The Sweetness of Forgetting

by Kristin Harmel

  “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’s Strudel

  STRUDEL

  INGREDIENTS

  3 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and sliced into narrow slivers

  1 Granny Smith apple, peeled, cored, and shredded

  1 cup raisins

  1/2 cup chopped candied orange peel (see recipe below)

  1 cup brown sugar

  2 tsp. cinnamon

  1/2 cup slivered almonds

  1 sheet frozen puff pastry, thawed

  1 egg, beaten

  Cinnamon sugar for sprinkling (3 parts sugar mixed with 1 part cinnamon)

  DIRECTIONS

  1. Mix apples, raisins, candied orange peel, brown sugar, and cinnamon in large bowl. Let sit for 30 minutes.

  2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees.

  3. Spread slivered almonds in a thin layer on a baking sheet and toast in oven for 7–9 minutes, until slightly browned. Remove and set aside for 5 minutes until cool enough to touch. Mix into the apple mixture.

  4. Spoon apple mixture into a colander lined with cheesecloth and press down with another piece of cheesecloth, to eliminate extra moisture in the mixture. Leave in cheesecloth-covered colander to drain while you place puff pastry sheet on a greased baking sheet. Roll lightly to expand area of pastry without breaking through the dough.

  5. Spread apple mixture down the middle of the pastry lengthwise and fold the pastry around the mixture, sealing on all sides by using a bit of water on your fingers and pressing edges firmly together.

  6. Brush top of pastry with beaten egg, cut 5 or 6 narrow slivers in the top, and sprinkle liberally with cinnamon sugar.

  7. Bake for 35–40 minutes, until golden brown.

  CANDIED ORANGE PEEL

  INGREDIENTS

  Four oranges

  14 cups water, divided

  2 cups granulated sugar

  DIRECTIONS

  1. Peel all four oranges, taking care to remove the peels whole or in two pieces, if possible.

  2. Cut the peels into thin strips

  3. Boil 6 cups of water, and add the peels to the boiling water. Boil 3 minutes, drain, and rinse the peels, then repeat the same process again. (This gets rid of some of the bitterness of the orange peels.)

  4. Mix remaining 2 cups water with 2 cups sugar and bring to a boil. Add the peels, reduce heat, and cover pot. Simmer for 45 minutes.

  5. Remove from sugar water with a slotted spoon, and lay peels on a rack to dry. Wait at least two hours before using them in the recipe above. Dip the remainder in dark chocolate and enjoy as a snack.

  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.

  Rose took a deep breath and looked into the eyes of Hope, the granddaughter she knew she’d failed. Hope’s mother, Josephine, had suffered from Rose’s mistakes, and so too had Hope. Even now, Rose could see it in her granddaughter’s eyes and in the way she lived her life. Then, she looked to Annie, the one who brought all the memories rushing back in. She hoped for a better future for her. “I need you to do something for me,” Rose said at long last, turning to her granddaughter.

  “What do you need?” Hope asked softly. “I’ll do whatever you want.”

  Hope didn’t know what she was agreeing to, but Rose had no choice.

  “I need you to go to Paris,” Rose said calmly.

  Hope’s eyes widened. “Paris?”

  “Paris,” Rose repeated firmly. Before Hope could ask any questions, she went on. “I must know what happened to my family.” Rose reached into her pocket and withdrew the list, the one that felt like it was on fire, along with a check she’d carefully made out for a thousan
d dollars. Enough for a plane ticket to France. Her palm burned as Hope took them from her. “I must know,” Rose repeated softly. The waves crashed against the dam of her memories, and she braced herself for the flood.

  “Your . . . family?” Hope asked tentatively.

  Rose nodded, and Hope unfolded the slip of paper. Her eyes quickly scanned the seven names.

  Seven names, Rose thought. She looked upward, to where the stars of the Big Dipper were beginning to appear. Seven stars in the sky. “I must know what happened,” she told her granddaughter. “And so, now, must you.”

  “What’s going on?” Annie interrupted. She looked scared, and Rose longed to comfort her, but she knew she was no better at comfort than she was at truth. She never had been. Besides, Annie was twelve. Old enough to know. Just two years younger than Rose had been when the war began.

