Lilac Girls (40 page)

“How can you be so unfeeling, Caroline?”

“Unfeeling?”

“I still can't even work, and you go about your do-gooding here as if I'm no one to you.”

Do-gooding
? I felt my Irish temper rise up my back in warm prickles despite the cold. I turned to face him.

“How unfeeling were you when you decided to have a child?” I said.

“You knew I was married—”

“Incompatible, Paul. You said children complicate things, remember? ‘No place for that in an actor's life'?”

“Things happen. Adults deal with them. Unless they're rich and spoiled—”

“Spoiled? Really? Is it spoiled to give up my own happiness for that of a child I don't even know? Do you have any idea what it's like waking up every morning knowing you and your family are together and I'm alone? Don't talk to me about unfeeling.”

It wasn't until he opened his jacket and wrapped me in velvet that I realized I was shaking.

“Be sensible, Caroline. When will either of us find what we have again?”

“True,” I said into the cotton of his shirt. “You may be the only man left in Paris.”

He laughed and pulled me closer.

“I miss you, C.” His heavenly scent surrounded us, cocooned in that jacket, his fingers interlocked at the small of my back. I'd missed that musky essence of pine and leather. He brushed his lips against my cheek.

“Come and get something to eat,” he said. “Even over that terrible band, I can hear your stomach growling. A friend of mine has a place in the Latin Quarter you'll love. He's made an apple tart. With real crème fraîche.”

How wonderful it would be to slide into a bistro booth with Paul, the leather seat allowing us to sit hip to hip as so many lovers before us had done. The offerings would be meager, but there would at least be warm bread and wine. We'd talk about everything. Which crème fraîche is best? From southeast or southwest France? Which new play should he do? How much he loved me. But then what? He'd go home to his family and leave me worse than before.

“I'll come to New York,” Paul said, his lips soft against my ear. “It will be like before.”

I felt his chest against me, only the silk of my dress and the cotton of his T-shirt between us.

“You can't just leave here, Paul.”

Even if he didn't have a family, it could never be like before. The world was so different now.

Paul stood back, held me at arm's length, and smiled his most dangerous smile. “I need to get back to New York. Broadway's rebounding, you know.”

I pulled away and shivered as the wind ballooned the skirt of my dress. Was he using me to escape his new responsibilities? Did he want me or just relief from family life?

“C'mon, C. We could do something together. I'd consider Shakespeare. Let's talk about it at dinner.”

I felt a drop of cold rain on my hand. I would have to move the coats under the overhang of the store.

“You need to get back to your family, Paul.”

Paul stepped back. “You're infuriating.”

“You're a father.”

“But I love you—”

“Love your daughter
.
If you don't, I'll have given you up for nothing. So
act
if you have to, and soon you'll find you mean it.” I touched his sleeve. “It's not that hard. Just be there. When she wakes in the night afraid. If she stumbles at school.”

“Rena doesn't want me there—”

“Your daughter does. She wants you to teach her to sail a boat, show her off in the park. You don't know how powerful your love is, Paul. Without it she'll fall for the first boy who says he loves her, and he'll shatter her for good.”

“Why throw away everything we have? It's ridiculous, your pilgrim ethics.”

“Puritan,” I said.

“I don't think I can do it.”

“You can. Funny thing about grief: It gets easier with practice.”

I held out a white package.

“This coat's perfect,” I said. “A bit large, but she'll grow into it.”

“I love you, C. And I'm stubborn too, you know.”

“Love her, Paul. If not for you, then do it for me.”

“You're going to wake up one morning and know you've made a terrible mistake.”

I suppressed a smile. Like every morning?

Paul stared at me for a long moment, then slipped off his jacket and draped it across my shoulders. He wore only an old white T-shirt underneath, threadbare in parts. It was a prewar shirt, no doubt, for it hung somewhat loosely, but the sight of Paul in it, even thin as he was, caused more than one woman in the booth to stare.

“This always looked better on you,” he said.

The satin lining of his jacket felt good against my skin, still warm from him.

Paul kissed me on both cheeks and took the white package. I smoothed the flap of one velvet pocket in my fingers, soft as a cat's ear.

I looked up just in time to watch Paul's beautiful back as he retreated through the crowd, and then I turned and pushed the racks out of the rain.

I
N THE MONTHS THAT FOLLOWED,
Paul sent a few more letters, and I tried to distract myself with volunteering. At least I had Mother, though she would not be with me forever. Our life became reduced to a routine well known to those in homes for the aged—tea with Mother's friends, the conversation revolving around inflamed sacroiliacs; the odd errand at the embassy for Roger; and church choral concerts.

