Page 32 of One of Them

D elia sped back to the apartment on the rue Vavin, where Gaby was putting away the groceries she’d just bought. Gaby paused, a bunch of carrots in one hand, when Delia came clattering in. “What’s wrong?” she said.

Throwing herself onto the sofa, Delia told her about the gallery where she had seen her mother’s sculpture, and the gallery owner’s startling news about Sophie being alive. “Do you think it could be true?”

Gaby put down the vegetables and joined Delia on the sofa. “Of course you want it to be true... but I don’t know.”

“Marie-Pierre said she thought my mother and... Serge had been caught and killed. But she didn’t have any actual proof. And since I hadn’t received any more letters from my mother...”

“Letters could easily have gotten lost, especially if she was writing during the war. Did the woman at the gallery say anything else?”

“Only that she’d seen my mother at the gallery sometime late last year.

And that she’d had letters from her. I wanted to get an address, but the woman didn’t believe me when I said I was Sophie Rossner’s daughter.

I told her I’d bring her my passport. But I just realized that won’t convince her—the name on it is Goldhush.

I wasn’t thinking of that when I made the offer.

” Delia put her head in her hands. “She thinks I’m a troublemaker.

Or crazy. If I go back there, I’m only going to make things worse. ”

“I can go.” Gaby looked at the clock on the wall. “But not today. What about tomorrow afternoon?”

“Oh, Gaby!” Delia leaned closer to hug her friend. “That would be such a help. She said she could produce the provenance, but we never got that far. I want to know how she acquired it. Also when. And if there’s any way to get an address for my mother, that would be the best of all.”

The next day, Gaby was off from work. She took Félix to a playmate on the floor below, so when she left, Delia was alone in the apartment. She was too unsettled to do anything but sit by the window, waiting and watching for Gaby’s return.

When she spied her friend crossing the street toward the building, she ran to the door and flung it open. “Well?” she asked. “What did you find out? Did you see the sculpture?”

“No, I didn’t.” Gaby unbuttoned her jacket and took it off.

“Why not? It was right in the window.”

“Actually, it was sold.”

“Sold!” Delia was crushed. “Really? It was just there yesterday. Who could have bought it?” It seemed so unfair to have stumbled upon the sculpture at all, only to let it slip through her fingers. Why hadn’t she thought of buying it? She felt tears of frustration welling in her eyes.

“But she gave me something to give to you.” Gaby handed her a sealed envelope.

Delia tore it open immediately, scanning the few lines it contained:

I bought the sculpture that was in the gallery.

I would like to give it to you. I also have some information about where your mother is now.

I’m usually home by 5:00 p.m. The dorm is on the rue Gay-Lussac, near the Sorbonne, and my room number is 401.

If you meet me there, I can tell you what I know.

Yours,

Anne

In her haste to get her coat and bag, Delia knocked the table, sending the large ceramic bowl at its center skittering to the floor. It cracked neatly as a melon.

“What’s the matter?” Gaby said.

Delia thrust the letter into Gaby’s hand. “It’s almost five o’clock. I have to see her, talk to her. Now.” She gestured to the mess on the floor. “Oh, so sorry about all this! Can I clean it later?”

“Go,” said Gaby. “I’ll take care of it. Just get your things and go.”

Delia grabbed her coat and took the Métro to Anne’s dorm. Racing up the stairs, she passed other students, talking, laughing, some arm in arm. Their world felt so distant from hers that it pained her. But this was no time to brood about that. She rapped on the door, and Anne opened it.

Now that she had a chance to observe Anne more closely, Delia thought she looked older.

No, not older. More sophisticated, somehow.

Paris had a way of doing that; even American girls were not immune.

Delia sized up the gray flannel dress enlivened by the silk scarf at her neck—she’d obviously learned a thing or two about scarves since that day they’d gone shopping in Poughkeepsie—and the several thin silver bangles on her wrist. All in all, it was a definite improvement.

Then she looked into Anne’s eyes and saw.

.. what? Not fear. Not even shame. No. It was an acknowledgment of some kind.

“I’m glad you came,” Anne said.

“You said you had the sculpture. Where is it?” She sent an anxious glance around the room. It didn’t look to be there.

“My roommate will be back any time now. Let’s go somewhere else to talk.”

They went to a café around the corner, where they ordered coffees that neither one of them drank.

“What’s this all about?” Delia asked. “The only reason I came is because of the sculpture. But I didn’t see it anywhere upstairs. Do you really have it? Or is this some kind of trick?”

“No trick,” said Anne. “I owe you an apology. About what happened at Vassar. And about what I did.”

Delia snorted; she couldn’t help herself. “You can apologize all you want. But you don’t expect me to believe it, do you?”

“There was a reason I signed that letter.” Hard as it was, Anne kept talking. “A terrible reason, but a reason all the same. I felt awful about it. I still feel awful about it.”

“Then why did you do it?”

“Because I didn’t want anyone to know.”

“Know what?”

“Know that I’m Jewish.”

“Jewish?” Delia was stunned. “You?”

“Yes,” Anne said. “Jewish. Me.”

“I had no idea.... You never said... and your name.”

“My father changed his name before I was even born. He was having trouble launching his career, and he thought a name like Bishop would make it easier. As it happened, he was right.”

“But you knew you were Jewish? You were raised Jewish?”

“I was. But the other girls at school—my friends—weren’t.

I was the only Jewish girl in my class. They liked me, they accepted me—to a point.

