Part I: The Crossing
Water Street, Worcester
Four winters ago, on New Year’s morning in 1915, your grandfather, Mendl Levitzky, went to visit Ethel and Rachel Abramowitz, who had taken ill with the grippe. It was a Friday, and he wanted to deliver medication to the elderly sisters before it was time to prepare for Shabbos. Mendl—your mother called him Ta—was a pharmacist.
Back then, Zoé, we had a two-bedroom apartment above our store, Levitsky’s Dry Goods, on Water Street in Worcester, Massachusetts, where all the Jews lived. Ours was a modest business that served the everyday needs of our neighbors, stocked with flour and sugar, crockery and cooking pots, mops and buckets, glue and sandpaper, gingham and felt. Purchases were wrapped neatly in brown paper and string. Your grandfather’s apothecary filled five glass cabinets at the back of the store.
I worked behind the counter and kept the books. Camilla, your mother, was in her third year of nursing school at nearby St. Vincent Hospital but still helped to clean and stock the shelves after finishing her clinical rounds each day. She was very good with the customers, but she felt restless at twenty years old, anxious to complete her degree and always complaining to me about doing “mindless work” while Europe, particularly my French homeland, was embroiled in a horrific war that would eventually scar us all.
Water Street was an immigrant community bound by family ties, shtetl traditions, and distrust of the goyim. Your grandfather was well respected. He cared deeply for his customers. A pious Jew who honored the mitzvah of visiting the sick, he made house calls. That Friday morning, convinced that his homemade remedies cured the sick far better than doctors’ pills and powders, he brought the Abramowitz sisters a slippery-elm concoction, which he swore could cure any cough, even the most intractable lung congestion.
The following evening, just as three stars marked the end of Shabbos, he lay down.
Your mother never knew how many times I relived those frigid days in January, tending your grandfather round the clock, trying to quell his catarrhal cough with syrup and soup, bathing him with alcohol rubs to lower his fever. He was a strong man who rarely took to his bed. Others had died from the influenza, but I told myself he would recover.
At my insistence, your mother went to stay up the hill on Providence Street with your great uncle Ze’ev and his dour wife, Raisa—over Camilla’s fierce objections that her nursing skills were precisely what her father needed. Throughout that week of delusions, she grudgingly minded the store while I looked after Mendl. Hoping to silence her skepticism, I conjured up encouraging reports each morning, and she asked me to hand him cinnamon candies and little notes that made him chuckle. I tried to convince her—and myself—that he would be up and about in no time.
On the fifth night, Camilla and I had yet another argument. We had just shuttered the store and were standing on the sidewalk when she grabbed my arm. “Maman, for once, please let me come with you upstairs. I know what to do for him!”
“I’m perfectly fine tending Ta on my own, thank you.” I wrenched free of her grasp.
Camilla grimaced. “Why won’t you trust me? At the hospital they let me care for some of the sickest patients. Stop treating me like a know-nothing!”
Across the street, Gertrude Shapiro, the neighborhood yenta, waved and headed toward us.
“Don’t use that tone with me,” I said under my breath. “You know very well that Ta needs his rest, and he would never forgive himself if you got sick too.”
“How is your husband, Simone?” yelled Gertrude as she approached, glancing from me to Camilla and back with a feigned look of concern that masked a vicious tongue.
“He should be better soon,” I said, “God willing.”
“Yes, God willing,” Gertrude clucked. “Such a good man.”
“How do you know, Maman?” Camilla blurted out. “Ethel Abramowitz was admitted to the hospital today, she’s so sick. Ta may need a real doctor!”
“Camilla!”
“Well, please give Mendl my best wishes for a speedy recovery,” Gertrude called over her shoulder as she scuttled off.
“Do you have any idea how that gossip will talk about us now?” I hissed.
“All you care about are appearances!”
“That’s quite enough!”
Camilla glared at me, then turned and ran up the street toward her uncle’s. I trudged up the stairs to our apartment, forcing down my anger with each heavy step.
Later that evening, after your grandfather had barely finished the chicken broth I spooned into his mouth, he looked at me with feverish eyes. “How is Camilla?” he whispered.
I dabbed his burning forehead with rubbing alcohol. “Feisty as ever.”
He smiled wanly and brushed my hand with a fleeting touch, like the fluttering wings of a moth drawn to the light. “I would like to see her.”
I hesitated. “It’s too late now. Maybe tomorrow.”
He nodded weakly. Then his cough overcame him once again. When he finally settled, I readjusted his covers and wished him a peaceful night.
