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Authors: Susan Meissner

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BOOK: White Picket Fences
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Gary’s brow puckered. “Does Chase know you saw him? Did you talk to him?”

“When I went over to him, he’d already started to walk away. I asked him a question and he seemed fine.”

“You asked him a question?”

“I asked him if he knew where Tally was. It was a perfectly reasonable question to ask. And he gave me a perfectly reasonable answer.”

Gary said nothing. He appeared deep in thought.

“I told Neil about it. I told him I thought perhaps Chase
does
remember the fire. But he thinks I’m jumping to conclusions, that there’s a rational explanation for what I saw. He says we’d know if Chase had memories of the fire, especially disturbing ones.”

Gary rubbed his neck. “Well, I suppose that’s probably true.
But why guess? Why don’t you just ask Chase if he remembers it?”

“Neil doesn’t want to. He says that if we drag this out now, we could unearth something that’s best left buried. Neil doesn’t want to mess with Chase’s future by digging up a past he doesn’t even remember. He made me promise I wouldn’t say anything to Chase about it.”

Gary leaned back in his chair. “To be honest, I can’t think of a whole lot of things that are best left buried. Maybe you and Neil should go see a psychologist together and talk about what you should do… and maybe about what you should’ve done.”

A wisp of regret spread across her face. “You think we should have asked Chase about it a long time ago.”

He shrugged. “I just think if you had kept the line of communication open from the beginning, even when he stopped talking about it, you wouldn’t be having this conversation with me. Chase would know he’d survived a fire where a baby died because he would’ve always known. And I don’t get why you and Neil are afraid this would be too hard for him to handle. He’s nearly an adult. Does he have emotional problems? Is he depressed? Is he deathly afraid of fire?”

Amanda was about to say no to all three questions when a thought slammed into her: Chase always closed his eyes when he blew out his birthday candles. Delcey—and every other kid she could think of—made a wish with eyes closed but would open them wide to blow out the candles.

Not Chase.

He always wished with his eyes open and then closed his eyes tight to snuff out the flames.

twelve

C
hase and Tally stood in a swath of late afternoon sunlight as Neil backed the borrowed pickup into the driveway. Next to them, two solid-cherry bookcases glistened.

“Why is he giving these away?” Tally asked, touching the shelf nearest her and sliding an index finger across its smooth finish.

“Somebody at La Vista asked him to make them for a new library, so he did,” Chase answered. “People are always asking him to make things and give them away. I don’t really know why he does it.” The truck stopped just in front of him. Chase moved forward to grasp the back of the truck and lower the tailgate.

“Maybe because it’s a nice thing to do.”

Chase glanced at the shelves. His father had carved vines and blossoms into the sides and edges, and the beveled wood shone under several coats of varnish. He said nothing.

Neil got out of the truck. “I forgot my cell phone.” His father started for the front door and then turned. “Chase, there are some old blankets in that metal storage cabinet. You can pull those out and lay them on the truck bed. I’ll be right back.” Neil dashed inside the house.

Chase wordlessly walked to the cabinet on the far side of the
garage and opened it. Tally followed him, and he handed her two army-issue blankets. He watched her gaze meander across the worktables, piles of lumber, saws, and sanders.

“Do you come in here sometimes and work on stuff too?” she asked.

Chase grabbed a third blanket and nudged the cabinet door closed. He tipped his head toward the workshop. “This is his thing, not mine. I make movies, and he makes furniture.”

“You say it like you don’t like what he does in here.”

“You ask like you think I have to like it. He has his thing. I have mine. You don’t see Delcey in here, do you?”

They walked back toward the open garage doors, and Tally nodded at Chase’s car, parked inside the third stall. “How come you get to have the only parking place?” she said.

Chase tossed the blankets into the truck bed. “He hasn’t asked for my spot yet.”

They spread two of the blankets over the truck bed and were quiet for a moment. “Do you think those two men are still at this nursing home?” Tally asked. “The ones Matt thinks you should interview for that project?”

“Probably. I don’t know. Josef’s ninety-something. Eliasz, his roommate, is a few years younger. I haven’t seen them since Easter. My mom sent me over there with cookies.
Easter
cookies. And Eliasz is Jewish.”

Tally cocked her head. “But a cookie is a cookie.”

Chase moved toward the first bookshelf. “Especially to a blind man.”

“What?”

“Eliasz is blind.”

“Did…did it happen at the concentration camp?” Tally asked.

“No. He was born that way.”

“What
did
happen at the concentration camp?”

The door to the kitchen swung open and Neil stepped out.

“I’ve never actually asked him,” Chase said, as his father walked over to them.

Neil motioned to the bookcase closest to Chase. “Okay. Let’s get these loaded and go. I want to get them there before they start serving dinner and the halls get clogged with wheelchairs.”

Chase had been to La Vista del Paz Assisted Care Facility twice before, starting when his father made a new podium for the dining room last year. A friend at church had told his father the facility needed some new furnishings and was having a fundraiser to pay for them. His father had decided he would cross at least one thing off their list.

