Serendipity's Footsteps Read online

  “Everyone’s sorry,” he said, his face sagging. “Helpless, but sorry. People’s shallow sentiments are about as effective as these braces.” He shoved his braces, sending them clattering to the floor. “They’re not going to cure a damn thing. America’s sorry about the war in Europe, but not enough to fight the Nazis. When people hear your story, they’ll tell you they’re sorry, too. But ‘sorry’ doesn’t change laws or save people.” He reached for her hand, his fear for her showing on his face. “You shouldn’t have to rip out your heart to ease their consciences.”

  “I won’t,” she said truthfully. Her heart was already scabbed over, drained of blood. “I’ll be fine.”

  —

  She was fine, perfectly fine, one week later as she walked into a throng of the most elegantly dressed people she’d ever seen to make her way into Madison Square Garden. Or that’s what she told herself. Mrs. Ashbury braced her arm with a steady, white-gloved hand as they started toward the entrance, but Dalya craned her neck, looking for Henry. Thomas was helping him out of the car and into his wheelchair, and Henry lifted his hand with a smile.

  “I’ll see you inside,” he called to her. “I have to use the secret entrance,” he added as Thomas wheeled him past. “It’s reserved for only the most important people, you know.”

  She smiled, but couldn’t bring herself to laugh. The fur coat she was wearing was one that Mrs. Ashbury had lent her, and its bulky warmth made her claustrophobic among the waves of people. She longed to follow Henry through whichever quiet door he’d entered, but that was impossible. The Night of Stars, as Mrs. Ashbury had explained to her, was a fund-raiser for Jewish refugees, one of the largest in Manhattan. It was the “ideal opportunity” for Dalya’s story to be heard by the most influential people in the city. She’d told her what a privilege it was to be able to share what had happened to her, so that other victims might find refuge, too. Dalya had agreed, and now she felt herself being caught up in Mrs. Ashbury’s enthusiasm. There was a nervousness concealed in Mrs. Ashbury’s poised face tonight, though, as if she wasn’t convinced that Dalya would be true to her word.

  Mr. and Mrs. Ashbury led her swiftly through the crowd, not giving her time for second thoughts. “Stay by my side,” Mrs. Ashbury whispered. “I’ll introduce you to everyone you need to know.” She squeezed Dalya’s hand, smiling at her with something akin to pride.

  Stepping into the main lobby, Dalya entered a gilded world of tuxedos and candy-colored gowns. Women with coiffed hair were draped on the arms of men sipping martinis at the bar, trailing elegance like perfume. It seemed so impossible to her that this world could exist parallel to the one she’d come from, that while these people fluttered about in their brilliance, others shivered in threadbare clothes and filthy barracks, starving. She might’ve stood staring all night, but Mr. Ashbury brushed her shoulders to remove her coat, making her start. He and Mrs. Ashbury were immediately drawn into conversation with some couples standing nearby, and Dalya was left awkwardly on the edge of their circle, waiting for Mrs. Ashbury to introduce her.

  She tucked her bare arms to her sides, afraid that the golden air might corrode on contact with her impostor skin. But it didn’t, and a moment later, she took a relieved breath when she spotted Henry across the room, leaning against the counter of the Coca-Cola soda fountain. With his wheelchair tucked discreetly behind the counter, and his braces hidden underneath his tuxedo, he looked like every other able-bodied man there. She stepped toward him, and his eyes found hers. Astonishment was a look she hadn’t seen on his face before, and it made him look younger, more vulnerable, and very handsome.

  “I feel like everyone is staring at me,” she whispered, smoothing her pale green gown self-consciously. “Do I look out of place?”

  Henry shook his head, struggling to speak. Finally, he said quietly, “You look more like you belong here than anyone else.”

  “Because I look like a refugee?” she said.

  “No.” His eyes swept over her gown and came back to rest on her face. “Because you look beautiful.”

  Her cheeks flared, and she smiled shyly. She had an urge to move closer to him, to stand beside him for support. If she did, would he slip his arm around her waist like she wanted him to? She leaned forward, her feet ready to take another step, but then Mrs. Ashbury was at her side.

