Chapter Sixteen Rory

Back from the beach, still sandy and sunburned on my shoulders, I recline on my bed, the white linens pressed and taut. I know I’m going to end up sleeping in a sandbox, but Current Me is too lazy to go shower off for Future Me. Nate would despise that—any crumb he encounters in bed is treated as though he’s sleeping atop fifteen hoagie sandwiches.

I run my eyes over this heavenly suite and grab the aloe from the glossy wooden panel set into the wall right below the window that acts as my nightstand. Marco fetched the aloe for me when he spotted my sunburn, declaring that “any wish is yours, any wish at all!” So I asked if it wouldn’t be too much trouble to bring me a caffè shakerato—my Italian addiction that is espresso mixed with sugar and ice. Now I set the aloe back on the table, rub my sticky hands on a napkin, and reach for my fluted crystal shakerato. I sip, savoring the sweet foam crema on top, and sigh.

Out my window, the Mediterranean is a now-familiar show-off. Man. This is the life.

Okay, I need to finally do the thing I’ve been putting off.

I grab my phone, thumb to FaceTime, dial, then hold the phone above my head. A familiar unease roils my stomach—that I hope Papa’s nurse, Suzette, will answer, that I hope Suzette will not answer.

One ring—two—three. I wonder if today is the day that I will ask Papa whether I’m adopted. I haven’t gathered up the courage yet on any prior call. I suppose because I’ve been grappling with whether it’s even fair to confront him with the past when he remembers it only indiscriminately now.

Finally, the rings abate and Suzette’s head fuzzes into view: boingy brown curls, red lips, and a smile like sunshine that I am grateful is bequeathed to my father every day.

“Hi, Suzette!” I say, summoning cheer.

“Hi, Rory!” She waves exuberantly. “It’s been a while! How was the meditation retreat?”

“Amazing, actually. I’m meditating twice a day now. Twenty minutes each time.”

“Really? Tell me everything! What is all that quiet like? I can’t even imagine it.” Suzette has thirteen grandchildren, four of whom used to live with her, before she began to provide live-in patient home care. She once joked she suffered from overtouch syndrome.

“Honestly, I couldn’t imagine it before, either. You know what I was like.…”

“The best anchor in the world.” Suzette smiles proudly, a smile that immediately sears all my little pockets of shame.

“Thank you.” I can feel she’s about to ask me about it—when I’m going back to LA and where I’ll work next—so I rush on. “It’s crazy how something so boring as a silent meditation retreat could be so… I don’t know, transcendent.”

I feel instantly stupid to use such a grand word to describe it, but there was something indisputably sacred about the retreat that I am still struggling to define. Failing to slot into place how ten days when, quite literally, nothing happened except birds sang and food was eaten and sleep was had, the moments nonetheless feel elongated in my mind, crystal clear. I felt such love for the birds that it nearly brought me to my knees. I found myself rubbing the trunks of trees with reverence. Digging my toes into the grass and sighing because I felt like my skin connected with the ions in the earth, or something.

And the memories are sharp, lingering, like cream rising to the top, displacing the arguably far bigger and more important things I’ve done and lived.

My whole life I’ve tried to be strong, persevere, work hard—at my career, at my relationships. Because I checked those boxes, I believed that of course things would work out for me. How hilarious! But then Papa got sick, and my job and relationship imploded, and now I get it. That life is one huge mind fuck, and you can do everything right but still wind up in the muck.

Maybe some of it is salvageable. And all the things Max and Caro and Nate have said swirl around me—Get back on the horse. Go get ’em, again!

Second chances, blah, blah, blah.

But this strange feeling has clung to me since I lost my dream job—the sense that in any event, I was just marching toward the end. And not really enjoying any of it, certainly not savoring the sour-coffee-perfumed windowless prison of my television studio. Maybe there’s something easier, something that feels lighter, like meditation, for me to pursue. It’s weird, though, imagining deviating from the path that has felt predestined. By God or by Papa, I’ve never been entirely sure.

“Anyway, how’s Papa doing?”

“He’s okay today, sweetheart. Been asking about you.”

“Really? That’s a good sign. Each time I get worried…” I trail off, suddenly not wanting to vocalize my deepest fear: that one day soon I will become a permanent stranger to my father. Unless Max can cure him.

