Melting the Snow on Hester Street Read online

  Beneath the tawny skin, her face had drained of all colour. ‘It’s not possible, Max.’ He looked over her shoulder, saw the photograph – the picture of the three of them together; the picture neither had laid eyes on since they ran from Allen Street, and his face, too, seemed to drain of blood. His expression froze. They gazed at the photograph together, without speaking.

  Eleanor ran a finger over the image. And then, so did Max. She sighed: the saddest sound, of resignation and loss, a wound that would never heal. Max put an arm around her shoulders and she leaned into him.

  ‘It is you … Isn’t it?’ Marion said softly. ‘I knew it was. I knew it couldn’t be anyone else. It had to be you … Is it?’ she wanted confirmation. ‘Is it really you?’

  ‘Is it us?’ Eleanor said. She looked up into Marion’s blue eyes. After so many years of caution, her answer came to her automatically. She smiled and collected herself. ‘They look just like us, don’t they? A younger version. It’s uncanny … But it’s not us, Marion. No—’

  ‘It’s not?’ Marion’s shoulders sagged.

  ‘What’s that?’ burst out Max.

  ‘Max, darling,’ Eleanor laughed.

  ‘But of course it’s us!’

  ‘Max. No, you are mistaken …’

  He ignored her. ‘Well of course it is us,’ he said again. ‘And that, Marion, that beautiful baby you see there – that is our daughter, Isha. You can’t see it there – but she was beautiful.’

  ‘Darling … you’re confused …’

  ‘She had the most beautiful eyes. Like her mother. You can’t see it in the photograph. She was beautiful.’

  ‘You have a daughter?’ Marion asked.

  ‘No,’ Eleanor said.

  ‘We do,’ Max said. ‘Called Isha. Twenty-two years old last week. The seventeenth of October.’

  ‘Isha …’ Marion repeated.

  ‘It’s a beautiful name.’

  ‘Isn’t it?’ Max smiled.

  ‘Only. Forgive me, will you? I’m a little confused,’ Marion said. ‘Is it you in the picture? Or isn’t it you?’

  ‘Of course it is us,’ said Max. ‘How could it be anyone else? Eleanor! Tell her! Of course it is us! How could you be in any doubt?’

  And finally, Eleanor nodded. ‘Us, perhaps … But in another lifetime, Marion,’ she said.

  ‘I knew it!’ Marion cried triumphantly. ‘I knew it!’

  ‘And yes, we had a daughter once,’ Eleanor continued. ‘But we don’t have a daughter. Not any more.’

  ‘We had that picture taken – d’you remember, El? The night of the rally at Union Hall – you in the sash …’

  She ignored him. ‘It was very cold. And there was an infection. It killed my mother. It killed half the block. You know how cold it gets in New York. Especially – well.’ Eleanor looked at Marion, and in her low, flat voice, there was a murmur of the rage she generally kept so closely in check. ‘Of course you wouldn’t know. In any case, Isha is dead, Marion. Where did you get this photograph?’

  ‘But you keep saying that, Eleanor,’ Max said desperately. ‘“Isha is dead”. As if by saying it, the pain will simply go away.’

  Again, she ignored him. ‘Tell me,’ she said again to Marion, ‘where did you find this photograph?’

  ‘But we don’t know that she’s dead,’ Max persevered, looking across at his wife, anger tingeing his words. ‘We don’t know it for sure …’

  Eleanor shook his arm from her shoulders. She stood up. ‘Marion. Tell us, please: where did you find this picture? Who sent it?’

  ‘I told you I was—’

  ‘Who sent it?’

  ‘Except I don’t think—’

  ‘Shiksa! Why won’t you speak?’

  ‘Give her a chance, Eleanor …’ muttered Max.

  ‘What do you want from us, Marion?’ Eleanor asked her. ‘Why do you bring us here, to show us this? You think it’s a game? A little parlour game?’

  Max took Eleanor’s hand. She tried to snatch it away, but he held it tight. ‘Eleanor,’ he said. ‘Let her speak.’

  Marion looked from one to the other; the colour drained from her own face now, too. She had not expected this. She had not expected … anything. Had it only been a parlour game, she wondered? It’s what Charlie thought. But he was wrong.

  ‘No – n-not a p-parlour game, Eleanor. I know myself how much a mother can miss her child.’

  ‘Ha!’ Eleanor spat it out. ‘I don’t think so.’

