The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,153

should never run out of places to go. And always, always have money of my own. Damned if I didn’t live my whole life by what she told me.… Those pictures you brought. Can I see them again? I’d like to have one of Mama.”

She chooses a shot of Mama and me, taken at Ronnie’s wedding. “Thanks, Mama. For everything,” she says, not hiding her tears. Then she swipes a hand over her eyes and announces, “Well, I guess we’ve got a movie to make.”

She starts to haul herself to her feet, not bothering to hide the effort. I go over to help her, and she lets me. Then we’re standing face-to-face. She caresses my cheek. And we embrace.

My arms around Barbara, I realize that what she yelled at me earlier is true: no explanation she can give is good enough. So she believed, at twenty-one, that I loathed her. But the lifetime of silence afterward—nothing can make that all right.

Yet … It’s not that I forgive her. But forgiveness feels irrelevant. What matters is hearing her voice, holding her, looking out the window at the view she sees every day. It’s the physical reality, flesh and blood and bone, of this person with whom I spent the first nine months of my existence, the two of us pressed together in the chrysalis of Mama’s womb more closely, for longer, than we would ever touch anyone else.

What matters is my grandniece wearing Zayde’s tin horse over her heart.

“I love you,” I murmur.

“Me too. Lainie, thank you for coming. It means a lot to me.”

As we leave her office, I say, “Harriet and I are going to a spa in Mexico this spring. Want to come with us?”

“Do they put you on a diet of watercress?”

“Food’s fantastic. And we bring our own booze.”

She shrugs. But doesn’t say no.

DURING THE COUPLE OF hours we were talking, Josh filmed outdoor footage of the lodge and the mountains; Jen showed him where to get the best shots. And she helped him experiment with locations for the interview, sitting in various spots in the living room while he checked the light.

“I’m your body double, Gram,” she quips.

Barbara forces a smile, and I can see that she’s exhausted. I realize that I am too. I’m awash in fatigue.

“Show time,” she says. And goes ahead with the “interview” like the trouper she is, faking it for the audience of Jen, who hovers, and anyone who might peek in.

Josh asks her to sit at one end of the sofa and does a little preliminary shooting—fiddling with sound levels, he says, and letting her get comfortable in front of the camera. Not that the Sweetheart of the Rodeo suffers from stage fright. When he starts filming, she launches into her USO stories as smoothly as if she’s rehearsed them. In fact, all her stories have the polish of tales repeated dozens of times, delivered with professional timing.

I want to pay attention, to get a window into at least a few of the missing years in my sister’s life. But I’ll be able to watch the video Josh is making, I can share it with Harriet when I get home.

Sitting next to the fire, physically and emotionally wrung out, my mind drifts to the story I’ve just heard and to the person I can’t forgive—Mama.

Never run out of places to go. That was the unintended moral that Barbara took from Mama’s cautionary tale. But was it unintended, accidental? Or did Barbara hear exactly what Mama meant to tell her? Did Mama deliberately—though no doubt unconsciously—project her own yearning for escape onto Barbara and give her the strength to leave? And not just the strength but the resolve, as if she virtually pushed Barbara out the door?

Every person grows up in a different family, Harriet said. And I get it that my sisters and I each experienced a different version of Charlotte Avramescu Greenstein. Nevertheless, a Mama who refused to tell us Barbara was safe, a woman who chose Barbara’s—and, even more than that, her own—fantasy of freedom over relieving our anguish, is someone I don’t even recognize. That woman is a monster, condemning her other daughters to suffer and letting Papa keep going to the morgue to look at dead girls!

Condemning Barbara, too? I would have written to her. In fact, I might have taken the next train to Colorado Springs. And then? I can’t imagine her coming home with me—I understand how stifled she felt—a lifetime of estrangement, is