Infinity's Daughter (9 page)

In 1934, right at the beginning of the Dustbowl, my greatest hopes and my greatest fears came careening into each other. Susan became pregnant with her first child, and my first grandchild to be. As a grandmother in waiting, I was naturally nervous. But, more than ever I was nervous about Susan bringing a child into the world during such hardship. Sam and I were still doing alright though Susan and Todd were beginning to struggle. She had been able to keep her position at the museum, but had difficulty climbing up the corporate ladder due to tight budgeting. Todd was one of the premiere officers, but had taken a mandatory pay cut due to the city’s financial restrictions. Sam and I were doing what we could to help them, but we weren’t able to help as much as we typically would have been.

To make matters worse, Susan was not taking well to the pregnancy. She was ill very often, and spent an increasing amount of time in bed. She feared she would lose her job because of it, although she had a little family in her co-workers at the museum, and presumed that they would hire her back after the pregnancy if she did lose her position in the interim.

I went to see her every day. Her beautiful face was insipid and melancholy, although she tried her best to keep up appearances that she was feeling and doing much better than she looked. Her efforts hadn’t fooled me in the least.

For a brief period of time in the first few months of her pregnancy, she was bedridden for almost two weeks. Todd had sat by her side every minute of the day he wasn’t at work. When he wasn’t with her directly, he was in the kitchen preparing her meals, or on the phone with the physician, asking for reassurance that he wasn’t going to lose his one and only. One day when I had gone to see her, I found Todd in the kitchen, hunched over a pot of homemade noodles, crying.

I had grown close to Todd over the years, but had never seen him in such a state. He was one of the most genuine and caring men I had ever met, but he was always composed in his compassion. His emotional vulnerability was surprising, and it made my heart go out to him.

Todd had made the noodles himself. Trying to save money, he was using his mother’s own recipe. She had been over earlier in the week to help him get started, but had headed back to Queens and would be returning during the weekend. I found him staring morosely into the pot, watching the fresh noodles roll over each other in the softly boiling water, the heat spitting little droplets of water into the air near his face every now and then. Amidst the steam rising out of the pan, I saw his eyes laced in tears.

I walked over to him, placing a hand on his shoulder. “Todd, what is it?” I knew what was wrong, we all did, but I didn’t know how else to approach him.

He looked away momentarily, grabbing his forehead and rubbing his eyes. Then he turned back to me, smiling against his pain. A silent tear rolled down his cheek, surprising him. He caught it and wiped it away, sniffling. His lips quivered as he tried to speak, but no words came out. He blushed, and looked down at his feet, a small whimpering sound falling out as he stifled a cry.

“It’s okay, it’s okay,” I had said as I reached out to hug him. I couldn’t believe I was seeing him like this. Part of it scared me, and I wondered if Susan was really sicker than I understood; if Todd was keeping information from me that the doctor had delivered to him. But I knew that wasn’t the case. I assumed it was fear—and not unjustified. Seeing the person you love, suffer, is one of the hardest things anyone will ever go through next to losing them.

He wiped his eyes again, “I’m just so scared,” he said, “the doctor says she’s doing alright, but he’s not sure if she’ll be able to carry to term. Her body just wasn’t ready; she’s under too much stress, that’s what he said.” He sniffled again. “I just can’t imagine my life without her. I wouldn’t be anything, not without Susan.” He hugged me then. “You have an amazing daughter, Lucy. I’m so lucky to be a part of your family.” His tears flowed steadily now. I was unsure what to say. I was afraid for Susan, too, but didn’t fear her death. I think much of it came from my own experiences with pregnancy. What I feared the most was her losing the child. But I couldn’t tell Todd that.

“Susan is strong, she’s one of the strongest women I’ve ever known,” I told him, “and she’s my daughter. If she’s anything like I am, I’m certain she’ll pull through.” I patted his back, “I know this is hard; it’s so hard for all of us right now. We have to be strong too, strong for Susan. I’m here to help whenever or however you need it.” I smiled, “and she loves you so much, more than anything. You’re a wonderful husband, and she is so incredibly lucky to have you. I’m proud to have you as my son in law.”

