The Woman in the Photograph Page 5

  The most recent passport, dated January 1987, six months before she died, had no stamps. In that photo, her hair is short, with some streaks of gray. She’s tanned and wears an apple red Revlon lipstick smile. Her eyes looked directly at me, the way she did on our last visit. I saw the mother I knew so well and felt an ache in my chest. I wished the phone would ring and I would hear the sound of her voice at the other end.

  It was several days before I took out the envelope again. I turned it upside down and dumped the contents on the table. There were several dozen photos—some more recent color prints and others in the brown tones of my mother’s childhood. I scanned through the more contemporary pictures: Mom with her cousin Lynne in Paris, Alice and Erika at my cousin’s wedding posing with Lynne and her sister Margie. Even in this one, taken when the sisters were in their late forties, they are mirror images of each other—Erika in an off-white sleeveless Chinese silk dress with a mandarin collar, Alice wearing a black sleeveless Chinese sheath with silver embroidery from MODES, Kowloon, Hong Kong. The photo was a poignant reminder of both impermanence and continuity. I’d brought the dress back for Sarah when we emptied Mom’s apartment; she wore it to the winter ball her senior year at Berkeley High, after she had a seamstress take it in and raise the hem above her knees.

  I started to examine some photos taken in Germany and realized I had seen a few of them when I used to browse through my mother’s drawers as a child. I didn’t take much interest at the time, except to laugh at how the sisters were posed in matching outfits: toddlers in little ruffled dresses, adolescents holding tennis rackets dressed in pleated tennis skirts and matching V-neck sweaters, even one in identical pajamas. The latter had my grandmother’s name on the back written in graceful European script: Deine Nelly (Your Nelly). It identified Erika as twelve and Alice as ten. I had never turned it over before.

  Near the bottom of the pile I noticed the edges of a photograph that was larger than the others. I pulled it out and stared at it, mesmerized by the vision of two young women leaning toward each other on a loveseat—Erika and Alice in silk evening gowns, dressed for an elegant occasion or a party I couldn’t even imagine. An embossed imprint on the corner of the four-by-six sepia print said “Leipzig, Germany.”

  The woman in this photograph is not my mother.

  The words flashed across my mind like a streak of lightning on a dark night.

  The mother I knew so well had no use for frills, no interest in glamour. She disdained people who followed fashion or fads, and claimed to not care about clothes. “It’s what’s on the inside that counts,” she said.

  After George moved out, my mother used to rummage in the garbage disposal room between her apartment and the one next door that was inhabited by two models.

  “They had a party, and the next morning they put out perfectly good food, crackers and cheese and salami that had not even been opened,” she told me. She hated waste and helped herself to whatever seemed usable, and occasionally she even found an article of clothing, once a running suit, and another time a sweater that she could wear.

  This was not the woman in the photo.

  The young woman before me never reached for secondhand clothing, nor did she eat leftover food discarded by someone else. The woman in the photograph expects her world to provide luxury and happiness. She has not given up hope. She still has dreams.

  I showed the photo to my daughter, who was home for the weekend from college. I realized that when the picture was taken, Alice was probably just about the same age as Sarah.

  “Oh Mom,” she said, “Grandma Alice was so glamorous. What I would give for a dress like that! And look at the little cutouts on the shoes. I never got the impression that she was interested in clothes. In fact, she was always mending and adjusting her old clothes on the Singer sewing machine that you taught me to sew on.”

  “No, I never saw this side of her either,” I agreed.

  Then a fleeting image crossed my mind. “Except for one time when I was really little. I must have been only four or five, and I think my mom and dad were going out to a party. I can see my mother standing at the top of the stairs in a strapless black dress. It was tight around her waist with a wide skirt made of several layers of sheer black gauze. It twinkled, maybe with sequins or some shiny beads, and I thought my mother was the most beautiful woman in the world, a movie star.”

  “I wonder what happened to that dress,” Sarah said.

