Chapter 46 Ada
Ada
Following the trial, Ada is paraded past the press without being permitted so much as a goodbye to Gordon, Ingrid, anyone.
From beloved actress to cautionary tale.
Maybe it will be nice to avoid the press, the stories, the gossip for a few months. Even if she must do so behind bars at
the California Institution for Women.
When she’s placed in a small cell, her racing heart acknowledges nothing beyond what it experienced the last time she was
imprisoned. Except this is not the Oranjehotel. Her captors are not the Gestapo. She will be permitted visits. She is not
awaiting interrogation or torture. Even if such truths are ones her mind cannot entirely trust.
And when her first visitor comes a couple weeks later, it is Mother.
Ada waits at a small table in an otherwise empty cell while the guard opens the door for Constance, who murmurs something,
then presses a few bills into his palm. After the door closes and locks, he walks away.
Mother doesn’t want eavesdroppers, then. A realization that makes Ada feel no better about this visit.
She wears a smart pair of trousers, a blouse, and an elegant cloche resting atop neatly styled hair. A sharp contrast to Ada’s unsightly prison garb. Constance looks her daughter over with obvious disapproval before sitting down.
“Really, darling, it did not need to come to this—although contempt is a fitting sentence, considering the contempt you and
your sister both held toward my efforts to guide you, to protect you, to raise you better than this.”
In the past, Ada has glimpsed all sides of Mother—the harsh critic, the disciplinarian, the woman who praised her, loved her.
Mothered her. Beneath those facets was always the woman Ada had never seen, not until recently. One whose chosen punishment
for her children was to cut them off from each other entirely.
“I did my best,” Ada replies simply, because if Mother is still with Dietrich, anything Ada says might be reported back to
him, might endanger herself or Ingrid.
“Your best? No, you let yourself be swayed by your sister, by your obsession with this war crimes nonsense, by anything except
reason, just like when you were a girl. Even after the measures I took in Arnhem, you haven’t learned. Should I have left
you imprisoned for months instead of days? Would that have taught you better?”
The measures she took in Arnhem? Last time, Ada was imprisoned following Gestapo arrest. Nothing to do with Mother.
Or perhaps everything to do with Mother.
As her challenge settles over the room, Ada can’t speak. Mother knew Ada helped Ingrid escape, and she confiscated Ingrid’s
letters. Perhaps she knew much more about Ada’s life under occupation. Enough to orchestrate her daughter’s arrest.
Surely not. Yet the thought is all too easy to believe, as much as it prompts a deep ache in Ada’s heart. She has learned
the twisted nature of her mother’s love all too well.
“The Oranjehotel . . . That was your doing?”
“No, that was your doing. You and your resistance, your Jewish dance instructor, your meddling where you didn’t belong.” Mother’s eyes flash,
dangerous and threatening, before she draws a steadying breath. “Fortunately, I cared for you enough to put a stop to it.”
Ada presses shaking hands to the table as heat sears every part of her body. “You had Dietrich arrest me?”
“Not a real arrest, of course; I was quite clear that no harm should come to you. After I found that note around your hairpin,
Gregor and I discussed our suspicions and concerns regarding your activities, so I asked him to frighten you a little, nothing
more. To leave you imprisoned for a few days without explanation, then make it appear as if his men had mistakenly arrested
the wrong girl. Had you continued making such poor decisions, eventually you would have been arrested without my intervention,
then God knows what might have happened.”
As if Ada never understood the dangers posed by resistance work. As if she was an impressionable girl influenced by her subversive
Jewish dance instructor. As if she was not a young woman who made her own decisions to defend her country and help the oppressed,
all with complete awareness of what might happen if she were caught.
Mother places a hand over Ada’s. “You were never in any real danger at the Oranjehotel; it was simply a teaching tactic. I
kept you safe, my darling.”
Arrested by order of her own mother who was foolish enough to believe her instructions would be followed. Tortured without
her knowledge or consent. Then freed by her entreaty, although that was merely an act.
Ada stands and steps back. “Shall I show you how well you protected me?”
With shaking fingers, she finds the buttons at her chest. Unfastens one, then another, her speed increasing until the movements match her breaths while Mother stares in blatant confusion. A trance that breaks only when Ada removes her blouse.
“What are you doing?” When Ada grabs her undergarments, Mother’s chair nearly topples in her haste to get up, then she catches
Ada’s wrist. “Enough, that is quite enough! I said stop!”
