Nesha managed to find a parking meter a block away from the restaurant. It felt odd having a man drive her around. Disorienting. Like Nesha himself. Comforting and disorienting at the same time. What was happening to her? Why couldn’t she just be grateful for his company while all hell was breaking loose in her life?
They sat at a booth with high backs for privacy. The waitresses scurried back and forth from the kitchen at the rear, carrying huge trays piled with plates of food. They looked like college students working their way through school, thin cheery girls with muscular arms.
While they waited for their burgers, Rebecca said, “You really think there are terrorists in Canada?”
“It’s an easy country to get into. An easy country to hide in. Canadians are decent, so they don’t expect people to come here and try to kill them.”
“But why would they come here? Surely not that promise about moving the Canadian Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.”
“I’d forgotten about that. Your prime minister was reckless to bring up Jerusalem at all. Now he has the Arabs up in arms — any implication that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews is going to boil their blood. This is why the Muslim Brotherhood is so popular — they tell people what they want to hear. That they’ll spread Islam throughout the world, and they’ll wipe Israel off the map.”
She stared at him while the waitress set down their plates. Rebecca picked up a French fry and chewed thoughtfully.
“You don’t believe me. You’ve grown up in a country where Jews are like everyone else. In Arab countries Jews are less than human. The Arabs couldn’t believe it when Israel was created. The underlings with their own country? Maybe if it was there earlier, the Holocaust wouldn’t have happened. In their rage the Arabs threw all the Jews out of their lands. People who’d lived in Arab countries for generations — they left behind everything they owned. They went to the only country that would take them. Israel.”
“Okay, hold on. What about the peace accord?”
“That’s between governments. Between two presidents. The radicals on the ground have their own agenda.”
He had stopped eating while he talked. Half his hamburger still lay on the dish.
“I thought you were starving,” she said, finishing her fries.
He picked up his burger and took a large bite, chewing with a smile. “I get worked up about this.”
“I hadn’t noticed. What do you want to do while I go find Sentry at the hospital?”
“I’ll drive you and wait for you in the car. I hate hospitals. I can snooze and listen to music. And think about your body.”
He let her off at the Elizabeth Street entrance of Toronto General, where there was less traffic.
“I’ll try to be back in fifteen minutes.”
When she found the room, Mrs. Sentry lay sleeping while her husband and son exchanged heated words in low voices in a corner of the private room. Not a good place for an argument, she thought. Though the patient seemed unperturbed, her head covered in white bandage, an IV solution dripping into her arm. Beneath the covers, wires ran to a heart monitor. Otherwise there was little visible evidence of the injuries she had sustained.
When Erich saw Rebecca, the anger in his face slid beneath the surface. He stepped away from his father toward her.
“How is she?” Rebecca asked.
He looked back at his mother. “Sleeping quietly. They gave her something for the pain.”
His father nodded toward her without expression, though an energy sparked from him that seemed to issue from his unruly hair. He was wearing dark sweatpants and a jacket.
“It’s nice of you to come,” Erich said.
Now she was embarrassed. She hadn’t come to visit. “Have you spoken to Fitzroy today?”
“No. Why?”
“Something’s happened. The man they had in custody. He was killed by another inmate.”
Erich blinked. “Right in prison?”
“I’d like to talk to you about something. Your father too, if he doesn’t mind.”
Erich hesitated, then approached his father, murmuring a few words.
“Killed?” said Sentry. He followed his son to the other side of the bed, near the door.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said to Will Sentry, who waited with his head tilted, “but something unusual seems to be going on. The man who ran down your wife was an Arab national. He might’ve been a terrorist. Someone might’ve had him killed in prison so he wouldn’t be able to talk.”
“Terrorists? Here? I don’t understand,” Sentry said. “What does it have to do with us?”
“You don’t have any Middle Eastern connections?”
“I don’t concern myself with politics.”
“What do you know about Dr. Salim?”
“Why?”
“He’s Egyptian. The man had an Arab passport.”