  ‘You can believe it or not.’ Marion shrugged. ‘In any case, there’s a letter. I have the letter with me right here. From the girl. It explains everything, I think.’ Her hands were shaking as she produced the envelope from her pocket. ‘I’m going to leave you with this. And when you’re done, I’ll s-send the kid down. If you would like me to. I’ll s-send her down here. All right?’

  ‘What’s that?’ Max whispered the words. ‘What “kid”, Marion?’

  ‘She’s up at the house right now. In her bedroom. Waiting for you to read the letter.’

  ‘She?’

  ‘Read the letter,’ Marion said. ‘I’ll send her down.’ And she was going to leave it at that, but then the thing seemed to be so momentous, suddenly, so much more than she had ever imagined it would be, she couldn’t resist turning back. ‘Honey,’ she said to Eleanor, ‘I don’t think she’s dead. I don’t think your daughter is dead … I think we have found her.’

  70

  Marion had asked the girl to stay hidden in her room until she came for her. Now Marion hurried through the castle grounds to the smaller of the two guesthouses to seek her out. There were sixteen guests in the house party altogether, and Marion had left the guesthouse empty especially for her. As she passed the tennis courts, she broke into a trot, ignoring cries from Natalie and the Lindberghs, asking her to stop and adjudicate. Charlie was a notorious cheat, in any case. And Natalie was convinced the Lindbergh’s line calls could not be trusted. Marion simply waved, and ran on.

  She was panting by the time she reached the girl’s rooms. She found the girl pacing the carpet like a wild thing. There were patches of sweat on her cotton dress and her bobbed hair stuck to her cheeks. Marion wondered if she should lend the girl something more flattering to wear … She looked lovely as she was. Full of life. But even so.

  ‘Honey!’ Marion panted.

  The girl spun round and almost collided with her, almost exploded with questions.

  ‘What did they say? Did the picture seem to mean anything? Will they meet me? Is it them? What happened? Am I mad? Have I imagined it all? … Oh won’t you just tell me please, IS IT THEM?’

  Marion waited for the questions to stop and finally, still out of breath, she nodded. ‘It’s them. They’re reading the letter now. Sweetheart, you need to pull yourself together. Collect yourself. G-give them a few minutes and get on down there.’ She beamed at the girl. ‘Y-your name is Isha …’

  ‘Isha.’ The girl tried it out on her tongue. Frowned. ‘Isha.’ Something stirred – the faintest of memories.

  ‘Isha,’ the girl whispered. ‘Yes. Yes, of course …’

  ‘Beautiful name,’ Marion said.

  ‘It is. Yes it is. Did they say anything else?’

  ‘They think you died. The time you write about in your letter – when the w-woman came to fetch you. Your parents think you died then. At the same time as your grandmother.’

  The girl said nothing.

  ‘They’ve been searching for you all this time.’

  ‘They didn’t find me,’ she said. ‘I guess they didn’t look hard enough.’

  ‘Honey – how could they find you? You disappeared.’

  ‘I didn’t disappear. I was always here.’

  ‘You changed your name.’

  ‘I didn’t have a name. How could I change my name when I never had one?’

  ‘Hey,’ Marion said, and it sounded sharp. ‘If you’re j-just going to go d-down there and make my friends feel b-bad, don’t bother. I’
ll wish I’d never got you here.’

  ‘No!’ the girl cried. ‘No, no. Of course not.’

  ‘They’ve been searching for you. And n-now they’ve found you. That’s all there is to it.’

  ‘I don’t want to make anyone feel bad …’

  ‘Well then.’

  ‘Truly,’ the girl was aghast. ‘After all this, it’s the very last thing I would want to do.’

  ‘Now,’ said Marion, taking control. ‘W-what are you going to wear?’

  The girl didn’t reply. ‘Isha,’ she muttered again. ‘Isha Beekman … Isha Beekman. I had better get down there, I suppose.’ She walked towards the door, and only as an afterthought turned back to Marion. ‘Where am I going to find them? Will you take me there?’

  ‘Not yet.’ Marion shook her head. ‘Give them a moment. It’s quite a letter you wrote – and this is the first time they laid eyes on you, honey.’

  ‘But they’ll want to see me.’

  ‘L-let’s straighten you up a bit first, shall we? Got to make a good impression … Your dress is looking kind of sweaty. Have you anything else to wear? If you don’t, I’m sure I do. You’re slimmer than I am, b-but we can find something … C-come with me.’ She took the girl by the hand.