  I wonder what happened to my mother, was all I could think. Did all this sparkle die when Daddy died? Or was that just the last straw?

  “I need to find out what happened to the woman in this photograph,” I said to Michael when he got home that evening.

  I bought a polished wood frame and hung the photo of Alice and Erika on our bedroom wall. At the end of the day, I found myself gazing at the photo as though I hoped the two women would notice I was there and turn their heads towards me. Instead, they remained focused on each other. Soeurchen, Alice whispers to her sister. Soeurchen, Erika answers her back—two sisters with their private understanding, the world they came from still eluding me.

  11

  Diamonds

  Lynne Gordon was my mother’s first cousin. Her father, Curtis, was the youngest brother of Max Lewin. He had come to America in the early twentieth century, fallen in love with Lillian, and decided to marry her and settle in New York. Though Alice was seven years older than Lynne, they used to talk on the phone all the time, and I would sometimes hear my mother joking in a light tone I was unaccustomed to. During the holiday season Mom helped out at Lynne’s Jewelry, a cozy, busy little boutique on 86th and Lexington.

  In April 1992, I went to New York to talk to Lynne and my Uncle Willy. After exiting the subway at Columbus Circle so I could walk through Central Park to Lynne’s home, I had a sudden impulse to head uptown on Central Park West towards Mom’s building. The English plane trees along the edge of the park were already fluttering a curtain of new green leaves. When I got to the building, it looked so ordinary, sixteen stories of brown brick, a plain green awning, unadorned rectangular windows, some with air conditioners sticking out. I remembered the first time Mom had taken me to the city to meet George.

  “I used to live here in the late fifties,” I told the doorman at number sixty-five.

  He squinted his eyes and offered a weak “Uh huh,” but allowed me to enter the lobby to satisfy my curiosity. Within, it was cool, dark and empty. Familiar soft golden sconces still illuminated the ochre wall, the molding traced a bright white accent along the ceiling, and the marble floors were spotless. I glanced toward the elevator and felt a sinking in my chest. I had no one to visit.

  I thanked the doorman and turned back toward 67th street, where I could cross through the park to the East Side. I passed by Tavern on the Green and the bench where Mom used to sit in the sun with her sun reflector, then headed over toward the Sheep Meadow.

  By the time I got to the model boat pond near 72nd Street, my feet ached. I found an empty bench and sat down to watch an older man help his grandson guide a sailboat across the water. Then it hit me. This is what I did for the three years I lived with Mom and George. Uprooted and introspective, I was the lonely observer who watched and wondered when I would find my place in the scheme of things. I took a deep breath, grateful I had found a life of my own.

  When I got to Lynne’s apartment on 101st and Fifth, I was damp with sweat and dying of thirst. Lynne opened the door and grabbed both of my hands to pull me into her apartment. For a second I saw my mother—long legs, shoulders back, suntanned face surrounded by dark hair, a woman who looked “ageless,” though I guessed she must be in her late sixties. She wore tailored slacks and a classic blue and white striped shirt, her carefully made up eyes framed by oversized tinted glasses. Her smile was contagious, and when you looked at her, you knew that she was not disappointed with her life.

  The walls of her apartment were decorated with her own original watercolors mingled with other
works. Most were unfamiliar, but I noticed a Picasso lithograph of a bowl of fruit over the dining room table. She led me over to the buffet, a rolling cart with cut glass dishes and decanters arranged on delicate lace doilies, and offered me a tall iced glass of ginger ale and some thick-sliced rye bread with several different kinds of cheese and German mustard. She had also put out bowls of fresh berries—ripe strawberries and deep purple blueberries. I felt like an honored guest, though I knew that this was Lynne’s gracious style with everybody. I made myself a plate, sat down carefully, and took off my shoes. Lynne settled on a stuffed chair across from me and leaned forward, lowering her voice as if she were sharing a great secret, and told me that she still missed my mother every day.