  “Here you are.” She tucked an arm around her. “Come. Both of you. Dalya, I’ve been telling Mr. and Mrs. Cavendash about you, and they’d love to talk with you.”

  As Mrs. Ashbury steered her away, Dalya glanced back to see anger in Henry’s eyes. She knew how he felt about what his mother was asking of her, but she hoped, for all of their sakes, he wouldn’t make a scene.

  “I won’t do this.” He leaned toward Dalya, whispering, “I won’t translate your pain.” Shaking his head at his mother, he added a brisk “I’ll go find our seats inside.” Mrs. Ashbury flushed with embarrassment as he turned away.

  “No.” Dalya tried to keep the panic from her voice, but Henry must have heard it, because he stopped. “Please…stay. I need you here with me.” Yes, she needed his words for the English she still had trouble forming smoothly. But more than that, she wanted him beside her. She couldn’t do this, any of it, without him.

  He hesitated, but as he looked at her, his eyes turned tender, until finally, he nodded and followed her through the crowd. She straightened her shoulders as her resolve returned, then extended her hand toward Mr. and Mrs. Cavendash. “I’m Dalya Amschel,” she said in slow, careful English. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

  Then, because she knew it was what they were waiting for, she began.

  There was a moment when anguish threatened, strangling her breath. But her body took over, forming the words it needed to say, while she watched from somewhere outside herself. As she talked and Henry translated, the words sounded more and more like they belonged in someone else’s story, to someone else’s life, until she almost believed it hadn’t happened to her at all. Almost. Her family’s faces grew blurry and distant, losing their familiar curves and colors, becoming more and more like strangers.

  When she finished and looked up, it was into horror-stricken faces. Mrs. Cavendash was wiping her eyes with the handkerchief Mr. Ashbury had offered her, mumbling, “Oh, my dear, my heart breaks for you.”

  Dalya nodded politely, but their sympathetic words slipped from her skin, falling to the floor to get trampled. After they’d apologized to the point of embarrassment, silence settled over the group, as if no one knew how to move on from what they’d heard. Mr. and Mrs. Cavendash filtered back into the crowd but were soon replaced by others. Some were strangers, but others were famous people who might have inspired awe in the Dalya of Before. Ethel Merman paused to take her hand and shed some lovely tears, and Danny Kaye offered her his kind smile. They promised to dedicate their performances to her; they told her she was the star tonight, not them. The Dalya of Before would’ve swooned, would’ve asked for autographs in her girlish, giggly fashion. But the Dalya of After was numb as she mechanically gave her own performance again and again.

  Finally, it was Henry who ended it, interrupting Mrs. Ashbury during another round of introductions to announce that the show was about to begin. Mrs. Ashbury, for a moment, looked disappointed. But she recovered with “Of course. Let’s go sit down.” She clasped Dalya’s hand. “You were brilliant, my dear. You’ve done such a service. You should be proud.”

  Then she drifted away on Mr. Ashbury’s arm.

  Dalya put a hand out to steady herself against the wall, but instead, Henry took it gently into his own. She hadn’t dared to look at him while she’d talked, afraid of seeing pity. Now she did. What she saw was her own calm face mirrored as a statue in his eyes.

  “Well, you did it.” He studied her worriedly. “Was it horrible?”

  With anyone else, she would’ve lied, because the truth made her seem too warped, too unnatural. But because it was Henry, she answered honestly. “No. I didn�
�t feel a thing.”

  “Good,” he said. “It’s better to distance yourself. You didn’t need to relive it.”

  She stared at him, wishing he hadn’t said that. Didn’t he realize that was the most horrible part of it? If she couldn’t feel pain anymore for the ones she’d loved the most, what hope did she possibly have?

  She helped him with his wheelchair and they made their way to their orchestra seats. Soon, the lights dimmed and the show began to the cheers of the thousands of people filling the arena. There was a speech by Eleanor Roosevelt, and Glenn Miller conducting his swing band to “In the Mood.” There was laughter, toe-tapping music, and applause that made the floor quake. But the music and lights were a faint buzzing in Dalya’s ears, an acute reminder of a joy she couldn’t be part of.

