy couple showed up at the door, Suzy and I did our best not to act like we were seeing a unicorn. We’d been taught all our lives how wrong segregation was, but despite the Civil Rights Act that had passed the previous year, it was still very much the norm in the United States.

Just a few months earlier, Martin Luther King Jr. had called from the steps of the Alabama state capitol: “
How long? Not long, because no lie can live forever.… How long? Not long, because the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.
”

I knew it was true, but sitting across the table from Miss Barton and her fiancé, I rankled with impatience.
How long?
It had already been too long.

Lying in bed next to Suzy, I marveled, “His race wasn’t even a footnote in her description of him. No separate but equal. Just people. Without having to say anything about it. What a wonderful country.”

“It’ll be like that in the U.S.,” Suzy said. “You’ll see. Someday, it’ll change.”

“It’ll change when people
make
it change. When we get off our duffs and—”

“Oh, Nanny, don’t go on about it. We had such a lovely day. Just enjoy being here.”

I turned away and punched my pillow into submission.

“Nan?”

“What?” I huffed.

“Don’t be a bitch.”

“I’m not!”

“Well, how would you describe that disposition?”

I didn’t feel obligated to describe my disposition one way or another.

“Nan?”

“What?”

“Now that we know what we’re doing, I’d love to tour South America … Asia … India. And we have to come back to Europe with Mom and Daddy. The only thing that could possibly be more fun than you and me would be the four of us together.”

“I can’t wait to get my hands on an American newspaper,” I said. “I’m dying to know how the space flight is going. But I will miss the wonderful breakfast here.”

“Four of the guys I’ve gone out with are going to be in London,” said Suzy. “They’re snowed, but I could care.”

“Even the one with the guitar?”

“
Especially
the one with the guitar.”

We met up with Mike and Dave in London, but they were catastrophically hung over, and the happy reunion devolved into an argument about the car, which they were having shipped back to New York. They were planning to drive from there to Peoria, and the Goodman sisters with all
our bags and baggage were conspicuously not invited along for the ride. Things went downhill from there.

“David,” Suzy said imperiously, “I hate to say this, but I’m sorry I met you, and right now, to be quite honest, I could wring your fat neck.”

As we haughtily stalked off, I broke a heel on my last pair of shoes.

“Oh, terrific,” Suzy groaned. “You’re hobbled again, and there go Uhren & Schmuck with the car.”

We splurged on a taxi back to our dingy hole of a hotel room, which was filthy and without hot water, so our first order of business the next day was to find new digs, which we liked so well, we wrote Mom and Daddy asking if we could stay an extra week.

“I love hearing English again,” said Suzy. “I’m tired of being the one with the foreign tongue.”

I liked the British, so staid and dignified, proud of their heritage. We went to Parliament and Westminster Abbey, checked our watches with Big Ben, walked Trafalgar Square, and visited the National Portrait Gallery. I was stirred by the pomp and ceremony at the Changing of the Guard, and Suzy was in seventh heaven standing in front of the Crown Jewels.

“Five hundred and thirty carats.” She whistled softly. “How’d you like that on your little handilock?”

We bought a large postcard with a picture of Queen Elizabeth and wrote on the back:

Every night, we took the Tube to the West End to see the ballet or a play:
Oliver!, The Right Honourable Gentleman, Beyond the Fringe, Richard V, Little Me
. We both loved
Camelot
, and Suzy was surprised to see me cry through half of it.

“Goodness,” she said, “I thought I was the sob sister.”

“It was so … so … 
alive
” I sniffled. “So idealistic and tragic.”