  “Who are these people?” Hope asked, looking down at the list again.

  “They are my family,” Rose said. “Your family.” She closed her eyes for a moment and traced their names on her own heart, which, astoundingly, had gone on beating for all these years.

  Albert Picard. b. 1897

  Cecile Picard. b. 1901

  Helene Picard. b. 1924

  Claude Picard. b. 1929

  Alain Picard. b. 1931

  David Picard. b. 1934

  Danielle Picard. b. 1937

  When Rose opened her eyes, Hope and Annie were staring at her. She took a deep breath. “Your grandfather went to Paris in 1949,” she began. Her voice was strained, for the words were hard to say aloud, even now, even so many years later. Rose closed her eyes again and remembered Ted’s face the day he came home. He’d been unable to meet her eye. He’d spoken slowly as he delivered the news of the people she’d loved more than anything in the world.

  “They all died,” Rose continued after a moment. She opened her eyes again and looked at Hope. “It was all I needed to know then. I asked your grandfather to tell me no more. My heart could not bear it.”

  Only after he’d delivered the news had she finally agreed to return with him to the Cape Cod town where he’d been born and raised. Until then, she had been determined to remain in New York, just in case. It was where she’d always believed she’d be found, in the meeting place they’d spoken of years before. But now, there was no one left to find her. She was lost forever.

  “All these people?” Annie asked, breaking the silence, bringing Rose back to the moment. “They all, like, died? What happened?”

  Rose paused. “The world fell down,” she said finally. It was all she could explain, and it was the truth. The world had collapsed upon itself, writhing and folding into something she could no longer recognize.

  “I don’t understand,” Annie murmured. She looked scared.

  Rose took a deep breath. “Some secrets cannot be spoken without undoing a lifetime,” she said. “But I know that when my memory dies, so too will the loved ones I have kept close to my heart all these years.”

  Rose looked at Hope. She knew that her granddaughter would do her best to explain it to Annie one day. But first, she would need to understand it herself. And for that, she needed to go to the place it had all begun.

  “Please go to Paris soon, Hope,” Rose urged. “I do not know how much time I have.”

  And then, she was done. The toll was too high. She had said more than she’d said in sixty-two years, since the day Ted had returned with the news. She looked up at the stars and found the one she had named Papa, the one she had named Maman, the ones she had named Helene, Claude, Alain, David, Danielle. There was still one star missing. She could not find him, no matter how much she searched. And she knew, as she’d always known, that it was her fault he wasn’t there. A piece of her wanted Hope to find out about him, on her journey to Paris. She knew the discovery would change Hope’s life.

  Hope and Annie were asking questions, but Rose could no longer hear them. Instead, she closed her eyes and began to pray.

  The tide was coming. It had begun.

  Chapter Seven

  Do you, like, have any idea what she was talking about?” Annie says as soon as we get back in the car after dropping Mamie off.

  She’s fumbling with her seat belt as she tries to buckle it. It’s not until I notice that her hands are shaking that I realize mine are too.

  “I mean, like, who are those people?” Annie finally clicks the belt closed and looks at me. There’s confusion etched across her smooth brow, along with her smattering of freckles that are fading more the farther we get from the summer sun. “Mamie’s maiden name wasn’t even Picard. It was Durand.”

  “I know,” I murmur.

  When Annie was in fifth grade, her class did a basic family tree project. She’d tried to use a website to trace Mamie’s roots, but there’d been so many immigrants with the last name Durand in the early 1940s that she’d gotten stuck. She’d sulked about it for a week, upset at me that I hadn’t thought to research Mamie’s past before her memory began to vanish.

  “Maybe she got the name wrong,” Annie says finally. “Maybe she wrote Picard but she meant Durand.”

  “Maybe,” I say slowly, but I know that neither of us quite believes it. Mamie was as lucid as we’d seen her in years. She knew exactly what she was saying.

  We drive the rest of the way home without speaking. But for once, it’s not an uncomfortable silence; Annie isn’t sitting in the passenger seat resenting me with her every breath; she’s thinking about Mamie.

