Summer 2006
Ramsey, New Jersey
The call from Englewood Hospital comes at two o’clock in the morning.
My husband and I jolt awake to the telephone’s sharp brrring, but I’m first to reach the phone. The nurse’s calm, measured voice is somehow more terrifying than his words. It’s only George’s arm around my shoulders that keeps the shaft of panic in my throat from erupting in a scream.
My eighty-six-year-old mother is in the ER—with a sprained wrist, contusions, and a bump to the head. “Your mom was lucky. Given her age, the injuries are minor,” the nurse says. “Can you come pick Allina up and drive her home?”
My mother didn’t want to bother us in the middle of the night, according to the nurse. She showed up to the hospital alone, in a damn taxi. Unbelievable.
I thank him and hang up before giving in to tears. George tugs me close and rubs my back until the ache in my chest eases.
“We dodged another bullet,” he murmurs against my ear. “She’s fine, Kat. Your mom’s a strong woman. Like you.”
“I know,” I whisper.
“Let me come with you.”
There’s no sense in having us both at the hospital, so I tell George to stay here. I’ll need his quiet strength and humor later on today, and he can call the girls once I get Mother home, run interference if need be. Maggie and Brynn may be grown with families of their own, but they’re fiercely protective of their gran.
My sweet husband brews me a cup of tea while I dress. He hands me the mug with my morning blood pressure meds.
“It’s early, but take ’em now,” George says. “Pressure’s probably going through the roof.” He sighs hard as I pace the kitchen, then gives me a look I’ve seen many times—a loving, hazel-eyed stare-down that’s half order, half plea. One that says: Take a breath, Kat. For me. Please.
After forty years, George knows every dark corner of my control-freak heart. I find comfort in his gravelly baritone and the warmth of his fingers as they cover mine. The man doesn’t let me leave the house until my hands are steady.
I make the half-hour drive to Englewood in twenty-three minutes, with a swarm of worries buzzing around in my head. How did she fall? Will she need more help, or in-home care? There’s also the tired argument we’ve fought for months, the one that always ends in guilt: Should I have convinced her to come live with us last year when she gave up her car?
Like other women with elderly parents, I’m learning how to mother my own mother. Most days are a clumsy dance of love and fear and angst, filled with missteps that make me heartsick. And weary.
When I finally lay eyes on her in the emergency room, relief has me light-headed. My mother has a small bandage above her left eyebrow and a wrap around her right wrist. Purple bruises are beginning to bloom on her arms. And yet, she’s sitting up on the edge of the hospital bed, holding court over the medical staff while they check her vitals. Her back is straight, the slender legs are swinging, and that regal chin is high in the air. After she orders an aide to fetch a glass of water, the nurse laughs.
She’s a force of nature. An eighty-six-year-old hurricane of a woman.
Laughing through tears, I push past the gap in the curtain around her hospital bed. Her eyebrows lift in mild surprise, as if I’ve turned up late for our weekly lunch date.
“Ah. There you are, Katchen,” she says in her commanding German accent, using a pet name I haven’t heard in decades.
More tears, but I blink them back and take her hand. “Mama, look at you. What happened?”
She gives me a peck on the cheek, then rolls her eyes before dismissing my question. “I’m fine. You’re overreacting, as usual. It was a small mishap.”
The nurse coughs out a laugh. “Your mom dodged a bullet, but she’s a pistol herself.” He wags a finger. “Behave, sunshine. No more mountain climbing.”
Mother harrumphs, clearly offended at being teased like an old lady. But then he winks at her, and the woman is transformed. Coloring, she pats his arm and thanks him for his expert care. That’s when I know my mother will be fine. Even injured, she’s well enough to notice a handsome young man with deep blue eyes.
When those eyes shift to mine, they’re filled with amused sympathy. “Good luck,” the nurse murmurs, before escaping down the hall.
Once more, I ask my mother how she hurt herself.
That stubborn chin pops up another notch. “I was cleaning out my bedroom closet and lost my balance. It could have happened to anyone.”
Somehow, I don’t think so.
“You used the step stool, didn’t you?” I ask in my most patient voice. The stool she’d promised never to use by herself. The one I should have taken out of there years ago.
