Where to Find Me

by Alba Arikha

  I liked having someone like Peter in the family, because he made us question everything we took for granted. Thanks to Peter and Cristina, I was afforded a glimpse into what it meant to be a victim of war. To be oppressed, or unfairly judged. To fight for freedom and civil rights. I was proud of my aunt and uncle. There was something authentic in their desire to make a difference. They meant it. They lived it. And even as a child I could see that made it laudable. If my father disagreed with some of their views, that was his loss. This was about justice. The Jewish extremists had killed Peter’s father for no reason other than the fact that he happened to be a British soldier. They had deprived a child of his father, a heinous crime in itself. I felt for Peter, even though 1946 seemed a world away from mine.

  Except that when they came to see us that day in Dorset, after Lucie disappeared at sea, Peter, especially, seemed strangely subdued. “We’re with you with all our hearts,” was all he said, while outside the rain continued to fall relentlessly.

  Peter’s voice, usually so loud and clear on public platforms, was remarkably quiet in our private surroundings, almost as if he wasn’t sure of what to say. Was it because my parents weren’t fighting for a cause? Or was it because he found it difficult to relate to the death of a stranger? He barely knew Lucie, although he and Cristina had been at the wedding. I remembered him there, fiddling with his tie, standing by the buffet on his own while everyone was dancing. He seemed shorter and pudgier, and his hair was parted on the side. His large eyes looked worried – not the committed, passionate eyes I was used to, filled with the verve of his regular railing. There was no outcry that day, just a feeling of deep unease on his part, although not on Cristina’s. She was drinking copious amount of champagne and dancing; she was wearing a low-cut red dress and high-heeled sandals. I could hear her laughing on the dance floor: she was very loud, perhaps even drunk. Cristina taught art in a grammar school, but she also showed her paintings in local galleries, and someone in London had expressed interest in her work, is what my mother told me, which had made Cristina happy, so she was especially ebullient that day.

  Cristina was different from Peter. They shared the same political and moral values, but there was a certain grace and ease about her which her husband lacked. I could see it now in the way Cristina took Ben aside to talk to him. She did so spontaneously, with great confidence. For all his talk of international boycotts and social justice, Peter did not match her confidence. Cristina had a special way with people, especially children. I enjoyed her company, and so did Ben. I couldn’t hear what she told my brother, but I could see his small face momentarily light up as she spoke, stroking his hair as she did so.

  Then his face fell again, and Cristina went to find my mother in the kitchen. They began cooking together, and I could see them from outside peeling vegetables, their heads bent as they spoke, their faces looking grave. I was in the garden, so I watched them through the kitchen window during that small pause in the rain, before it lashed down again and their faces became as fuzzy as an old photograph.

  But rather than go inside, I chose to stay where I was, in the wet garden. It was an impulsive reaction, as if I needed to commune with the elements, so I lifted my face and arms, and let the blustery rain soak me – my hair, my cheeks, my clothes, my sandalled feet. My mother came outside and grabbed my arm. “Hannah, what are you doing – are you mad? You’re going to catch pneumonia! Don’t you think we have enough worries as it is?” she shouted. “Go and dry yourself. And I mean now!”

  Her tone was sharp and angry, and I cursed her under my breath as I ran upstairs to change. How could she not understand? Nothing was the same, and nothing could be explained – that’s why I had done it.

  But now was not the time to argue with her, as she had pointed out.

  I threw my wet clothes on the floor. I dried my hair and grabbed a dress from my wardrobe and went back downstairs. My parents had lit candles and set the table beautifully. Ben was sulking. We all sat down to dinner, and just as we did so, the rain turned to hail. It smashed against the window pane before it turned to rain again. My mother had made mashed potatoes with chicken breasts and carrots, but none of us was really hungry.