  The light in the sky has almost entirely gone out now; I imagine Mamie at her window, searching the stars as twilight finally gives way to the blackness of night. Out here on the Cape, especially when the summer tourists have all snuffed out their porch lights until the next season, the nights are dark and deep. The larger streets are lit, but as I turn onto Lower Road and then Prince Edward Lane, the faint glow of Main Street vanishes behind us, and ahead of us, the last vestiges of Mamie’s heure bleue disappear into the dark void that I know is the west side of Cape Cod Bay.

  I feel like we’re in a ghost town as I make the last turn onto Bradford Road. Seven of the ten homes on our street are summer homes, and now that the season’s over, they’re deserted. I pull into my driveway—the same driveway where I spent summer nights as a little girl catching fireflies and winter days helping my mom shovel snow so she could get her old station wagon out—and turn off the ignition. We’re still in the car, but now that we’re a block from the beach, I can smell salt in the air, which means that the tide is coming in. I have a sudden urge to hurry down to the beach with a flashlight and dip my toes in the frothy surf, but I quell it; I have to get Annie ready to go to her father’s for the night.

  She doesn’t seem to be any more ready to get out of the car than I am.

  “Why did Mamie want to leave France so bad anyway?” she finally asks.

  “The war must have been pretty bad for her,” I say. “Like Mrs. Sullivan and Mrs. Koontz said, I think her parents had died. Mamie would have only been seventeen when she left Paris. Then I think she met your great-grandpa and fell in love.”

  “So she, like, left everything behind?” Annie asks. “How could she do that without being sad?”

  I shake my head. “I don’t know, honey.”

  Annie’s eyes narrow. “You never asked her?” She looks at me, and I can tell that the anger, which had gone into hibernation temporarily, is back.

  “Sure I did,” I say. “When I was your age, I used to ask her about her past all the time. I wanted her to take me to France and show me all the things she did when she was a kid. I used to imagine her riding the Eiffel Tower elevator up and down all day with a poodle, while eating a baguette and wearing a beret.”

  “Those are stereotypes, Mom,” Annie says, rolling her eyes at me. But I’m fairly sure I can see the hint of a smile tugging at the corners of her mouth as she gets out of the car.

  I get out too and follow her across the front lawn. I forgot to turn the porch light
on before I left the house earlier, so it looks like the darkness is swallowing Annie whole. I hurry to the door and turn the key in the lock.

  Annie lingers in the hallway for a long moment, just looking at me. I’m sure she’s about to say something, but when she opens her mouth, no sound comes out. Abruptly, she turns on her heel and strides toward her bedroom in the back of our small cottage. “I’ll be ready in five!” she yells over her shoulder.

  Since “five” usually means at least twenty minutes in Annie-speak, I’m surprised to see her in the kitchen just a few minutes later. I’m standing at the refrigerator with the door open, willing dinner to materialize out of thin air. For someone who works around food all day, I do a lousy job of keeping my own fridge stocked.

  “There’s a Healthy Choice meal in the freezer,” Annie says from behind me.

  I turn and smile. “Guess it’s time I go to the grocery store.”

  “Nah,” Annie says. “I wouldn’t recognize our fridge if it was full. I’d think I’d accidentally gone into the wrong house.”

  “Ha-ha, very funny,” I say with a grin. I shut the refrigerator door and open the freezer, which contains two trays of ice cubes, a half bag of miniature Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups, a bag of frozen peas, and, as Annie promised, a Healthy Choice frozen meal.

  “We already ate, anyways,” Annie adds. “Remember? The lobster rolls?”

  I close the door to the freezer and nod. “I know,” I say. I look over at Annie, who’s standing by the kitchen table, her duffel bag propped against the chair beside her.

  She rolls her eyes at me. “You’re so weird. Do you just sit here and eat junk food every time I go to Dad’s?”

  I clear my throat. “No,” I lie.

  Mamie used to deal with stress by baking. My mother used to deal with stress by getting furious about little things, and usually sending me to my room after telling me what a lousy daughter I was. I, apparently, deal with stress by stuffing my face.

  “All right, honey,” I say. “Got everything?” I cross the kitchen toward her, moving absurdly slowly, as if I can prolong her time with me. I pull her into a hug, which seems to surprise her as much as it surprises me. But she hugs back, which makes the pain in my heart temporarily disappear.