  ‘Can’t I just go out there?’ the girl said. ‘I’m so damn nervous.’

  ‘D-don’t curse, honey. It’s n-not nice. And, no. No you can’t. You’re gonna come with me. I’m going to get you fitted up just perfectly.’

  She led the girl out of the guesthouse, up the hill to the castle, and up to her private rooms.

  ‘Nothing too sophisticated,’ Marion said. ‘You’re only a kid.’ She handed the girl a blue silk dress, too loose for the girl, like everything in Marion’s wardrobe; matched it with a little cloche hat and some pale gloves and a pair of sunglasses.

  ‘It’s bright out there. You don’t want to arrive s-squinting.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘But I think,’ Marion added, scrutinizing her carefully, ‘maybe you should lose the gloves.’

  ‘Yes, yes, yes,’ said the girl, tearing them off impatiently. ‘I think it’s OK now. Isn’t it? I look—’

  ‘You look lovely, kid,’ Marion said. ‘Just like your mama.’

  The girl smiled uncertainly. ‘You think that?’ she said. There were tears in her eyes. ‘Is that what you really think?’

  ‘I just know it,’ said Marion. ‘Now go on out there! I’m going to p-point you in the right direction. M-much as I’d love to watch the beautiful reunion, I’m going to leave you to it. I’m taking Patricia to see the chimpanzees.’ Marion smiled. ‘That little k-kid – she can never get enough of those chimpanzees, y’know? She just loves ’em.’ She stopped. Looked at the girl. ‘Come on. They’ll be waiting for you. Are you ready?’

  ‘Am I ready?’ The girl laughed, and her eyes danced. It was the lightest, prettiest, merriest laugh: and it reminded Marion of Patricia. ‘Gosh, Miss Davies,’ the girl said, ‘I’ve been waiting my whole life!’

  71

  They read the letter together, side by side, in silence. And when they had finished it, they laid it aside, and turned to the other photograph – the one of the girl as she was now.

  ‘It looks,’ he said at last, ‘a little like a casting card. Doesn’t it? Maybe she’s an actress. She’s very pretty …’

  Eleanor smiled. ‘She’s lovely.’

  ‘She looks like you.’

  ‘You think that?’ Eleanor said. ‘Is that what you really think?’

  She sprung up, unable to sit still any longer. ‘It must be her though, mustn’t it? If you say she looks like me? And she has the photograph. Oh, Max how long must we wait for her? Why doesn’t she come?’

  ‘She’ll come – I guess. She’ll come any minute.’ Max tried to be calm. But it was impossible. He stood up too, and began to pace back and forth. ‘Should I go and fetch her?’

  ‘What will we say to her? ‘Eleanor stopped. ‘We’ve waited so long and now all I want to do is run, Max. What if … what if—’

  ‘It may not be her.’

  ‘I think it is, Max. I think it is.’

  ‘But Eleanor,’ he said at last. ‘You know, whoever it is, she is looking for us. She has come all this way to find us. All the way from Allen Street.’

  She had made the same journey. They tried to imagine it – found it impossible. When Eleanor spoke, she noticed he held her hand. She turned it over, stroked the scars on his palm, and he watched her doing it. Eleanor said, ‘She might be terribly angry with us. If it is really her.’

  ‘Well then, why would she come to find us? Why?’ he cried. He feared just the same thing. ‘… She has a small fortune waiting for her, you know,’ he added. ‘I sent it every month to that post-office box. Batia’s box in New York. You remember? I just kept on sending it and never stopped. Every month, no matter what. So. And, she’ll know it when she sees. Every envelope, every month. She’ll know we didn’t forget her.’ He smiled. ‘I was thinking of it on the train. All that money, just lying there in that box … and I was thinking, with the money, Isha’s money, if it’s still there … Maybe we could just go back to the way it was – you and me; we could rent a little bungalow. We could make a film on our own. Wouldn’t you like that? You and me … and maybe even our daughter. It’s how it was meant to be …’

  Eleanor imagined it, and it was magical, irresistible. Of course it was. She shook her head. ‘It’s too late.’

  ‘No it isn’t. It’s a fresh start. Another chance …’

  ‘What if she isn’t Isha?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Eleanor looked again at the letter in her hand, at the photograph of the baby, and at the photograph of the woman. ‘She must have been looking for us a long time,’ Eleanor muttered.

