Always and Forever (2 page)

“Kathy, breakfast.” Sophie appeared in the doorway.

“See you at two,” Kathy said hastily. “French toast calls.”

Kathy and Marge tried to keep the conversation light, but Kathy knew her aunt was anxious about this trip overseas, even while she was proud of its purpose.

“I know the war’s over,” Sophie said with an apologetic smile, “but take care of yourself, darling.” A tic in her left eyelid betrayed her concern that Kathy was about to put an ocean between them. “God knows how long before we’ll see you again.”

“Aunt Sophie, we’re scheduled to be there four months,” Kathy chided. “If I’d gone to college in the West, I would have been away that long between holidays.”

“It’s going to be a pain in the ass to get a ship home.” Only when she was distressed did Sophie allow herself even the mildest profanity. “Look at all the soldiers who are trying to get home. Look at all the war brides who are trying to get here. Sure, it’s easy enough going over—”

“Not that easy,” Marge reproached. “They had to get priorities.”

“Aunt Sophie, I’ll get home all right,” Kathy soothed and reached to hug her aunt. “And if I have the chance, I’ll go to Berlin and say ‘hello’ for you.”

“I could never set foot in Germany again,” Sophie said sharply, all at once looking ten years older. “Not after Hitler. Not after what the Nazis did to the Jews.”

“Aunt Sophie, it’s over,” Kathy said.

“For Jews it will never be over.” Sophie’s voice trembled. “No Jew must ever forget what happened in Nazi Germany. We must never let it happen again.”

“I’d better go down to the store and say good-bye to Mom and Dad.” Kathy broke the grim silence that engulfed them for a moment and reached to kiss her aunt with warmth. “They’re still upset that I’m going.”

“Ach.” Sophie shrugged and forced a smile. “They’ve survived worse.” She hesitated for a moment, her eyes over-bright. “If you do get to Berlin, have a cup of tea or coffee at a sidewalk cafe on the Kurfürstendamm. If any still stand.”

Sophie remained still, watching Kathy head down the stairs. Her mind raced back through the years. She was fifteen again and in Berlin where she lived for almost six months. Papa had given up trying to support the family on the farm, and had moved in hopes that big-city medical care would improve Mama’s health.

Papa had been so proud that his daughter had gone through the free, country district elementary school. For a year, before they had moved to Berlin, Sophie had worked as a domestic for a wealthy neighboring household. There she had learned a smattering of English. But in Berlin it was her job to take care of the flat and her mother.

Just the week before, two students from the university had moved into the flat across from the one she shared with her parents and two older sisters. From the first sight of one of the pair, a slender blue-eyed boy, she had been drawn to him. Again—in her mind—she was at the landing on their floor as the young men were mounting the stairs …

Her heart pounded when her eyes met those of the blue-eyed young man, and she sensed a similar response in him.

“Excuse us, Fräulein,” he said politely and smiled. “We are neighbors, yes?”

“Yes.” Her own smile was dazzling.

Alex’s friend Sigmund grinned in amusement as Alex introduced them both to Sophie. She was enthralled when Alex asked her to join him later at a nearby, beer garden. “I will meet you there,” she said shyly.

Bidding the two young men a polite farewell, she hurried down the stairs and out into the street on her shopping mission. She would say nothing at home about meeting Alex Kohn at the beer garden this evening. She was not yet ready to reveal this new friendship to her family. Often in the evenings she went out for a walk, since by then the others were there to look after Mama, so her leaving would not provoke curiosity.

Papa disapproved of the university students because of their liberal attitudes.
“Troublemakers, all of them, with their crazy ideas.
” In their flat she never talked about her fascination for the suffragists in England and the United States, who were fighting for the rights of women to vote.

With startling yet glorious swiftness, the romance between Sophie and Alex became the focal point of both their lives. Alex was so handsome, so sweet and gentle. And one day he would be a doctor. That would impress Mama and Papa. But before she could marry, she forced herself to explain to Alex, they would have to wait—in the Jewish tradition—until her older sisters had acquired husbands. When Alex protested, Sophie pointed out that he had much schooling ahead. They were young and had time. They could wait.

