No One Must Know (6 page)

“Tell me, Dr. Gal, what are you and your family doing here?” Mr. McCallum asked, waving his hand in the direction of the sanctuary. “This isn’t exactly where I would have expected to find you.”

Dad’s face turned beet red and he swallowed hard. “Well, we’ve got to get going,” he said. “It was nice to see you again, Mr. McCallum.”

For a long moment, the man looked at Dad in confusion. Then he suddenly seemed to notice the cross around my neck. He stared at it so hard that he made me feel self-conscious and I covered it with my hands. He looked from me to Dad and then around at the church as if he’d just realized something. For some reason, he seemed embarrassed.

“Drive safely,” Mom said. “The roads around Banff can be treacherous.” I noticed that her hands were shaking. “Well, we’re late, girls,” she added, hustling us out of the building.

As soon as we were in the car, I asked, “Who were those people?”

“Mr. McCallum owns a small grocery store in Toronto. We used to shop there when we first arrived in Canada. You were too young to remember,” Mom said.

I turned to Dad. “I didn’t understand something he said. If your friend in Toronto is a good doctor, why doesn’t he have enough patients?”

“It’s nothing you need to concern yourself with,” Dad said.

“And another thing – did you notice how he was staring at my cross?”

“Forget it,” Dad said. I could tell by the firmness of his voice that it was useless to ask more questions. “Don’t worry your head over things you don’t understand.”

“L
unch is in two minutes, Alexandra. The food is warming in the oven. We’re having chicken paprikash – your favorite,” Mom said.

We sat down around the dining-room table, which had been formally set with a lace tablecloth and cloth napkins. Unlike my friends’ families, we always had the main meal in the middle of the day. In spite of the early hour, two candles burned in heavy silver candlesticks at the center of the table. These were the only valuables we had brought with us from Europe. Mom said they were precious to her because they’d belonged to my grandmother.

The chicken paprikash was just as I liked it – hot and spicy.

“You’re the best cook in the world, Mom.”

“I have excellent recipes. Good friends gave them to me,” she said. “Leave room for the second course,” she added as she put a bowl of cucumber salad on the table.

“Excellent meal, Agi,” Dad said.

“Nice to be so appreciated.” She laughed and then turned to me. “How was Sunday school, dear?”

“Boring. Sister Ursula is hard to take.”

“She’s a nun, Alexandra! Show some respect,” she scolded.

“Learning doesn’t always have to be entertaining,” Dad said in a firm voice. “Sometimes we learn the most when we must try the hardest. Always remember that knowledge is the only thing –”

“They can’t take away from you.” I completed the much-repeated motto for him. “Talk about double standards, Dad! You don’t go to church every week, and neither does Mom. I don’t see why I have to. I never have time to sleep in. It’s not fair!”

“Watch it, young lady! I won’t be spoken to in such a manner.” Dad seemed genuinely annoyed. “When you’re my age, you’ll do as you like. For now, you’ll do as you’re told. It’s for your own good.”

“Stop it, you two,” Mom said. She knew Dad was angry, but I could see by the muscle twitching at the side of her mouth that she was fighting not to smile at our familiar argument. I loved it when her face was so full of mischief. It made her look just like a kid. Changing the subject, she turned to me and said, “I’ve been doing some thinking about your Girl Guide tea. Why don’t you bake a cheesecake? They’re easy to make and delicious.”

“I have to do it by myself,” I reminded her, “without any help.”

“Let’s bake one together first, to give you practice. Then you’ll be able to do it by yourself.”

“Can I invite Jean and Molly? It’ll be fun baking together.”

“Good idea. Let’s do it next weekend.”

“After you finish you homework,” Dad said just as a great big sneeze escaped my lips. “Agi,” he said, laughing, “the paprika in your chicken certainly clears our sinuses.”

I reached into my skirt pocket for a Kleenex, and as I did the tips of my fingers touched the cold smoothness of my rosary beads. They reminded me of the photographs I’d found in Mom’s drawer. She was in a good mood, so it seemed safe to ask her about them.