He rolled his eyes. “Doctor, doctor! Salim’s company is in the government’s pocket. He’s part of the ruling class. Can’t you tell by his clothes? If there are terrorists anywhere, then they’re against the government. You’re barking up the wrong tree.”
“Your wife said your house was broken into —”
“So you’re the one who told the police.”
Her face went hot. “I thought it might be connected to this.”
“Very civic-minded, I’m sure,” he said, smiling, turning on the charm. “But I told the police. It was one of my students. We had a disagreement about his grade. He’s a hothead and wanted to get back at me. So he broke in and made a mess. Nothing to do with anything.”
Erich’s eyes had shifted away abruptly, his jaw set. Was this what they had been arguing about?
“Wolfie.” Mrs. Sentry was mumbling in her sleep. “Wolfie.”
“I’m here, darling,” her husband said, stepping back to her bed. He took her hand and stood watching her face. “I’m right here.”
“She called your father Wolfie,” Rebecca whispered to Erich, still beside her.
“His real name is Wolfgang.”
She supposed it was too German for Canada. “Is your real name Erich Sentry?” She was only half joking.
“It is now. But it used to be Erich Eisenbaum.”
Birdie’s name. “My German’s rusty. Is it a translation?”
“Partly. Eisen means ‘iron’ and baum means ‘tree’ in German. They took away the ‘Ei’ from ‘Eisen’ and were left with ‘Sen.’ So it became Sentry. He used to tell me that story when I was a kid. He was so proud he could come up with an English-sounding name. When I was old enough to translate for myself, I asked him why he didn’t use Irontree. He said it was a ridiculous name because a tree couldn’t be made of iron. Nothing could live in an iron tree, including us.”
Sentry looked up from his wife to his son. He seemed to be following their conversation. When his wife dozed off again, he stepped toward them.
“You forgot that ‘sentry’ means standing on guard,” he said to Erich. “We always have to be vigilant to protect ourselves.”
“Against what?” she asked.
“The world is filled with danger.”
“I’ve noticed,” she said. “I understand someone tried to kill you a few days ago.”
She glanced at Erich, the probable source of the information.
“I can’t help feeling it’s because I met your cousin. If you’d tell me more about her, maybe I could figure this thing out.” She didn’t mean it to sound like a challenge, but her impatience was probably surfacing in her voice.
“There’s nothing to tell.” He fixed her with brown eyes that professed sincerity and reason. Then spoiled it by adding, “Leave her out of it.”
Rebecca wasn’t good at taking orders. “Her name was also Eisenbaum. She never married?”
“Doctor, please! Let her rest in peace!”
Rebecca was startled. As if her question was offensive. And peace was not a word she would have used for the murdered woman. If there was such a thing, she doubted the woman was resting in it, but she wouldn’t burden him by saying so.
“I wanted to tell you — I’m having doubts about the homeless man. What if he didn’t kill her? What if the same man who ran down your wife killed your cousin?”
He suddenly lifted his hands over his ears. “Cousin! Cousin! Stop calling her that.”
Rebecca looked at Erich, who stared at his feet. “I don’t understand —”
“She was my sister!” Sentry leaned back against the wall, ashen. “She was my sister. My beautiful, brilliant sister. Don’t ever call her Birdie! Her name was Frieda. She was always the smart one in the family. You believe it?” He appraised Rebecca, his eyes bitter. “You want to know the worst part? She was a doctor once. Can you imagine? Just like you. A doctor. At a time when it was next to impossible for a woman. The insane creature you saw in the backyard was just like you once.”
She couldn’t move. A cold nausea rose in her. Funny the way your body reacted to words. Only words, but the body took in their import as if they were bullets aimed at the chest. She pictured the dirty heart-shaped face beneath the cap, the unfocused eyes. The horrors of the camp had destroyed her.
“I can’t imagine what she went through ...”
“You don’t want to. You wouldn’t have survived what she went through. Did you ever have to kill a baby?”
“Dad ...”
“In the first camp she was sent to. She told me she delivered babies of women who were foolish enough to get pregnant. If the Nazis saw the babies, mother and child would be gassed. So she saved the mother by killing the baby. How can someone stay sane after that?”
