The Sweetness of Forgetting (47 page)

“I love you,” she’d murmured to him.

And now, as she floated in this sea, she realized it wasn’t a sea at all, in fact, but rather the thousands of sheer layers of her wedding dress, cradling her in their softness. She saw the colors she’d painstakingly layered together, and she realized that she could see through each of them, just a little bit. They were soft against her skin, just as they had been on that April day, so long ago.

She listened harder as she floated slowly up through the layers. And then, suddenly, she knew. She must be dead already. She was surprised she hadn’t realized it before; it was so obvious. Of course that was why she’d been hearing Alain’s voice for days; he was calling her home, showing her the way through the milky strangeness, the way to where her family had been all along. They hadn’t been in the sky; they’d been in this strange, layered world. But perhaps this
was
the sky after all. How was she to know what the clouds really felt like? Maybe this was sunrise.
Maybe any moment now, the strange sea would be illuminated from within.

And then, Rose knew for sure that she had died, and that heaven was real, for she could hear the voice of her love calling for her.

“Reviens à moi.”
Jacob’s voice drifted down from above. “
Reviens à moi, mon amour!
Return to me, my love!”

Rose wanted to reply. She tried to call back, “I am coming, Jacob!” But the sounds died in her throat.

But then she felt his hand encircle hers. She knew at once it was Jacob; she would know his touch anywhere, although it had been nearly seventy years since she’d last felt it. His hand wrapped around hers the way it always used to: warm, strong, familiar. It was the hand that had saved her, so long ago.

She knew that he was pulling her to him, after all these years, and that this must mean he’d forgiven her for sending him back to his death. Her heart overflowed, and in her eyes, she could feel tears. It was all she’d hoped for over the years.

She took a deep breath and realized that the sea smelled like lavender, the same scent she’d breathed in on her wedding day. She was home, finally home. She held tight to Jacob’s hand and began, at long last, to swim toward the surface.

Chapter
Twenty-nine

I
t’s Annie who notices first.

“Mom!” she hisses, tugging frantically at my arm as I watch Jacob leaning over Mamie, whispering to her in French. We’d arrived at the hospital an hour ago, and Jacob has been bent over Mamie ever since.

“What is it, honey?” I ask, unable to look away from the scene, which feels futile and sad.

“She’s moving, Mom!” Annie says. “Mamie’s moving!”

I realize with a start that she’s correct. I watch in awe as Mamie’s left hand twitches a little and closes around Jacob’s. He continues to whisper to her, more urgently now.

“Is she . . . ?” Alain begins, trailing off as he stares.

“She’s waking up,” Gavin murmurs from beside me.

We all watch as her eyelids begin to flutter and then, unbelievably, open. I know that one of us should go get a doctor or a nurse, but I find myself rooted to the spot, unable to move at all.

She exhales loudly, like someone who’s been holding her breath for a long time, and her eyes dart quickly around the room, until they alight on Jacob and widen. She says something
unintelligible, in a voice that doesn’t sound like hers. It’s as if she’s trying to remember how to use her mouth.

“My Rose,” Jacob says, “I have found you.”

She moves her lips for a moment, makes another moaning sound, and then says, “You . . . here,” in a voice that is raspy and hoarse, but unmistakable. She stares up at Jacob, who is crying now as he leans down and kisses my grandmother once, lightly, on the lips.

“Yes, I am here, Rose,” he murmurs. They stare, drinking each other in.

“We . . .” Mamie trails off and tries again. “We . . . in heaven?” Her words are slow like molasses, but she seems determined to speak.

Jacob draws a shuddering breath. “No, my love. We are in Cape Cod.”

Mamie looks confused for a moment, and then her cloudy eyes scan the room, alighting first on me, then on Annie and Gavin, and finally on her brother. “Alain?” she whispers.

“Yes,” he says simply. “Yes, Rose. It is me.”

She looks back to Jacob in stunned disbelief. “Alain . . . alive? You, Jacob . . . you are alive?” she whispers to him.

“Yes, my love,” Jacob says. “You saved me.”

Mamie’s eyes fill and tears begin to run down her face in rivers. “I did not . . . I did not save you,” she whispers. “How can you say . . . ?” She pauses, drawing a shuddering breath. “I asked you . . . to go back. It is . . . my fault.”

“No,” Jacob says. “None of it was your fault, dear Rose. I lived because I always believed I would see you again. It is you, for seventy years now, who has kept me alive. I have never stopped looking for you.”

She continues to stare at him.

“Someone should go get the doctor,” Gavin whispers beside me.

“Uh-huh,” I reply vaguely. But none of us make a move to go.

After a moment, Mamie turns her head slightly until she focuses on me. “Hope?”

“Yes, Mamie,” I say, taking a step forward.

“Why . . . you crying?” she asks haltingly.

“Because . . .” I find I cannot explain myself. “Because I’ve missed you so much,” I conclude, realizing in that moment how true the words are.

She looks back at Jacob. “How . . . ?” she asks.

He nods, understanding her. “Hope found me,” he says. “Hope and Annie and their friend Gavin.”

“Gavin?” she asks. She looks over at us again with some effort, and she scans Gavin’s face in confusion. “Who Gavin? You?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Gavin replies. “We’ve met a few times. I’m a handyman in the area. I’m . . . I’m friends with your granddaughter.”

“Yes,” Mamie murmurs. “Yes, I know now.” She closes her eyes for a moment, and when she opens them again, she stares at Jacob for a long time before looking back at me.

“How . . . how you find my Jacob?” she whispers.

“It was the list you gave me,” I say. “The one that sent me to Paris.”