“I have to tell you something, Mom,” I began. “Yesterday, when Jean and Molly came over, I tried on the scarf
that Dad gave you for your anniversary. I didn’t think you’d mind, as long as I put it back in your drawer,” I added quickly.

“Really, Alexandra! You shouldn’t –”

“I found some old photographs in the drawer.”

She stopped mid-sentence, her fork halted halfway to her mouth. Two round red apples dotted her cheeks. She glanced at Dad, who had put his fork down and was listening to us.

“Did you look at them?” she asked.

“Of course I did! Who are those women, Mom? One of them looks just like you, except younger. Is it a picture of you when you were a girl? When were the photos taken? The people in them look so old-fashioned.” The words just tumbled out of my mouth, and once the questions had started I couldn’t make them stop. “Why do they have stars on their clothes?” I asked.

My mother’s eyes filled with unshed tears. “Oh, Alexandra, I thought you knew better than to snoop in my dresser!”

“I wasn’t trying to be nosy,” I protested. “I just wanted to show Jean and Molly your scarf.”

She sighed deeply but did not reply.

“Who are those women, Mom?” I repeated more insistently.

“I think the time has come to tell the child,” Dad said.

Mom put her hands over her face. “Please, Jonah. Not yet…. Not ever!” She pushed herself heavily from the table and grasped the handle of her cane. “I feel one of my migraines coming on,” she announced. “I’m going to lie down.” She hobbled out of the room before I could stop her.

I turned to Dad. “What’s going on? Why is Mom so upset? What is it that you should tell me? What do you know about those old pictures?”

He took a long drink of his soda water. “Your mother will tell you about them when she’s ready.”

“When will that be?”

“Later,” he said and began to eat.

We finished the meal in silence. Suddenly, my favorite food tasted like sawdust in my mouth.

I barely saw my mother for the next few days. When I got home from school for lunch on Monday, I wasn’t greeted by the usual mouth-watering smells coming from the kitchen. And Mom wasn’t waiting for me either. Instead, a note propped up on the table said that she still had a migraine and was lying down. I didn’t want to disturb her when she wasn’t feeling well, but I knew that Dad would be home for his own lunch in a few minutes.
We had to eat something, so I took six eggs out of the refrigerator and beat them with a whisk to make an omelette, just as I had seen Mom do many times. I was buttering the rye bread I had toasted when Dad arrived. I showed him Mom’s note. He read it but did not comment as he ladled food onto his plate.

“I made enough for Mom too,” I said.

“I’ll take it up to her when we’ve finished eating,” he said.

At the end of the meal, he piled the remainder of the eggs and toast onto a plate and climbed the stairs to their bedroom. I could hear loud knocking on their door, but he was back downstairs a minute later, his color high, the plate of food still clutched in his hands.

“Your mother must be sleeping. The door is locked, and she didn’t open it when I knocked.” He scraped the contents of the plate into the garbage can.

I stared at him. Was this the father who was constantly lecturing me not to waste food?

When Mom stayed in her room that evening and all the next day, Dad and I took turns making sandwiches for each other. We ate’ them in silence because he still refused to answer any of my questions. “Your mother will talk to you when she is ready,” he told me. After he’d eaten lunch, he hurried back to work while I returned to school.
That evening, after dinner, he read the newspaper in his favorite armchair while I did my homework at the dining-room table. Mom never came downstairs.

I had trouble falling asleep that night. I tossed and turned, replaying the events of the past two days. All kinds of thoughts filled my brain. I remembered how Mrs. Cowan had insulted Jacob. I was still embarrassed that I hadn’t understood why he was so hurt. The scene around the dining-room table on Sunday also kept running through my mind like an old movie. Why had my mother become so upset when I asked her about the photographs? I wondered. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that the girl in the photos was her when she was younger.