They were pale days, one indistinguishable from the next, so a visit from a friend of Mother's one morning threw me for a loop. Mother had told me a friend of hers named Anise Postel-Vinay, who'd been arrested while working for the French underground during the war and held at Ravensbrück concentration camp, was stopping by our apartment. Anise and friends had founded the ADIR. Though Mother was uncharacteristically evasive when I asked for details, I agreed to this favor, expecting Anise to appear at our apartment asking for gently used clothing or canned goods.

That day, Mother, midway through her unfortunate poncho phase, was sporting a red-checked, caftanesque affair she'd resurrected from somewhere when Anise arrived. Parisians stared when Mother wore that poncho, as if picturing it where it belonged, flung over a café table under a plate of good cheese.

The doorbell buzzed, and Mother showed Anise in. Two men followed behind carrying a canvas stretcher on which a woman lay wrapped in a white cotton blanket.

“Dear God,” I said.

Anise, a handsome, no-nonsense woman, planted herself on our living room Aubusson and ran the fingers of one hand through her cropped hair.

“Good morning, Mme Ferriday. Where should the men take her?”

I took a step back. “She's staying? Here? We knew nothing of this.”

Mother went to the stretcher. “Anise asked if we could help this Polish friend of hers,” she said to me. “She's unconscious, Anise?”

Anise laid her hand on the woman's blanketed leg. “Heavily sedated. Just flew her from Warsaw.”

“She needs a hospital, Mme Vinay,” I said.

“Her name is Janina Grabowski. I knew her at Ravensbrück concentration camp. Operated on by Nazi doctors.” Anise felt the woman's forehead. “We need to handle this privately. She was brought out of Poland, well…without the knowledge of the authorities.”

We were to take in a sick Polish fugitive?

“Could she get no help in Warsaw?”

“Most of Warsaw has been reduced to rubble, Miss Ferriday. Their healthcare system is a mess. Antibiotics in short supply.” Anise threw back the blanket to show us the woman's leg. Under the gauze, an angry infection raged.

“Take her to my room right away,” Mother said. “I'll cut some fresh bandages.” At last, Mother could relive the nursing days of the Woolseys on the Civil War battlefield. “We'll call our personal doctor for her.”

I held one hand to the stretcher. “Wait. I listened to the trial on the BBC. The Germans are supposed to be providing reparations—”

“None, Miss Ferriday. Germany decided they do not recognize Communist Poland as a country. They consider it part of Russia.”

“That's ridiculous.”

“Janina is a charming person who once gave me the medicine she could have used to save herself, allowing me to stand here now. She has suffered more this morning than you will in your lifetime and could quite possibly be dying as we speak.”

I waved the men along. “We are happy to have her,” I said.

“Good. Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

I walked to the window. “Put her in my bed. First door on the left.”

The men carried the stretcher down the hall to my bedroom and Mother followed. As they passed, I saw that blood from Janina's leg had seeped through the blanket. What had we gotten ourselves into?

“We are at your service, Mme Vinay,” I said.

Anise walked to the door. “Your mother told me you'd help.” She turned and almost smiled. “That's good. Because there are sixty-two more where she came from.”

I
picked Halina up from daycare one night after my last nursing shift. The facility was housed in one of many government-controlled childcare centers. In Lublin at the time, any child with two working parents was assigned to a childcare facility where school-aged children spent their days learning basic math, reading, and Communist Party rhetoric. I walked toward ours, which was situated in a drab former housing complex requisitioned by the Party, a beige, humorless place that smelled of cooked potatoes and cabbage, a smell I still could not tolerate twelve years after Ravensbrück. At least the government paid for it.

As I waited for the class to be released, I leaned against the wall to take the pressure off my bad leg and considered my new bracelet, the result of a plan Father Skala and I had worked out. Father, Papa's dear friend, was our former parish priest, now retired. At Zuzanna's urging, I approached him for advice about my being overwhelmed as a mother. With trying to juggle work, caring for a young daughter, and being a wife, I was often worn to a frazzle and lost my temper more and more. Father Skala suggested that, in addition to prayer, I might also wear a rubber band on my wrist and snap it every time I felt my temper getting the better of me. I wore the dull red band on my wrist and did a good deal of band-snapping each day. By week's end, my wrist was raw from snaps.

“No running,” Comrade Jinda, Halina's unit leader, called out as the children made their way to their parents.

