Which was smart. I couldn’t see her being empathetic; she’d be more likely to tell you to stop whining. To appreciate the opportunity you’d been given. To use the pain.
“But not you.” Taylor grinned at me. “You’re just riding the wave, aren’t you? Channeling the story. I can tell. It’s the best feeling.”
“I don’t know if I’d go that far,” I said. They glanced at each other, and I felt like I had to defend myself.
“You have to remember, I had writer’s block for a year,” I said. “I think that’s why it’s all rushing out.”
That seemed to satisfy them. As Taylor brought up a plot issue she was trying to solve, I had to force myself to listen. Because the truth of the matter was that Taylor was right. It did feel like I was channeling the story.
Roza had said something similar during our first one-on-one. The words drifted back in her husky voice: The writer’s mind is a channel. When we open, glorious truths can flow in.
The question then became: What—or who—was I channeling?
* * *
At 3:00 p.m. I knocked on the red door. Roza wrenched it open wearing a flowered robe and looking vaguely annoyed. “Oh, hello, dear. Come in.”
“Is now still a good time?” I followed her inside. A tray with a patterned teapot and teacups sat on the coffee table. No Unicum today.
“Yes, darling.” She tightened the robe’s knot as she led us to the sitting area.
“How are you?” I noticed the laptop open on her desk. “How’s your writing?”
“Like shit.” She slammed it closed and joined me on the couch. She sat casually and the robe rode up her bare thigh until she pulled it down. It looked like she’d just taken a shower.
“I’m sorry to hear that.” It was strange to think of Roza writing books; I couldn’t imagine her sitting at her desk, typing, starting, and stopping. I pictured her books springing from her head fully formed, like the children of Greek gods.
She smiled. “But yours seems to be going rather well?”
“Except for the boring characters.” I grinned back.
She leaned forward to pour the dark tea, a smirk still tugging at her lips. “I said the plot is boring, dear. And that I wasn’t really getting a feel for the characters. I’m only saying these things because I know you can do better.”
“But how can I make the plot more interesting if it’s preordained?” I felt a flicker of irritation. “It’s historical fiction. I have to follow what happened.”
“Well, lucky for you, Daphne didn’t keep detailed diaries.” Roza picked up a sugar cube with tiny tongs and dropped it into her tea. “And even if she did, you have creative license, darling. You can go wherever you’d like.”
“Yeah.” I poured milk into my own tea, watching it bloom. “For some reason I feel like I have a responsibility to Daphne to get it as right as I can. And, I mean, the story is dramatic enough on its own.” I chanced a sip and burned the tip of my tongue.
“Let’s focus on the relationships between Daphne, Florence, and Abigail.” Roza watched me through the rising steam. “One, a maternal relationship. The other, something else. Not quite sure yet.”
“Sisterly,” I offered.
Roza raised an eyebrow. “Is that all? Boring.”
I laughed. “Point taken.”
“Good.”
“You know, I didn’t even see Florence as maternal,” I sighed. “But I guess you’re right. She is older. And thinks she’s in charge.”
“Mothers usually do.” Roza paused. “And what’s your mother like, dear?”
Here we go. I remembered Keira’s complaint and hid a smile. “She’s… I don’t know how to describe her. I always thought she was pretty cold and shut down. But then she got married a few years ago and now she acts like a completely different person.”
“In what way?”
“She’s… I don’t know; she’s just way more affectionate. He’s a little younger and has two teenagers. And… yeah, they’re just this normal, happy family. They make a huge deal out of Christmas every year—big tree, all these presents, my mom even makes cookies. I was lucky if I got anything, growing up. She was Jewish by blood but we didn’t celebrate those holidays, either.”
“Jewish?” Roza repeated. “From where?”
“Hungary.” I’d already told her this. But maybe it was too much to expect she’d remember every detail about my background.
“Your grandparents survived the war?” she asked, her eyes softening.
“They barely made it through the Holocaust. Most of the family died in camps. But my grandparents snuck out over the border. My mom was two.” Every time I thought of the story, it filled me with a kind of distant disbelief. That my grandparents and mother had lived through their own horror movie, complete with a dramatic escape.
“When did they come to the US?” Roza asked.
“They spent a couple of years in Paris. They came to the US when my mom was four. She never shared that much about her parents, but she did tell me that they became completely Americanized, speaking only English, making only American meals. They owned a jewelry store in Chicago and they both died when she was in her early twenties.”
“How did they die?”
It felt good, maybe more than that, to be the object of Roza’s intense focus.
“My grandmother had cancer,” I said. “Lymphoma. And my grandfather… he got hit by a car two weeks later. My mom thought it was on purpose. A suicide.”
Mom had told me this on her father’s birthday one year, drunk and maudlin. Those were the times I pushed, when I knew I might be able to get a few more crumbs about our past.
“That makes sense.” Roza watched the ever-present fire.
“The suicide?”
“No.” She absentmindedly pulled at a lock of her red hair. “All of it. I could sense that there was a sadness in you. Suffering attaches itself to people.”
“Oh.” I winced.
“It makes for the best writing, dear.” It was bright in the room, the pale daylight streaming in. A few dust motes danced between us. “Everyone suffers, of course. You can’t be a person and not suffer. But there are deeper traumas. Generational. They’re encoded in your DNA. The Holocaust. Slavery. Genocide. A reminder of the human depths of depravity. You should be grateful for it.”
“Grateful?” I echoed.
She smiled. “You have a reaction. Tell me.”
“Well…” I didn’t want to sound petulant, but I also wanted to be honest. “My childhood wasn’t the worst, but in a lot of ways it was messed up. My dad disappeared when I was nine. My mom dragged me around from place to place. I never had a real home.”
“And now she has one. And the happy, stable life you always wanted. With her new kids. Hmm?”
To my horror, tears welled up. How was Roza so good at making me cry?
“What’s the worst part?” she asked softly.
“The worst part?” I sucked in the building mucus. “It’s probably that now, whenever I see her—usually I go back around Christmas, now that everyone’s celebrating it—she acts like I’m this gross reminder of the past.”