White Picket Fences (36 page)

Tally handed him the photo of the two nurses.

Josef brought the photo close to his face. He eyes widened. “Where did you get this?” he breathed.

“Is that Katrine in the picture?” Chase asked.

“Where did you get this?” he repeated.

“The woman standing next to her is Sofia, isn’t it?” Chase said.

Josef nodded wordlessly.

Chase leaned forward. “Josef, if you could know what happened to Katrine, would you want to know? Do you want to know what happened to her?”

Josef swallowed hard, and his eyes misted over as he looked up at Chase first and then Tally. “Where did you get this?”

“The woman you knew as Sofia is the woman our parents knew as Marta Bachmann,” Tally answered.

“That’s…that’s impossible. The Gestapo killed Sofia when she and Katrine were running away. They shot her in the street!”

“No,” Chase said gently. “They didn’t shoot Sofia.”

Chase said the words slowly, letting Josef adjust his mind to their meaning. When it appeared he understood, the old man screwed his eyes shut and brought a shaking hand to his face. Tally reached out and laid her hand on his shoulder.

“Katrine died saving our grandfather,” Chase continued. “Remember when you told us someone inside the ghetto had sold you out? The Gestapo ambushed Sofia and Katrine as they left the sewers. The soldiers had been tipped off, just like you said. Sofia and Katrine ran. Katrine had my grandfather; Sofia had his baby sister. They split up. They were running through the streets of Warsaw, trying to get away. Katrine hid our grandfather under a sidewalk grate because he couldn’t run as fast as an adult. The Nazis came upon her as she was running away without him.”

Chase paused. Josef’s body shook slightly with the cadence of silent tears. Tally stroked his shoulder.

“How do you know all this?” the old man whispered.

“My dad finally read the letter from his father. The letter explained everything,” Tally replied.

Across from her, Josef was silent.

“You… you wanted to know, right?” Tally asked him.

Josef brushed away the tears and cleared his throat. His voice sounded thin and used up when he spoke. “You have no idea how much.”

“I’m sorry about Katrine,” Tally said, and Chase noticed her voice was also thick with emotion. “I’m sorry you had to hear what really happened to her.”

Josef opened his mouth to say something and then shut it. He pointed to the picture of Katrine in his hand. Then he opened his mouth again. “But don’t you see? This means she didn’t learn to live without me like I had to learn to live without her. This means she didn’t
choose
to learn to live without me. You’ve actually done me a tremendous kindness.” His voice fell away again, and fresh tears sprang from his eyes. But this time he kept his eyes open. With shaking fingers he traced the outline of Katrine’s face, frozen in a cheerful smile.

Chase nodded to Tally, and she began to unwrap the tissue-papered parcel in her hands. Josef looked up from the photograph at the sound of rustling paper. The old man watched as the paper fell away and the two butterflies—one large and one small—appeared in her palm.

“Oh,” he whispered. “Where did you find it?” With a trembling hand he reached for the pin. Tally handed it to him.

“Katrine wrapped the baby in her cape,” Chase replied. “The pin was attached to it when she handed the baby to Sofia.
She and our grandpa hid the pin inside his family house and left it when they escaped to England. Tally’s father just now found it in the house. It was still there. He sent it to her.”

Josef smiled and held the pin up. The tiny pearls and sapphires caught the late-afternoon rays. He brought his other hand over the pin as if to hold it in an embrace. Then he stretched out his arm. “Thank you,” he said.

“I want you to have it,” Tally said.

Josef leaned forward, touching her with his outstretched arm. “And I want
you
to have it,” he whispered. His hand trembled as he waited for her to take the pin. When she did, he sat back and exhaled deeply. “I would like to hold on to this. Just for a little while.” He pointed to the photograph in his lap.

“That’s a copy. It’s yours,” Chase said.

Josef nodded. “Thank you.” He picked up the photo and brought it to his chest and closed his eyes.

Chase stood. “We should get going.”

