The Sugar Men

by Ray Kingfisher

  ‘I talk to him almost every day.’

  And that was probably true. Judy and David hadn’t spent absolutely every waking second with her, and somehow she’d obviously found some time alone to call him.

  ‘So, how is he?’ Judy asked.

  ‘Old, like me.’

  ‘No,’ David said. ‘I think she means, Does he still get the nightmares?’

  Susannah wet her lips while she gave it a moment’s thought. ‘I think he’s glad we got together.’

  ‘Does he sleep better?’

  ‘He doesn’t give me a night-by-night account, but . . . mmm . . . I’m pretty sure he does. He keeps thanking me, which is nice. And I know I’ve been sleeping better. That could be me just getting more tired, of course.’

  ‘Do you want us to leave?’ David said. ‘So you can rest.’

  ‘Stop fussing,’ Susannah said, giggling. ‘You’ll know when I want you to leave – I’ll be snoring.’ She sat up in bed a little more. ‘No, I just want you here. I just want to talk with you while I still can.’

  David rubbed his chin, rasping the stubble. ‘I think we’ve pretty much talked all the talk there is over the past few weeks.’

  That was when it hit Judy. There was one question she’d always wanted to ask her mother but never dared even to skirt around. But she now realized that as now-or-never situations went, this was up there with the best. Why shouldn’t she ask the question that was now itching the back of her throat?

  Her mother had never tried to hide the fact that she was Jewish, but didn’t follow the faith herself, and so hadn’t made any attempt whatsoever to encourage her children to find out about it, never mind follow it. Sure, she’d always given them the spiel about being half Jewish, half Scottish, whole American, but there were no visits to synagogues, no bar mitzvahs, no sacred days, no worshipping at all. In fact, the only obvious vestige of the religion she followed as a child was a penchant for bagels.

  There had been a few Jewish visitors over the years – but never people who were visiting because they were Jewish. They regularly met up with the people they knew as Uncle Paul, Aunt Helena and Uncle Reuben (and, yes, they called them that even though it confused the heck out of Reuben at first), and in spite of them all being devout Jews and the Morgans not, it was never mentioned and no concerns or friction seemed apparent either way to the young Judy.

  In Judy’s college days of ‘finding herself’ she’d gone through a short phase of discovering her Jewish roots. In hindsight it was clear she’d been egged on by David, who had probably had the same feelings a couple of years before, but for Judy it ultimately amounted to little more than reading up on Jewish history and culture, after which she largely forgot all about it and carried on with life.

  It only became apparent to her when she thought about it at that moment, but there had always been a part of her that resented the fact that her generation – hers and David’s – had been the one that had broken the link with Judaism – or, at least, Jewish practices. It felt as if Hitler had lost his battle but subsequently won on appeal.

  And so she asked. She knew if she tried to engineer the conversation around to it in some subtle or clever way she would only chicken out, so she just said it. She spoke the words slowly and clearly so there could be no misunderstanding – and so her mother couldn’t pretend she hadn’t heard it.

  ‘Mom, why weren’t David and I brought up as Jews?’

  Both David and Susannah stared at her, and for a few moments looked like they’d stopped breathing.

  Then David gulped loudly, flicked his face between his sister and his mother and said, ‘Let’s not go there, huh?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Judy said. ‘David’s right. Ignore me.’

  But Judy knew from her own first-hand experience how a mother can read her child’s facial expression better than any fairground con artist could ever pretend to.

  ‘No,’ Susannah said, her voice getting stronger instead of weaker as Judy expected it to. ‘That’s a very good question – and a fair question.’

  David and Judy stayed silent. The trouble was, so did their mother. It was clearly a subject area she had to give some serious thought to. But slowly, and with a few false starts, she started to speak.

  ‘If I’m completely honest,’ she said, measuring her words with an almost scientific accuracy, ‘it’s a big regret in my life.’

  And then, once she got started, she really got started, speaking softly but with conviction.

