Then Sings My Soul (13 page)

One book, however, listed the name of the Orthodox church in the town, and Nel figured that'd be as reliable a place to start as any. She hoped the post office could help her verify an exact mailing address, and she knew what she was going to send. If this Josef Maevski was as well respected as the book indicated, perhaps the town would have some record of him. And if they had some record of him, maybe they'd have some record of Peter and Jakob. She'd send the church a photocopy of the page from
Gemstones of the Tsars
,
a photocopy of the diagram and dimensions she and David had found inside the silver cup, a photocopy of the ship manifest and the photograph of the two boys, and a photograph of the aquamarine.

Then she would have to wait.

She might hear nothing, she realized that. But if she heard something, it could prove to be well worth the time.

Nel climbed the creaky, worn, walnut stairs to her room but stopped outside her parents' bedroom. The same queen-size bed with a scrolled, black-iron frame was set against the same wall it'd been on since she was a child, and the sun had faded a permanent outline of the bed's scrollwork onto the wall. Between the two pillows at the head of the bed, Dad had neatly placed a needlepoint throw pillow with fishing bobbers and the phrase “I'm not old, my bobbers just don't float like they used to.” On either side of the bed were matching bedside tables and white carnival-glass lamps. Above the bed hung a painting of seagulls flying toward the sun, which hung low in the sky over a grassy beach. It looked like the view of the lake from the house, and she wondered if they'd asked someone to paint it at some point over the years. The same wedding-ring quilt was folded at the end of the bed, neatly made with a candle-wicked bedspread smoothed over the top, neither of which could hide the two parallel sunken spots in the mattress where her parents had lain side by side. She ran her hand across the pieces and threads of the quilt as if to bring back the life that had placed each stitch. Mom had let her help make that quilt and many others on lazy afternoons on the upstairs sleeping porch.

Nel grabbed a quilt from her room and headed to the upstairs sleeping porch, which faced the lake. She sat for as long as she could bear the cold and listened to the soft barks of the black squirrels as they no doubt vied for sections of the new corncobs she'd set out. She thought she'd been so sure of her life in Santa Fe and the life and business she'd established among the other artists. But now that she was home, she wondered if this was where she might need to stay.

CHAPTER 22

The staff always had an activity of some kind lined up for residents to do each day, and those healthy enough were required to attend as part of their rehabilitation program. This morning featured “Rockin' and Rollin' with Debbie,” a bubbly instructor who led residents in wheelchair exercises set to either Big Band or early rock-and-roll music, depending on her mood. The exercises weren't so bad, and Jakob knew moving around would help him get out of the place sooner.

Besides, Debbie wasn't so bad to look at either, blessed with bleach-blonde hair and a pretty decent figure. Jakob couldn't figure out if she thought all the old men like him were blind, or if she liked dressing in a way that caused them all to gawk at her. If one of them drooled, she chalked that up to the aftereffects of a stroke or Parkinson's. At any rate, she was awfully cute, dressed in her Jane Fonda, formfitting exercise clothes, which made exercise time a fabulous distraction from the death and dying all around them.

“You all are in for a treat! I brought my collection of best swing music today. Everybody ready?”

It was a rhetorical question.

“Okay, let's go. We're starting with hand swirls.”

The jungle-beat drums of Benny Goodman's “Sing, Sing, Sing” rose from the speakers, and Debbie stuck her hands straight out in front of her, making circular motions in opposite directions with her hands. Never mind that none of the residents could move their hips. She moved hers plenty enough for all of them.

After a couple minutes of that, she switched things up. “Okay, everyone, we're reaching to the stars. Reaching. Reaching. Grab those stars!” She raised both her arms, then grabbed at invisible stars somewhere above her stiff blonde hair, one arm at a time, up and down and up and down as the trumpets and trombones of Goodman's band continued to wail from her CD player.

“Let's do ‘the drummer,' everyone!”

Jakob's upper arms burned with the acid of inactivity as she pushed the class along in the exercise routine. He lifted his arms and struggled to keep up with the whine of muffled trumpets and the jangle of the tambourine in Irving Berlin's “Steppin' Out with My Baby.”

“And let's see everyone's dazzle hands before we slow it down a bit!” Her energy level alone exhausted Jakob, as he brought his hands close to his chest, then stuck them out in front of him, stretching his fingers and waving at the air.

Ridiculous that my life has come down to exercises fit for a bunch of kindergartners
,
he thought.

“Good job, everyone! Time for ‘the simple sway.' It's a slow one, so y'all can catch your breath.” The shrill, woody sound of Glenn Miller's clarinets, cornet trumpets, and saxophones playing “Moonlight Serenade” floated through the room, and at once Jakob was back at his wedding reception, his hands cupped against the small of Catherine's back. Her dress, a champagne-colored silk, draped gracefully over her bodice, and whispers of chiffon had played in the wind against her creamy neck and shoulders. It'd been an outdoor wedding, she'd insisted on it, at her parents' stately Chicago waterfront home on Lake Shore Drive. At the time, neither of them cared so much about having a church wedding. Who needed religion when they had each other, a perfect June night, and the moon shining like a spotlight on them alone?