It was easy to spot my daughter in the crowd. She had Matka's golden hair and was a hand taller than most of the other children. At ten years old, Halina was a year behind the children her age, for she had been held back for not knowing her multiplication tables. How lovely it was to see her—my reward, the prize God had given me for all I'd been through. The children walked up to meet their parents and exchanged the accepted greeting. Halina shook my hand and gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. She had a lovely scent all her own, of soap and fresh air, even after being in that dreary place.

“Good evening, Matka
,
” Halina said.

Comrade Jinda noted with a smile that all children were accounted for and turned to assemble the next group.

“A real kiss for your mummy, Halina?” I said.

She reached her small hand to mine. “You know it's not allowed.”

We headed for the door. What a serious little thing she'd become!

“So how is the most wonderful daughter today?”

“Not more wonderful than any other,” Halina said.

“Was rest time better today?” At daycare, the children were taught to eat and rest and even use the toilet on cue.

“I just pretended to rest,” Halina said

By the 1950s, the Polish United Worker's Party, or PZPR, Moscow's thinly disguised Polish proxy, was in complete control. Though Stalin was dead by then, his policies lived on. He had promised the Allies at Yalta that he would provide free elections in Eastern European countries and allow them to operate as democracies, but instead installed a Communist Party government in each country, Poland being no exception. We ended up with rigged elections, no independent political parties, and no criticism of the Party allowed. All policy was based on the collective needs of the people. I was reassigned to be a trauma nurse at the new state hospital and Pietrik to factory work just outside Lublin, where he was bused daily.

“I'll talk to your teacher,” I said. “She must make sure you are getting a good sleep.” With morning drop-off at 5:00
A.M.
and pickup at 7:00
P.M.
, a child needed a rest during the day.

“No, Matka
.
I'm not a baby. Besides, Comrade Jinda would just put me at the end of the lunch line again if you complain. Plus, it's fine. It let me think about what I would paint this weekend.”

My leg burned as I hurried her past a breadline.

“We have no paints, Halina.”

“We have your mother's brushes.”

“How was math class?”

“Comrade Jinda made flash cards. I may be in baby math until I am as old as you. I hate times tables.”

“I use math every day as a nurse.”

“Marthe said she would buy me paints for my name day.”

“When is the placement examination?” I asked.

“I don't know,” Halina said. She picked up a stick from the road and dragged it, drawing lines in the dirt along the side of the road.

“Did Comrade Jinda let you be on the blue team?”

“Yes,” Halina said.

“Without any trouble?”

“Yes. Once I told her there was no proof Jesus rose from the dead, she let me do anything I wanted.”

I stopped short, sending a ripple of pain up my calf.

“Who told you that?” I asked.

“I don't know,” she said with a shrug.

I tucked that shocking bit away to discuss with Comrade Jinda. Religion was supposed to be off-limits at school. It was bad enough we had to sneak around to go to mass. Every trip to church meant a black mark on one's record, and there were people paid by the authorities to note such things.

The childcare facility was a twenty-minute walk from our apartment. My leg ached from standing most of the day caring for patients, but I was luckier than most, since I lived within walking distance of childcare. Many of the other nurses were assigned to housing outside the city and only visited their children on weekends.

We were also lucky that Papa, somehow still working in his postal center job, managed to keep us all in our apartment. Pietrik, Halina, and I lived in my old bedroom; Zuzanna slept in her old closet room which only fit her bed; and though I tried not to think about it, Papa and Marthe slept in the room he and Matka once shared.

The smell of buttery pastry met us at the door. Marthe had been baking Halina's favorite
kolaczki
again.

Halina ran to Marthe.
“Babcia!”

“My little
ciastko,
” Marthe said as she turned from the stove and gathered Halina in her arms.

“Did you buy me paints?” Halina asked.

“Halina,”
I said. “That's not polite.”

“It's fine,” Marthe said, sitting Halina at the table with a plate of apricot
kolaczki.
“She is just a girl.”

“She knows better,” I said.

I walked down the short hallway to my room, feeling as if a hot poker were stabbing my calf with every step. My old bed was pushed to one side, and a small bed for Halina stood along the other wall, the bed I shared with her most nights. When had Pietrik and I started sleeping separately? Pietrik sat reading a book, still in his gray coveralls from the factory. He'd been assigned to the Lubgal Ladies Garment Factory in the new suburb of Helenów on the edge of the city. It had its own training school and on-site residences for which we'd put our name on the waiting list.