  ‘You know I have the utmost respect for people of all faiths,’ she said. ‘But especially for practising Jews. Partly out of jealousy, partly because they remind me of my parents, but mostly because I admire the mentality; it’s saying to the whole world that the Nazis weren’t going to beat them, as if every time they celebrated Yom Kippur or observed the Sabbath it would be like poking Hitler in the eye.

  ‘I’d love to say I’d thought it through and come to a decision about what I did and didn’t believe in, but in all honesty I just couldn’t face that sort of question head on. After the war we all moved to America because those awful years destroyed our faith in our own country, but for me I reckon they also destroyed my faith in . . . well . . . in my faith. It wasn’t a choice, you understand, it was just my way of running away from the whole thing. Of course, I didn’t see it like that at the time, but apart from anything else I got panic attacks at the mere thought of being in a building full of Jews. And you have no idea how ashamed I am to say that, but it’s the truth.’

  ‘Mom,’ Judy said. ‘You have nothing to be ashamed of.’ She looked to David and he nodded vigorously.

  ‘Distancing yourself from your faith must have helped you get over things,’ he said. ‘Anyone can see that.’

  They waited and their mother started to speak once or twice before she got back into gear. ‘I guess it probably did. But what I’m certain of is that I got sick of all the bitterness and hate – from the Nazis to the Jews, from the rest of the world to the Germans. I just wanted to step off of that particular carousel. I know I saw things so horrific that no young girl – nobody at all, in fact – should ever see. But I also know that however bad some people were, there were good people too. And you know something? Before I went back to Europe I’d forgotten just who those people were.’

  ‘Yes,’ David said. ‘That . . . that makes perfect sense.’

  Judy simply nodded, leaving her mother to continue.

  ‘And, of course, when I met your father – a Gentile – that was the end of the matter as far as I was concerned. I just had so much more to worry about. These days they’d say I had a mental illness – post-traumatic stress or whatever – but whatever you call it I wasn’t thinking straight, and on the few occasions I did consider returning to my faith, the big worry was how Archie might take it. My thinking was that I couldn’t risk losing him – not after I’d lost so many others. The reality I know now is that he would have accepted me whatever my faith. And I think a little of me wasn’t so much afraid he’d leave me – more that he’d get taken away from me.’

  She stopped and let out a long sigh.

  ‘That’s enough,’ David said. ‘You’re getting tired.’

  Judy tried to agree but the words just wouldn’t come.

  However, with a cough and a deep breath Susannah continued. ‘It’s all right, I’m fine. I was just thinking about your father.’

  ‘Thinking what?’ David asked.

  ‘Thinking how his shock of reddish blond hair had a life all of its own, thinking how he used to hold my head so gently in his hand whenever he kissed me.’ She closed her eyes and her voice weakened. ‘And thinking how my Archie did, in fact, get taken away from me.’

  ‘You don’t have to carry on talking, Mom.’

  ‘But I want to, David. I have more to say. You see, once your father and I started to try for a family, it got more complicated. I was obsessed with blanking out those memories even more but they just wouldn’t go away, there were reminders eve
rywhere I looked and in everything I tried to do. And the thing was, well . . . I’d . . . how can I put it . . . I’d stopped being a woman for about a year when I was a teenager because I hardly ate at all for that time, and I wondered whether motherhood would ever happen – whether I was even capable. And also I wondered whether your father would still want me if he couldn’t have a family with me – so, so stupid of me, I know. That was about the only time I talked to him about specific things that had happened to me and how it worried me so much. And, God bless the man, he told me he’d married me for the woman I was and not for my baby production skills, so I wasn’t to worry.