  The trembling didn’t start until the evening finally ended, and then it came suddenly and ceaselessly. Mr. and Mrs. Ashbury had decided to join some friends for drinks, sending Dalya and Henry back to the house with Thomas. The ride was blessedly short, but as Dalya pressed into the seat, drained of the adrenaline that had sustained her through the night, the trembling began.

  She tried to hide it in the folds of her coat, but once she stepped into the foyer and Henry took her coat, he startled at her shaking shoulders.

  “What is it?” he asked, but when she tried to speak, no words would come. He led her to the elevator at the back of the house.

  Numbly, she followed him to her room, and when he lay down on her bed and opened his arms, she went into them without a sound. His arms encircled her as her head dropped to his shoulder in exhaustion. She gave no thought to judgments, or their recklessness, only to his warmth and the steadiness of his heartbeat in her ear. He didn’t move to touch her or kiss her, but if he had, she would’ve given herself to him without hesitation. She wondered if he’d soften under her touch, if he’d give up his own anger if their bodies met. She wondered if it would bring her own feelings, any feelings, to the surface. But he didn’t move. Instead, he held her, for hours it seemed, until her violent trembling stilled and she drifted into soundless sleep.

  When she woke later to the shuffling footsteps of Mr. and Mrs. Ashbury passing her door, her limbs were sore and stiff, her bed empty and cold.

  But over the next months, as winter stretched into spring and then to summer, the memory of Henry’s heartbeat stayed while memories of her family slipped further and further from her mind. There were more talks, at Mrs. Ashbury’s teas and church meetings and fund-raisers. Each time, Dalya’s tale got easier in the telling. And because she could almost believe it hadn’t happened to her, her lack of tears didn’t feel so much like a betrayal.

  BEA

  Bea couldn’t go through with it. She stood in front of the full-length mirror, staring at the terror-stricken face peering back at her. There was no expectant awe washing over her, like her mother and friends said it would. There was only suffocation as she was sucked under a flood of silk and pearl beading. This was not her dress; it had been handpicked by her mother, altered and delivered to their front door without Bea ever once uttering a word about it. This was not her engagement ring; it had belonged to Gerald’s grandmother, a family heirloom that he’d had resized to fit her finger. It felt foreign on her hand—heavy, cold, and impossibly tight. And these pale pink shoes on her feet. They would never be hers. They would always belong to her mother. Her mother, who’d worn them on the day she married her father. Who’d worn them for him on every wedding anniversary until he died. These shoes belonged to a woman who loved. And there was one thing Bea knew with certainty. She did not love Gerald Hawthorn. She never would.

  When her mother had brought her the shoes, Bea had hesitated. The last time she’d seen them, her mother had slapped her for getting a red wine stain on one toe. The shoes had been cleaned since then, and there was only the faintest trace of the wine left. To the untrained eye, the stain would never be noticeable.

  “Here,” her mother had said, all business. “Your father would’ve wanted you to wear them on your wedding day.”

  “No, Mom. I can’t. They’re yours. They mean too much to you.”

  Her mother had shaken her head. “No.” Her glance skimmed over the shoes. “I don’t know why I held on to them, except to keep them for you. Ridiculous, really, to get attached to a silly pair of shoes.”

  Her mother’s nonchalance when she gave Bea the shoes made wearing them even more excruciating. Had she forgotten what true love felt like, or had she just buried the memory so deep it had become distorted in her mind?

  Bea glanced at herself in the mirror again, cringing at the sight of the shoes. The nausea came on violently, sending her flying to the bathroom. She barely made it in time. She was patting her face with a towel when her mother came in.

  “Nerves?” She arched her eyebrow in a way that dared Beatrice to offer up another explanation.

  “Yes,” Bea muttered. She knew her mother had noticed her rounded waistline, tightening skirts, and lack of appetite. Her mother also knew about Bea’s short-lived fling with Harvard-dropout-turned-musician Luke Tannen. Benjamin, her stepfather, hadn’t been home from his business travels often enough to notice the romance or the effect it had on Bea’s waistline. And Bea was positive her mother had never mentioned it to him. Instead, her mother had pushed the idea of marriage to a “more acceptable” young man, and she’d done it with such subtlety that Benjamin had never questioned the lightning-fast courtship and hurriedly arranged wedding. Of course, her mother had made sure that Bea invited Gerald into her bed so that Gerald would never doubt when Bea told him she was expecting his child. Her mother’s capacity to mask deceit never ceased to amaze Bea.