“Thanks, Lucy,” he sniffed, “that means a lot. I’ve been calling the doctor every day, just to check in. They think she should be alright. It will just be a hard next few months.” He looked down again, shrugging his shoulders in grief.

But the doctors were wrong. It was a hard next few months, but not in the way they had meant.

Susan had been at work one day, working on restoring an invaluable painting down in the catacombs of the Met. Her colleagues down in the depths were few and far between, mostly each posted at their own workstation, engrossed in the fine detailing of their own projects.

She described the instance to me, and said she had been feeling better recently, so had gone back to work. She had been back to work for about two weeks, and was very happy, and quite optimistic about the pregnancy. That day, however, before going back into work, she had felt ill again. Not ill enough to stay home, but ill in a strange and foreboding way.

She was working on the fine little brush strokes, applying the cleaning agents one tiny stroke at a time, with her own fine-tipped brush, when suddenly, little beads of sweat had begun to form on her face She had told me how she had felt very flushed, perhaps faint. She had turned to get a glass of water, when a great pain struck her and she collapsed on the floor. One of her co-workers down in the belly of the museum beast had heard something fall, and thought it might have been one of the works. He walked through the maze of restorations, until he came across Susan, curled on the floor, unconscious, with a pool of blood around her legs.

They whisked her away to the hospital. Todd was called, and came over in a police car, as quickly as was possible in those times. Living in that part of town, I had beat him to her side. He came in in his uniform, tears streaming down his cheeks, his hat tossed off somewhere. Susan was snowy white, all of the color drained from her cheeks. She was disoriented, and exhausted, but cogent enough to understand what had happened. I was standing next to her, holding her hand on the hospital bed when Todd arrived.

He grabbed her then, as delicately and as completely as he could. “Baby, baby, Susan, oh God are you okay, baby, I can’t lose you, I can’t lose you, honey…” He was weeping, big heavy sighs, his form shuddering up and down, worse than I had seen him that day in the kitchen.

Susan’s frail figure, and her petite, pallid face looked up to meet his eyes. “Todd…” she said quietly, tears brimming around her irises, “Todd…the baby…the baby…” Her voice faded into her own sobs, and her face contorted as the words fell in a heavy mass from her lips, “we lost the baby…Todd,
we lost the baby
…” Her words came in sobs, stripping her of all her energy. I thought she would lose consciousness again, she had lost so much blood, there was little left to her, I couldn’t believe she could muster any tears.

Sam arrived a few minutes later. Standing in the door, understanding what had happened, and waiting respectfully for Susan and Todd. I placed my hand on her in understanding, and left the room to meet him. Together they mourned the loss of the little, precious life that they tried to bring into the world. It was the pain of what could have been, and the pain of what was perhaps not to be. They burdened themselves with guilt about what they could have done differently, or about what was wrong with themselves. In the end it didn’t matter. It was too late. I cried for them, quietly, in the halls of the hospital with Sam. I understood her pain. The pain of a mother’s loss is one that cannot be explained, and should never be felt.

Susan returned to work a few weeks later. The Met was a considerably kind place to work, and their respect for her and the work that she did, kept her in their good graces and they held her position in her absence. When Susan arose from the tragedy, she came out slightly different. She was still my beautiful and widely intelligent daughter, but there was something missing. In her soft voice and compassionate manner, it was as if someone had taken something out, misplaced a cog in the watch, or forgotten something in the recipe. I understood what it was, and it can never be replaced. She would heal in time, but it would never be the same again.

From our own personal misfortune, we turned outward to the world. I found it insane to watch the way everyone and everything had begun to crumble. Despite the efforts of FDR and the government to spur job growth, creating jobs commissions and encouraging public works, we were still sinking. Although I knew what was to come, and that our nation would pull out of it, living through a time where precious life balanced on the cusp was devastating.