“Mr. Stewart, are you okay?” Debbie had moved closer to him and looked ready to check for a pulse in his neck before he answered her.

“Fine, I'm fine.” Jakob craned his neck to see if Nyesha was around. “I'd like to go back to my room, please.”

They'd danced on her parents' veranda to the song “Moonlight Serenade.” Catherine was everything Jakob wasn't, everything he'd never experienced. Her soft edges consumed his hard ones, and in her eyes Jakob found liberation from the pain that had always enervated him. They'd spent their courtship on back roads sipping bootlegged, homemade strawberry wine and tasting each other. The curve of her neck, tendrils of her hair falling against it in the moonlight, enraptured him, and he couldn't get enough of her. She was educated. Established. High society. She was everything warm and satin, velvet and sweet in his otherwise cold, bitter, and caustic world.

As much as Catherine enamored Jakob, she frustrated him as well, always wanting to know what he was thinking. What was the matter. Why he looked as if he was brooding. What had happened to Peter and him. How they'd come to America. What life was like back in Ukraine. Jakob supposed he was a sort of novelty to her—she knew precisely who she was, after all. Relatives kept precise records of the Bessinger family tree, which traced back to Boston and the American Revolution. She came from old family money made first in the steel mills of Pennsylvania, and then in the newer ones in Chicago. Marrying an immigrant orphan like Jakob was way outside the realm of normal for her family. She couldn't help her curiosity.

One evening shortly after their marriage, they were halfway through dinner when she set the tarnished silver cup on the table. Jakob's head spun from the effects of the Chianti, and he had been hoping for a little living-room dancing, maybe a walk in the moonlight.

“Tell me about it, baby, won't you, please? What happened that's so awful you can't tell me?” She'd stroked Jakob's hand, and for the first time ever, her touch felt like a knife searing his skin. He rose from the table too quickly. Grabbed the cup and threw it. Smashed the dining-room window. Papa's tzitzit, which he'd kept since Peter died, flew into the air along with the aquamarine, which rolled out of the cheesecloth and bounced along the wooden floor with the rest of the shattered glass. A couple of neighborhood dogs barked, and the only other sound was the muffled cry of Catherine.

She retreated to their bedroom and shut the door behind her, and Jakob had obligingly slept on the couch that night, half sickened by his reaction, the other half sickened by memories and the fact that Catherine wouldn't leave his past alone. He drank the rest of the bottle of Chianti and at some point, long after midnight, fell into a cramped and hard slumber. He awoke the next morning to the glass in the dining room all cleaned up, the kitchen sparkling, coffee brewing, and a note that read,

My dearest Jake,

I'm sorry I pushed you to talk about your past. I won't mention it again. I've gone for a walk on the beach.

Yours,

Catherine

For a week or so thereafter, conversations between them felt stilted. Polite. But like many things in marriage, they learned to let things go for the sake of having and holding. Catherine was true to her word, and neither of them talked about that night, or his past, again. Soon, Eleanor was on the way, and they were back to their overall joyful social and work-related routines.

Even so, if someone asked Catherine if that night changed things between the two, she might have said yes. Jakob would have too. Since then, Jakob carried an additional weight of regret, along with all the others, that he did not bare his soul to his one and only love, the one person who could have listened and encouraged and
understood
—not because she had felt the same sorts of pain, but because she loved him that much. Instead, Jakob had carried the weight of what happened in Chudniv for nearly a century.

None of it mattered anymore, as close to the grave as he was.

Solomon was right.

Everything eventually turns to dust.

CHAPTER 23

“I'll be right back with your drinks.” The waitress, Julie, smiled.

Nel sat with Mattie in a booth at Clementine's, grateful for a break in her lapidary work and the monotony of driving to and from Lakeview visiting her dad.

“How is he this week?” Mattie asked.

“He's okay. His hip is healing well—the doctors and therapists are really pleased with his progress. But his mind …”

“I've noticed the same thing during my visits. But I'm not surprised, honey. We've been losing him for a while now.”

“How long? I mean, Mom never let on to this when we talked on the phone. And when I was home two Christmases ago, I didn't notice anything other than maybe a little forgetfulness. Certainly nothing that alarmed me.”

Mattie thought for a moment. “Probably the spring after you were home last for Christmas … when was that, two years ago? That's when the noticeable decline began. Like you said, it was subtle at first, losing his keys, not paying the bills. But then he started to forget bigger things, including where he was at times.”

The waitress set their drinks on the table. “Have you decided on anything yet?”

“A few more minutes, please.” Mattie held up her hand.

“Of course. I'll be back.”

“I wish Mom had told me.” Nel shook her head as she stirred a packet of sugar into her tea.

“The hardest thing for her were the nightmares … and the time she found him in his skivvies at three in the morning walking down the middle of North Shore Drive.”

Nel's jaw dropped. “Are you kidding me?”

“I'm sorry, I shouldn't laugh.” Mattie tried to suppress a giggle. “It really was mortifying to her at the time. And for him, once he realized where he was. Blamed it on sleepwalking when she told me about it the next day. But not long after that, Catherine began asking him to see a doctor. He refused for a good while. You know how men can be about seeing doctors.”