Mother snorts and looks down, suddenly fascinated by her swinging feet.
God help me. I want to strangle her. “You could have broken a hip. Or worse.”
The look she slants out the corner of her eye promises rebellion.
We speak carefully during the drive back to her house, but the air is thick with guilt, frustration, and too many words left unsaid. Halfway home, though, she reaches for my hand. Hers is colder than it should be, and trembling. Despite all the bluster, she’s shaken.
“I’m tougher than you think,” she says, perhaps to convince herself as much as me. “Getting old isn’t for the weak.”
As if I didn’t know this. I’m only twenty years behind her. But I let the irritation go for now. We hold hands the rest of the way back to her house.
The charcoal sky has paled to lavender by the time we pull in to the driveway of my childhood home. After sixty years, much remains the same. The red brick is a bit darker, but the paint around the windows and shutters is crisp evergreen. And the oak tree and patch of lawn in her front yard are immaculate, thanks to the service we bring in twice a month. Money was always dear, but my mother knows how to take care of what she has.
She makes it into the house, limping but unassisted, and informs me that no, she will not go to bed. The sun is rising, for pity’s sake. And she’s starving. It’s early for a full breakfast, but a nice cup of chamomile and some butter cookies will hit the spot.
Yet another strategic surrender is in order. I get an icepack and some ibuprofen and settle her on the living room sofa. She plumps up the rust and mustard pillows with her good hand, settles back onto them with a heavy sigh. The furniture—which was at the height of style in the 1970s—has seen better days. Like her, it’s still hanging on, in remarkable shape for its age.
I head into the kitchen to fetch the requested tea and cookies.
“Leave the dishes alone,” she warns. “And stay out of my bedroom. I’ll straighten that mess up later.”
There are two dishes, a fork, a spoon, and a mug in the sink, which makes the kitchen a disaster area by her neat-freak standards. Disobeying her direct order, I load the dishwasher while the chamomile steeps, then wipe down every inch of the faded avocado countertop.
When I return to the living room, she’s out like a light. Thank you, God.
I drop into a chair, grateful for the chance to take stock, get a good look at her. Open-mouthed and snoring, my mother’s cheeks are hollow. Her angular jaw is softer. These changes are small, but they make her appear much older. And there’s something different about her breathing, a slight hitch at the end of each exhalation that wasn’t there even a year ago. As her chest rises and falls, I’m suddenly terrified it will stop.
Fear hits like a blow to the solar plexus. My mother is the only person in the world who knows all of me, who remembers me from my beginning. I’m not ready to lose her.
That fucking step stool is getting hacked to pieces and dumped in the trash. Today.
I hurry to her bedroom, leaving the door open a crack so I’ll know if she stirs. The state of the room shows exactly what happened. Her closet door is wide open with the step stool just inside it, although the thing is on its side under a pile of blouses on hangers. A flash of how she fell—the loss of balance in reaching for the top shelf, an attempt to steady herself by grabbing her clothes, then the slow-motion crumple to the hardwood floor—makes me want to smash everything in the room to bits. Instead, I hang each fallen article of clothing with care, breathing in the sharp, lemony scent of Jean Naté that clings to them.
When I go to right the stool the damn thing is jammed, stuck in the doorframe. It comes free on the third yank, but the struggle uproots a segment of floorboard. This flooring is falling to pieces, an obvious hazard.
I ease onto my knees to press the scuffed plank back into place, but the gap below the flooring is large. It’s actually more than a gap. The slat is clever camouflage for a hiding place, one that’s a perfect fit for the item wedged inside. The thing is the size and shape of a home safe box, and wrapped in an old silk scarf—a navy-and-white-polka-dotted one I remember from grade school. It was Mama’s fancy scarf. She used to wear it all the time.
The hairs rise on the back of my neck. A better daughter would respect her privacy, slip the plank back into place, and walk away.
But I don’t.
The box is so heavy it takes both hands to lift. I set it on the floor, then unwind the silk scarf and the thicker red velvet one underneath it.
Too late, I realize the enormity of my mistake. I’ll never be able to unsee the monstrous thing.
It’s a large wood box made of honey oak in an elegant chevron pattern. A tiny brass key taped to the side is a design of curlicue perfection. The lid is lacquered to a satin gloss.