She was the doctor his wife had spoken of! The one who had lost her soul. She had not only smothered other women’s babies. She had saved her sister-in-law’s life by smothering her own niece. Sentry would never know.
Rebecca’s heart twisted with pain. In a flash she saw herself delivering Miriam, hearing the plaintive cry for the first time. What would she have done in the other’s place? Unthinkable.
“After that,” he continued, “she was sent to a camp where she worked in the office. Not practising, of course. Keeping records, that sort of thing. It was better there, but it was too late. The damage was done. You know where ‘Birdie’ came from? Her Jewish name was Faygele. Little bird. She said that was why she was going crazy. Because a bird couldn’t live in an iron tree. She called herself Birdie after that. Even half-crazy she still understood irony.”
Rebecca wavered where she stood. Was she still in the room? The hospital? The old woman’s face appeared in the air, confused, distressed.
Erich took a deep breath beside her. “Dad. Maybe you should sit down.”
His father retreated to the further chair. The old woman dissolved into the wall.
“I’m sorry,” Erich said. “You didn’t need to hear all that.”
In her peripheral vision, a figure appeared in the doorway of the room. Nesha. Bad timing.
“I was wondering what happened to you,” Nesha said, observing Erich.
She had to snap out of it. “Sorry. I lost track of time. This is Erich and his father, Will. This is Nesha. He’s visiting from California.”
“Your friend from the States.” Erich nodded at him, but gave her a sidelong glance that implied subterfuge on her part.
She hadn’t lied, only omitted crucial information. The gender of her friend. She gave Erich a half-hearted smile and said goodbye.
“You’re very quiet,” Nesha said on the way to the elevator.
“I’m not feeling well.”
“You were okay when I dropped you off. You mad because I came up?”
“Of course not.”
The middle-aged woman in the elevator stepped backward to let them in.
“Nice-looking young man. He wasn’t supposed to see me?”
She cringed at the woman listening behind them. “Don’t be ridiculous. We just met last week.”
“Sometimes things happen fast. I saw the look between you.”
“You don’t understand.” She turned to find the woman staring up at the lighted floor numbers changing as they descended.
The elevator stopped at the first floor. The woman stepped around them and hurried off. They headed toward the Elizabeth Street exit.
“It’s a tragic family. I’m learning more about them than I want to know and it’s upsetting me.” She looked at him sideways. His eyes searched hers, waiting.
“The woman who lived in their backyard. The dead woman. She wasn’t Sentry’s cousin. He says she was his sister. His sister. He was probably too embarrassed to admit it. He says she was a doctor. That she was ... he says she was just like me.”
Nesha stopped and took her hand. “Impossible. No one’s like you. He’s distraught and he’s lashing out.”
“But she was a doctor. How could she become what she was?”
“You didn’t have to die in the war to be destroyed by it,” he said.
Nesha had been one of those casualties. But Rebecca couldn’t explain her distress to him, the kinship she felt with the older woman. She could hardly explain it to herself. She was a successful young physician, her future stretching out before her. Yet the small, sad face hung like a moon on that horizon. What if one day she found it looking back at her in the mirror?
“You need some rest. Come on, I’ll take you home.”
Rebecca was changing for bed when the phone rang. She glanced at the clock on her night table. It was after eleven.
“Hi, Rebecca. It’s Susan.”
“Susan! Are you all right?”
“I’m feeling a bit better.”
Was she whispering? Rebecca sat down on the edge of the bed, relieved. “I can hardly hear you.”
“How’s Miriam?”
This was a change. “She’s holding her own.” Don’t push. Don’t say it.
“Rebecca, I’m so sorry about everything. I know I’ve made things difficult for everybody. I just ...” She sniffled.
Rebecca’s heart contracted at the sound of Susan weeping. “Don’t cry, sweetie. It’s not your fault. These things happen.” She hesitated. “If you’re feeling up to it you could drop into the hospital for a visit.” There, she’d said it.
“Got to go!” Susan murmured. “Jeff’s coming.”