“So did I! Not at first, I tried not to say anything at first, but by the end it was all I could say. Stop. Please stop.”
Holding Mother’s gaze, she takes off her brassiere. “He didn’t listen to me. He didn’t listen to you either.”
Suddenly this cell is as cold as the one in the Oranjehotel, where the only heat came from the terror rushing through her
veins, the tears escaping down her cheeks, the blood seeping from her skin. She watches Mother’s eyes fall to her breasts.
To the scar. To the key symbolic of Dietrich’s crest.
Stunned silence, then a sob. “Oh, my darling girl . . .”
Their matching unsteady breaths cut through the quiet as Mother sinks into her chair, motionless, her eyes glassy and glazed.
As if she’s not entirely present. Ada’s heartbeats throb in her chest as she waits for an apology, an expression of concern
or regret, anything to acknowledge what she’s done and the nature of the man she brought into their lives.
Somewhere down the hall, a muffled voice breaks the stillness, prompting Mother to spring to her feet. “For God’s sake, cover
yourself. This is most inappropriate.”
Ada doesn’t oblige. Mother is already snatching her clothes, dressing her, muttering to herself.
“I should have removed you from that ballet school. Then you never would have been coerced into such reckless behavior and
this would have been avoided.”
Not another glance at her scar, not an embrace, nothing more. Because Constance will never be the mother Ada wants her to be, only the mother she is.
Once Ada is dressed, Mother takes her shoulders. “When your father left, then Ingrid, then you, I found no solace in resenting
what I couldn’t change. Each time, difficult though it was, I realized I had to move forward. To forgive. So must you.” She
tightens her hold. “Leave the past where it belongs.”
If Ada had found a way to forget, she would have done so long ago.
Clinging to pain serves no purpose; neither can it be entirely left behind. Pain shifts and eases but always remains.
“You wanted to be with him, didn’t you?” she asks through her teeth. “It was never due to fear for our safety. And you never
lost touch with him.”
“You wouldn’t have understood, not when both your sister and your dance teacher corrupted your politics. So I gave you a version
of events you would accept. Few can entirely fault a desperate parent doing what she must.” Mother arches a brow in a slight
challenge. “Life is acting, darling. You know that.”
Those words drive the dagger into Ada’s final remaining hope the same way a dagger once sliced through her flesh. She presses
her palms to her stomach, suppressing the urge to wail, to sob, to sink to her knees and lament her own foolishness. Ingrid
was right, has always been right. Their mother has never been a woman capable of learning, of changing, of being anything
other than the manipulator and liar she has proven herself to be. Despite Ada giving her chance after undeserved chance to
be something different.
“Eventually I was going to tell you Gregor and I stayed together. You might have disputed me at first, but you would have
accepted it soon enough. Appeasing your sister has always been impossible, but you are far more gracious.”
All along, he’s been here with Mother and supervising her sister. But Mother is wrong; Ada was willing to accept repentance, to extend forgiveness. She will never condone the fascist beliefs Mother pretended to renounce, will never accept her relationship.
Ada has not been gracious. She has been too gullible, too trusting, too foolishly hopeful.
“Don’t be stubborn, Aleida. Gregor works for the FBI. Do you expect to make a convincing case against him? Give up the negatives
and any additional copies of the documents. I know you have them. I looked everywhere for them. Let them go so we can move
on with our lives.”
Mother has been in Gordon’s house, looking for Ada’s evidence, all while Ada thought Ingrid was being far too suspicious.
She wants to order Mother to get out, to never return. Except, if she leaves before Ada has conceded to her wishes, she might
use Ingrid as a perverted teaching tactic to encourage Ada’s cooperation.
There is only one way to protect herself. To protect Ingrid. She must be the gracious daughter Mother expects, even though
these will be the most difficult lines she’s ever had to deliver.
“I don’t wish to dwell in the past,” Ada says quietly. “But without Ingrid, we can’t be a family.”
That word, that single word certain to win Mother over. Her expression doesn’t change, but a slight softening occurs around
the corners of her eyes. An indication Ada’s approach is working.
“Once I’m released, Gordon will throw a party to celebrate, so perhaps we can speak to Ingrid privately there? If you help
me, I’ll give you my remaining evidence. We can put all this behind us.”