All the heavy thinking was making me thirsty, so I decided to go downstairs to the kitchen for a glass of milk. I was surprised to see light streaming out from under my parents’ door. The grandfather clock in the corner showed that it was twenty minutes past three. I tiptoed closer to their door, careful to avoid the floorboards that creaked. I could hear the murmur of voices, but no matter how hard I strained, I couldn’t understand what they were saying. So I risked going even closer, pressing my ear against the bedroom door. I could still hear only the odd word of their conversation.

“… must tell her,” Dad was saying.

Mom was whispering and sobbing at the same time, so it was even more difficult to make out what she was saying. I heard her cry, “No. No! She … wasted,” but the rest of her words were too muffled to understand.

“Alexandra … must …” I heard Dad mention my name.

“Wasted!” Mom said again, before beginning to speak in Hungarian.

Suddenly, I heard footsteps approaching, then Dad’s voice, clear and close. I rushed back to my room on tiptoe, careful to close the door quietly behind me. I didn’t dare turn on the light, but instead lay silently on top of my covers, listening to Dad’s footsteps pass my door.

Lunch the next day was a lonely affair, but at least there was food warming in the oven. The sauerkraut with meatballs, Mom’s specialty, was delicious, but I had to eat it by myself with a copy of
Seventeen
magazine propped up against the salt and pepper shakers for company. Dad arrived a few minutes later, kissed me hello, and without even taking a bite of food, climbed upstairs two steps at a time. I heard the bedroom door slam and muffled voices rise in anger. I hung around at the bottom of the stairs for a while, but when I couldn’t muster the courage to follow my father, I went back to school.

Both Mom and Dad were waiting for me in the
living room when I arrived home in the afternoon. Although she was a little pale, Mom seemed to be in a good mood.

“My headache is better,” she said. “Come, join us.”

I sat down in an armchair.

“So, darling, what have you been up to?” she asked.

“Nothing much.” I twisted a strand of hair around my finger. “Oh, Father Mike told me he’d be calling you soon,” I said to her, remembering the conversation I’d had with the priest a few days earlier. “I didn’t have a chance to tell you before.”

“What does he want?”

“To set a date for my confirmation, I think. I told him you didn’t want me confirmed.”

She shot a quick glance at Dad. “Did you tell Father Mike why?” she asked.

“I told him exactly what you told me, Mom – that nobody gets confirmed in the old country, so you aren’t used to the custom.”

Dad lowered his paper. “Confirmation is out of the question,” he said.

“I agree with you, Jonah. I couldn’t bear it either. But I have to tell the priest something, don’t I? What do you want me to say when he calls?”

“Tell him that we don’t want Alexandra confirmed. Period. You don’t have to give a reason.”

The longer I listened, the angrier I became. They were talking about me as if I wasn’t even there. “Why can’t I be confirmed?” I finally asked. “All the kids at Sunday school were ages ago.”

“This topic is not open for discussion,” Mom said. “Your father and I know what’s best for you.” She sighed. “I’ll call Father Mike tomorrow and explain.” She forced a smile. “How was school today?”

“Okay.”

“Answer your mother properly,” Dad said.

“I don’t want to talk about school. I want to know what’s going on.” I turned to my mother. “You have headaches that last for days. You won’t discuss the old pictures. You’re getting excited about Father Mike. What’s the matter with you?”

I was sorry as soon as the words had escaped my mouth, for her eyes quickly filled with tears.

“Nothing’s the matter, darling,” she whispered. “It’s just that…” Her voice trailed off.

“Stop upsetting your mother.” Dad jumped in. “She’ll explain everything to you when she is ready.”

We sat in silence for the next few minutes. “So, darling,” Mom finally said, “what are your plans for the weekend? Isn’t your school dance on Friday? Are you and Molly going together?”

“I’ll drive you,” Dad said.

I kept my voice casual. “That’s okay. I’m going with another friend, and I’ve been invited for dinner before the dance.”