The Sweetness of Forgetting (14 page)

We talk for another hour, Gavin patiently explaining all the things I don’t understand. If Mamie is indeed from a Jewish family in Paris, I ask, why can’t I just call the synagogues in Paris? Or aren’t there Holocaust organizations that help you track down survivors? I’m sure I’ve heard of places like that, although I’ve never had reason to look into them before.

Gavin explains that it’s worth trying Holocaust organizations as a first step, but that he thinks it’s unlikely I’ll find all my answers there. At most, even if I can find the names on a list somewhere, I’ll only get a date and place of birth, maybe a date of deportation, and if I’m lucky, the name of a camp where they were taken.

“But that won’t tell you the whole story,” he adds. “And I think your grandmother deserves to know what really became of the people she loved.”

“
If
she even is who you’re saying she is,” I interject. “I think this sounds crazy.”

Gavin nods. “I don’t blame you. But you have to go find out.”

I’m not convinced, and I look away as he explains that the synagogues might have better records, that they might be able to point me to other survivors who remember the Picard family. Besides, he says, even though the Holocaust happened seventy years ago, some of the record keepers are reluctant to give out information over the phone. While there had been many efforts made over the years to open things up, for many of the people who’d been alive during the war, giving away names was like giving away lives.

“Plus,” Gavin concludes, “your grandmother obviously wants you to go to Paris. There must be a reason.”

“But what if there isn’t a reason at all?” I ask in a small voice. “She’s sick, Gavin. Her memory’s gone.”

Gavin shakes his head. “My grandpa had Alzheimer’s too,” he says. “It’s awful, I know. But I remember his moments of clarity. Especially about the past. And from what you said, it sounds like your grandmother was completely lucid when she gave you the names.”

“I know,” I admit finally. “I know.”

By the time I lock up and we walk out, daylight is waning, the blue of the sky starting to deepen. I shiver as I pull my denim jacket a little tighter around me.

“You okay?” Gavin asks, pausing before he turns to the left. I can see his Jeep parked along Main about a block down.

I nod. “Yeah. Thanks. For everything.”

“It’s a lot to take in,” he says. “
If
it’s true,” he adds as an afterthought, and I know the words are for my benefit, not his.

I nod again. I feel numb, as if the things he explained to me
this afternoon completely overloaded my system. I simply can’t bring myself to believe that my grandmother has a past she’s never spoken of. But I have to admit that everything he said made sense. That chills me to the bone.

“Well,” Gavin says, and I realize I’ve been standing on the street, staring blankly into space.

I shake my head, force a smile, and stick out my hand. “Listen, thank you again. So much.”

Gavin looks surprised by my extended hand, but he shakes it after a moment and says, “My pleasure.”

His hand is calloused and warm, and it takes me an instant longer than it should to let go. “I hope you enjoy those cookies,” I say, nodding to the box in his left hand.

He smiles. “They’re not for me,” he says.

I feel suddenly awkward. “Well, take care,” I say.

“Take care,” he repeats. And as I watch him walk away, a sense of loss rolls in from nowhere.

Chapter
Nine

I
toss and turn all night, and when I do fall asleep, I have nightmares of people being rounded up in the streets, right outside my bakery, and marched off toward train cars. In my dream, I’m running through the crowd, trying to find Mamie, but she’s not there. I awake in a cold sweat at two thirty in the morning, and although I don’t normally leave for work until three forty-five, I get out of bed anyhow, pull on some clothes, and head out into the crisp air. I know I won’t be able to sleep another wink.

The tide must be low, because as I walk to my car, I can smell the muddy salt from the bay two blocks away. In the stillness of the early morning, I can hear the faint sound of waves rolling into shore. Before I get into the driver’s seat, I stand there for a moment, breathing in and out. I’ve always loved the smell of salt water; it reminds me of my childhood, when my grandfather would come over after a day of fishing, the scent of the sea still on his skin, and swing me high into the air.

“Who’s my favorite girl in the world?” he’d ask while he flew me, Supergirl-style, around the room.

“Meeeee!” I would reply with a giggle, delighted anew each time. I’d already figured out, even at that age, that my mother
could be cold and moody, and my grandmother terribly reserved. But my grandfather smothered me in kisses, read me bedtime stories, taught me how to fish and play baseball, and called me his “best pal.”

I find myself missing him terribly as I start my car engine. He’d know what to do about Mamie. I wonder suddenly whether he knew the secrets that she kept. If so, he’d never let on. I’d always thought they had a decent marriage, but can a relationship really survive if there are lies wrapped around its roots?

It’s a few minutes past three by the time I walk into the bakery. I mechanically pull out yesterday’s frozen muffins, cookies, and cupcakes, which will go into the bakery cases once they’re defrosted. Then, I sit down to spend an hour online before I need to start the day’s baking.

I log on to my e-mail and am startled to see a message from Gavin, sent to the bakery’s online orders address just past midnight. I click to open it.

Hey Hope,

Thought I’d send you the links to the organizations I told you about. www.yadvashem.org and www.jewishgen.org are the best places to start your search. Then you might want to try the Mémorial de la Shoah, the Holocaust memorial, in Paris. They have good records for French victims of the Holocaust, I think. Let me know if I can help.

