Pictures of the Past by Deby Eisenberg Read Free Book Online

things, but I don’t know which suitcase they are in.” As she spoke, drawing in not only the warmth of Ida’s greeting, but the familiar scent of chicken soup and old rugs that pervaded the apartment, she felt at home already.
    “No, darling,” Ida insisted. “Your coming here…this to me is an honor…you are to me from a royal family…you are a princess and you will be treated as such…end of discussion.” And so Rachel accepted the flowers graciously and nibbled some brownies, savoring each bite of the deep chocolate flavor. In the moments she stood facing Ida with smiles and nods as she chewed, she took a really good look at her. Rachel saw immediately that Ida was not the old-world guarded individual she remembered from her youth, but a sweet, perky, middle-aged woman, younger looking than she had anticipated, with a petite frame and a possibly good figure hidden beneath an outdated wardrobe.
    Rachel knew a little of Ida’s history in Europe and had previously witnessed her quiet, yet contented life in New York. But now as she walked through the same apartment that she had visited two or three times as a child, her focus was different. She wasn’t looking out the windows; this time she was also looking at the apartment—at Ida’s memorabilia—plates and linens and crackled pictures. She wanted to know more about Ida’s story and the wisdom in her years. “Aunt Ida,” she coaxed, “please tell me about all of these pictures.”
    “No, my dear,” she answered almost abruptly. “You think they are mine, my real memories. But they are gifts from other people, thinking they can replace what I have lost.” Her back was to Rachel now, as she scanned her own apartment. “Over the years, when I was reunited with neighbors from our village or relatives from neighboring communities, people who had made their way to America before the war would share with me pictures they would insist included my mother or father or even me. I would thank them graciously, for I knew they had only the best of intentions, but my father would never have had a beard of that fashion, my mother would never have worn that dress, and I certainly was not a towering, husky child.”
    “Aunt Ida,” she said again. “Won’t you please tell me your story?”
    Ida looked at her chosen niece with sweet adoration and tried to be soft in her response. “Rachel, my Rachel—you have always been a unique child—and now a woman. It is so easy for me to see how you would love and be loved.” (This would be one of the only references Ida would make to Rachel’s predicament.) “One day, my darling,” she continued. “Perhaps, one day I will tell you my story, though it is a sad one.” But to herself, Aunt Ida hoped that Rachel could help her create new good memories of birth and push further back the memories of death.

Taylor
     
    Paris
    July 1937
     
    A lthough this was not Taylor’s first European trip—twice before he had accompanied his parents on summer holidays in the south of France—this would be his first exposure to the metropolitan life of a European city, and his first independent passage. The itinerary was well planned and seamlessly executed. He boarded a train in Chicago and his first-class Pullman accommodations afforded him ample comfort and privacy to review his father’s instructions and all that had transpired in the last week.
    Surprisingly, he was not consumed with thoughts of Emily. Initially, he had been worried that she might return to Newport immediately upon his departure, and he pictured her recaptured by the patterns of her youth, dancing in the arms of any number of young men who had pursued her through the years. And so, he was extremely relieved when she assured him she would remain in the Chicago area while he was abroad. She would still use her guest room at the Woodmere Estate in Kenilworth as her home base, but she would spend time with a rotation of girlfriends from school, as well as a