  ‘We had a long wait, but when those dreams came true and it finally did happen – when I became pregnant with you, David – there were more bad thoughts I had to try to blot out. I didn’t manage to do that, of course. I thought back to those poor women who’d had miscarriages and stillbirths and deformed children because of the disease and starvation, and wondered whether the same thing would happen to me, that I’d be carrying for a few weeks, then I’d lose it. I tried so hard not to think like that, of course, but the images just kept flashing in my mind. They still do; I came to accept about fifty years ago that it just goes with the territory. My bad memories have always been a part of who I am, but when you two came along I sure as anything didn’t want them to be part of you as well.’

  Then Susannah slowly moved her hand to her face and rested her fingertips on her forehead.

  ‘That’s enough talking,’ David said. ‘You need rest.’

  Susannah didn’t say anything for a moment. Judy asked her whether she was okay.

  ‘Your brother’s right,’ Susannah said eventually, almost slurring the words out. ‘I think I’ve said all I wanted to say. Does that answer your question?’

  ‘Forget the question, Mom. Just rest.’

  But Judy’s mother had pretty much said it all, and Judy spent a few minutes thinking the words through while David made their mother more comfortable.

  Susannah fell asleep, so Judy picked up the tray and headed for the door. ‘You coming?’ she whispered to David.

  He shook his head. ‘I don’t want her left on her own.’

  The next morning it took Susannah almost half an hour to fully wake up. She seemed delirious and Judy and David feared the worst. However, she perked up in the afternoon, talking more about years gone by, and especially about how much she missed ‘my Archie’. She even talked on the phone to Reuben and then Teddy, and in each case Judy heard a tremble in her voice as she said goodbye.

  It was later that day that she laid the palm of her hand on the top of her chest and looked up to Judy with eyes that were now just that bit more weary and sunken.

  ‘What is it, Mom?’

  Susannah said nothing.

  David pointed to the phone. ‘You want the doctor?’

  ‘No,’ Susannah said.

  David and Judy looked at each other, neither knowing what to say.

  ‘Just . . . just let me rest,’ Susannah said, almost gasping the words out.

  David shrugged, and when Judy sat down so did he.

  They followed their mother’s instructions, making sure she was never alone, and later on that night they both settled down in the armchairs either side of the bed.

  It was in the dark, early hours of the morning when Susannah woke again, this time talking incoherently, breathing in fits and starts, and lacking the energy to move her arms much.

  This time David didn’t just point to the phone, he picked it up. ‘I’m calling the doctor.’

  Susannah’s eyes were now about three-quarters closed. She managed a frown as if David’s words were taking time to register.

  ‘We’re calling the doctor,’ Judy said, holding her hand. ‘You’ll be okay.’

  Now Judy saw no reaction in her mother, her eyes were now closed fully. She told David to hurry up, just as their mother breathed quickly but shallowly a couple of times. But David was frozen – all his concentration on his mother.

  Susannah opened her eyes slightly and smiled at both of her children. In truth it was little more than a hint of a smile, but it was clearly as much as she could manage and there was no mistaking the feeling. Then she spoke between gasps of air. ‘No doctor . . . got my girl . . . my boy.’

  Judy and David knelt down either side of the bed and each held one of their mother’s hands.

  ‘Mom,’ Judy said, her voice crackling. ‘Please don’t. Please!’

  They waited for what seemed like a season, until Susannah’s head seemed to sink into the pillow a little more and fell slightly to one side. She took a few more short gasps, then a long slow breath.

  Then she breathed no more.

  CHAPTER FORTY-FIVE

  This time it is different – another sense is present.

  The light is bright yet soothing rather than harsh. The sound is of a multitude of choirs singing in harmony. The smell is sweet and fresh and of every known pleasure captured in a fragrance. The very air feels and tastes of a long journey’s end. And rest.

  And yet there is another sense.

  The light disperses itself, shooting around in dazzling formations, then the beams unite to form three figures in the ether – all perfect, all flawless yet individual. The figures glow and radiate love as they approach her.

  They are the figures bonded by family. They approach her, and now there is no fear, only a love that engulfs and transcends every other emotion. They reach out with arms healthy of flesh and clear of skin, and touch her with hands that are soft and comforting.

