A woman in Papa’s bedroom?
“I am Marthe,” the woman said. “I’ve heard so many nice things about you both.”
I stood, took a deep breath, and considered the woman. Marthe was a few inches taller than Papa, her dressing gown belted with twine. Brown hair worn in a braid hung down over her lapel. A country woman. Papa had certainly lowered his standards.
Marthe came to stand near to Papa, but he made no move toward her. “Marthe’s from a village outside of Zamosc. A great help to me these years you’ve been away.” Papa looked embarrassed Marthe was there. Who wouldn’t, introducing his girlfriend to his dead wife’s children?
“Why don’t we sit?” Marthe said.
“I would like to go to bed,” I said. It was like a swap out at the market. My eyes went to Matka’s picture on the mantel. Did Papa not miss her? How could he do it?
Papa waved me to him. “Sit with us, Kasia.”
Marthe sat on Matka’s favorite chair, the one she had painted white, with the calico pillow seat. I watched Zuzanna bond with Marthe. Papa looked on, happy to see them connect.
“I wish we could offer you something to eat, but we just finished the last of the bread,” Marthe said.
Papa felt the stubble of his beard. “It is worse than ever now. Since the Russians came, there is barely any food at all. At least the Nazis kept the bakers in flour.”
“So we’ve traded Nazis for Stalin?” I asked. “Even trade if you ask me.”
“I get on well with them,” Papa said. “They have let me keep my job at the center.”
“Let you?” I asked.
“You can get all the Russian cigarettes you want now,” Marthe said, a little too brightly. “But few eggs.”
“It is just a matter of time before we are all calling one another ‘comrade,’?” I said.
“We’ll get on just fine,” Zuzanna said.
“They are looking for former underground members,” Papa said with a pointed look at me. “They took Mazur last week.”
A volt of current went through me, and all of a sudden I could barely breathe. Mazur? He was Pietrik’s childhood friend, a most skilled agent at the highest ranks of the underground. He’d read me my AK oath. A true patriot.
Big breath in, big breath out.
“I’m done with all that,” I said.
“They took us from the camp on a Swedish bus,” Zuzanna said. “You should have seen it as we crossed the border to Denmark, all the people gathered there with welcome signs. They were very nice to us in Sweden too. We flew the Lublin Girl Guides banner someone had found in the Ravensbrück booty piles as we drove in, and you should have heard the cheers. We spent the first night on the floor of a museum.”
“With dinosaurs with big teeth crouched over us,” I said. “No different from the camp.”
Zuzanna fetched her cloth sack. “Then we stayed with a princess at her mansion. Look what they gave us before we left Sweden.” She opened the sack, set a white box on the table, and opened it. “They gave each of us one. Tinned sardines. White bread and butter. Berry jam and a piece of chocolate.”
We had each taken only nibbles of the food, saving it.
“And evaporated milk?” Papa said. “It’s been so long.”
“How kind of them,” Marthe said. “I have a flour ticket I’ve been saving. I can make—”
“Don’t trouble yourself,” I said.
Papa bowed his head and ran his fingers through what was left of his hair.
“I am sorry about your mother,” Marthe said, standing.
“It looks like it,” I said.
“Kasia,” Papa said.
I picked up the white chair, the cushion still warm from Marthe’s rump.
“Good night, Papa,” I said. “Good night, Zuzanna.”
I carried Matka’s chair toward my room, passing the mantel, careful to avert my eyes from Matka’s picture there. It was too hard to look at her face, a new knock to the belly every time. I entered my room and closed the door. No mistress of my father’s would park in my mother’s seat, no matter how much help she was to him.
1945
I followed the nurse into the house and saw an ambulance attendant in the kitchen at the end of the hall. Even from the front door, I could see the potatoes scattered on the floor, the shine of olive oil on tile. How could I have left Paul alone after Dr. Bedreaux’s warnings?
As we neared the kitchen, I saw Paul seated at the table, a nurse taking his pulse. A gush of warmth rushed through my arms.
“You’re okay, Paul. Thank God.”
Paul looked at me. Had he been crying? “We tried to phone you. Can you believe it, Caroline? It’s almost like a dream.”
I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”
“They rang the doorbell,” he said. “It’s all so…surreal.”
“Who rang the doorbell, Paul?”
“Rena.”
“Rena rang the doorbell? You’re not making sense.”
“They just took her upstairs.”
“She’s back?”
My voice sounded distant, foreign.
Paul rubbed a spot on the tablecloth. “She has been at the American Hospital.”
Did he seem happy? Not really. It was all so confusing.
“She hasn’t been able to talk much. Seems a German family took her in.”
I slumped against the doorjamb.
“How wonderful,” was the only thing I could think to say. “I’d better go now.”
I turned to leave.
“Caroline, wait,” Paul said. “Where are you going?”
“This is all so overwhelming.”
“I know. I am sorry, Caroline. Rena has been in the hospital for weeks, too ill to speak.”
I am sorry. I hated those three words. How many times had people said that when Father died? Je suis désolé sounds beautiful in French, but it only made things worse.
“Well, I have to go home,” I said.
I needed time to think and didn’t want to break down in front of him. After all, a woman was alive and had not died a tragic death in a concentration camp. She was no doubt tucked into Paul’s bed upstairs as we spoke.
Paul stared at the potatoes on the floor. “Yes. We’ll talk tomorrow.”
“I mean home to Connecticut,” I said.
“You can’t go home now. This is a shock for all of us.”
“I can’t think straight. I have to go.”
Why didn’t he throw his arms around me and beg me to stay?
“We’ll talk tomorrow and figure all of this out,” Paul said, still rooted in his chair.
Somehow I made it out to the car and back to Mother’s apartment, where I committed myself to voluntary confinement, mostly in bed, dressed in pajama bottoms and Paul’s shirt I’d worn home from his house. The kitchen phone rang a few times until I took the receiver off the hook and left it dangling. “Si vous souhaitez faire un appel, s’il vous pla?t raccrochez et réessayez,” said the recording over and over again until there was a series of short beeps and then nothing.
The door buzzer rang several times a day, but I didn’t answer it.
I self-flagellated by day—allowed my hot tea to cool and then drank it tepid and overmilked—and steeped myself in could-have-beens. Could have been lasting love. Could have been a wedding. A baby. Had I really hocked half of Mother’s silver to nurse another woman’s husband back to health? Betty was right. I had wasted my time.
One morning Mother let herself into the apartment and planted herself in my bedroom doorway, her umbrella dripping on the carpet.
Mother. I’d forgotten she was due to arrive.
“It’s pouring out there,” she said.
Good, I thought. At least others were inside and as miserable as I.
“Heavenly day, Caroline, what is wrong? Are you ill? Why don’t you answer the phone?”
I may not have been French, but was I not allowed to take to my bed and marinate in my own despair?
“Paul’s wife came back,” I said.
“What? From the dead? How is this possible? Where was she all this time?”
“I don’t know. Some hospital.”
“That is incredible,” Mother said. “Well, you have to pull yourself together.”
“I can’t,” I said and pulled the duvet up over my shoulders.
“You are taking a bath, and I’m making you tea. A bath makes everything better.”