I squeeze my eyes shut, praying hard, like I do anytime I think of Hippoheal and the incredible stuff Max is doing. If it’s at all possible to save Papa, Max won’t give up until he does. That comforts me some. It does.

“Here,” Suzette says. “I’ll bring you over to your dad.”

The view gets bumpy as she moves across the hall, panning the phone over the dusty Oriental rugs and paintings of ships navigating stormy seas. Papa loves our home in Michigan. Used to love swimming in the lake and all the green and the fact that a poor kid from the Soviet Union, who’d only ever lived in cramped rooms without indoor plumbing, suddenly had space and relative luxuries.

It pangs me that Papa could one day need to leave our beloved home. That his Alzheimer’s may progress to a point that even Suzette living in full time couldn’t care for him all on her own. Papa’s been adamant that he wants us to live our lives, that he doesn’t want either Max or me to forsake our dreams to care for him. But I would—in a heartbeat. I will. I want him always at home, where he prefers to be. And thankfully having Papa at home, even with Suzette, is cheaper now than a care home. Though Papa doesn’t have the funds to pay for Suzette. So Max took out loans against his equity in his company and is paying for it, by and large. I know he can afford it, especially once his drug is on the market, but still. I do feel guilt that Max is not only financially responsible for Papa’s care but physically there, too. And what am I doing or providing? I’m just floundering. If Papa understood, if I told him I’d lost my job, he wouldn’t approve of my path. He would tell me to get back in the game. He would scoff at main characters, at meditation, at silence, at giving up on all my dreams.

Is that what’s happening now? Am I giving up on my dreams?

I can’t ruminate too hard on that depressing thought because the top of Papa’s head pops into the screen. His hair is silver now, still thick and gleaming, brushed to the side. He’s sixty-five, but his forehead is that of someone twenty years younger, hardly marred by a crease. He’s still vigorous and youthful, strong—visible facts that are even more jarring given his memory loss, constant knife-in-the-chest reminders of all the time we have lost. Suzette tilts the phone down and there he is, my father.

I don’t care if I’m adopted. This is my father. Whatever the story behind it—maybe I’ll never know—but he chose me, and he wanted me. And he was the best dad I could ever imagine.

“Papa.” Tears well in my eyes.

His small blue eyes are warm and happy, the whites of his eyes so bright they add to his air of virility. He smiles, his familiar sweet smile, with teeth crowded and a bit yellowed. He was always self-conscious about that. Seven years ago, Max and I saved up and got him a fancy dental whitening package for his birthday, right before he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s. He never used it—developed a fear of the dentist, or maybe just doctors in general—and couldn’t be cajoled to go.

“MW… my wonderful…”

“Daughter,” I supply, the last part of his nickname. He calls me MWD; Papa can create an acronym from anything. Max is MWS. But lately Papa often just conjures the first part, and I can always see the moment exactly when his brain loses the neural connection in the middle and his expression goes bleak.

He knows me. He still does, at least.

“Rory, is that you? Where are you?”

I swallow hard and smile. “I’m in Italy, Papa.”

“Italiya? Finally, you took a vacation.”

I force a smile. “I did.”

He nods. “You deserve it. How hard you work. Are you on the sea?”

“Yes! I collected seashells on my walk today, like we used to do when we’d go up north.”

His eyes twinkle. “Was the water wet?”

I smile. “You’ve still got jokes, Papa.”

His eyes dart around, suddenly confused.

No, not yet, I silently pray. He has lucid periods, and then sometimes he goes.

“Very wet, I can confirm,” I say, regretting having not answered more simply. “I’m here with Max, too. Traveling on a really fancy train.”

“I’m glad you are together with your brother. It’s so important, Rory, that you and your brother are always good to each other. Some siblings… they aren’t good to each other.”

“We are. I promise, Papa,” I say, glad I can say that honestly now that Max and I have discussed things.

“Where are you?” he asks, face scrunched in confusion.

“Italy, Papa,” I say again. “On a train.”

“You’re on a train.” He nods, and my heart sinks. He’s just repeating the word, trying to give the pretense of understanding, which is what he did a lot before we finally convinced him to go see a specialist. Before his diagnosis.

I debate what to say, whether to wait patiently for him to talk more, or comfort him somehow, or change the subject. The specialist Max and I paid to help us navigate Papa’s decline said other techniques to calm and comfort him could be resting a hand on his forearm or maintaining eye contact, both of which are difficult to do from afar.

