“The day Rose and I were married,” Jacob says. “We became one in God’s eyes.”
I swallow hard. “You and my grandmother were married?” I repeat.
Jacob looks surprised. “Of course,” he says. “We did so in secret, you understand. Her family did not know, nor did mine. They believed us to be too young. We longed for the day we could have a ceremony in front of them, to celebrate with the people we loved the most. But we never had the chance.”
I’m struggling to understand, and I suddenly realize what this means; if my grandmother was married to Jacob, her marriage to my grandfather had never been real. I feel another pang of sadness for him, for the losses he never knew.
Or had he? Had my grandfather realized in 1949, when he went to Paris, that Jacob Levy had survived, that Jacob’s very existence annulled his own union with my grandmother? Had he, for this reason, told my grandmother that Jacob had perished? The thought makes my stomach swim uneasily, and I realize I may never know the answer.
“Did you marry my grandmother because she was already pregnant?” I venture.
“No.” Jacob shakes his head vehemently. “We married because we loved each other. We married because we feared the war would tear us apart. We married because we knew we were destined for each other. The baby, I believe, was conceived on the night of our wedding, the first time we were together in that way.”
I close my eyes and absorb this. My mother hadn’t been the product of an affair between teenagers; she’d been conceived in marriage. She’d been the result of the consummation of the love between Mamie and Jacob. She, and then I—and then Annie—were all that remained of the ill-fated union between two soul mates.
“Don’t you see?” Jacob asks after a long silence. “I was right all along. Rose has been alive. I knew it in my heart. And now, finally, I will see her again.”
Jacob falls asleep just after we pass through Providence, and in the waning evening light, Gavin and I sit in silence, each lost in our own worlds.
I don’t know what’s going through Gavin’s mind, but his face looks sad. It’s how I’m feeling too. I’m not sure why, mere hours away from a reunion that’s been nearly seventy years coming, I feel emptiness instead of jubilation. I suppose it’s because all that was lost seems to overwhelm what was gained. Yes, Mamie had a life of freedom and safety. Yes, she gave birth to my mother, who gave birth to me, carrying on the family she’d promised Jacob she’d protect. And yes, Jacob had survived all these years, all these miles. But they had each carried their burdens alone, when they didn’t have to. Because of misunderstandings, or perhaps lies, they had each lost the kind of love that I’d never believed in before.
But now I do. And it terrifies me, because I know I’ve never known that kind of love. Not even close.
Gavin pulls over for gas just past Fall River, and as Jacob continues to sleep in the backseat, I step away from the car and call Annie. I tell her we’ve found Jacob and are on the way back with him in the car. I smile as she squeals and goes to tell Alain. I can hear his exclamation of excitement in the background too. I assure her we’ll be there in two hours or less and that Jacob will tell her the whole story then.
“Mom, I can’t believe you did it,” she says.
“It wasn’t just me,” I say. “It was you, honey. And Gavin too.” I glance over to the car, where he’s pumping gas, his back turned to me. He reaches up absentmindedly to scratch the top of his head, and I smile. “It was Gavin too,” I repeat.
“Thanks, Mom,” Annie says anyhow. There’s a warmth in her voice that I haven’t heard in a long time, and I’m grateful for it. “So what’s he like, anyways?”
I tell her about finding Jacob in Battery Park, and about how he’s kind and polite and has loved Mamie all these years.
“I knew it,” she says softly. “I knew he’d never stopped loving her.”
“You were right,” I say. “See you in a few hours, sweetheart.”
I hang up, and as I walk slowly back to the car, I look above me, where the first stars of twilight are beginning to poke holes through the sky. I think of all the nights I saw Mamie sitting at the window, waiting for the same stars, and I wonder whether this is what she’s been looking for, the love of her life, who’d been here all along.
As I come up beside Gavin, he looks down and smiles gently at me. “You okay?” he asks. I watch as he removes the nozzle from his gas tank, replaces it back on its lever, and screws the cap back on.