Good luck,
Gavin

I pause and take a deep breath, bracing myself, then I click on the first link, which takes me to a database of Holocaust victims’ names. Below the search box, it’s explained that the database includes records of half of the six million Jews murdered during World War II. My stomach lurches suddenly; I’ve heard the figure before, but now it feels more personal.
Six million. My
God.
I remind myself that Gavin’s probably wrong about Mamie anyhow. He has to be.

The text on the main page also explains that millions of victims remain unidentified. I wonder how this can be the case, seven decades later. How can so many people be lost forever?

I take a deep breath, enter
Picard
and
Paris,
and click Search.

Eighteen results are returned, and my heart pounds as I scan the list. None of the first names match the names Mamie gave me, and I don’t know whether to be relieved or disappointed about that. But there’s an Annie on the list, which makes me feel suddenly ill. I click on her name, not realizing until I do so that my hand is trembling. I read the scant text; the girl was born in December 1934, it says. She lived in Paris and Marseille and died on July 20, 1943, at Auschwitz. I do the math quickly. She didn’t even live to see her ninth birthday.

I think about my Annie. On her ninth birthday, Rob and I took her and three friends into Boston for an afternoon tea party at the Park Plaza. They dressed up like princesses and giggled about the little tea sandwiches with the crusts cut off. The picture I took of Annie, in her pale pink dress, her hair long and loose as she blew out the candle atop a pink cupcake, is still one of my favorites.

But little Annie Picard from Paris never had a ninth birthday party. She didn’t become a teenager, fight with her mother about makeup, worry about homework, fall in love, or live long enough to figure out who she really wanted to be.

I realize suddenly that I’m crying. I’m not sure when I started. I quickly close the page, wipe my eyes, and walk away. It takes fifteen minutes of pacing the kitchen before the tears stop.

I spend another thirty minutes clicking around the first site Gavin sent me, horrified by nearly everything I find. I remember reading Anne Frank’s diary in school and studying the Holocaust in history classes, but there’s something about reading about it as an adult that has a completely different impact.

The staggering numbers and facts swim before my eyes. Two hundred thousand Jews lived in Paris in 1939 when war broke out. Of those, fifty thousand perished. The Nazis began arresting Parisian Jews in May 1941, when they rounded up 3,700 men and sent them to internment camps. In June 1942, all Jews in Paris were made to wear yellow Stars of David marked with
juif,
the French word for
Jew
. A month later, on July 16, 1942, there was a massive roundup of twelve thousand Jews—mostly foreign born—who were taken to a stadium called the Vélodrome d’Hiver, then deported to Auschwitz. By 1943, the Nazis were going into orphanages, retirement homes, and hospitals, arresting those who were the most defenseless. The thought makes my stomach lurch.

I enter
Picard
into the second database Gavin sent me. I find three surviving Picards listed in a Munich newspaper, and three others—including another Annie Picard—listed as survivors living in Italy. There are three Picards listed in the death book of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, another eleven listed at Dachau in Germany. There are thirty-seven Picards on a list of 7,346 French female deportees who perished. I find the eight-year-old Annie Picard again on this list, and the tears return. My sight is so blurred that I almost don’t notice when two familiar names come up on the screen. Cecile Picard—the second name on Mamie’s list—and Danielle Picard—the last.

Heart thudding, I read the details listed for the first name.

Cecile Picard. Born Cecile Pachcinski on May 30, 1901, in Krakow, Poland. From Paris, France. Deported to Auschwitz, 1942. Died autumn 1942.

I swallow hard a few times. Cecile Picard would have been forty-one when she died. Just five years older than I am now. Mamie, I know, was born in 1925, so she would have been seventeen in 1942. Could Cecile have been her mother? My great-grandmother? If that’s true, how is it that we’ve never spoken of this before?

I blink a few times and as I read the details of Danielle, my heart catches in my throat.

Danielle Picard. Born April 4, 1937. From Paris, France. Deported to Auschwitz. Died 1942.

She was only five.

I close my eyes and try to breathe evenly again. After a moment, I google the third organization Gavin suggested, the Mémorial de la Shoah. I click on the link and enter the first name on Mamie’s list, Albert Picard, into the search box. My eyes widen as I find him.

Monsieur Albert PICARD né le 26/03/1897. Déporté à Auschwitz par le convoi n° 58 au départ de Drancy le 31/07/1942. De profession médecin.

I quickly cut and paste the entry into an online translator and stare at the results. Albert Picard. Born March 26, 1897. Deported to Auschwitz in convoy number 58 from Drancy on July 31, 1942. He was a doctor.

Numb, I enter the other family names. It doesn’t say what happened to them, only the dates of their deportations. They’d all been taken to Auschwitz in convoys 57 or 58, in late July 1942. I find all of the names except Alain, who, according to Mamie’s list, would have been eleven when it appeared his whole family was taken away. I stare at the screen, puzzled.

I check my watch. It’s five thirty in the morning here. France is six hours ahead of us, so it’s likely that there will be someone at the memorial’s offices now. I take a deep breath, try not to think of my phone bill, and dial the number on the screen.

On the sixth ring, a machine answers in French. I hang up and redial, but once again, a machine picks up. I look at my watch again. They should be open by now. I dial a third time, and after a few rings, a woman answers in French.

“Hello,” I say, exhaling in relief. “I’m calling from America, and I’m sorry, but I don’t really speak French.”