I remember reading the newspaper and seeing pictures of dust storms so thick that when it snowed, the snow came down black to the ground. The whirlwinds that came up in the southwest were horrific. Without crops there, the dust just picked up and blew. I never understood in my history classes how bad it really was. To watch people starving on the streets, young children begging for money whenever I walked outside, and it was everywhere. The Depression was in everyone’s homes, in everyone’s pockets, and all across the country. The dustbowl sucked up everything that anyone had, and wiped it away in the wind, just as the stock market had plummeted, dumping all of the country’s money over a cliff.

Susan would come home crying, having seen pictures in the newspaper about the hardships across the nation. Sam tried to boost everyone’s spirits with political talk about the promise of the government works projects, and how Roosevelt would pull everyone through. I smiled, knowing he was right. But I dared not say anything. I knew what was happening next. I knew what was already happening overseas in Germany. And I was scared and perplexed all at the same time. I just kept having the same horrible, terrible feelings of guilt that there should have been something I could do. Someone I could have warned. Perhaps I was too afraid, consumed by my own fear of the unknown should I try to change time. Perhaps I just didn’t have the guile. But whatever it was, I suffered along with everyone else.

And in our personal finance, we were struggling too. With Todd and Susan down money from their slipping paychecks, we began supporting them off of Sam’s salary. I tried to go out and get a job—something I had never done before—but there just wasn’t anything to be found. And now with Susan’s medical bills, things were getting very tight.

We saved everything. Newspapers, cardboard, empty soda cans and soup cans, even empty spools of thread. You never knew when you might need something, or you might be able to sell it or even burn it for heat. I reminisced about the days when it was easy, missing the life with parties and dresses and glorious dinners. But that was no more. I would go to the market or the grocery store even when there wasn’t much for them to offer, and we were forced to make it last the entire week. On our own without the finances to eat at what few diners remained open, I found myself in the kitchen more and more. I had never cooked so much in my whole life. Feeling rather spoiled, I came to realize that preparing my family’s meals was good for me. I was embarrassed that it had taken sheer adversity and hardship to bring out these skills and my own capabilities.

And so we waded through destitution, being far more fortunate than others. I kept my guilt silent, continuing to volunteer with Susan on the weekends, and even mustered up the courage to go myself during the week, hoping to make up for my inaction on the front of preventing this entirely. But, even if the paradox hadn’t existed, even if the possibility of completely ruining the course of history for the worse wasn’t a true possibility, I couldn’t even have known that anyone would listen. One person with knowledge is something, but it takes a lot to change the course of history. I pondered this while I cooked for my family, and served food at the shelters. My breath would catch in my throat as I worked, trying to parse out my own paradox, hating myself, and weeping for the suffering of the world.

The Dustbowl had been a particularly difficult period of my life. From the challenges with Susan losing her first child, to the prolonged and unrelenting suffering amidst everyone around me and the painstaking recovery that our nation had rolled into and what I knew it would be, my heart and my mind had begun to close off. In 1936, we lost both Adelle and John. On that day, I felt like I lost a piece of myself. They had come to be more my parents than my own had been, taking on a vital role in my adult life and transition to the new time that I wouldn’t have been able to do without them, and couldn’t fathom life with anyone else at my side.

Adelle, especially, had been my rock. My own mother had become a phantom, haunting my mind and spirit, drifting out of my dreams and my memories of my youth. She was still real to me, but my memories of her smell and her touch teased me, changing in their solidity, asking me if she were ever real at all. Adelle filled that hole in my heart, keeping me above water whenever I was sinking. She was almost more than a mother to me, she had become my best friend, I think. As the visions of my own mother ebbed and flowed, and her image standing alone, deserted in the driveway frequented my mind and tugged at my soul, Adelle was there to console me and bring me back to my new reality.

And John. John was the first person to give me a chance in the new world. He didn’t pin me as hysterical, which would not have been surprising given the time period. His compassion could not be matched. He had opened his home to me, a stranger, protecting me at the most vulnerable time of my life.