“Why didn't she take him anyway back then?”

“Honestly? I don't think she wanted to know what they'd say any more than he did. And she felt they were managing.”

“Managing?”

“When you've lived that long, been married that long, I think there's a part of you that simply takes each day as it comes. Probably why she didn't mention it to you too. She didn't want to be confronted with the truth of how bad things were getting for the both of them … the possibility of having to sell their home and move to assisted living or someplace they didn't want to be.”

“I guess I can see that. I only wish she'd told me so I could've helped. I'd have been happy to help pay for a housekeeper or for home repairs or whatever.”

“I'm sure your mother knew that. But I'm also sure she was determined not to be a burden to you.”

“It wouldn't have been a burden.” Nel sighed. “You mentioned nightmares. Dad was having nightmares?”

“That was the worst part.”

“He had nightmares in the hospital, too, delusions that seemed to really scare him.”

“He'd been having a lot of those—night terrors, I suppose. Catherine told me he'd wake up drenched with sweat and screaming, but he'd never tell her—or he couldn't remember—exactly what the dreams were about.”

The waitress came back and took their orders—they both ordered chicken-salad sandwiches and fries.

“Do you know if that's why Mom was doing research into Dad's past?”

“She never mentioned that to me, but I suppose it could be.”

“The day of the funeral, I found an envelope addressed to her from Ellis Island. Inside were papers about immigrants along with this really old photo of two adorable little boys.” Nel pulled the photo, the ship manifest, and the tarnished silver cup out of her purse and laid it all on the table in front of Mattie. “I was hoping maybe you could help me make heads or tails out of some of this.”

Mattie picked up the cup and traced the outline of the etched bucolic village scene with her fingers.

“I found that cup when I was moving things around in Dad's lapidary room. There was an absolutely brilliant aquamarine inside it too, that I left at home, and a faceting diagram written in Cyrillic. A death certificate, too, for a young man named Peter Maevski Stewart. And Peter Maevski is the name on the ship manifest, see?” Nel pointed at the lines where the names of Peter and Jakob were written. “There. Peter Maevski, fourteen. And Jakob Maevski, five. It's gotta be connected somehow.”

“It would seem so,” Mattie said, turning her attention back to the cup and sighing. “I've seen cups like this, but not for a long time.”

“You have?”

“Not since I was a little girl. Not since my last
Shabbat
.”

“
Shabbat?
Sabbath? You're Jewish?”

“I know it probably seems strange. I haven't thought about that part of my life for a long while. But yes, I'm Jewish.”

“But you don't observe your faith anymore.”

“My family abandoned their faith when they came to America. It happened with some immigrants. Times were much too dangerous for many to take the chance of someone finding out you believed in God. I was born in Germany, and I haven't practiced the Jewish faith since I was a small girl there. I became a Presbyterian when I married my ex-husband. By then it was the fifties and we wanted to raise our children in the church.”

“So your family came to America during the Holocaust?”

“Shortly before the actual Holocaust, yes. Things had been horrid for Jews in Germany for a while, of course, and our experiences were no exception. We couldn't buy food except at Jewish groceries, which were always in short supply. I had a friend, Katrina, from a Christian family who lived down the street. Her mother let Katrina bring us bread from their grocery every day. But it became more and more dangerous for Katrina and her family to help us. They risked their lives; I understand this now.”

“How'd you all get out of there?”

“Father explained to us later, when we were older, that he had saved a lot of money in cash. He'd kept it hidden in the walls, under floorboards, in teacups, wherever he could. I was too young to remember that, but I do recall we left in the middle of the night. Left everything behind except for the clothes on our backs. I didn't have a chance to say good-bye to Katrina …” She paused and toyed with the corner of her napkin. “We took a train to Amsterdam and then boarded a ship to New York.”

“Did they make you wear stars?”

Mattie smiled sadly. “They did. My friend Katrina, the one who brought us bread? She wanted to wear a star too. She thought it meant we were special. She didn't understand. Neither did I, until later.”

“It must've been terrifying for you.”

“Yes and no. It was hard to leave my friends, but I had my family. We all came here together. Only later did I realize what we'd escaped.” She picked up the photo of the two boys. “It was horrific for the Jews in Eastern Europe well before the Holocaust. During the pogroms. Judging from the year these two immigrated, they probably escaped something similar.”

“The stone I found, the top of it, the crown, has a six-pointed star, like the Star of David.”

Mattie raised her eyebrows. “Now that is interesting. Especially with this cup.”

“What do you make of it?”

“It's a kiddush cup, usually used on Friday evenings before the Sabbath. The father in the family, the head of the home, fills it with wine when the Sabbath blessing is read.” She handed the cup back to Nel. “We may have to talk more about your heritage.”

“You think I could be Jewish? That Dad was Jewish? That Mom was researching that?”

“Could be …” Mattie sorted through the papers and looked at the boys in the photograph again. She met Nel's gaze, her countenance appearing suddenly grave. “You know, some things are too painful, too shameful to speak of. The people who emigrated from Eastern Europe around the turn of the century, like this paper is dated … so many were Jews.”