  I told Lynne that I did too, and was so glad we could talk. I mentioned that coming with Mom to her store was one of my happiest childhood memories—climbing the rickety ladder to the loft, rummaging through boxes, finding shells and beads to glue onto earring backs and pendants, and listening to the hum of voices down below.

  “Mom sounded so cheerful when she was there with you,” I said, “different from the person I saw at home.”

  I took the photo of Alice and Erika posing on the love-seat out of my bag and handed it to her. She held it in her hand for what seemed like a long time.

  “I never saw this photograph before. I would guess it was taken two or three years before she left Germany. Isn’t Alice elegant? Beautifully coiffed, not a hair out of place, not a wrinkle in her dress, so soignèe.

  “It reminds me of the day I went with my parents to meet her when her ship docked in New York. I was only thirteen at the time but have a vivid memory of Alice leaning over to give me a hug. She was maybe about twenty, and I thought she was the most elegant person I had ever seen, in a dark skirt and a jacket with fur trim. She had diamonds from knuckle to knuckle.”

  Diamonds from knuckle to knuckle! The only diamonds I had ever seen were the ones on the ring she kept at the bank.

  “I came to New York so I could talk to you face-to-face about this very thing,” I said. “I don’t know the woman you just described.”

  She looked at me, the glow from the lamp reflected in her glasses. “Oh, honey,” she said. “Everything’s been buried for so long, but I’ll help you all I can.”

  I took a bite of my sandwich, though my mouth was so dry it barely went down. I had so many questions on my mind, but I decided to start with the day Lynne met Alice at the pier.

  “Where was Erika—and how about my father?”

  “Gosh, I don’t remember seeing Erika. And as for your father, well, Alice and Fez weren’t married yet. Your father came to New York a year earlier.” I was about to interrupt, but she assured me that Alice and Fez knew each other from Leipzig and started going out together immediately after she got here.

  I was confused. “Was that the first time you met my mother, when her ship docked?”

  “No, no, I had met her before. Let’s see, where to begin? As I told you on the phone, Daddy, who was Max’s younger brother, settled here in New York but continued to go back to Leipzig four times a year because he was in the fur business. He kept in close touch with his siblings, and in January of 1927, he took my mother, my sister, and me with him for a family reunion. That was the first time I met my German relatives, including Alice and Erika.”

  I thought of the names on the inheritance document. “Wait a minute.” I said. “Does that mean you met Max and Nelly in Germany?”

  “I was just six at the time,” Lynne said, “so I don’t remember many details. I think Alice and Erika were already teenagers. They took me and Margie to a big park near their home where they met up with some boys and girls their age. I thought they were so popular and smart. I do remember the last night, when we had a big dinner in your grandparents’ house.”

  “The house? Do you mean the apartment building on Grassistrasse?”

  “Yes, it must be that one. It seemed like quite a grand place to me. Tall heavy doors and high ceilings. All my father’s siblings were there, my aunts and uncles. They seemed like a mob of very big, very loud people, all speaking in German. Let’s see if I can remember their names: Selma, Meta, your grandfather Max, George, Ellie, Paula, my father Curtis, and of course their spouses.”

  “They were my mother’s aunts and uncles? What happened to them?”

  “Alice never talked about them?”

  “Lynne, my mother never talked about anything from her past. Nothing. That’s why I’m here.”

  “Somewhere I have a photograph from that dinner. I need to find it and make you a copy.”

  Lynne had detailed memories of the farewell dinner given by Max and Nelly in honor of the American Lewins, who were sailing for New York the next morning. The long dining room table was set for thirty people, so elegant and modern for 1927, with individual placemats, sparkling glasses, and embroidered napkins. Most of the aunts wore dark dresses that looked old-fashioned, but Nelly’s was a twenties number that glittered when she walked. Lynne and her sister had spent the afternoon practicing a song their father wrote in German. It ended with “Good-bye Germany, hello America.” They waved little American flags while they sang, and all the strange foreign relatives clapped their hands when the song was done.

  “Can you remember anything else about Max and Nelly?” I asked.