  Ben kept his head lowered and didn’t speak, even when Cristina tried to communicate with him. So we ignored him and tried to pretend that everything was all right, and Peter began to talk about his children and their school, then about the war in Lebanon, but was quickly interrupted by my father, who diverted the conversation to Margaret Thatcher instead (“No wars today Peter – no wars”), except that Thatcher was intrinsically linked to the Falklands War, so my mother deftly launched into a lengthy reminiscence about Argentina and how she had once been as a young girl, and how we should all go there some day – South America is where it’s at.

  But none of us really cared. About South America or the children’s school, or the Falklands War. All I could think about was Lucie, alone at sea.

  I’m sure that Ben was thinking the same thing.

  Then my father mentioned the Beatles, and we began to talk about John Lennon. Ben lifted his head briefly: he was a Beatles fan. I said that I wanted to go to New York and see Strawberry Fields in Central Park. Ben said he didn’t want to, then fell silent again. My mother looked worried. “Ben, darling, please don’t be upset. Tell us what you’d like to talk about! Anything you’d like.”

  Ben fiddled with his food and said nothing. My mother then declared that it didn’t matter, he didn’t have to eat if he didn’t want to – she was happy to just talk about the Beatles and Strawberry Fields and anything he wanted to. “But I don’t want to talk!” Ben cried out. “Don’t you understand? I don’t want to talk about anything at all! Don’t you see? Don’t you see?”

  He began to squash the mash harder and harder with his fork, and bits of potatoes started to fly everywhere. My mother shouted something, but it was too late. Ben grabbed the plate with two hands and smashed it on the table, breaking it into several pieces as the food spilled everywhere. We looked at him, bemused. My mother turned white. “Ben,” she whispered. “Ben please—”

  Ben threw his chair back and ran to his bedroom, leaving the floor covered in bits of mash and porcelain. Peter and Cristina were stunned into silence. For a long while, none of us said anything.

  Eventually, my mother got up and went to open the kitchen closet. She picked up a broom and slowly started to sweep the shattered bits into a pile. Cristina cleared the leftover dishes from the table, while Peter ran upstairs. My father remained seated in his chair, gazing into the void like a drunkard.

  *

  These were my first life lessons:

  That tragedy leaves a trail in its wake, which alters the order of things.

  That fragility has the same velocity as strength.

  That guilt is as powerful as sorrow.

  That nothing can be taken for granted.

  That everything good can disappear.

  My big father had now become small. My mother spoke in whispers.

  Walter pretended that everything was just the same.

  Ben hardly spoke at all, because he said his mouth hurt when he did.

  As for me, every night I dreamt of the sea. Of enormous waves engulfing me.

  Of Lucie’s startled green eyes, just before she went under.

  *

  After two weeks, Lucie’s body still wasn’t found.

  Walter urged us to return to London. “I’ll wait for her. They’ll find her,” he said, sounding remarkably composed. “Bodies don’t just disappear at sea.”

  We left reluctantly, but not before my mother said she was putting our Dorset house on the market. It was cursed, she said, and we couldn’t possibly keep a house with windows facing the same beach on which Lucie – not to mention the other girl – had died. “It will be bad for our psyches,” she said. “And this beach is unsafe.”

 
“It isn’t,” my father replied. “It was a fluke. A terrible one, but a fluke nonetheless. It’s very unlikely to ever happen again. I’m not selling this house.”

  They began to fight, late into the night. It was his house, not hers. He had owned it for twenty years and loved it more than anything. She had no right. “This isn’t about rights, but common sense!” she shouted. “What about the children, Leon? Ask Freud what he would say!”

  “I don’t give a shit about Freud!” my father shouted back. “I just care about my house!”

  But in the end she won the battle. I suppose she convinced my defeated father that it was the right thing to do. “I’m tired of arguing with her,” he later told us. “And perhaps she has a point. Perhaps she knows best.”

  Ben and I didn’t contest it, because we didn’t know best. All we knew was that it broke our hearts further, but we were too fraught to stop her.