  “Here.” Her mother offered her a package of saltines. “They help.”

  “Mom,” Beatrice started. “I can’t…”

  Her mother’s eyes flashed with impatience. “Yes, you can. You will. That’s all there is.” She turned away, then stopped. “You’ll need more rouge to hide the paleness.”

  “I’ll put more on.” Bea gripped the edge of the sink, swallowing thickly.

  “Guests are arriving,” her mother said. “I should go downstairs. You…collect yourself. In time for the ceremony.”

  Bea nodded, holding her breath until the door clicked shut. Then she deflated against the counter. She gathered her waterfall of skirts, squeezing them back through the bathroom door and into the sitting room. From the window, she could see her mother on the back lawn greeting guests.

  She was perched on Benjamin’s arm, chatting politely with his business associates. She knew each of their names and the intricacies of their families, and she played the perfect hostess flawlessly. But as Bea watched, that sculpted woman blurred into the mother of her early childhood—the mother of bare feet and untamed hair, of water-gun fights and three-legged races. The mother who had been loved by her father for spontaneous kisses and Christmas carols in July. The mirage was over in a blink; that mother turned to stone again, gone.

  The whine of the string quartet began. The several hundred seats were nearly full, and Gerald was standing with his groomsmen at the front of the crowd. He looked handsome. Bea could practically hear the ladies on the lawn whispering as much to each other. He was handsome, but her body never had the right response to him. Her heart never trip-trapped happily at the sight of him; she never felt heat sparking when he touched her. His hand on her back may as well have been a cold marble wall, no more. She’d tried to force her feelings, to talk herself into love. Her mother had said it was possible—to choose to love someone. But Bea’s heart wouldn’t cooperate.

  Her mother would be coming for her any minute. Suddenly, Bea felt a shortage of oxygen. There wasn’t enough air, and her dress was drowning her. She flung open the sitting room door, ran through the hallway, and grabbed Benjamin’s car keys off his bureau and the cash from his wallet. Three hundred dollars. She’d make it last long enough to get where she needed to go. She flew down the back stairs to th
e kitchen and out the side door. Everyone was gathered out back for the ceremony, so no one saw her in the driveway. She pulled Benjamin’s Rolls-Royce out of the garage just as the string quartet played the opening chords of the Canon in D.

  She drove for hours and hours, stopping only to check into cheap motels to sleep and to buy herself some clothes somewhere in Pennsylvania. Five days later, right before she crossed the border into Mexico from El Paso, the baby moved within her for the first time. The tiniest bubble popping under her skin, there was no mistaking the sensation of an alien being inside her. She pulled over, threw her wedding dress over a cactus, and tossed the pearly pink wedding shoes onto the side of the road.

  She wished she could shed the little life twirling inside her, but she would bring it into the world. That was the least she could do for it before she let it go. She’d stay in Mexico until she was sure her mother wouldn’t force her to go through with the wedding. Luke had once mentioned an artists’ commune near Parral where he’d lived for a time. Maybe she could live there for a while. Then she’d figure out where to go until the baby was born. It wouldn’t be home, that much was certain.

  She took a deep breath, hit the gas, and entered a new world, never looking back as the tires spewed her dress and shoes with baby-fine dust.

  PINNY

  Her stomach was whining. It had woken her up, and no matter how she shifted on the cushions, it wouldn’t hush up. She closed her eyes, trying not to think about the eggs and waffles the girls back at Smokebush would be eating this morning. The more she tried not to think about them, the more she did, and the worse she felt. She loved those eggs with the stringy yellow cheese melted over the top.

  She flipped onto her stomach and reached into her backpack for her jelly beans. The bag came up empty. Then she remembered. She’d finished them off last night.

  The whining was a lion’s roar now. She sat up. Ray was curled tight, her hands in fighting fists, even in her sleep. Pinny looked out the window. The storm clouds were gone, and moonlight was turning the soaked streets blue. Daylight was probably a ways off; she wouldn’t last till then.