  “I really can’t, though they used to send us picture postcards. I’ll have to look for them. I never throw anything out! But I do remember the day that Max died as if it were yesterday. I think it was in 1932. My father loved his older brother. When Daddy heard the news, he became hysterical. He sat on a wooden crate in our living room and could not be consoled. He mourned for days. I sat next to him for a long time but he wouldn’t talk to me.”

  “How did Max die?”

  “A massive heart attack. They said he died instantly. He was a very successful dentist and well-respected. But apparently the man was—what do they call that now—a Type-A personality? And very controlling. He never shared financial information with his wife, and he usually left her at home when he traveled. Anyway, he was on his way to give a talk at a medical convention. He was only in his fifties and he died in the taxi.”

  This information was entirely new to me. “I’d always assumed he and Nelly died in the Holocaust. That’s why Mom didn’t talk about them.”

  “No, honey, it was a tragic loss but it wasn’t the Holocaust.”

  “Then what happened to Nelly?”

  “What do you know about Nelly?” Lynne asked after a long pause.

  “I know nothing.” I said. “I had the impression that my Mom didn’t love her mother, and she never said a good word about her. I didn’t even know her first name until I saw the papers for the restitution case.”

  Lynne seemed reluctant to go on. I leaned forward and kept my gaze fixed on her face.

  “Poor Nelly,” she said. “I think in those days a woman alone felt destitute, and she wasn’t a strong person to begin with. Max was the mainstay of the family, and from what I understand, very domineering. After he died, Nelly fell apart. A few weeks later she threw herself out of their bedroom window.”

  The living room that had seemed so colorful and charming when I first walked in felt claustrophobic and crowded—too much furniture, too many disparate pieces of art on the wall. I could hardly breathe.

  “She jumped out the window and died?” I asked, too stunned to say much more.

  “That’s what I was told,” Lynne said. “The terrible thing,” she said, lowering her voice as though she didn’t want to be overheard, “is that she didn’t die right away. She was hospitalized for nine months, which was torture for the girls because she was sorry and decided she wanted to live—too late. During all that time, the girls visited her in the hospital almost every day. While they sat by her side, Hitler became chancellor of Germany, and by the time she died, everything in their world had changed.”

  12

  The Cows

 
I had always suspected that something bad must have happened, but I hadn’t guessed this. If I sensed that Alice felt abandoned, I had not taken it literally, until now. How could Nelly leave her two teenage daughters in the midst of such a threatening world? Lynne could not give me an answer.

  “She told me what I just told you, and of course she talked about the money. They tried to get money out of Germany, every way they could.”

  “You mean the Swiss bank account?”

  “Yes, and other assets too. You know about the cows?”

  “The cows?” As eager as I was to piece together the puzzle, this was too much information to take in. “Let’s go for a walk,” I said to Lynne. “I can’t think straight.”

  We walked along Fifth Avenue to 92nd Street. Lynne got us coffee at a kiosk and found a bench alongside the park where we could rest. It was a relief to sit in silence and watch the passersby—a flock of schoolgirls in blue uniforms, a dog walker with four little furry creatures on matching pink leashes, people whose lives appeared perfectly normal. My stomach ached and I barely touched my coffee, but the smell was comforting. Lynne finished hers, placed her napkin in the foam cup, and put it in the trash can.

  “What’s happening with the Leipzig property?” she asked.

  “Not much so far,” I answered. “The lawyer said it may take quite a while to gather the documents. Some of the municipal buildings were bombed during the war—he even found one paper with the edges slightly burned.

  “You know, the money would be a great help, but it’s really not only about the money.”

  “I understand,” Lynne said. “Family is so important. Though believe me, if there’s any money to be settled, you deserve it. Let’s go back and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  I dropped the remainder of my coffee in the trash and we went back to the apartment.

  “While Erika and Alice were at Nelly’s funeral,” Lynne explained, “the guardian appointed to handle the estate ran off with the entire safe. That must be when he took the Swiss bank account numbers they needed to claim their inheritance.