  So the house was sold. I couldn’t bring myself to say goodbye to it – neither could Ben. The last standing witness to our childhood was now gone, and it only added yet another sense of loss on top of everything else.

  But it was a house. Lucie was a person. Yet it was the same.

  Time splattered, like blood.

  3

  Walter rang one morning to say that he was in London for two days and that he’d like to come for dinner the following evening.

  My mother stuffed a goose as if it were Christmas. “We’re eating French food, in honour of Lucie,” she announced.

  She hadn’t cooked in weeks and made up for it. She prepared roast potatoes and chestnuts, grilled vegetables and warm gravy. She served French cheeses and dark-chocolate mousse for pudding. She lit the whole room with candles and put on a Charles Aznavour record.

  The adults ate heartily, as if everything were normal.

  Ben and I picked at our food and pretended to be happy.

  Walter appeared as he had always done: jovial, gentle, though perhaps less prone to playful banter. He also drank more. Everyone drank more. Lucie was only discussed at the end of the meal, when enough alcohol had been consumed. Walter insisted that nothing could have been done to prevent the incident, therefore there was no use in discussing it.

  “She’s dead,” he said, “and I’ll recover. We all have to. The only way to do that is to press forward and move on.”

  I noticed that his lips had turned purple, just like the wine.

  “It can’t be that simple,” my mother said. “You can’t just move on like that.”

  My father looked at her with disapprobation. “Anita…”

  “It’s the trauma talking, not him,” my mother continued, pointing at Walter.

  She was drunk. I could tell. She spoke in a strange way, as if her mouth had turned soft, like jelly.

  “There’s no trauma, just sadness,” said Walter, who had never used such words in front of us before.

  “Walter, sadness is the least of it,” my mother continued, speaking too loudly. “Trauma is the word you’re looking for. T.R.A.U.M.A.”

  “Anita!” my father barked. “Enough!”

  My mother looked at him and sniggered. “Enough? Really?” she dabbed her lips with a napkin and glared at him with shiny eyes. “Enough is this, Leon: if you hadn’t played that stupid dip-dip game, none of this would have happened. None of it, and—”

  “And the children have always loved that game – and you know it, because you used to play it too. Or maybe you’ve forgotten?” my father snapped back.

  “No, I haven’t forgotten, but that’s beside the point, isn’t it? Isn’t it!” she cried out. “It’s true! If you hadn’t chosen to go into the sea when you did, and play that game when you did, none of it would have happened, would it?”

  “Anita, Leon, none of what happened is anybody’s fault. None of it,” Walter said, in a barely audible voice.

  But my father wasn’t listening to Walter. His whole face had begun to tremble. I had never seen him look that way, and it frightened me. When he spoke, his words were slow and filled with menace. “Are you blaming me, Anita? Is that what you’re doing? Fucking blaming me for a rip current I couldn’t fucking control?”

  “I’m not blaming you, but I think that we all have responsibilities here,” my mother answered, avoiding his gaze as she poured herself another glass of wine. She was nervous now, and tried to hide it.

  “Yes,” my father declared, his tone still dark and angry. “You’re right. If you had remembered that Lucie was in the water – because let’s face it, you forgot that she was there, having rescued your son – YOUR son, not HERS – she probably would have been found and saved, wouldn’t she? Wouldn’t she?” he repeated, shouting this time.

  “Leon, Anita, please,” Walter repeated, and when I looked at him, his cheeks were all red, and he looked as if he might cry. “She’s gone, and there’s nothing we can do about it,” he added, in a hoarse voice.

  I longed to flee. Run and flee and hide in my bedroom. They were spewing hot words like venom. Was it really my parents speaking? Or was it the helplessness of grief?

  My father poured himself another glass of wine. My mother lit a cigarette and smoked it nervously. Ben had lowered his head so that it was nearly touching his plate, and his legs were twitching under the table; I could feel them rubbing against mine. I touched his knee and squeezed it gently. I felt that I needed to say something. Anything to remove the ugliness and tension hanging over us and restore some decency to the conversation.