Now that they were gone, two years after, the part of me that went missing with their loss felt numb. Like an empty pit where things vanish that you were sure you knew where you had left them. They had made me stronger, they had taught me everything I needed to know. And I loved them. They had both moved on peacefully, which I was so grateful for, and I was sure they were in a wonderful place. But my own selfishness, and the unbridled torment of the past decade left me feeling weak without them by my side.

Whenever I was alone, I felt like I was swimming through time. A vast sea of alternate realities, some of which I had the key to, and others remained unknown, taunting me with their probabilities. I watched them all roll past me, knowing it was not my place to judge, not my place to make choices, and not my place to grieve. My relationship with time had been jaded. Allowing me the benefit—or burden—of seeing into my future and knowing the fate of history, but being unable to forecast my own fate within that future was incredibly taunting and emotionally straining. I wanted nothing more than to be able to prevent the woes of my family and loved ones, to help the world settle its suffering. But I was cursed with the knowledge that I could not share, and could not act on what I knew. At the same time I felt cursed in my inaction and my own silent feeling of being misplaced in time.

And so 1938 became the year for me to withdraw. I drew inside myself to reconcile my feelings of guilt and confusion in my own inaction and insecurity about my belonging in this era. It seemed that since the financial collapse, I had been unable to escape the paradox. It followed me around, whispering accusations and taunting me with regret and remorse. I had to talk it down, and bring myself up.

Everything else aside, ignoring the phantoms of the past, 1938 was the year when things felt like they had finally gotten back to some sense of normalcy. The unemployment rate was still considerably high, but our own family was stable once again, and FDR’s policies had helped alleviate much of the population’s suffering through civilian corps and national public works projects. However, I knew what was around the corner, globally, and tried to sit tight without losing my mind from the fear of the war to come. The only thing to look forward to was our final move out of the Depression when the war would finally begin.

So, in my spare time, I began to spend more time alone, trying to ease my mind in some cathartic sense. Susan was working full-time again, and Todd had been given his full salary back. Sam’s energy had grown again, seeing his daughter and son in law successful once more, and he found solace in his job, doing his best to help New Yorkers find their own sense of normalcy, and remove the criminal element that had grown strong during the city’s fall. In my family’s triumph, I moved towards self-reflection, going on outings and walks by myself, as I had done before Susan was born, and now without the company of Adelle and the dissolution of the reading group to aid me in my loneliness.

I remember vibrantly that it was that year, that Walt Disney’s first full length, animated film was released. Oh how I adore
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
. When I heard about it on the radio, I was absolutely elated. I kept the news to myself, planning to go see the film as a matinee when Sam was at work. After a decade of tight finances, supporting ourselves as well as Susan and Todd, Sam and I had finally returned to a level of comfort where we could enjoy the extra luxuries of life once again. I put on one of my chic dresses that I hadn’t worn in years, feeling slightly too old but happy with my figure nonetheless, and headed out to the cinema.

It was a lovely winter day, in February. I bundled up my dress in my only remaining fur coat, wrapping myself tightly so as to not let the winter air creep into my bones. As I aged, I found it surprising how much more susceptible I became to illness. I thought again of the future, where I could have been protected with a simple trip to the drug store, to a CVS, or a Woolworths. Woolworths was around today, but the home remedies that it offered were not of much value, or were somewhat shocking to me still, even after having lived without modern medicine for so long. Some days, I thought that my memories of cat-scans and x-rays and physicians in scrubs surrounded by hordes of divine technologies were nothing more than figments of my imagination.

Walking to the theater, I thought of the progression of film, too.
Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs
would become the best, animated feature film of all time. No one knew it yet, but it would shock everyone despite the Depression, producing record ticket sales of any movie yet in this history of film. I thought back to my childhood as best as I could while I walked, far more excited than I was to see Mickey Mouse on his steamboat. This was
Snow White,
a film that had substantially influenced my childhood. I recalled my days dressing as Snow White, with Becky, while we would each take turns playing the role of the evil queen trying to feed her the poisoned apple.