I’m agonizing over what to say when Papa says, “I took a train to Kyrgyzstan—did I ever tell you that?”

I feel my chest surge with relief that Papa can still continue the conversation, even if it’s patchy. Maybe Max was exaggerating Papa’s deterioration, if he can still pull a memory out of his pocket of which I wasn’t aware.

“No, but I’d love to hear.”

“It was a horrible train, in the military.” Papa’s military years are a black hole—I know nothing. He never liked sharing, going back to his past. He was an only child, his parents long gone. What is the point? I have my wonderful children, living in freedom in America. Life can only be lived forward, not backward.

It’s something I grieved after he was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, that I hadn’t asked sufficient questions, tasted the marrow of Papa’s wisdom and experience. That maybe I’d never get access to all that history—his and ours.

Back when I thought Papa’s ancestry was actually mine.

The phone clips to spotlight just his forehead, and Suzette’s fingers overtake the screen. She shifts the camera back to encompass all of Papa’s face, now pinched, from anger or pain I’m not sure. “I took this train after basic training. That was hell on earth. I ever tell you about it? They beat me because I was Jewish.”

“Who beat you, Papa?”

“Yes.” He nods. “They beat me bad. Ten on one, in the night, screaming ‘dirty Jew’ and stuff like that. We drank vodka and slept on wooden slabs. The train was going to…”

“Kyrgyzstan?” I remind him.

“Yes. It was pretty country. A lot of evergreens. I could have just slept and looked out the window, but the other soldiers wanted booze. One night, I woke up to a fellow soldier taking off my pants and selling them for vodka.”

“No way!” I clap my hand over my mouth, and in that moment, Papa smiles his glittery smile, and it is just like BA (Before Alzheimer’s—that acronym is only mine and Max’s).

“Yes!” Now he’s laughing, too. “It was so crazy. They convinced me to sell everything—shirts, jackets, extra boots. When we arrived at our base after four weeks on the train, we stumbled out in only our boots and underwear. Our officer was pissed!”

“Oh God, I can’t believe I didn’t know that.” I’m giggling; Papa seems so with it now. I wonder if I can ask him about the adoption, after all. I probably should have broached it with Suzette first.

“Papa, I—”

“You’re in Kyrgyzstan?” Papa frowns. “Be very careful about your watch, Rory.”

“My watch?” I glance at it, a small gold face with a brown leather strap. Papa surprised me with it when I got my first reporting job, so that I’d always be on time on air.

“They’ll steal it!” Papa’s eyes crease with alarm. “In the middle of the night, they could take it!”

“I’m okay, Papa. No one’s taking my watch.”

“A knife to your throat!” He makes a slashing motion at his neck. “That’s what they’ll do. Thieves!”

“There aren’t thieves on this train,” I say gently, though it flashes, the boulder careening at me as Max shoved me aside. The missing books. I wiggle my torso, to shake out the anxieties. “Hey, Papa, can I ask you a question?”

It takes him a few moments to calm. “Anything. Anything and everything.”

I hold my breath. “Do you know a woman named Ginevra Ex?”

I mentioned her once to him, before I came to Italy, when I visited him in Michigan. I told him I’d be working for a famous author, and I said her name. His face took on this peculiar look, and he said, “The good one and the evil one. Of course.”

He was obviously confused. Babbling, like he is prone to sometimes. I tried to change the subject, but then he became agitated, erupting in Russian. I was a bundle of nerves, tried to divert his attention to a deer trotting across the fresh snow outside, and then we had hot cocoa in the kitchen looking out on the frozen lake.

Eventually he relaxed. And I didn’t dare mention her name again. I thought it a random trigger, though—not anything meaningful. And thankfully now, Papa’s face is perplexed. Relief washes over me. He doesn’t know her. I’m inventing crazy links in my head.

But then he says, quite strongly, “Ginevra Efrati.” Still, he looks unsure.

Efrati? “No, Ginevra Ex.” But my heart spasms.

Who is Ginevra Efrati? I sift my memories, parsing my past. Is that a name with significance, or something completely random his brain has conjured up? My heart has begun to beat quicker, a weird sensation stirring in my chest.

Is he talking about Ginevra Ex?

