The Sweetness of Forgetting (10 page)

My heart lurches as I glance at my daughter. She’s staring at Mamie with a look of concern and love so deep that I realize, suddenly, that whatever’s going on with her now is truly just a phase. This is the Annie I know and love. It means I haven’t screwed up entirely. It means my daughter is still the same decent person she’s always been underneath, even if she hates me for the time being.

“I am fine, dear,” Mamie replies. “I want to be up on the rocks by the time the sun goes down.”

“Why?” Annie asks softly after a pause.

Mamie is silent for so long that I begin to think she didn’t hear Annie’s question. But then, finally, she replies, “I want to remember this day, this sunset, this time with you girls. I know I do not have many days like this left.”

Annie glances at me in concern. “Sure you do, Mamie,” she says.

My grandmother squeezes my arm, and I smile gently at her. I know what she’s saying, and it breaks my heart that she’s aware of it.

She turns to Annie. “Thank you for your faith,” she says. “But sometimes, God has another plan.”

Annie looks wounded by the words. She looks away, staring off into the distance. I know that the truth is finally beginning to sink in for her, and it makes my heart hurt.

We finally reach the rocks, and I set up the chair I’d grabbed from the trunk of the car. I help Annie lower Mamie into it. “Sit with me, girls,” she says, and Annie and I quickly settle down on the rocks on either side of her.

We stare in silence toward the horizon as the sun melts into the bay, painting the sky orange, then pink, purple, and indigo as it disappears.

“There it is,” Mamie says softly, and she points just above the horizon, where a star twinkles faintly through the fading twilight. “The evening star.”

I’m reminded suddenly of the fairy tales she used to tell me about a prince and a princess in a faraway land, the ones where the prince had to go fight the bad knights, and he promised the princess he’d come find her one day, because their love would never die. So I’m surprised when it’s Annie who murmurs, “ ‘As long as there are stars in the sky, I will love you.’ That’s what the prince in your stories always said.”

When Mamie looks at her, there are tears in her eyes. “That’s right,” she says.

She reaches into the pocket of her coat and withdraws the Star Pie she asked me to bring from the bakery. It’s smooshed now, and the star-shaped lattice crust on top is crumbling. Annie and I exchange looks.

“You brought the pie with you?” I ask. My heart sinks; I’d thought she was entirely lucid.

“Yes, dear,” she replies quite clearly. She stares down at the pie for a moment as the light continues to fade from the sky. I’m just about to suggest we start heading back before it gets too dark out when she says, “You know, my mother taught me to make these pies.”

“I didn’t know that,” I say.

She nods. “My mother and father had a bakery. Very near the Seine, the river that runs through Paris. I worked there as a girl, just like you do now, Annie. Just like you did when you were a girl, Hope.”

“You’ve never told us about your parents before,” I say.

“There are a lot of things I have never told you,” she says. “I thought I was protecting you, protecting myself. But I am losing my memories now, and I fear that if I do not tell you these things, they will be gone forever, and the damage I have done will not be reversed. It is time you know the truth.”

“What are you talking about, Mamie?” Annie asks, and I can hear worry in her voice. She looks at me, and I know she’s thinking the same thing I am. Mamie’s mind must be clouding over again.

Before I can say anything, Mamie begins breaking off pieces of the Star Pie and throwing them into the ocean. She’s whispering something under her breath, speaking so softly that I can barely hear her over the roll of the tide into the rocks below.

“Um, what are you doing, Mamie?” I ask as gently as possible, trying to keep the worry from creeping into my voice.

“Shhh, child,” she says. Then she goes back to throwing pieces into the water.

“Mamie, what are you saying?” Annie asks. “It’s not French, is it?”

“No, dear,” Mamie replies calmly. Annie and I exchange confused looks as Mamie throws the final piece of the pie into the water. She reaches for our hands. “Who is like unto You, O God,” she says in English, “and You will cast all their sins into the depths of the sea.”

“What are you saying, Mamie?” Annie asks again. “Is it from the Bible?”

Mamie smiles. “It is a prayer,” she replies.

She stares at the evening star for a moment while Annie and I watch her in silence. “Hope,” she finally says. “There is something I need you to do for me.”

Chapter
Six

Rose

When Rose had awoken that morning, she knew. It was just like the old days, when she’d known things deep in her bones before they happened. Those days were far in the past, but lately, as the Alzheimer’s had stolen more of the in-between, it was like the timeline of her life had become an accordion, folding in on itself, bringing the past ever closer to the present by bending and contracting the years that had gone by.

But on this day, Rose remembered everything: her family, her friends, the life she’d once had. For a moment, she had closed her eyes and wished to drift back into the oblivion from which she’d come. The Alzheimer’s terrified her some days, but other days, it was a comfort. She was not ready for this clear window into the past. But then she opened her eyes and looked at the calendar that sat on her bedside table. Each night before closing her eyes, she crossed off the day she’d just completed. She was losing everything else, but knowing the day of the week was something she could still control. And according to the red
X
’s on the calendar, today, the twenty-ninth of September, was a special day. Rose knew in an instant that the fact she’d been granted a reprieve of clarity on this day, of all days, was a sign from above.

And so she’d spent the morning writing it all down, as best she could, in a letter addressed to her granddaughter. Someday, Hope would read it and understand. But not yet. There were still pieces missing. When Rose closed the envelope, just before lunch, she felt empty and sad, as if she had just sealed off a piece of herself. In a way, she supposed, she had.

She carefully wrote out the address of Thom Evans, the attorney who’d drawn up her will, and she asked one of the nurses to please stamp and post the letter. Then she sat down and wrote out a list, forming each name carefully and clearly in big block writing, despite her shaking hands.

Later that day, as she drove to the beach with Hope and Annie, she checked the pocket of her skirt three times, just to make sure the list was still there. It was everything to her, and soon, Hope would know the truth too. It was impossible to hold back the tide any longer. In fact, Rose was no longer sure she wanted to. Being a one-woman dam against a surging flood was exhausting.

Now, as she stood on the piled rocks, her granddaughter on one side and her great-granddaughter on the other, in the fading
heure bleue,
she looked up at the sky and breathed in and out, in tune with the ocean, as she held the Star Pie in her hands. She threw the first piece into the water and recited the words so softly that she couldn’t hear them herself over the rhythmic rushing of the waves.

“I am sorry for leaving,” she whispered into the wind.

“I am sorry for the decisions I have made.” A piece of the crust landed on an incoming wave.

“I am sorry for the people I have hurt.” The wind carried her words away.

As she threw piece after piece of the pie into the ocean, she glanced at Hope and Annie, both of whom were staring at her in confusion. She felt a pang of guilt for scaring them, but they would understand soon enough. It was time.

She looked back to the sky and spoke to God softly, using words she hadn’t said aloud in sixty years. She did not expect forgiveness. She knew she didn’t deserve it. But she wanted God to know that she was sorry.

No one knew the truth. No one but God, and of course Ted, who had died twenty-five years earlier. He’d been a good man, a kind man, Papa to her Josephine and Grandpa to her Hope. He’d shown them love, and she would be forever grateful for that, because she had not known how. Still, she wondered whether he would have loved her the way he did if he’d known the whole truth. He’d guessed at it, she knew, but to tell him, to say it aloud, would have been to crush his soul.