I recall sighing then, my breath blowing up like a cloud of smoke in the cold, wrapping itself in circles around my head. I could hear Becky’s voice, her small, six year old figure creeping up on me in the black cloak, dangling a ruby red apple in front of me. Where did these memories come from? Were they all but waking dreams? Haunting me and confusing my mind and my memories? I felt a chill in my heart, and an ache in my soul. Whatever they were, their reality stayed with me. I could feel their presence and held their emotions inside of me, feeling everything play out again and again in my mind. A part of me wanted to go to the movie to bring that back, bring me closer to the future that I had left, to the world that I once knew but was now so far from. To bring me closer to Becky. Perhaps she was somewhere, in a concurrent dimension, watching
Snow White
for the first time as a little girl, before she had ever met me. This idea of an interconnected world, with overlapping universes appealed greatly to me. As I walked to the theatre, I imagined little Becky walking beside me, smiling.

The theatre was just a few blocks away. I didn’t need to take the subway, and preferred to walk anyway, regardless of the cold. My shoes were slippery on the icy sidewalk, but I managed, shaking my fist in age’s face as I approached the shinning lights of the cinema’s marquee.

“One for Snow White,” I said quietly. Speaking the words out loud was so strange. It was like teleporting back into the sunset of the twentieth century, into the land of televisions and VCRs. As the man passed me the tiny paper ticket through the slot in the stand, I could feel the plastic rectangle of my videotape copy of Snow White, could see the little reflections on the shiny film that was round through its thick shell. I rubbed the ticket between my fingers and clenched my throat, swallowing tight, and holding my emotions in my stomach.

I hadn’t seen a film by myself, ever. I didn’t go by myself when I was in high school, because I had always gone with Becky or Brad. Even my mother and I would have movie nights, going out on the weekends to see one of the new
Beethoven
movies, or the next of the Disney animated films. And now I was here. Alone, in solitude, at the release of first ever full-length animated film, when Walt Disney was no more a household name than a spaceship was a distant vision brought to life in the imagination of H.G. Wells.

I was surprised to see how crowded the theatre was, until I realized what a sensation the movie would become. I tried to find a seat to myself, not situated too close to the groups, or couples who were attending. I succeeded, and sat down in the small, wooden folding chairs, resting my hands in my lap. My palms were sweating, and my face grew hot as I fully appreciated how nervous I actually was for this. It was bringing me closer to the future than I had been since 1900. I wasn’t sure if I was ready for it.

The film was everything I could have imagined and more. Not only was it more fantastic than I had remembered it from my childhood, but it brought out the most incredible reactions from the crowd. Sitting next to persons who had never seen something like this in their entire lives, and could only imagine it, was astonishing. Men and women alike gasped in horror at the evil queen, and laughed out loud at the dwarfs. When the movie first opened, everyone exclaimed at the wonder of the images, at the incredulity of the animation, whispering to one another how something so amazing could have been produced like that. I sighed and exclaimed with them, enjoying the movie as if I had never seen it before. It was exceptional, being transported forward through time, while simultaneously living the moment in the past, for the first time.

Leaving the theatre, I recall feeling rejuvenated. There was a magic in reliving that moment, that movie that had touched so many lives across the decades that cannot be put into words. And it was only something that I could have experienced for myself. Not with Sam, not with Susan, not with any of the ladies from the book club. It took me to a place within myself that I hadn’t visited in a long time. Not truly. It took me back to my roots, and helped me know that everything that had happened to me was real, or at least, that my knowledge of the future was indeed justified, however and wherever it came from.

It brought me closer to my family in a way. It helped me feel them and touch them and remember the smells and sounds of our living room, sitting between my mother and father, watching the film in the darkness with the smell of microwave popcorn filling our small kitchen and living room. It brought me closer to reality, and back in touch with who I was. I walked in the setting sun, on my way back to our pleasant brownstone in the city, my shadow long and lanky in the shallow angle of the sun. I wondered how many more things I would relive, and the memories they would attract from within.