Josef slowly opened his eyes. He did not ask them to stay. But his eyes were kind.

“Oh, by the way, we got an A on our project,” Chase said. “Thanks to Tally we didn’t have to start over from the beginning. She saved the camera and the footage from the fire.”

Josef smiled broadly. “An A! I am pleased for you both.” He looked up at Tally. “Perhaps when you return from your trip to Warsaw, you can tell me what you thought of it. What it is like there now.”

“Sure. I’d be happy to do that,” she said.

“All right,” Chase said. “See you later, Josef. Tell Eliasz goodbye for us.” He and Tally turned to go.

“Wait!” Josef said quickly, as if a sudden thought occurred to him. “How did God give you back your memory of the fire? How did he do it?”

For a second Chase saw himself back at Alyssa’s grave, hearing the gulls crying above him, feeling the cool grass beneath him, and contemplating for the first time the peculiar notion that his last name spelled out rebirth.

“He showed me in a dream.” And he nodded toward Eliasz, whose closed eyes danced under his eyelids like water over stones.

A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS

Writing is an art form for the soloist, but were it not for these remarkable people, I truly would have nothing meaningful to say.

Thank you, Bob—husband, confidant, partner in everything—for your patience and gentility. You are my hero. And to my kids, Stephanie, Josh, Justin, and Eric, thanks for being amazing young adults who keep me planted on solid ground.

I am grateful to my mother, Judy Horning, for willingly and lovingly reading with an honest eye the rough-cut version.

To the amazingly affirming crew at WaterBrook Multnomah, especially editors Shannon Marchese and Jessica Barnes, thank you for your creative insights into the human heart. You are geniuses.

To my agent, Chip MacGregor, thanks for your well-timed votes of confidence and cheering from the sidelines.

To Al Gansky, thank you for letting me peek inside the mind of a passionate woodworker.

To my beloved book club sisters, especially Debbie Ness and Barb Anderson, thank you for thinking me capable of greatness.

And to God, who gives beauty for ashes, I am indebted beyond words.

A
UTHOR’S
N
OTE

The characters Josef Bliss, Eliasz Abramovicz, Katrine, and Sofia “Marta” Bachmann in
White Picket Fences
are fictional, but the Warsaw Ghetto, the carnage at Treblinka, and the smuggling of little ones out of the ghetto during World War II are historical events. One of the most well-known rescuers was Irena Sendler, a Catholic social worker who risked her life to save more than two thousand Jewish children during the Holocaust.

Irena was twenty-nine years old when the Germans invaded Poland and forced Polish Jews into a barbed-wire enclave known as the Warsaw Ghetto. Along with many other sympathizers, Irena took on an underground name, Jolanta, and joined an underground operation called Zegota to offer aid to the displaced and starving Jews. As the horrors of the ghetto heightened, Sendler and a small band of associates began whisking Jewish children away to safety. Sometimes they would use hidden compartments in ambulances. Sometimes the children were placed in coffins or gunny sacks. Sometimes they used a labyrinth of underground tunnels and basements. Sometimes they used forged documents and used the city’s tram, if the tram operator for that day was a Zegota member.

Once outside the ghetto, the Jewish children were taken to Catholic homes and taught the Polish language so they could
pass as Gentile Poles. Many priests and monks provided false baptismal certificates so that Jewish children could pass as Catholic born.

On the evening of October 20, 1943, informed Nazis came to Irena’s apartment and began to bang on the door. A quick-thinking Irena passed the lists of locations of all the rescued children to a friend who was in the apartment with her. The friend hid the lists in her underwear as the Nazis broke through the door. The soldiers searched the apartment for several hours, looking for the names and locations of the estimated two thousand Jewish children that had been spirited away from the ghetto. They never found them.
^*

Irena was arrested, beaten, sent to Pawiak prison, and given the death sentence. A bribe from members of Zegota to her German captors allowed for her release, and she remained in hiding until after the war. The index of names was buried in jars under a tree until the war ended, though sadly, most of these children were not reunited with their parents because the vast majority of them had died during the war. In 2003 Ms. Sendler received the Jan Karski Award for valor and courage. She was also nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize. She died in 2008 at the age of ninety-eight. You can read more about her at
www.irenasendler.org
.