  And as they touch her she is home. She is now content, and is everything she has ever wanted to be. The three figures embrace her one by one, with the warmth of a lifetime’s yearning.

  But there are more ghostly shapes. A small girl with large, happy eyes appears, who skips towards her. Then there is a tall man with unkempt blond hair – the man she never forgot.

  Yet more figures emerge from the white fog, first the two guardian angels who ensured she could live that other, better life; then a hundred friends she has missed.

  She feels the embrace of every one of them in the heady mix of senses, and then they all step to one side. In the distance is another saintly figure, one with hair that is light yet has hints of red, and a crooked smile that makes her heart pump harder. He slowly comes closer, then as she stands there powerless he cradles the back of her neck and kisses her full and sweet and tenderly on the lips.

  He says he’s missed her as much as she has missed him, then takes her hand. They turn together and she sees that now there are thousands of figures, all reflecting light and love as if it were the same thing.

  And they all move as one into the bright, dazzling light that warms.

  For Judy it felt like the planet had stopped still for some length of time. If somebody were later to tell her that she and David had stood over their mother for an hour she would have believed them. But eventually her senses returned and again she told David to call the doctor. He ignored her and just stared at their mother’s lifeless form, his lower jaw hanging in mid-air. Then Judy told him again to call the doctor, this time shouting the words as she cried. That made him look in her direction, although he appeared to have little focus. And he still didn’t speak, but Judy saw his pained expression move slowly from side to side and it took her a few seconds to work out that he was shaking his head.

  With her eyes now blurring she looked at their mother again, and a few seconds later felt David’s arms around her. He held her as only a big brother can, and they both wept at the passing of a generation.

  CHAPTER FORTY-SIX

  Susannah’s funeral took place on a warm September morning in 2009 at the Greenview Cemetery in Wilmington; the place she always maintained was her home town.

  Judy was surprised at the number of people that turned up at the small multi-faith chapel in the centre of the cemetery grounds, many of whom she didn’t recognize. It was another sign, she now realized, that t
here were elements of her mother’s life she knew little about.

  The ceremony went as well as any funeral could have done, with eulogies from Reuben, from the oldest neighbour in the street, and lastly from David. This final one was especially touching because Alex, David’s eleven-year-old son, also went up to the lectern, and David went into detail about how his mother had doted on her grandson, reading him stories as a toddler, helping teach him to read, and even feigning an interest in soccer for his benefit. Judy listened to every word with a pride that made her feel four inches taller, because it showed the congregation that their mother had been so much more than just a survivor. The congregation was largely unaware of her mother’s past and that was the way she would have wanted it. Alex was too young to have any comprehension of that – to understand what had happened to his grandmother in the years following her own eleventh birthday. But the very fact that he was there only validated her opinion that you could overcome the worst of any ordeal given enough time, love from those around you, and inner strength.

  In spite of the warmth, there had been a strong coastal breeze when they’d entered the chapel. Now, as they filtered out and followed the pallbearers along the gravel path, even that breeze held off, so the longleaf pines standing guard over the cemetery kept still, as though showing their respects.

  The colours, too, were discreet, the rusty orange and yellow lichens clinging to headstones long after the azaleas and sweetbay magnolias had shed their bright flowers.

  Soon the gentle scrunch of shoes on gravel ceased and the assortment of Susannah’s friends, relations and old acquaintances gathered around the graveside. At the front of these people were David and Judy, with their own families close at hand.

  The rabbi spoke a few final words in honour of Susannah as they lowered her coffin – a deliberately plain wooden affair – into the space next to her husband’s grave, and David and Judy each pushed earth on top using the back of the shovel while the rabbi recited a Kaddish. Then one of the pallbearers took the shovel from Judy and rested it against a tree trunk a few yards away. As he returned Judy caught a glimpse of a bird fluttering along and taking a second to perch on the handle of the shovel before moving on. She couldn’t have been sure but it might even have been a wagtail.