Chase met Josef and Eliasz the day he helped Neil deliver it. The two elderly men were sitting in the empty dining room with the newspaper’s crossword puzzle between them when he and Neil rolled the new podium in. Josef was reading a clue to the puzzle aloud.

They looked like brothers. Silver white hair covered both their heads, elongated ears and noses disrupted their finely wrinkled faces, age spots polka dotted their sagging cheeks.

They smiled in unison, their thick Polish accents—even
after decades in the United States—dovetailed, and they both wore cardigans in shades of blue. The eyes of the younger man were clouded and colorless. The other’s eyes were clear and steel gray.

“Have you come to give a speech, then?” the sighted man had asked as they wheeled it in.

“Who is here, Josef? What are they doing?” The blind man’s gaze followed the squeaking sounds of the hand truck’s wheels.

“Looks like you have a new platform for lecturing the kitchen staff on how not to burn the bread, Eli.”

“I smell new wood,” the blind man said, craning back his neck and sniffing the air.

“I heard you needed a podium,” Neil said. “I’m Neil Janvier, and this is my son, Chase.”

“Very nice to meet you both. My name is Josef Bliss,” the older of the two men said. “This is Eliasz Abramovicz.”

His father said it was nice to meet them. Then he and Chase positioned the podium and released it from the hand truck.

“Did you build it yourself, Mr. Janvier?” Josef asked.

“Yes, I did. And please, you can just call me Neil.”

The administrator came in at that point to thank them. Then she asked if Neil could step inside her office for a moment. Neil said he’d be right back.

“Very nice work,” Josef said, sizing up the podium with his eyes. He turned to Eliasz. “Eli, what was the name of the furniture maker from
yrardów that we met up with in the camp?”

“Jaworski. Does it look like something Jaworski would have made?”

“Yes. Yes, I think it does.”

Chase found himself wanting to ask Josef what he meant. “Camp?”

Josef turned to look at Chase. “A concentration camp. Eliasz and I were at the same concentration camp. Outside Warsaw.”

“Like a Nazi concentration camp?”

“Just like.”

“So…so you’re both Jewish.”

“Eliasz is. I’m Catholic. You didn’t have to be a Jew to be an enemy to Hitler.” Josef smiled, but it was not an expression of amusement.

“How did… What did you do?” Chase asked.

“He made the Nazis angry,” Eliasz spoke from beside Josef.

“Josef didn’t play by their rules in the ghetto.”

“And you both survived a concentration camp?”

“Yes. Eliasz and I both escaped from Treblinka.”

“Treblinka…,” Chase echoed.

“Yes. You know of it? It is in Poland.”

“My great-grandfather died at Treblinka,” Chase murmured, almost to himself.

“Almost a million people died there, son.”

Neil and the administrator appeared at the entrance to the dining room, finishing their conversation as they walked back in. Neil looked at his watch and then motioned for Chase to come.

“I guess I have to go,” Chase said.

“Well, you must come back and visit us sometime, Chase,” Josef said. “Sounds like we have something to talk about.”

Chase nodded but said nothing. As he walked away he
heard Eliasz say surely it was time for tea and that the name Janvier sure didn’t sound Jewish or Polish to him.

Chase came back only once after that—to bring Josef and Eliasz the Easter cookies. He had waited for Josef to bring up the concentration camp. But Josef did not. And neither did Chase.

A hall clock chimed five o’clock as Chase, Tally, and Neil stepped inside La Vista del Paz. Neil went to find the administrator, and Chase asked at the reception desk if Josef Bliss and Eliasz Abramovicz still lived there. She nodded.

“Tell my dad I’ll be right back,” he said to Tally, and he started down the B-wing corridor.

About halfway down the long hall, Josef sat in a wheelchair in a sunny alcove, reading a sports magazine.

“Chase!” Josef called out to him.

Chase stopped and stepped into the alcove.

“I thought that was you. Bringing more furniture today?” Josef asked.

“Bookcases. For the anniversary and the new library.”

“Ah, yes. The anniversary. It’s going to be quite the affair. Eliasz is resting up for it even now so he can dance the tango with all the nursing staff.”

Chase nodded toward Josef’s chair. “You’ve got a wheelchair now.”

“It’s what they punish you with when you fall too many times taking a pee.”

“You all right?”

“This is just what happens when you hang around too long, Chase.” He patted the arms of the wheelchair.

The two were silent for a moment. Chase was suddenly hesitant to ask Josef if he and Eliasz would allow him to videotape them talking about the war. About Treblinka. The man might say no. Chase sensed a tiny part of himself hoped he would say no. He wasn’t sure he really wanted to know what it had been like at the concentration camp. “Mr. Bliss…”

“Josef.”

“Josef, I have a favor to ask. My friend and my cousin and I have a sociology project to do for school. We’re thinking of making a video documentary and basing it on the Holocaust. We were… we were wondering if you and Eliasz would share with us what you went through during the war.”

BOOK: White Picket Fences
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ads

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