There were always these little snubs, little exclusions.

It was as if they couldn’t help it. They couldn’t even see what they were doing as hurtful in any way.

It was just how they were brought up, part of who they were.

” Anne seemed to be feeling the hurt washing over her again.

“I couldn’t understand it at first—I felt like one of them.

I was one of them. Only I kept finding out that I wasn’t. It made me angry. Furious, really.”

“So you lied.”

“Not exactly...”

“Yes, you did. You lied, and you kept lying.”

“I didn’t plan it!” Anne burst out. “It was after my father died, and I was so unhappy. I missed him so much.”

“I don’t see what that has to do with hiding the fact that you’re Jewish.”

“I know, it doesn’t seem to make sense, but to me it did. I wanted to escape all that unhappiness. Escape from myself and be someone else.”

“Someone not Jewish.”

“Well, yes. I’d already been accepted to Vassar, and I wanted my life there to be different.

I wanted to be different. So I started using my middle name—my first name’s Miriam—and though I never told anyone I was Christian, I just let them think I was if they chose to. I thought it would be easier.”

“Was it?”

“Yes. No. I mean, at first it was. No more worrying about those little remarks, about that attitude . And feeling like I belonged. But I had to listen to the worst things about Jews, much worse than what they would have said to my face. And then Virginia was set on telling the dean about—”

“About my affair with Mr. McQuaid?”

Anne paused and then said hesitantly, “Yes, that. Though at first I didn’t know who it was. You never said. Virginia knew, though. She... followed you. And you had told me that you’d broken up with a married man. So I put two and two together. But I wasn’t the one who told her, I swear it.”

“Why should I believe that?”

“Because it’s true, and now I’m telling you the truth. When she said she was going to go to the dean, I tried to discourage her, I really did. But I was afraid to try too hard, afraid she would figure it out and turn on me. I was a coward. I’m so sorry.”

“Maybe it wouldn’t have mattered if we didn’t know each other. If I hadn’t confided in you that day. If I hadn’t thought you were my friend.”

“I wanted to be,” Anne said. “I wanted that very much.”

“Not that much, it seems.” Delia paused. “Anyway, you did what you did, and you have to live with it, just like I do. Despite those snotty girls, I loved being at Vassar. You took that away from me, and I can never have it back.”

“I know,” said Anne. “But there is something I can give you—the sculpture.”

“So you keep saying. Where is it? And you said you had something to tell me about my mother. What is it?”

“The sculpture is upstairs. I’ll get it for you.” Now Anne was the one who paused. “Your mother—she’s in Palestine.”

“What?” Maybe Delia had misheard. Palestine? Sophie? That made no sense.

“The woman in the gallery said she left Paris and went there to live. On one of those collective farms. There’s a name for them, right?”

“Kibbutzim.” This was even more unlikely—weren’t those farming communities? Sophie might have loved fresh flowers, fruit, and vegetables, but the idea that she would actually have anything to do with growing them, with growing anything, seemed ridiculous.

“I have an address.” Anne handed Delia a slip of paper. “And I can get the sculpture.”

Anne walked out of the café, and after a moment, Delia followed.

The sky had darkened, and the air was cold; she pulled her coat more tightly around herself.

She had never wanted to see or speak to Anne again.

But the sculpture. She wanted that. And she wanted to hear more about her mother in Palestine—she wanted to hear anything that Anne could tell her.

Delia waited in the street until Anne returned with a burlap bag. She handed it to Delia. As soon as it was in her arms, Delia felt the weight of the thing, its solidity. “Thank you.” She knew she was being ungracious, but she couldn’t offer anything more.

“I’m glad—glad you want it. And glad you’re willing to accept it from me.” She paused. “And I hope that we can see each other again while you’re here.”

Delia didn’t answer.

“You know where I live,” Anne said. “But where are you staying?”

“In Montparnasse. On the rue Vavin.”

“Do you mind giving me the address? Just in case I find out something else about your mother—I’ll need a way to reach you.”

Delia hesitated before answering. She was starting to have a better understanding of Anne’s behavior now.

If she and her own family had stayed in France, they would have hidden their Jewishness too.

They would have had to lie—it would have been a matter of life and death.

Anne, of course, hadn’t had to face anything like that in New York.

But Delia wasn’t insensitive to how it felt to be an outsider, to be scorned or avoided not because of something you’d chosen, but simply because of who you were.

She herself had felt some of that at Vassar, even if it hadn’t bothered her all that much.

She could understand Anne’s need for acceptance, even if the length to which she’d gone—joining those other girls in hounding her out of Vassar—was reprehensible.

Would she have done that? She had to admit, if only to herself, that she wasn’t entirely sure that she wouldn’t.

The sculpture was too heavy for her to carry all the way back to Gaby’s, so she found a taxi.

When she got it up the stairs, she set the bag down on the table, but she didn’t open it right away.

She was too preoccupied with what she’d just learned about Sophie.

It was only later, when she’d brought the sculpture into Gaby’s room, that she loosened the string and peeled back the layers of tissue.

The form was as simple and strong as Delia had remembered, the color as rich and as radiant.

She thought of her father then; should she tell him what she’d just found out, or wait until she had something more substantial to share?

But a decision didn’t have to be made immediately.

Just having this object in her possession was enough for now.

She ran her fingers over the cold, unyielding surface, and when she removed her fingers and replaced them with her cheek, she didn’t even flinch.