Sophie cried in Alex’s arms with happiness when he presented her with an exquisite brooch—precious stones in a gold setting designed as a bow—that had belonged to his mother. He told her how his mother had given it to him when he’d had to flee from St. Petersburg because Alexander III had begun to persecute Jews and students, which put him at double risk.

“The pin was created by the jeweler who designed for the Czarina. Mama said I was to give it to my wife,” he said tenderly. “Keep it close to your heart until the day we can be married.”

“Oh Alex, I love you so much,” she said with an abandon that would have shocked her the year before. “I live for the day I can be your wife.”

But then Sophie’s world was shattered. At the supper table in the early summer of 1883 her father told his three daughters that the family was to leave within a week for America.

“Papa, why?” Sophie whispered, pale and shaken.

“For a better life,” he said. “My cousin Isaac writes from New York City that work is to be had there. Not just for me, but for Dora and Hannah, too. And in America,” he said reverently, “we will find doctors who can help Mama become well again.”

“Do we have the money?” Hannah asked doubtfully.

“Isaac has sent us the tickets. We will work hard in America and pay him back.”

All at once Hannah and Dora were plying their father with questions. The kitchen was charged with excitement. Sophie saw the glint of hope in her mother’s eyes.
Would the doctors in America help her?

The next morning Sophie waited until Hannah and Dora had left for their jobs to talk to her father.

“We have little time for talk, Sophie,” he warned in high spirits. “We must prepare for our journey.”

“Papa, I would like to stay here. I—” She hoped she could make him understand about Alex. But her father would hear none of it.

“You’ll go to America with the family,” he barked at her. “Always, you have crazy ideas.”

“But Papa, I have to tell you—”

“I will tell you!” he thundered. “You will go with the family to America. Who else speaks the language there? You will lead us. Where Mama and I go, our children go.”

“Papa, there is a young man,” she said desperately. “He wishes to marry me.”

“You have been carrying on behind our backs?” he demanded, all at once ashen.

“Papa, no!”

“Who is this man who talked to a child about marriage?”

“I’m fifteen. Mama was fifteen when she married you. We—”

“Enough of this. It would break your mother’s heart to leave you behind. You have an obligation to take care of the flat and of Mama,” he blustered. “You will go with us to America.”

Later she sat with Alex at their favorite sidewalk cafe and told him her father’s ultimatum. She fought against tears. How could her whole world have fallen about her shoulders this way? Yet she knew she could not refuse to go with her family. Mama needed her. In a strange new world they would all need her.

“Sophie, this is insane.” Alex reached across the table for her hand. “You will marry me and stay in Berlin,” he said determinedly. “We have a right to our own lives.”

“I have to go with them, Alex.” Gently she withdrew her hand. “Our time will come later.” She tried to smile. “I’ll come back to you.” She reached within the neckline of her dress to unpin the jeweled brooch she always wore hidden from all eyes. “I will come back, Alex, and you will give me my pin again. Keep it safe for me. I will come back to you.” Sophie pulled herself back into the present. She had never been able to go back to Alex. Their time had never come.

Downstairs Kathy walked into the cluttered candy store. Assailed by the familiar aromas of chocolate, soda flavorings, and newsprint, she felt an unexpected emotional wrench. She wouldn’t see Mom and Dad and Aunt Sophie for almost half a year.

“Bubbeleb
—” Her mother emerged from behind the counter with arms outstretched, her eyes moist.

“Mom, just think I’m going to the Catskills to work for the summer,” Kathy coaxed. The year between Erasmus and Barnard she had been a waitress at Grossinger’s for the summer. Mom and Dad hadn’t minded that, though their phone bill for that eight weeks was frightfully high. Still, in an emergency they could drive up in two hours.

“You’re going to a foreign country,” her mother reminded dramatically. “Germany yet.”

“I’ll make you an egg cream for the road.” Her father strived for nonchalance. “You, too, Marge.”

“A little one,” Kathy stipulated and Marge nodded.

“You still have your job at Macy’s?” Mrs. Ross asked Marge with sudden concern.

“Oh, sure.” Marge smiled. She knew Kathy’s mother kept predicting women would be losing their jobs now that the soldiers were all coming home from overseas. “I called in sick. Even a trainee can be sick,” she drawled. At first enthusiastic about the job that could lead up to being a buyer, Marge was talking privately about quitting to look for something on Seventh Avenue, at the wholesale level.