Is she my mother?The question dangles off my tongue. In any moment it could careen off. I need to get the book back; I was so focused on figuring out the embezzling thing, so sure that’s what struck me as odd. But now I wonder if the odd thing is that Ginevra could have dropped a clue about, or revealed, my birth mother.

“Ginevra Efrati,” Papa repeats. “Yes. The good one and the evil one. The evil one!”

It’s the second time he’s said the name Ginevra Efrati. And now he’s made the second strange association with good and evil. Something slingshots at me, a memory.

“Are you talking about the story you used to tell us? About the sisters?” Yes, I know it as a certainty now, deep down; Papa means the fable he used to tell Max and me when we were kids. It even came up in my interviews with Ginevra—a moment I remember clearly because Ginevra shifted from slow, professional interviewer to a more feverish pace, abandoning her notes, pressing me for details, like the story was somehow important. I couldn’t conjure all the details, but the bones of the bedtime story, I do remember.

Papa nods solemnly. “The good one was the beautiful one. So very beautiful. It’s not fair! It was never fair. The evil one. She ruined it all. She lied to me. I never… I never should have walked away. Where is she? Where?”

“Where is who, Papa?” I’m completely confused, but I want to keep him talking. It feels like I’m on the precipice of understanding something significant.

“Ginevra!” Papa lurches closer to the camera. “Where is she?”

“Ginevra Ex is in Italy, Papa. I’m not sure it’s the same person you’re talking about. She’s the author, the one I told you I’m working—”

“Ginevra, where…?” The phone clatters to the ground, and I hear him shout something unintelligible.

Suzette pokes her head back in the frame with an apologetic frown. “Rory, darling, we need to go.”

I’m breathing so fast. “But—”

“Try us tomorrow, sweetheart.” Her eyes are compassionate but firm. The call clicks off.

The phone flops out of my hand. I stare at the ceiling, trying to make sense of our conversation. Did Papa know Ginevra? But how?

I summon back his bedtime story, try to recall all the contours. It was about a duke who meets two sisters by a lake. One sister is very beautiful but oblivious, and one is very ugly and brilliant. The duke is in love with the beautiful sister and makes valiant efforts to be with her. I would always press Papa—More, more! Laughing hysterically at all the duke’s endeavors and failures. He skates across the lake, but then he plunges through the ice! He climbs the highest mountain, but then he falls off a cliff! He hikes through the desert, but in the end, he doesn’t have enough water! Basically, the duke never succeeds.

Because, as Papa would say, the ugly sister is evil and controls the beautiful sister. The ugly sister keeps moving the beautiful sister farther and farther away from the duke. For a while, the ugly sister even deludes the duke into believing the beautiful sister doesn’t love him in return. And in the end, the duke and the sisters all wind up alone, because eventually the evil sister locks the beautiful one up in a tower and throws away the key.

How strange are the stories told to children. I wonder if Max remembers more than I do. But what could this story possibly have to do with Ginevra? I think back to the first time I interviewed Ginevra. I was pretty low ranking to score such a get. Now I wonder, did she request me specifically? Because of Papa?

I shiver—because if she’s one of the sisters, she’s obviously the ugly, evil one.

No, that’s impossible. There has to be another explanation. I don’t want to believe the story could be true, that Ginevra could have horrible motives—evil ones—in sending us all on this trip.

My fingers run over my knee now, the cuts en route to scabs. I think about Caro’s accusation—about Ginevra leveraging this trip. Could she be targeting me? Is this all a publicity stunt? Or maybe the book’s not even done, maybe she’s still scripting things, playing us like her puppets to cultivate more story lines. Okay, I admit that speculation is out there, but I can’t discount Caro’s idea that Ginevra has people planted on the train, besides Gabriele. I consider everyone we’ve met—the chirpy Californians; the Russians wafting that garlic stench; Mr. sourpuss Pom-Pom; the Italian family seemingly popping up around every turn. Could one of them have pushed the boulder or taken the books? But why? If Ginevra were picking anyone to be her minion, would she really pick a couple or a family? Or maybe she’d figure unlikely culprits would present the perfect cover…

I shake my head, feel like I’m inventing monsters under the bed who aren’t at all real. The thing is, despite all this craziness, I like Ginevra. I’ve always liked her. There’s something about Ginevra that is down-to-earth, kind. Compassionate. Flamboyant, sure, and occasionally self-important, although I get the sense it’s all masking deep-seated insecurities. A few times she spoke about her sister, Orsola, who lives… where again? Some Italian city… not Rome, I don’t think. They’re twins, identical. Close, I think.

