It had been just as difficult in the weeks leading up to Audrey’s first departure to London, years ago. But she’d been not much more than a child then, just fifteen. This time felt as though it ought to be different, that Audrey should be able to decide whether to stay or leave Berlin. She was twenty now, a woman. She told Ilse as much.
“Except no one considers you a woman until you’re married, do they?” Ilse said. “As far as making your own choices. Until then, it’s your father’s call.”
Audrey scoffed. “Right. And then after a woman gets married, her choices are limited to what her husband is willing to allow. We’re just always under a man’s control. What if I don’t want that?”
Ilse rolled her eyes. “I know you’ve never been interested in marriage, or boys generally.”
Audrey cast her eyes to the embroidery on Ilse’s bedspread, the subtle pattern of forget-me-nots, dark yellow against the lighter fabric. She recalled the only time a boy tried to court her, when she was thirteen and had hardly adjusted to all the new changes in her body. She hated the development of her breasts, the onset of her menstruation and all it meant. That she was a woman now, Sophie told her. But all she’d ever seen of women’s lot was death and heartbreak and discontent. And when the son of the grocer two streets over approached her with a bouquet and a request for a kiss, Ilse had had to defuse her ire as Audrey hit him with the flowers. Muttering apologies to the rejected boy, Ilse had marched Audrey home from the market, offering an understanding ear and a gentle lecture on propriety as rogue daisy petals clung to Audrey’s hair from the skirmish.
“You might find you want to get married one day, you know,” Ilse said now. “People change. They grow.”
“You mean they grow up,” Audrey said wryly. “They concede to what’s expected of them.”
Ilse turned back to the magazine, and Audrey knew she was giving up the fight for another day.
“I like this one,” Ilse said, pointing at a long gown. “The Empire waist—”
“Doing girl things?” a loud voice said from above.
Audrey’s eyes whipped up to the ceiling, where Ephraim’s head had just emerged from the attic access door. Lately he had taken to using the attic for play, as he had done as a young child, and the location of the access allowed him to torment his sister whenever she least expected it.
“Ephraim!” Ilse cried. “Get out! How long have you been up there, you yutz?”
Ephraim cackled and threw the rope ladder over, then scampered down. He stuck out his tongue at Ilse, who pitched a pillow at his head, which he narrowly dodged.
“Mind my stitches!” he shouted, deliberately loud enough for Ruth to hear, wherever she was in the house.
“He’s so childish sometimes,” Ilse said as he darted out the door. “What about this one, then?” She folded the magazine over to better display a page.
“Mm,” Audrey said, frowning. “I don’t think so. The sleeves are too billowy. They’ll get in the way of playing. I like the wrap-front on that one though. But I’d need it tea-length, so it doesn’t interfere with the pedals.”
It seemed a little ridiculous to focus so much on the dress, considering everything that was going on. But it was, as Ilse had said, a way for her to be involved, and served as a bit of welcome distraction from the stress in the house. Audrey also knew that it mattered. Only two women would be performing at the graduation—the rest were male, and would all wear the same black suit, that equalizer of men. But what a woman wore was always important, no matter how skilled—or inept—she might be. The right outfit had a way of validating a woman. Whether that fact was fair or not was irrelevant. Anyone who denied it was a fool.
Audrey and Ilse whiled away another hour perusing the pages of the magazine before wandering downstairs. It would only be another half hour before supper, and Ira was due home any time now.
They found Ruth and Ephraim in the sitting room. Ephraim had settled from his earlier unruliness and was curled in a large leather armchair by the fireplace, working in his notebook. He was always writing. What he was writing, no one really knew. But he was rarely seen without ink stains on his fingers. Wherever Ephraim was, a shadow always followed; the negative space his twin brother, Michael, should have filled. He’d died of a dreadful fever before the boys had even reached their second birthday. Audrey had been nine, but she still remembered little Michael’s eyes, because they were serious yet warm, just like Ilse’s. Such a contrast to Ephraim’s mischievous ones.
Michael’s death had wrought a permanent change in Ruth, as though a piece of her very body had died that day, too, only she hadn’t ever attempted to amputate it. She’d just allowed it to fester and grow gangrenous, seeping into the rest of her cells because the contamination served as a constant reminder of the child she had lost, ensuring he was unforgotten. Audrey couldn’t imagine why anyone would ever have children at all, if in the act of doing so, one had to risk enduring such ruinous pain. She couldn’t make sense of it. It was one of the major ways in which she and Ilse differed; Ilse wanted so much to be a mother one day.
Now, Ruth was staring into the fire, clutching a folded newspaper so hard her knuckles were white.
Ilse stopped in the doorway. “Is everything all right, Mama?”
Ruth nodded but didn’t make eye contact. She was only forty-two, but her light brown hair was streaked with grey, making her look older than her husband, who was seven years her senior.
Ilse exchanged a glance with Audrey, who shrugged.
“Game of bridge?” Ilse suggested. Audrey was a terrible player and always had been, but played on occasion for Ilse’s sake.
“I’m sort of enjoying my book right now,” she said. Ilse chuckled, then took her usual place over on the navy velvet divan. Audrey followed, settling at the opposite end of the small sofa and picking up the copy of Dante’s Divine Comedy that she’d been reading. Ilse had been immersed in Virginia Woolf lately, and had already disappeared behind A Room of One’s Own. The Kaplans’ wealth enabled them to boast a fabulous library that Audrey had worked her way through twice in the three years she had been living there. Ilse’s father believed that knowledge and self-education were essential for all, women included.
Ten minutes later, a series of clicks at the front door alerted the family to his arrival. Ruth exhaled. There was always an underlying sense of tension in the air when Ira was out, palpable relief when he came home safe.
“Papa!” Ilse said happily, but her smile slipped from her face when Ira appeared in the doorway, looking drawn and tired.
His eyes went to the newspaper in his wife’s hands. “Ruth—”
“You saw it, then?” she demanded, cheeks flushed.
“It is not as bad as all that.”
“What isn’t as bad as all that?” Ilse asked.
“Let us just sit and talk it over,” Ira said, kneeling beside his wife and reaching for her hand.
“What is it, Papa?” Ilse asked again.
He hesitated a fraction too long, and Audrey’s gut twinged.
“Hitler has ordered the deportation of all Polish-born Jews from Germany.”
The room was silent.
“But we aren’t Poles, Papa,” Ephraim said. “We are Germans.”
Ira cleared his throat. “No, son, we are not Poles. But these people were denied entry by Poland and are now living in ghettos on the border. Stateless. Homeless.” He paused. “It would seem that a young man in Paris has parents in one of the ghettos, and has exacted revenge by shooting a Nazi diplomat. The propaganda”—he glanced down at the paper still clutched in Ruth’s other hand—“makes it clear that Hitler is using this assassination to fan the flames of outrage. So…” He trailed off, massaging his forehead in a weary sort of way.
“So… what, Papa?” Ilse pressed. “Are we in danger?”