I love hearing from readers. Please visit me at
www.susanmeissner.com
. You are the reason I write.

Susan Meissner

*
Richard C. Lukas, “Irena Sendler: World War II’s Polish Angel,”
St. Anthony Messenger,
vol. 116, no. 3, August 2008.

A
N
I
NTERVIEW
WITH
S
USAN
M
EISSNER

For a
White Picket Fences
discussion guide,
visit
www.waterbrookmultnomah.com
or
www.susanmeissner.com
.

What led you to write
White Picket Fences?

Several years ago I was a court-appointed advocate for children involved in protective services. There were times when I saw that despite the outward appearance of a less-than-perfect home, a child could be loved there. Just because a parent is unconventional or unsuccessful career-wise or makes choices that buck societal norms, it doesn’t mean that he or she is by default a “bad” parent. Likewise, parents who we would traditionally call “good”—meaning they provide, they protect, they don’t hit, they don’t ridicule-can nevertheless make decisions regarding their children that have hugely negative effects, and yet their outward appearance would never lead anyone to suspect it. Even if you live behind a white picket fence, you still have to deal with the fallout of a living in a broken world. You can’t hide from it. The perfect idyllic life is an illusion. Life is a weave of both delight and disappointment, and
it’s precisely these things that give it definition and depth. To ignore what is ugly is to cheapen what is beautiful.

You dovetailed a current day family drama with the Holocaust and the Warsaw Ghetto. Why the connection?

I think it’s fair to say that the depth of the atrocities inflicted during the Holocaust wasn’t fully appreciated until after the war. There was ugliness happening, if you will, and much of the West failed to see it—for whatever reason. Within the horror, though, people made brave choices, selfless choices. And there were survivors who had to choose what they would take with them from the ashes of their suffering. I wanted to explore how a person makes that decision. Even the decision to pretend it never happened is a decision regarding those ashes.

What interests you about the intersection of personal relationships and perceptions—a theme you wove into both
The Shape of Mercy
and
White Picket Fences?

I see every great work of fiction being about human relationships.
Gone With the Wind
is so much more than just an epic story with the Civil War as a backdrop. It’s a story of human relationships. Scarlett and Ashley, Scarlett and Rhett, Scarlett and Melanie, Scarlett and her father. It’s within our closest relationships that our brightest virtues and worst flaws are exposed. That’s why there is such tremendous story value within intimate human relationships. We are at our best and our worst when we are responding and reacting to the people who shape who we are. Human history is the story of relationships and what they teach us about what we value. And what we don’t.

White Picket Fences
is a different kind of novel than your acclaimed book,
The Shape of Mercy
, but there are some similarities too. Can you explain those?

As with
The Shape of Mercy,
there is a historical thread in
White Picket Fences,
though it is not as dominant. The invasion of Poland by the Nazis is woven into the story and provides the backdrop for Chase’s and Tally’s discoveries about hope, dreams, and redemption. This thread is enhanced by visits to a nursing home where Chase and Tally meet a man blind from birth who survived the occupation of Poland. It is also a story that draws its pathos from family dynamics and the near-universal desire we have to make straight what is crooked. There are two young protagonists in
White Picket Fences
as in
The Shape of Mercy,
as well as a third character, who, along with the two men in the nursing home, provide a similar multigenerational story thread.

Is there a reason why Tally’s father, Bart, never makes a physical entrance in the story?

My intention was always to keep Bart’s character a bit mysterious, enough so that readers have to decide for themselves if Bart is a father figure worthy of any admiration. Whose perception of Bart will you believe? Tally’s? Amanda’s? Neil’s? I wanted the reader to have the challenge and satisfaction of making that decision.