“Don’t be sick too often,” Mrs. Ross exhorted.

“My wife still lives in the Depression,” her husband chuckled. “So Marge calls in sick. Girls aren’t standing in line waiting to grab her job. These are good times.”

“Your ship doesn’t sail till midnight,” Mrs. Ross turned to Kathy accusingly. “So why do you have to leave early in the afternoon?”

“We’re having a meeting up near the campus,” Kathy fabricated. Mom would feel better if she
had
to go into the city early. In truth, she wanted to roam about Times Square for a nostalgic while with Marge. Then they were going to splurge on an early dinner at Lindy’s. It would be her big farewell to the city.

“We should get moving,” Marge said and drained the last of her egg cream in noisy appreciation. “It gets harder and harder to find a place to park in the city.”

“Drive carefully,” Mr. Ross told Marge when Kathy had exchanged warm embraces with her mother and then himself. Kathy suspected he didn’t trust any woman driver. “Crazy drivers on the road these days,” he’d always say.

“Kathy, you write home regularly,” her mother ordered and Kathy steeled herself to smile in the face of a possible emotional outpouring.

“I’ll write twice a week,” she promised. “And I’ll be fine.”

“I won’t have a moment of real peace until you come home,” her mother declared. “Not a night that I won’t lie awake worrying about you.”

“The war’s over,” Mr. Ross reminded his wife. “Kathy’ll be safe.”

“I’m glad Aunt Sophie made me learn German through the years,” said Kathy. “At least, I’ll be able to communicate with the people.” But she was somber as she remembered that a long-time neighbor had given her the names of family members who had been caught in Hamburg during the Nazi rule in hopes she might look them up. But it was unlikely that she could track them down.

Seated on the front seat of the 1937 Chevy beside Marge, her luggage stashed in the trunk, Kathy considered what lay ahead. It would not be a joyous adventure. She and her group would see what had shocked the world when Allied soldiers had liberated the concentration camps. She suspected how they would react to the kind of atrocities that were difficult to conceive but had been documented by photographs and news stories flashed around the world.

Mom wanted her to stay home, meet a nice man, and get married. Couldn’t Mom understand that after what had happened in the last few years she couldn’t live with herself if she didn’t make an effort, however small, to help the world recover from World War II?

“Kathy,” Marge began as she pulled away from the curb and joined the stream of traffic down Thirteenth Avenue, “how many doctors did you say were in the group?”

“Two,” Kathy reported. “The other ten of us are what my English teacher would have called a motley crew. Including a plumber, a psychiatric social worker, and a third-year law student.”

“And all of you under thirty,” Marge drawled knowingly. “Don’t tell me there won’t be a lot of partying aboard that ship.”

“There won’t be any partying in Hamburg,” Kathy said with conviction. “I hear the city was one of the worst hit in Europe. And we’re traveling with hordes of canned goods because food is hard to come by.”

“Two doctors,” Marge repeated. Her smile blissful. “And one of them, I gather from what you told me, is the smoldering, moody type. Like Laurence Olivier in
Wuthering Heights.
”

“No,” Kathy denied. All at once self-conscious.

Marge clucked in reproach. “What did you say his name was?”

“I forget,” Kathy lied.

She had never compared David Kohn to Laurence Olivier, she told herself defensively. She and Marge had had such mad crushes on Olivier their last year at Erasmus. But all at once she recalled David Kohn’s brooding good looks. There
was
a kind of resemblance between him and the famous actor.

A
S THE COMMUTER TRAIN
from Greenwich chugged into the depths of Grand Central Station, David Kohn reached for the two much-scarred leather valises that had traveled with him from Berlin ten years ago, when his parents had packed him off to school in New York. It was still possible then to send money out of Germany for educational purposes. He could hear his father’s voice:

“You’ll be far away from home, David; but you won’t be alone. My cousin Julius will watch over you. You’ll go to school with his son Phillip. You’ll be with family—and you’ll be safe from this curse that has come over us here in Germany.”

He hadn’t been back to Europe since the summer of 1937, when, according to his father’s instructions, he visited Salzburg. Was he making a mistake in returning to Germany, even for a few months?
Could he handle it?