Finding Alice
Chapter One
Cambridge, Massachusetts, January 1956
Our home is creaking, settling in for the night. David is in the den typing up a paper he’s been working on for at least six months. I sit in the armchair in my study, feet propped up on the windowsill, needing to pee, too tired to get up, too busy caressing my belly, bidding the life growing inside me goodnight. Twelve weeks old. The size of my palm Dr. Page says.
With the baby, Mama has come back into my head. I need her, want her here to guide me. David is loving, attentive. He is willing to shop, cook, wash the dishes, sweep the floors. He’ll do anything to keep me happy and rested and I love him all the more for it, but I ache to say, "Mama. I'm expecting a baby," and pour my happiness over her, to keep her warm, to shine her face with pride. My baby, her grandchild.
I am filled with questions. Did she dream that her baby would be born with a hole in its heart for lack of love? That the weight of her body, tossing in sleep, would suffocate it? When does the fear go away? With its first kick? When it meets the world and screams?
I picture scenarios in which I ask her to place her hand on my belly and tell me the sex of the baby. She was always good at guessing. A girl, she says and we start spouting possible names. I paint her laughing with joy, hugging me, telling me not to fear, all will be well.
The old Mama dream has come back.
We’re rolling down the mountain surrounded by snow and rock. A black bed of pine trees waits below. Above us the barbed wire of the Italian-Swiss frontier plays its thousand bells, announcing Christmas, warning the German guards. I hold my baby sister against my chest and feel Mama’s hips embracing mine, her arms locked round my waist, her chin hooking my shoulder. A human avalanche, we roll to what we perceive as safety.
Romantic. False. Wishful thinking.
Since that night on Mount Bisbino, twelve years ago, Mama has drifted in and out of my landscape. Sometimes I’ve felt her presence like the phantom limb of an amputee, and in my dreams I asked her countless questions, both serious and silly. Should I cut my hair? Is it okay for my boyfriend to touch my breasts? If I get married, will my love, his love last? For how long? Why aren’t you here to help me? What happened to you?
Other times I reduced her to a pinpoint in my heart, pretending that not having a mother was just fine, nothing to go on about. I had Papa to take care of me. I wasn’t an orphan like so many other kids after the war.
Papa always maintained Mama was killed the night of Christmas Eve, 1944, trying to escape Nazi infested Italy with two of her children. Me and Claire. I believed the story in my teenage years when I was too absorbed in the now of my life to question it. But even then, when someone would ask about my mother, I could hear doubt unfurling as I answered. “She was killed in the war.” As an adult, I cannot help but think her death is the easy, neat explanation, the one that leaves everyone guiltless. Everyone except me, that is.
Maybe Papa knew the alternate ending to Mama’s story. Before he died, I plied him with questions, but his answer never changed. “Alice is dead. Please, Susie, let your mother rest in peace.” I’m left swaying on uncertain ground.
Is her death a lie or did she decide her life would be better without us and walk away? What will I tell my baby about the grandmother she will never have? I want my child to grow up without doubts. I need to search for the different truth that I believe is there. I need to free myself of the guilt I feel. Let go of the past. I have only six months before the baby leaves the cradle of my belly. She will need all of me then. I promise her that. I was a bad daughter. I will be a good mother. I promise.
I have no proof Mama is still alive, but I was there that night on Mount Bisbino. If the Germans had killed Mama, I would have heard the shots. No one fired a single shot.