The Last Princess (56 page)

“Oh, Lily, Melissa doesn’t want that baby. I’m sure it was just a whim. Today a baby, tomorrow a dress. She’s as unstable as could be.”

“But Ellis, she threatened to take me to court! And what if she and this Jean-Paul decide to get married? Surely the courts would award the baby to its own married parents, not its widowed grandmother!” Her shoulders began to shake and the tears to stream down her face as she thought of the dreadful prospect.

“Listen, Lily, I have to confess something. From time to time, whenever I’ve been in Paris, I’ve checked up on Melissa and her skier friend. And I can assure you that there’s absolutely no possibility that they’re going to get married. I’ve talked to the young man, and he has no intention of ever tying himself down to any one woman, let alone one with a child.”

Ellis’s words brought overwhelming relief, but Lily was too ravaged by the day’s events. He drew her into his arms to comfort her, but that only made her break down completely.

Finally, he said gently, “Lily, dear, this is just the accumulated strain of having been so strong for so long. You need rest, more than anything else.”

He carried her to her room, where he found a mild sedative and made her take it. “Come on, now. Get some sleep. Things will look better in the morning. I’ll be here if you need anything.”

After watching him retire to the nearby wing chair, she finally began to relax and shortly thereafter fell into an exhausted sleep. As soon as she stirred the next morning, Ellis woke from his uncomfortable position in the chair and went to summon Mary.

After asking her to bring Lily a tray, he returned to find her awake.

Sleepily, she asked, “What time is it?”

“Six-thirty.”

“When did you come back?”

“I’ve been here all night.”

“You seem to shoulder all my troubles, don’t you?”

“My shoulders are broad enough to stand it. Now, Mary’s bringing you some coffee.”

Weakly, she sipped the strong, hot brew. In the light of a new day, things seemed much clearer. The nightmares had receded somewhat.

The dreadful truth—that Harry was dead—was still with her, but that was a fact she was slowly beginning to accept.

Ellis spent the day with her, not pressing her to talk about her plans, but simply waiting. And then it came.

“Ellis, about six months ago, I came to a decision. I knew that when Harry was gone, I would not want to live here in the city any longer. I want to go back to the farm. I know that before when I’ve gone back, it has been for the wrong reasons, but this time I don’t feel as if it’s an escape; it’s simply the place that reaches out to me. All of my hopes and dreams were born there. That’s where I want to raise Cadeau.

“I don’t know, maybe it’s because I feel as if I failed with the other children and this is a second chance, a chance to redeem myself. There’s nothing here in Manhattan for me anymore. The only thing that matters is Cadeau.”

Ellis tried not to feel hurt at her words: “There’s nothing here in Manhattan for me….” At this moment, she wasn’t thinking of him. Right now, all her love and longing were centered on the child. And he wondered: Would she ever want romantic love to come into her life again, or would she retreat into the fulfillment of being a mother?

This retreat to the farm seemed to give him his answer, but trying to quell his ever devoted heart, he smiled down at her. “Would you like me to drive you?”

At long last, spring had come. Harry had been gone nine months, and Lily’s acute bereavement had softened into a duller sorrow. The grief she had felt at his death was not the stab it had once been. She could think of Harry without pain. She was grateful for their last year together. It had been their best one.

She and Cadeau were gathering wildflowers in the meadow. Lily almost laughed aloud when she looked at her. Her baby was now almost two and a half, and she was a sight to behold. Her burnished red hair shone in the sunlight. Her eyes were as green as the emeralds Harry had bought for Lily in Paris. The tiniest, most diminutive freckles were scattered across the bridge of her nose.

To Lily, she looked like a child from a Renoir—simply an enchanting creature. Lily laughed at the sight of her capering through the knee-high grass.

Lily picked her up and lifted her high above her head, all twenty-five pounds of her. Cadeau shrieked with delight.

“You look so delicious, I could eat you!” Lily said.

“No, Mommy, don’t!”

“I said I could, but I won’t.” Lily laughed, kissing her rosy cheek. “Now let’s pick flowers.”

As they gathered them, Cadeau peppered Lily with questions. “What’s this one, Mommy?”

“That’s Queen Anne’s lace—like the lace on your petticoat.”

“And what’s this one?” Cadeau asked, as she added another to her bunch.

“That’s a …” But Lily didn’t finish the sentence. When she looked beyond the sycamores to the clearing, silhouetted against the sky stood a man. As he began walking toward her, she stopped short. She would have recognized that walk anywhere.

She ran through the meadow, her skirts billowing out in the soft breeze, with Cadeau behind her. And just before she reached him, Lily dropped the armload of wildflowers, opened her arms, and ran into his extended ones.

“Oh, Ellis, I’m so happy that you came!”

Turn the page to read an excerpt from Cynthia Freeman’s
A World Full of Strangers

W
INTER, 1932

S
OON THERE WOULD BE
a simple marker placed here with the inscription that would read

H
ANNAH KOVITZ

1898–1932

Beloved Mother of Katie

the words that bore witness that once Hannah had walked upon the earth. Standing in the dense gray London fog that enveloped her slowly, Katie lifted her eyes toward the heavens. She listened, but there was no sound in the silence—no celestial chorus of angels singing, not even the song of the mournful dove. In time the grass would grow tall hiding the marker with no one to protect this sacred plot for posterity: the last time she would stand here was now. Who would know or care that beneath the freshly turned sod that had become home for Hannah was all that remained of a life born in poverty, lived in loneliness, ended in agony, whose passing went unnoticed as though she had never been?

