“Yes, we are,” Rose managed to say, too confused to dispute this characterization—newly arrived? Poor girl? “I’m sorry, who are you?”
“Oh, did I not say? Forgive me! I’m Dotty Epstein, Kurt Epstein’s wife, formerly Dotty Gimbel, of the Philadelphia Gimbels, not the New York Gimbels—but the same extended family, those are my cousins.” She spoke gaily, rapidly, as if any minute another voice—another friend or another cousin—would join in. “And you are Rose Downes, Gerhard Zimmer’s sister, are you not?”
“I am,” Rose said. “But I’m sorry, I don’t know you.” Gerhard? What did Gerhard have to do with this?
“Did your brother not tell you?”
“Tell me what?”
“Oh, this must be so absolutely bewildering to you!” She said it with such merriment that Rose felt like any objection, even the most clear-eyed of objections, would be taken personally, ruin all her fun. “My husband, Kurt Epstein, and Gerhard went to school together in Vienna. A lifetime ago, of course. Is his name familiar to you?”
“What? No.” Rose felt an intense need to sit down. She steadied herself against the refrigerator door. Kurt Epstein? Who? The thought of someone from Vienna here in Los Angeles filled her with a strange expectant dread.
“Well, he says he remembers you, from when you were a tiny little thing. Anyway Kurt was across the pond for work—he’s a filmmaker, you know.” Dotty dropped her voice, as if she were bestowing a most delicious secret. “And he was in London and ran into your brother. They hadn’t seen each other since they were children, practically. When he learned you had just moved to L.A.—”
“Two years ago,” Rose cut in, “not just.”
Thomas, scraping food into the trash bin, raised a questioning eyebrow at her. She waved him off, turned away. She couldn’t begin to explain.
“We’ve been here for more than a decade, and we know so many others from Vienna. You must come over. We’re in Brentwood. Where are you?”
“Mid-Wilshire,” Rose answered, feeling relief that they were in different neighborhoods, a thirty-minute drive from each other.
“Ah, close to Wilshire Boulevard Temple! Lucky for you.”
“Yes,” Rose said, not sure what she was saying yes to, exactly, but finding it impossible to say no.
“Are you members yet?”
“What? No.”
“Well, you must join. I’ll introduce you to Rabbi Magnin. He’s wonderful and charming and—urbane—not like most rabbis. We go far back, my family and his family knew each other—the retail business, you know. But why am I speaking of Rabbi Magnin? I am calling to invite you over this Sunday afternoon. We’re having some friends over, fellow expats, for coffee and cake. You’ll come over and it will be lovely.”
“That does sound lovely,” Rose said, “but we can’t.” She worked to sound regretful.
“Oh,” Dotty said. “But you must. Kurt will be terribly disappointed, as will I.”
“We cannot, not this week anyhow,” Rose said. “But I thank you for the invitation.” The more tense she felt, the more prim she acted. She didn’t want to be rude, and she was sure that Thomas would tell her she was being silly—aren’t you just the slightest bit curious? Maybe you would recognize him when you saw him. But whatever curiosity she felt was trumped by her unease. Why did people think that simply because she had been born in a particular city to a particular set of circumstances, she would want to socialize with others who shared those circumstances?
“You’ll come another time,” Dotty said. “They are wonderful get-togethers, I promise you.”
“Yes, another time,” Rose said, and soon hung up.
“Who was that?” Thomas asked.
“That,” Rose said, “was a force of nature. A woman by the name of Dotty Epstein. She says that her husband, Kurt, might have known my brother back in Vienna.”
“Might?” Thomas asked.
“Did,” Rose corrected herself, smoothing out a tea towel on the kitchen counter. “He did know Gerhard. Apparently they ran into each other in London recently. I don’t know why Gerhard didn’t mention it to me in his last letter. It’s so like him not to mention it.”
“So these Epsteins live here in L.A. and invited us over. Why did you say no? We’re free this Sunday.”
“I don’t know,” Rose said. She continued to smooth out the towel, folding it into thirds. “I didn’t want to.”
“Why not? It might be fun.”
“I simply didn’t want to,” she said querulously. Of course Thomas would think that it might be fun, Thomas, who saw the world’s ugliness but didn’t shirk away from it, managed to come out as an optimist, merely glad to be on the other side. She was not like him. She imagined meeting people from Vienna, being asked which school she had attended, which neighborhood her family had lived in, and though these questions were innocuous enough, the simple possibility of them felt like something hostile. She had been eleven when she left, not a small child, but there was little she remembered. She had one photograph of her family, taken a few summers before she and Gerhard left. They stood on a footbridge over the river in Bad Ischl, her father looking at something outside the frame. Her mother gazed directly at the camera, one hand resting on Gerhard’s shoulder (he was nearly her height then) and the other on Rose’s small kerchiefed head. Rose was the only one smiling, grinning, really. There were many reasons Rose could hardly look at the picture, but chief among them was this: She didn’t recognize that little girl.
Now Rose folded her arms across her chest, trying to bat back her tears. Thomas knew that gesture, and he said, “Oh Rosie,” and took her in his arms.
“I’m all right,” she said. “I really am.” And she was, here with him.
He breathed into her hair: “All right, then.”
Later that night, in bed, when Thomas reached for her, she pulled back. “I’m going to the doctor on Friday to get my new diaphragm—remember?”
“Well, there are certain things we can still do,” he said, and bit her bottom lip teasingly. She tasted the smokiness of his scotch. He was small but lithe; they fit each other well.
She closed her eyes. Thomas had always been able to make her feel good. She felt greedy when he touched her, looked forward to her mind quieting.
But now she spoke into his chest: “Thomas. We can’t.”
“I know. I was only—” and he pulled away, lay on his back. “Did you think I would?” he said to the ceiling. “Like that? After all these years?”
“No,” she said. “I don’t know. I wanted to be sure.”