And marked with a swastika.
That word, swastika, brings hot prickles of panic to my cheeks. It sucks all the oxygen out of the room. The swastika is a symbol of bigotry and hatred, and the death of millions of innocents. Of annihilation. For a generation of Germans, it’s also an icon of disgrace, a shared guilt many would rather forget.
Our heritage shames us. My mother has never said those words aloud to me, but I know that’s what she feels. I have always known this.
I was three when we arrived in America and have no memories of the country of my birth or how we came to live in the United States. I can’t even speak the language. Mother never permitted German in the house. We have left the Fatherland behind us, she’d insist when I begged for stories about my father or our homeland. We’re Americans now. You’re an American. After years of arguments and pleading, I stopped asking about the past. I lived in the shadow of her secrets by pretending they didn’t exist.
Have I been naïve, or unwilling to see? The single mother who loved me so fiercely, the woman who worked two jobs to keep a roof over our heads was, what? A goddamned Nazi.
No. I can’t believe it.
I slide the box into my lap, pick at the brittle bit of tape to get at the key. My hand quakes so much the key drops to the floor with a clatter. The coppery tang of fear coats the back of my throat.
No sound from the living room. She’s still asleep. I have to know.
The box unlocks with a soft snick, and I lift the lid, inhaling the sweet vanilla of old paper and ink. Inside is an odd jumble of items. German newspaper articles. A heavy gold locket, engraved with an A in ornate script. An opera program from a 1939 production of Richard Wagner’s Siegfried at the Bayreuth Festival. A pile of letters, the envelopes stiff and speckled with age. Faded postcards. There’s also a photo of Mama in a ruffled nurse’s apron—my mother was a nurse?—and surrounded by a group of children seated cross-legged on the floor. The children look sick, their expressions are listless, and her smile is too tight to be genuine. I flip the photo over, but the note scribbled on the back gives only her name and the date: Allina, 1940.
There are other snapshots of children, too, ones that make me queasy. Long, pristine rows of babies in cradles, wrapped with military precision in identical blankets. Toddlers at meals, seated on low benches. Others standing at attention with heads held high, chubby arms throwing Nazi salutes.
So many children. And no mothers in the photos. Or fathers. Only nurses.
One last photograph, a headshot, peeks out from the bottom of the box, and I pull it free.
The man in the photo is handsome even though he’s not smiling. His slicked-back hair is severe, as are the planes of his face, but his eyes are kind. Our eyes meet, this man’s and mine, and my breath catches. Squeezing my eyes shut, little lights explode behind my eyelids. I can almost remember his face.
When the memories finally come, they flash across my brain with stunning clarity, like snapshots from a photo album.
He’s smiling down at me, face haloed in sunlight, as we walk through a field of sunflowers toward a whitewashed house. His hands, rough and calloused, lift me onto his shoulders before we gallop down a hallway into a room filled with books and a huge, curved fireplace. He slides an arm around Mother’s waist as they lean in to kiss me good night. I remember the spice of his aftershave and the rasp of whiskers against my neck.
We have left the Fatherland behind us.
Examining the photo again, I try to view the man’s face objectively, to avoid inventing similarities if there are none to see. Yet there’s a likeness to the lines of our jaws and noses, and the shape of our eyes is similar. Closing mine, I try to remember more, try to force new images from my brain. But nothing else will come.
“Katchen. What are you doing?”
I turn at the sound of my mother’s sharp, accusing voice. She’s standing in the bedroom doorway, lips pursed.
When her gaze drops to my lap, she turns away with a cry.
I lift the box, offering it without a word. Every question is stuck in my throat along with hundreds of others asked over the years, all gone unanswered. Silent and fighting through waves of panic, I watch my mother attempt to gather herself. She will not look at me. Head bowed low, she presses a hand to her throat, then her stomach. Her breathing is labored, ragged.
Finally, Mama takes a deep breath, straightens her shoulders, and looks me in the eye. Her cheeks are wet. Her green eyes are dark with pain and fear.
“It’s not what you think.” Her good hand trembles as it reaches out, entreating. “Come back to the living room. Please. I can explain everything.”