Beautiful, Ginevra once told me. Orsola was the beauty.

I feel sick.

It can’t be true. I’m inventing things. How would Papa even know them?

And if Ginevra is my mother, does that mean I’m not exactly adopted but that she had some warped relationship with Papa? And why would she tell me the earth-shattering information that I’m adopted but lie about her role in things?

Why would she send me on this trip with so many instructions, so many strange setups?

It’s like I’m still her main character, and she’s scripting the show.

I could get off the train right now, I remind myself. No one—not even the famous Ginevra Ex—can keep me on board, riding a crazy train against my will. My eyes flitter out the window, at the outside world that seems far now, out of reach. My life narrowed to this box on wheels, and the people who exist upon it. This luxury train is starting to feel like a gilded cage. As beautiful as it is claustrophobic…

I don’t want to leave, though. I can admit that to myself. It’s not just Nate coming back into my life. It’s Max, Nate, and Caro, and even Gabriele. So many unfinished things. I realize I need to see how this all ends. Stories can’t really be aborted in the middle.

But I need to take back control. Of my life, of this trip. I have so many questions, and I’ve texted Ginevra, asking them, but so far she hasn’t responded. Tomorrow, we’ll be in Rome, and I’ll go see her. I’ll resort to ambushing her at her apartment, if I must. She can’t avoid me. Enough is enough.

I need answers. And another copy of the book. I rub my hands on my forehead, feeling absolutely… bewildered. I wish I could talk it over with my brother, with my ex-love, with my best friend, but I can’t fully trust anyone now.

I should meditate, but I don’t feel like it. The thing is, it’s easier to meditate when your mind’s not spinning out. At the retreat, I had so many moments of rebirth, thinking, Why doesn’t everyone on earth do this? Drink this Kool-Aid? If people knew silent meditation retreats existed, the entire drug industry would collapse. I felt like a junior Dalai Lama, needing to spread the message near and far, with the conviction that if only people knew that you could do absolutely nothing at all and experience the greatest bliss that exists, then world peace would be easily had. I imagined teaching people the wisdom of life: You get to choose how you feel. You can decide to feel joyful and observe all the wonderful blessings around you.

But now, back in the real world, it all feels a bit foolish. I’m facing real problems that I can’t avoid. I’m not going to stare out the window at the trees and solve everything.

Am I?

Papa would say, “There is nothing that a walk cannot cure.” If Max and I were fighting, Papa would shove us both out the door. “Go for a walk and don’t come back until you’re smiling-diling.”

I miss Papa’s dumb rhymes and optimism that things would work out. I imagine his strong arms around me—but I am struck with the melancholy realization that I am putting a halo around his memory that isn’t exactly warranted. His were never strong arms that promised to protect me from everything. I realize suddenly, sadly, that as wonderful as Papa was, is, he never promised to cushion me from life’s cruelties. It’s like chop, chop, timber—he wanted me to learn to jump and survive in the water alone, before I found his arms. He had to persevere through so much in his young life that he wanted Max and me to be prepared to do the same. On our own. Because in the end, you were always on your own. I remember the times—many times—that Papa would suddenly well up in tears. I never understood his triggers, often innocuous—an ambulance siren, the season’s first snow. As an explanation of his tears, he would tell me, “They’re all gone,” and I know he was talking about the people he loved before me—his mother, his father, and the woman I thought was my mother. “But I have you and Max,” he would say. I knew he meant it, but I think I also wondered if he was forever trying to convince himself we were enough.

The train doesn’t leave until midnight. Dinner isn’t for a few more hours.

I’ll shower, change, and then go for a walk—channel new energy. I summon some of Papa’s courage, tick through the things he overcame, like this new train-to-Kyrgyzstan story.

No one’s selling my stuff for vodka, at least. But even though Ginevra’s just paid me enough to last a good while, I don’t feel very abundant. Because until I find another job, nothing more is coming in, which triggers me in a deep place after the money worries of my childhood. Still, I can admit my situation is not quite at the selling-for-vodka level of dire. Not yet.

And how difficult is it, after all, to endure a luxury trip on the Orient Express?

To be honest—more difficult than I would have thought.