It was after all of that, while boarding the Sea Cloud for the Atlantic crossing toward America, that I first started to feel the crippling pull of exhaustion. “I’ve simply overtaxed myself,” I told a nervous Joe. First in Moscow and then especially in London. But after a week straight of resting in bed and keeping an empty schedule in my private stateroom, I had not recovered. I couldn’t keep food down. Tired as I was, sleep evaded me because of the discomfort of chills and fever. The first thing I did when I arrived back home to Washington was summon the doctor.
And it was on his orders that I found myself in bed for the next few weeks. Deenie, home with me in Washington until she returned to school, remained faithfully at my side. As terrible as I felt, I did relish this time with my girl after such a long separation. She delighted in studying my new Russian jewelry and pieces of art. She listened with wide-eyed amazement as I told her about the fur-clad commissars, about the colorfully domed towers of Moscow, about my outings with Polina Molotova and Ivy Litvinova. At thirteen years old, Deenie really was a charming young girl, blooming and bright, just on the cusp of her teenage years. I wished I could freeze time and keep her cheerful and close like that forever.
The only time I saw a frown on her lovely young face was when Joe would enter my bedroom, interrupting our private time and confidential whispers with business of his own. “My Mumsie— Oh. Well, hello, Deenie,” Joe said as he sauntered in one afternoon, finding Deenie and me huddled together under the blankets, laughing in my bed as I told her about Polina Molotova’s confusion over Coney Island. Immediately I noted how Deenie’s soft young frame stiffened beside me. I had hoped she would warm to my husband in time; I had understood all too well that there was bound to be some natural bitterness toward the man who had replaced her father in my heart and in our home. But neither time nor effort had done anything to soften my daughter toward Joey.
Joe, for his part, either didn’t notice or didn’t let it bother him. He swept into the room now without a knock, carrying a stack of something—photographs, I realized. “Hey, Deenie Doll, did Daddy Joe ever show you this picture?”
Deenie huffed an audible exhale to match her scowl. She loathed his nicknames; she refused to call him Daddy, as he’d asked her to. Mostly she just looked away whenever he entered a room, not speaking to or answering him at all.
Joe leaned toward Deenie over the bed, and I saw how she recoiled, but he stuck the photograph in front of her face so that she couldn’t help but see. “I just had a whole pile of our photographs developed from this past spring,” he said. “There’s our Mumsie dressed for the coronation ball. Isn’t she the most lovely woman you’ve ever seen?”
“Sure,” Deenie said dismissively. Then she turned toward me. “Mom, I think I am going to go start packing for school.”
I felt my heart drop; I’d been enjoying our afternoon together in bed. “Ah, look at this one,” Joe said, flipping to the next black-and-white image. “Here we are outside of Paris on our boat.”
“Mother’s boat,” Deenie said, her voice toneless.
Joe looked from the photograph toward Deenie, his dark brow rising. “What’s that?”
“You mean Mother’s boat,” Deenie repeated, her aquamarine eyes staring squarely into Joe’s for the first time. “The Sea Cloud is my mother’s boat. She and my daddy built it together.”
The blood pounded between my ears as I looked from my beautiful daughter to my husband, noting how his olive skin now appeared pale. Even his lips looked lighter as he calmly said, “That’s right, Nedenia. They did build it. Before I took over the registration. Now it’s my name on the deed, if you want to be technical.” He nodded once, a tight movement, before flashing a wide smile and adding: “Well then, off you go. Those school trunks won’t pack themselves.” Then, to my relief, Joe turned away, tucking the photographs under his arm and leaving the room before either of them could utter another word.
* * *
With Deenie back at school, I gave up my efforts to rise from bed and took to my covers completely, the illness, this so-called Moscow Malaria, attacking my entire body. My ears still felt as if they had been packed with cotton, so hard was it to hear anything. Joe, too, continued to complain of stomach pains, but our doctors were confounded by our strange and persistent symptoms.
As the days shortened and the nights turned darker, so, too, did the news from abroad. Germany was growing ever more aggressive under Hitler, who appeared to have solidified his grip of total power through his fanatical Nazi supporters. That autumn he began railing about how Czechoslovakia rightfully belonged to the Germans. Italy had its own fascist dictator, a man named Mussolini, while another, Francisco Franco, looked poised to take control of all of Spain soon, and Japanese troops were plowing their way through China with disheartening speed and brutality.