* * *
Charlotte sat thinking about the sentence Horace might or might not have spoken. From the moment she’d met Hannah Field in the noisy sprawl of the vast metal customs shed her first morning in America, Hannah had made it clear that she was going to take both Charlotte and Vivi under her wing. Most new arrivals would have been grateful, and Charlotte had been. But she’d also been on her guard. She was reserved by nature. The last few years in Paris had made her more so. And then there was the warning, though that came a year or two later.
Ruth Miller was an editor at another house with whom Charlotte struck up a friendship. She was also a friend of Hannah’s from college.
“Be careful of her,” Ruth said one day when she and Charlotte were having a non-expense-account lunch at Mary Elizabeth’s, a tearoom serving crustless sandwiches and mysterious meat and fish swimming in equally mysterious white or brown sauce. The place depressed their spirits and offended their palates, but it was convenient, inexpensive, and a step up from Schrafft’s.
“She’s been extremely generous,” Charlotte said, her voice even.
“Hannah’s nothing if not generous. You know that character in The Forsyte Saga, the one who takes up lame ducks? That’s Hannah. But just let the duck get back on its little webbed feet, and out it goes.”
“I’m not sure I know what you mean,” Charlotte said, though she had a feeling she did.
“After the war, I got mixed up with a bad egg. He drank, chased women, and was always in need of money, which I, of course, handed over. What’re a few dollars where love’s concerned? I’m not a very good judge of character. At least I wasn’t in those days. Hannah could not have been more sympathetic. She listened to my laments, did her best to find some redeeming traits in him, and never once urged me to throw the bum out. But when I did throw the bum out, when I got back on my little webbed feet and took up with Nick, she dropped me like the proverbial hot potato. I think Nick’s admirable qualities are what did it. She stopped calling, stopped returning my calls. Once I swear she even crossed the street to avoid me. The funny thing is, if she were a man, I would have caught on immediately. But she was another woman and so sympathetic. It took me longer to realize the friendship with Hannah was over than it did to throw out the bum.”
Charlotte sat in her office remembering the story and thinking about Horace’s comment. Even in a wheelchair, he wasn’t a lame enough duck.
* * *
“I’ve been thinking.” Vivi straightened from her prone position on the living room floor and sat up to face Charlotte, who was on the sofa. They’d been handing sections of the Sunday Times, fat with ads for gloves and ties and other Christmas gifts, back and forth between them. Thin winter sunshine trickled through the two south-facing windows overlooking the street that dozed in Sunday morning tranquility, interrupted only by the occasional pedestrian walking a dog or taxi cruising for a fare.
“Always a good endeavor. About anything in particular?”
“The dance.”
Charlotte put the section she’d been reading down. “The fact that you weren’t invited has nothing to do with you personally,” she said again. “Only with that bigoted old woman.”
“I know that. But it made me think about something else.”
Charlotte waited.
“If I’m Jewish, I ought to be Jewish.”
“Apparently you are,” Charlotte said after a moment.
Vivi thought about that. “I wish I remembered more about being in the camp.”
“I’m glad you don’t.”
“I can’t even picture it.”
“You were too young. And we were only there for a short time before it was liberated.”
“How did we manage before that? I mean, if they were rounding up Jews, how did they miss us all that time?”
“We had forged papers. Sometimes we hid out. The Germans weren’t always as efficient as they thought. And let’s not talk about the French gendarmes. In other words, we were lucky.”
“That’s what Aunt Hannah says her patients who are survivors tell her. They also say they never knew who to trust. An old friend could turn you in or a complete stranger could risk his life to save you.”
“I suppose that’s true,” Charlotte said.
“The people who helped us—”
“Vivi! It’s the past. It’s over.” Charlotte held out the theatrical section she’d been paging through. “I know you think Peter Pan is infantile—”
“I’m too old to sit in the audience screaming ‘I believe’ so some silly light onstage doesn’t go out.”
“Note taken. But is there anything else you’d like to see over the holidays? Fanny might be fun. We could go to a Saturday matinee or even in the evening during school break. Anything you want to see, within reason.”
“A Jewish church.”
“What?”
“I want to go to a Jewish church. Synagogue,” she corrected herself. “See what I mean. If I’m Jewish, I ought to know something about it. Couldn’t we go just once to see what it’s like?”
“I know what it’s like.”
“I thought you didn’t know. I thought it took Hitler to make you a Jew.”
“That’s my point. I think religion is dangerous.”
“But that’s my point. If people are going to treat me a certain way because I’m Jewish, I ought to know why.”
“There’s no logic to intolerance. Any more than there is to the rites and rituals of religion. Any religion. You think if you were Catholic, saying a dozen Hail Marys would cleanse your soul?”
“You always do that.”
“Do what?”
“I ask about being Jewish and you tell me some story about going to confession with your friend Bette or how all the other girls you played with got new white dresses for their first communion.”
“I grew up in a Catholic country. Most of my friends were Catholic, except for one Jewish girl. All I’m trying to say is I don’t trust any religion. Your father agreed with me. We were both atheists. I don’t think we ever talked about religion, except to agree on how much harm it did. He wouldn’t be any happier than I am with this religious awakening you seem to be having.”
She knew she was playing dirty, but it was necessary under the circumstances. And the ploy worked. Vivi took the theater section and began paging through it.
Five
Charlotte wasn’t sure how it had happened. Surely a letter she hadn’t even read couldn’t upend her life so completely. Still, something had breached the barrier she’d erected between then and now.
When she had first arrived in America, she’d found life less the challenge she’d braced herself for but more of a shock to her sensibilities. She couldn’t get used to people hurrying along the sidewalks with long confident strides or sauntering as if they hadn’t a care in the world instead of skulking with shoulders hunched and eyes averted, crossing streets and cowering in doorways to avoid anyone in uniform, and flinching with fear when a soldier stopped to ask directions because he might just as easily be bent on harassment, or worse. She was amazed at the absence of signs forbidding her to cross this thoroughfare or enter that area, and the press of traffic swarming the avenues and jockeying on the cross streets, and the lights that turned night into day. Paris had been so dark for so long. But the greatest surprise was the abundance. She had sailed away from a world still stalked by hunger, stunted by shortages, mired in misery. She’d landed in a country booming with optimism and hell-bent on making up for lost time. People were gorging on steaks and whiskey, butter and sugar. They were building houses, and buying cars and appliances and clothes, and going on holidays. Gradually, as she grew accustomed to this overstocked new world, the astonishment had worn off. Some mornings she’d opened her eyes and felt as if she were waking to a sunny day after a long sheet-twisting nightmare. Now the nightmare was beginning to shadow not her nights but her days again. Now the nightmare was becoming more immediate than her real world.