  ‘Not as long as we’ve been looking for her.’

  ‘Maybe not.’

  A long silence – and then Max suddenly said: ‘El – when this weekend is over …’ And Eleanor laughed. She already knew what he was going to say. And she already knew, as well as she knew anything, that no matter what, no matter how this ended, it could not possibly be the end for them.

  ‘Yes?’ she said, smiling. ‘What, when this weekend is over?’

  ‘I have a script I wanted you to look at …’

  She laughed aloud. ‘No,’ she shook her head. ‘Really. I don’t want to talk about scripts, Max. Not right now.’

  ‘It’s about the fire. About Triangle. You didn’t know I was working on it, did you?’

  ‘How could I have known, when you never told me?’

  ‘I’ve been working on it for years.’

  ‘Max—’

  ‘It’s about the fire. It’s about you and me. I mean to say …’ He gave a dry laugh. ‘A version … A nice version. They come back for the kid, in my story. And she’s right there, waiting for them. So there’s a happy ending. My film has a happy ending.’

  ‘Every movie should have a happy ending— Shhh! Did you hear it? I think she’s coming.’

  They waited, but they heard nothing more. Only the distant tock-tock of the tennis ball. Calls of ‘cheat!’ And the rustling of wind in the rose bushes behind them.

  ‘I wonder,’ Max broke the silence again. He was gazing at the girl’s photograph. ‘D’you suppose she’s any good. As an actress?’

  ‘She might be.’

  ‘I bet she’s good,’ Max continued, not really listening. ‘If she’s anything like her mother.’

  ‘Her mother,’ Eleanor smiled, ‘was never as good as people said she was.’

  ‘Her mother,’ corrected Max, ‘was – still is – far, far better than she ever realized. She just doesn’t care about it enough …’ He glanced across at Eleanor, and then back to the photograph in their hands. ‘She looks just like you, El. Remember the green eyes? Those big, warm, green eyes gazing back at us. Melting the snow on Hester Street, you used to say. No matter what. No matter how ill she was …’

>   ‘I picture them every day.’

  ‘Just the same as yours, El …’

  Eleanor stood behind him and looked again at the photograph. ‘Maybe,’ she said. ‘It’s so hard to tell … But she resembles me … just a little bit. Maybe?’ He lifted a hand, ran it along the hip of Eleanor’s dress, left it there. She didn’t move it away. After a while she lifted her arm, and rested it around his shoulders.

  Another rustle, and then footsteps – definitely footsteps this time, coming from the pathway behind them. Light, girlish footsteps …

  ‘They sound just like yours!’ he whispered. And they did.

  ‘Hello?’ he called out. ‘Is it you?’ The footsteps stopped abruptly.

  ‘Hello there?’ Eleanor moved towards the path, but Max pulled her back.

  Slowly, the footsteps restarted: light and girlish still, tripping down the steps one-two-three …

  Eleanor wriggled free of Max and ran towards them. The two women collided on the bottom step where the path turned in. They stopped. Stepped back. Considered each other.

  Same willowy height. Same slim build.

  Same short shock of thick, dark hair. Same light footsteps.

  ‘Mrs Beecham?’ Same soft, low voice.

  ‘Eleana Beekman. Kappelman. Call me Eleana …’ She laughed. ‘Call me whatever you like! And you must be … You signed yourself, Hannah. Hannah. Hannah!’ Eleanor leaned forward, gently, took the girl’s silver chamsa between finger and thumb. ‘Oh, Hannah. It is sight for sore eyes …’

  The girl turned to Max. ‘And you are Mr—’

  ‘Matz Beekman,’ he said. ‘You look … Can I say it? You look just like your mother.’

  ‘Well, I …’ The girl retreated a small step. ‘Mr Beecham. Beekman. Please. We mustn’t be too hasty …’

  ‘Look, Max. Mama’s chamsa,’ Eleanor said. ‘You remember it?’ He nodded. Though he didn’t remember it. Not really, not at all.

  ‘Is it really you?’ Eleanor said. ‘Max – Max – Is it really our little Isha returned to us?’

  ‘How can we be certain?’ the girl asked. ‘I remember nothing. Nothing. Except what I told you in the letter …’

  ‘It’s Mama’s chamsa!’ cried Eleanor. ‘I know it is!’ And it was, she was sure of it. Or if it wasn’t, it was similar – so remarkably similar.