Oh God, Katie whispered, is this all to mark the coming and the going of the genteel woman who had borne her life with dignity, who had buried two young sons and a beloved husband? Hannah, Katie remembered gratefully, had said it was she, the last surviving child, who had sustained her most of all. Hannah had prayed that she might live to see this child grow to womanhood, but even that was not fulfilled, for Katie was not quite a woman yet; tomorrow she would be seventeen. She called out softly, “Why, dear God, why? Please let there be meaning in my mother’s death, more than there was in her life, I beg you, dear God.” She picked up a handful of dirt, held the small, cold piece of earth close to her for a long moment, then threw it into the abyss. Giving in to blinding tears, she turned and walked away.

That evening she packed her belongings. The next day she took a train from Waterloo station, and at Southampton boarded a freighter that would take her to New York.

The crossing seemed like an eternity. For days on end the ship pitched violently, leaving Katie ill and confined to the cabin, windowless and foreboding. She would lie in her bunk with only the bleak, uncertain future to contemplate and suddenly living seemed more frightening than dying. Although during those last inevitable months, with Katie sitting at her bedside, Hannah had tried to prepare her for the eventuality that soon she would have to find a new life, hopefully better and happier than the one that she now had, Katie found little solace. But for Hannah, comforted with the thought that somehow out of all travail God did provide, there were compensations. In her absence there would be Malka Greenberg, her dearest and oldest friend, to whom she could vouchsafe her child and with whom Katie would find a haven.

However, when the time came Katie was not prepared. What would it be like, going to live as a stranger with Malka Greenberg and her family? She reached into her handbag and took out the faded photograph taken of Malka and Hannah so many years ago when they were small children in Poland, trying to read the face of her new benefactress. But nothing was revealed to indicate that she would really be wanted.

Malka Greenberg and Hannah Kovitz had developed a friendship that went back to a small village in Poland where both had been born. Their young lives were inseparable until Malka, at the age of fifteen, met and married Jacob Greenberg. Shortly after their marriage, Jacob decided to leave Poland, where life was unbearably hard, and go to America. Amidst promises of returning some day and a pledge of everlasting friendship, the two clung together, tears streaming down their cheeks, saying their goodbyes, each knowing secretly that they would never see each other again, as the Greenbergs departed, by cattle boat, for New York.

Ensuing years kept them in touch. They waited impatiently for a letter, a photograph. When Malka read that Hannah was dying, she wrote immediately that she was to put her mind at rest so far as Katie was concerned, that when the time came the child was to come to her as soon as possible. In spite of all her mother had told her about Malka, Katie realized that the two had not seen each other for many years, and that the years had a way of changing people. Katie thought perhaps Jacob Greenberg would object to her, even if Malka were willing. Maybe the two Greenberg children would not accept her. Maybe Birdie Greenberg, who was only a year older, would dislike having her around, and maybe Sammy, who was eleven years old, might resent having a stranger living in his house. Maybe she would be in the way. But the most important thing was that maybe Malka had merely made the promise as a gesture to a dying woman. And maybe she should have stayed in London; maybe she could have gotten a job and taken care of herself….

The ship reached New York harbor one day earlier than was scheduled and there was no one to meet her. Katie was desolate: she had no way of contacting Malka Greenberg because they had no phone. She had only their address, and Malka was expecting her the next day. After she had undergone customs, she sat on the shabby suitcase completely exhausted from the whole ordeal, unable to cry, and for a very long time watched the crowd disperse.

Finally, she realized what she must do. She picked up the suitcase, went out into the street, and experienced New York for the first time. And after she couldn’t say how many inquiries and struggles through the impersonal crowds, she found herself standing in front of Malka Greenberg’s door. Breathless by the time she reached the top of the five flights of stairs in the old tenement building, she leaned against the wall, felt the labored beating of her heart and waited for it to subside. All that she had anticipated was now here: the end of the journey had brought her to this moment.

She stood staring at the door and then timidly knocked, half hoping it would not be heard. When there was no answer she knocked again, this time with more vigor; still no answer. She took the letter out of her purse and looked again at the address; it had to be right, she had followed all the instructions for how to get here. This time, frantic, she pounded on the door. Suddenly it opened and there, framed in the doorway, was Malka, the front of her dress soaking from the washing she had just done. Awkwardly Katie said, “You’re Mrs. Greenberg?”

Malka stood looking at the girl. What happened that she was standing here? She was to have met her tomorrow. She could not find her voice. The resemblance between Hannah and Katie was so unmistakable it was as though she were looking at Hannah, and for one moment she was abruptly taken back to her own childhood. Slowly she held out her large arms, drew the young girl to her and kissed her with such tenderness that Katie easily placed her head on Malka’s bosom and the two held onto one another as though they would never let go. Katie knew that she had come home at last.

London seemed very far away now. Soon Katie became adjusted to the sights and the sounds of this strange land, and at times she had difficulty remembering she was the same confused and terrified girl who stood before Malka’s door only a few short months before. How wonderful it is, she thought, that one can shut out all the unhappy memories when there is love. At night she would lie awake and think of what might have become of her were it not for the Greenbergs and the love they had given her. It was they who had held her hand and led her beyond the dark of her bereavement. They had given her back her life, and now there was again reality in living, and contentment she’d never thought possible. The Greenberg family shared all they had with her, even the three-room flat where five of them now lived, without even making her feel she had intruded.

Birdie had gotten her a job in the same dress factory where she worked and each day brought with it new experience. And new enthusiasm, especially when she brought home the paycheck, which each week she gave to Malka, and each week Malka went through the ritual of refusing. She would say, “So tell me, Katie darling, how much do you eat? So Birdie’s got a bed, so how much room do you take up?”