35. Theo #3
She patted my hand. One of the tears escaped, tracing a path through the wrinkles that lined her cheeks.
Fishing a tissue out of the giant satchel she’d carried as long as I could remember, she wiped the tear away.
“You’re a sweet boy. But my mother died cursing me on the back ward of that terrible place.
Still, it was nice to dream of her. When I woke, I thought of my sister. And I remembered this.”
She dug in her purse again. “I don’t think I’ve ever showed this to you, zeeskeit.” Sweetness, it meant. “I took it to the home with me, but I put it safe away. After that dream, though—I can’t explain it, but I wanted to look at my sister’s face.”
I held still, barely breathing, as she took a small envelope from her purse. Her trembling fingers opened the flap.
In her creased hand lay a sepia photograph.
From it, Ella Carter stared up at me, wearing a black velvet coat with a white fur collar and clutching a tiny puppy in her arms. Though she was a little older here, I recognized her from the newspaper photographs that had been taken to celebrate her return.
I thought of the picture from my dream, the one that had drifted just out of reach: a sliver of black velvet, the slant of a child’s face, the wide dark eyes of a small dog. An arctic finger traced its way down my spine. “I don’t understand, Grandma. Where did this come from?”
She looked down at the ancient photograph.
“Charles, that gonif, handed it to me, as payment for his guilt. Not that he admitted he’d stolen our Lily—no, he would never say that!
He said it was to ease Mama’s mind, that if it made her feel better to have such a thing, he would give it to her, and gladly. But pah! It was all a lie.”
She pursed her lips, as if to lock a curse inside.
“Easy for him to act as if it was all in her mind, as if he was giving us these pictures of his Ella to pacify a crazy person. But my mama wasn’t crazy, and this was like an ice pick through the heart.
Better Lily should be poor and with her family than rich and with those goyim. ”
My heart started pounding, making me lightheaded. “Grandma, do you know exactly when Lily disappeared? What day?”
His grandmother’s thin eyebrows rose. “Why do you ask, zeeskeit?”
“I—no reason.” I fought to keep my face blank, not to think of the little girl lying in the morgue. The one that hadn’t been Ella. “Looking at these pictures, I guess I just wondered how much you remember.”
“I remember the moment I knew she was gone,” she said slowly. “The way it made me feel, colder inside even than the snow. I know it was a weekday, because the milkman came that afternoon. But the date…ach, no, Theodore.”
“That’s okay, Grandma,” I said, hiding my disappointment. I’d have to find another way. “So, Charles Carter gave you this photo? Do you have any others?”
My heart thumped unevenly as she reached into the envelope and drew out another picture.
In this one, Ella/Lily looked a little younger.
Her blond hair was a bell-shaped curve, the polished strands cupping her face.
She stood next to a grand piano, her hand resting on its polished surface.
Behind her was a window, through which I could glimpse the wrought iron fence that hemmed Gramercy Park.
I had stood in that room, had touched that piano. This was the Carters’ apartment.
“My Lily loved music.” My grandmother sounded wistful.
“On Friday nights, we would go to the synagogue on Eldridge Street—how beautiful it was!—and even before she was old enough to talk, she’d dance in my mother’s lap when we sang.
” She ran the tip of one gnarled finger over the surface of the photo.
“In the old country, Mamme used to play the piano. We couldn’t afford such a thing here, especially after Papa died, so she drew one for us and sang the notes when we pressed the paper keys, so we might pretend. Lily loved that best of all.”
With a pang, I imagined a tiny Lily and her older sister kneeling on the floor of a threadbare apartment, playing an imaginary piano together. “That sounds like fun, Grandma.”
Grandma Susi gave me a sad smile. If the other one had reminded me of casting shutters wide, this one made me think of curtains being drawn for the day, while the night lurked outside.
“She had such a pretty voice, my mother. You know the story of the canaries in the coal mines, Theodore? The ones they would send down with the miners to warn of disaster?”
Puzzled, I regarded her. “Sure. But what—”
“When things were good, my mother would sing. Especially one song, a song of hope, of fleeing from trouble. She sang while she hung out the laundry, when I made dinner alongside her. But when she fell silent, that’s how we knew the darkness would come.”
Every hair on my body stood at attention. “What song was that, Grandma?”
Her eyes softened dreamily. “Ah, I remember it like it was yesterday.” She hummed a few bars, and with icy, eerie certainty, I knew what she would say even before she spoke. “Bye Bye, Blackbird.”