  “Lucie was the bravest of us all, and that’s how we should remember her,” I blurted out. “No other way.”

  There was a stony silence as the adults looked at me. Then my father spoke. “You’re right, Hannah, that was very well put. You’re absolutely right. She was the bravest of us all.”

  Ben now looked up at us. His face looked small and fragile.

  “I should have drowned. Not her. So it’s my fault. That’s why you’re all shouting.”

  My mother immediately stubbed out her cigarette, stood up and walked towards him. “Don’t ever say or think that, my darling boy, never,” she said, her voice quivering as she wrapped her arms around him.

  “But it’s true,” Ben continued. “I was mean to her. I made fun of her. And she tried to save me anyway, even though I was horrible.”

  “You weren’t horrible, Ben, she knew you were just being silly,” Walter interjected, looking worried. “Please don’t ever think she took it seriously.”

  “Yes, she did – and Hannah’s right,” Ben continued, looking disconsolate. “She was nicer and braver than all of us, and now she’s dead,” he added, before breaking into uncontrollable sobs. “She’s dead, and I made fun of her.”

  My mother held him hard against her, but he pushed her away and darted upstairs.

  “Nobody’s allowed into my room – and I said nobody!” he shouted.

  I followed him quickly, but he slammed the door before I could get to him, and I stood behind it for a long while, calling his name in vain.

  That night, just before going to bed, I went into the kitchen to get myself a glass of water. As I was about to enter, I saw Walter talking to my mother.

  She was leaning against the stove. He was standing close to her, and she was laughing, pushing him gently away. “Come on, Walter,” I heard her say, followed by a few inaudible words.

  He stopped in his tracks and looked suddenly sad. “Of course,” he said. “Of course.”

  I must have made some noise, because the two of them looked up.

  “Hannah, darling?” my mother said. She quickly moved away from Walter.

  “I just wanted to get some water,” I said.

  My mother filled me a glass and handed it to me. I kissed her and Walter goodnight, and went upstairs to my room. I tried to fall asleep, but I couldn’t. Something felt wrong. An intangible feeling,
like slipping on ice.

  *

  Ben and I were sent to see a child psychologist whose office was on a leafy street in Hampstead. Dr Glass wore large glasses, and her grey hair was pulled back into a tight bun, which revealed her scalp; I found it intensely displeasing to look at, and it made me want to get up and run back home. But then she started to talk, and I quickly forgot about her hairline.

  Dr Glass explained that what had happened wasn’t a single occurrence, but was linked to other concomitant events (she explained the word “concomitant”). It was important, she said, that we understood the meaning of cause and effect. That there were such things as flukes, and this was one of them. “Not everything in life happens for a justifiable reason.”

  Lucie, Dr Glass continued, speaking very carefully, would have drowned no matter what. There was a rip current, and it would probably have ripped her away (hence its name), regardless of whether or not she had tried to save Ben. It wasn’t our fault, Dr Glass stressed. It was very important we understood that. None of it was our fault. And the fact that Ben had made fun of her once or twice was neither here nor there.

  She repeated that several times. “Neither here nor there.”

  “That’s not true,” Ben said in a small voice.

  “Why not, Ben?”

  “Because it’s normal to feel bad when you’re mean to people. And usually you have a chance to say sorry. I can’t say sorry to Lucie, because she’s dead.”

  Then he lowered his head in order to hide his tears. I clasped his small hand and held it in mine.

  Dr Glass looked at Ben for a long time before speaking. “What you say is correct, Ben. And you’re obviously a very sensitive and good person. But you see, I think that Lucie knew how sorry you felt from the start. I think that she forgave you immediately, because she could see it as clearly as I do: she knew that you didn’t mean it. You’re still young. Anyone would forgive you.”

  Ben looked up at Dr Glass with tears in his eyes. “But I don’t forgive myself,” he whispered, almost as if he didn’t want us to hear him.