She looks confused, and I realize she doesn’t know what I’m talking about. In the drama of the moment, I’d almost forgotten about her Alzheimer’s.

“But it was the fairy tales,” I add as she stares at me. “It was your fairy tales that finally led us to him. I didn’t know they were real.”

“They are real,” Mamie murmurs. But she’s looking at Gavin as she says it. “Of course. Always real.”

Her eyes shift to Alain and fill with tears again. “Alain?” she says softly.

“How do you recognize me after all these years?” he asks.

“You . . . my brother,” she says clearly. The tempo of her speech is picking up a little; it’s as if the words are coming back as she wakes up. “I would know you . . . anywhere.”

“I’m sorry I did not find you sooner,” he says. “I did not know . . . I did not know you were alive. All those years wasted.”

Mamie closes her eyes briefly. She’s crying again. “I believed . . . you dead,” she says. “In Auschwitz. That place. I imagined . . . many million times.”

“I believed you were dead too,” Alain murmurs.

Mamie turns her gaze to Annie next. “Leona?” she asks.

Annie’s shoulders slump, and my heart breaks a little for her; I know it hurts her when her grandmother doesn’t recognize her.

“No, Mamie,” Annie says. “Who’s Leona?”

But this time, it’s Jacob who answers. “Leona was my little sister.” He’s looking intently at Annie now. “My God, Annie, you look so much like her.”

Annie looks back at Mamie, her eyes wide. “You’ve been calling me Leona for months,” she says. “That’s who you meant?”

Mamie looks confused.

Annie turns to Jacob. “What happened to Leona?”

Jacob glances at me, and I nod slightly. Annie’s old enough to know. “She died, my dear,” he says. “At Auschwitz. I believe she did not suffer very much, Annie. I believe that she went peacefully.”

Annie’s eyes fill. “I’m sorry,” she murmurs to Jacob. “I’m really sorry about your sister.”

He smiles at her gently. “I can see her in you,” he says. “And that makes me glad.” He turns back to Mamie and bends toward her again. “Rose, Leona died many years ago. But this young lady here is Annie. Your great-granddaughter.” He pauses and says, “
Our
great-granddaughter.”

Annie looks at me sharply, and I realize that I haven’t told her yet. I haven’t told her that Jacob married Mamie long ago and was the real father to my mother. I reach over and squeeze my daughter’s hand. “I’ll explain everything later,” I whisper. She looks confused, and a little alarmed, but she nods.

Mamie is studying Annie now. “Annie,” she says finally. I can see recognition dawning in her eyes. “The youngest.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Annie mumbles.

“You are . . . good girl,” Mamie says. “I am proud . . . You have . . . spirit in you. It reminds me of . . . something I lost. Never let go . . . of that.”

Annie nods hastily. “Okay, Mamie.”

Finally, Mamie turns back to Jacob, who is still bent over her. “My love,” she says softly. “Do not cry.”

I realize that Jacob’s body is shaking with sobs, and that tears are streaming down his cheeks.

“We are together now,” Mamie continues. “I have . . . waited for you.” They stare at each other in silence, and it takes me a while to realize I’m holding my breath.

I watch as Jacob leans forward, slowly, gently, and kisses Mamie on the lips, pausing there with his eyes closed, as if he wishes never to move again. In that frozen moment, I’m powerfully reminded of yet another fairy tale. He looks very much like the prince kissing Sleeping Beauty, awakening her after a hundred years of slumber. I realize with a start that in a way, she’s been asleep for nearly that long; for seventy years, she’s lived a sort of half life.

“Forever, my love,” Jacob says.

Mamie smiles at him and stares into his eyes. “Forever,” she murmurs.

Chapter
Thirty

J
ust past three in the morning, just a few hours after Annie, Alain, Gavin, and I left her alone with Jacob, Mamie slipped away peacefully in her sleep.

Jacob sat by Mamie’s bedside for the next few hours, and just after dawn, when he stepped out of a cab outside the front door of the bakery Mamie had founded so many years ago, he seemed a different man. I had expected that he would be sad, defeated, for he’d waited seventy years only to watch the love of his life slip away. But instead, his eyes shone differently than they had when we’d first seen him in New York, and he seemed a decade younger.

The nurses told me afterward that Jacob had talked to Mamie long into the night and that when they finally came to check on her, and realized she had died, she was smiling, and Jacob was still holding her hand, whispering to her in a language they didn’t know.

Gavin called his rabbi, who came to meet with Jacob, Alain, and me, and together, we planned a burial according to Jewish customs. I understood now that Mamie had always been Jewish; that had never changed. Perhaps, as she’d said, she’d been
Catholic and Muslim too. But if one could find God everywhere, as Mamie had once told me, it seemed to make the most sense to send her home along the same road she’d entered upon.

We took turns sitting with Mamie—Gavin explained to me that in the Jewish faith, one is not supposed to leave the deceased alone—and a day later, she was buried in a wooden casket beside my mother and grandfather. I had struggled with what to do about that, having just learned that her marriage to Jacob in effect annulled Mamie’s marriage to my grandfather. But Jacob had wrapped his hands around mine and said gently, “God does not mind where you are put to rest. I think Rose would want to be buried here, where she lived her life, alongside the man who gave her a new life, and alongside her daughter.
Our
daughter.”

For the next several days, I went through the motions of running the bakery, but my heart wasn’t in it. It felt like a great hole had opened in my life. It was just me now, against the world: me responsible for this bakery; me responsible for my daughter; me responsible for carrying on a family tradition I was only beginning to understand.