Echoes Page 0,55
as not to upset her mother, although she missed it.
“Did they all die?” Amadea asked, as she saw her mother staring at the faded pictures. And then Beata looked at her strangely.
“No, I did.” She said nothing more then, and after a while Amadea went back to Daphne. She was a happy child of five, who thought the sun rose and set on her older sister. Amadea was like a mother to her.
After that first time when she took Amadea with her, Beata went back to the synagogue every year on Yom Kippur. It was the day of atonement, a time to contemplate past sins, and to allow God to judge you. She brought her children up as Catholics, and profoundly believed in what she taught them. But she still went to the synagogue once a year, and each time she went she watched them. Her whole family. They were always there, the men seated separately from the women. And each year, she took Amadea with her. She never told her why. It was too complicated, she felt, after all this time. She and Antoine had always told her their families were dead. Beata didn't want to admit she'd lied. And as part of all that, she never told either of her daughters she had been Jewish years before.
“Why do you want to go there?” Amadea asked her, intrigued by it.
“I think it's interesting, don't you?” Beata never offered any further explanation, and Amadea admitted to her best friend when she was fifteen that she thought it was creepy. But there was no question in Amadea's mind, ever since her father's death five years before, her mother hadn't been normal. It was as though the shock had been too much for her, and Amadea sensed correctly that she wanted to be with him. She was only thirty-eight, and still beautiful, but she was waiting to die now, and Amadea knew it.
When Amadea was sixteen, Daphne was eight, and that year Amadea had promised to take Daphne to her ballet class on the one day of the year that her mother went to the synagogue, on Yom Kippur. She was relieved to have an excuse not to go. She didn't know why, but she always found it depressing. She much preferred joining her mother in church, and lately Amadea had been praying to know if she had a vocation, like her friend's sister. She hadn't said anything to anyone but she was beginning to think so.
Beata took her place in the synagogue, as she always did, heavily veiled. And as she did each year, she saw them. She knew she could have gone at other times, but this always seemed the right day, to beg for their forgiveness and her own. She thought her mother looked frail this time when she saw her. And by some miracle, she found herself sitting in a seat just behind her. If she had dared to, she could have reached out to touch her. And then, as though by a miracle, sensing Beata's eyes glued to her, she turned and glanced at the woman behind her. All she could see was a hat and a veil, but she sensed more than saw something familiar about her. And before she could turn away again, Beata lifted the veil, and her mother saw her. Their eyes met and held for an endless moment, and then her mother nodded and turned away again, looking transfixed. She was sitting alone, among the women. And when they left the synagogue, Beata fell into step beside her. She had no sense this time that her mother wanted to avoid her. And what had struck Monika and took her breath away was the bottomless sadness in the eyes of her daughter. The two women left the synagogue side by side, and as they did, their hands brushed and met. Beata gently took her hand in her own and held it, and her mother let her. And then without a word, her mother went to join her father. He still looked tall and proud, Beata saw, although he was much older. She knew that he was sixty-eight, and her mother sixty-three. She watched them leave the synagogue, and then Beata took a taxi home to her daughters.
“How was it?” Amadea asked her that night at dinner.
“How was what?” Beata asked blankly. She rarely spoke at dinner, and tonight she looked particularly distracted. She was still thinking of her mother. They hadn't spoken in