It may sound strange, but I loved those coveralls. They fit him well in all the right places—his broad shoulders and long legs.

“What are you reading?” I asked. My leg ached, and I wanted more than anything to stretch out on the bed.

Pietrik did not answer. His book wore a brown paper cover, but it was
Doctor Zhivago,
one of many books on the banned list. His friend Aleksander had been sent away for reading Thoreau's essay “Civil Disobedience,” so Pietrik was smart about where he read
.

I tossed my bag onto the bed. “How was work?”

“They took Symbanski today. Right from his bench. Didn't make quota. He gave them a bottle of vodka, but they still took him.”

“We need to make the best of it—”

“We need a third world war.”

I stepped out of my uniform so that I was only wearing my slip, the one he'd once said made me look like Myrna Loy. “Halina needs to study for the math exam. Can you help?”

Pietrik kept his gaze on his book. “Does it matter how she places? She will end up on the assembly line next to me.”

“If she can get on the medical track—”

“Let her be.” Pietrik dog-eared a page. “And stop badgering her teacher.”

The room closed in on me. I snapped my rubber band. It smarted the inside of my wrist, but it did little to stop my mounting temper.

“I don't badger anyone,” I said.

“They'll have you on some list before you know it. Your father won't be able to get you off it no matter how cozy he is with the Kremlin.”

I reached for Pietrik's arm. “You understand—I need some say in my child's life. Let's find time to talk about it, alone—”

“Keep your voice down, Kasia.” Pietrik tossed his book on the bed and walked to the door. “Marthe knows enough of our business.”

He left and shut the door behind him. He enjoyed his little rebellions. The rubber band wasn't helping me, so I filled my lungs with air to combat the anger.

Once I heard Zuzanna return from work, I hurried to change. I came out from my bedroom to see her kiss the top of Halina's head and steal some
kolaczki
from her plate.

“Did you eat today?” I asked Zuzanna.

“Some greet their sisters with hello,” she said with a crooked smile. She had a dark smudge beneath each eye.

“How was the hospital?” Marthe asked.

“Good,” said Zuzanna. “We may be getting ten new beds.”

“That's a good thing?” I asked.

“More work for the same pay,” Pietrik said.

I noticed the tin box of paints near Halina's plate. A fancy British brand.

“Where did the paints come from?” I asked, trying to keep my voice steady. Certainly not from a store. There were no more private shopkeepers at that point, and government shops did not sell foreign brands. These were black market paints.

“A friend got them for me,” Marthe said. “An early name day gift—”

“I told her no paints,” I said.

“Let it go,” Pietrik said under his breath.

I closed my eyes and took a lungful of air. “Give me the paints, Halina.”

“Kasia,” said Zuzanna, her hand on my shoulder. I shrugged it off. That was when I noticed the brush, the sable-hair tip of it under Halina's plate. Matka's Kolinsky watercolor brush, the gleam of its nickel throat in the shadow of the plate.

“Where did you get that?” I said, short of breath.

“Marthe gave it to me,” Halina said.

Marthe stepped toward me. “She has such a talent—”

“Give me the brush, Halina,” I said, my arm outstretched, palm up.

Halina curled her hand around the paints and brush and put them in her lap.

“Give them to me,” I said, stepping closer.

“Let it go,” said Pietrik.

The blood rushed in my ears, heart thumping against my chest. Halina stood and ran to Marthe, paints and paintbrush in hand.

“Give them to me,” I said, following.

“It is my fault,” Marthe said, one arm around my daughter.

I grabbed for the paintbrush.

“No,” Halina said, pulling back.

“I am your
mother.
You must listen to me. Not to Comrade Jinda. Not to Marthe. To
me.
”

Halina stood her ground, clutching the paints and brush to her chest.

“No,” Halina said.

“She is—” Marthe began.

“Stay out of this. Would you once allow me to speak to my own child?” I stretched out my arm. “Give me the paints, Halina.”

“Never,” Halina said in a matter-of-fact way, looking me straight in the eye.

It couldn't have been my hand that placed the slap there, for it happened before I could even think about it, yet I slapped her hard across the face. As soon as my hand left her face, I wished I could take it back, but nothing could fix that.

“Kasia,” Pietrik said, his tone not so much accusatory as
—worse
—disappointed.

Halina did not even cry, just dropped the paintbrush and paints on the floor next to her. I picked up the black-lacquered brush and, one hand on either end, cracked it over the back of a kitchen chair, which resulted in a satisfying snap, leaving the two shattered ends like cat's whiskers.