I only meant to lie down for a few minutes, but when I awoke on the parlor davenport, three hours had evaporated. No sound emanated from the bedroom, only the sharp smell of camphor oil. My heart, oh, my heart pounded like a bass drum as I rushed to his bedside! There he lay, so still, so cold, his clouded eyes staring at nothing, purpled lips parted like a fish, skin the color of water.
I had been present for my father’s parting breath when I was only fourteen, and my mother’s too, days later, but I had failed to shepherd my husband’s soul from this sorry life. More than grief, as I closed his paper-thin eyelids with trembling fingers, I was drowning in remorse that I hadn’t honored his last wish, to see your mother.
I could not tell Camilla. Even as it was, she would not forgive me.
“Why didn’t you send for me?” she shrieked, as if possessed by a dybbuk, pacing the kitchen back and forth, back and forth.
“I thought he was just exhausted. I didn’t realize—”
“If only you’d let me come up with you last night, I could have told you!” Her words pierced like shrapnel.
“Camilla, please, there was no way to know.”
“Yes, there was. And you wouldn’t even let me say good-bye!”
I tried to embrace her, but she shoved me away, ran to her bedroom, slammed the door, and wailed. I crumpled on Mendl’s bed, now stripped clean of linens, and hugged my knees to my breast, quaking.
If only I had realized it was the end. If only Mendl had had the common sense to leave his slippery-elm syrup on the Abramowitz sisters’ doorstep instead of insisting on a house call! Then he would have lived, we would have stayed together, and your mother would never have run off to France with her beau.
Had that been so, however, you would not be here, dear Zoé.
*
I hardly knew Harry Geller, though I suspect your mother introduced him to Mendl long before he took ill. She and her father shared so many secrets.
At Mendl’s crowded funeral, Harry had the chutzpah to serve as a pallbearer alongside Ze’ev and the other shul elders. He was tall and strong, with broad shoulders, ruddy cheeks, and wiry red hair like an Irishman. At the time I couldn’t understand why Camilla found him so attractive. Surely his father, a successful lawyer, could afford to have his nose reset properly! How his mother could allow him to box, when he was studying to become a physician—at Harvard, no less—was beyond my comprehension. Such were the petty thoughts that distracted me from my bewilderment, guilt, and the harsh reality of burying my husband on that bitter January day.
To his credit, Harry was a great source of comfort to Camilla as we gathered in the Jewish section of Mount Hope Cemetery. She refused to stand next to me. Nor would Ze’ev nor Raisa nor the rest of the Levitskys, who had never accepted me as one of their own from the day I arrived in Worcester to marry Mendl. As the rabbi called my husband a true tzaddik, as the mourners took turns shoveling frozen clods of dirt that drummed the lid of his simple pine casket, all I felt was a profound, cold emptiness.
During shiva week at my in-laws’ apartment, people offered nothing more than obligatory condolences to me. Camilla barely spoke to anyone. For the few hours when we were home alone together in the evenings, she just nodded or grunted when I tried to start a conversation, mostly keeping to her room to study her nursing texts while I rocked slowly in the parlor’s saffron gaslight, staring at unfinished mending in my lap.
She wanted nothing to do with Sha’arai Torah, the shul your grandfather so loved. Without him as my mooring, his rituals and manners as the ballast of my days, I felt adrift. So, when Camilla begged for Harry to come for Shabbos dinner, how could I refuse? Meals with just the two of us were miserable, and the prospect of spending Friday night with my judgmental in-laws was no better. I hoped that a gesture of goodwill would encourage Camilla to listen, to allow me to give my side of what happened, to bridge the chasm of anger and silence and misunderstanding between us.
How she looked up at Harry that evening, smiling at his every remark! I should have been pleased by their joy. If only I had known what was to come, I would have welcomed Harry with a full heart. Alas, my dear Zoé, such foresight is not ours to have.
Instead, I was hobbled by my own longing for Camilla’s forgiveness and attention. I felt grateful that at last, after years of my fretting that she would never allow someone to court her, my beautiful daughter (she had luminous honey-blonde hair back then, the innocent face of a Botticelli angel, and piercing blue eyes) had finally found a strong, smart, tall Jew from a reputable family, with a promising career ahead of him. Yet I found him so irritating! With Mendl gone, I was convinced that I was the last person Camilla would ever ask for advice. I became obsessed with the notion that she had pledged her allegiance to another man in her father’s place. Once again, I felt shut out from her deepest affections.
We huddled around our little kitchen table, with Mendl’s seat empty. Camilla insisted that we use her father’s silver kiddush cup. She didn’t seem to realize or care that it was the last object that had touched his lips, but I chose to avoid a spat in front of our guest. As Harry sang the blessing over the wine in a clear, full voice, she smiled for the first time since her father’s death. All I could see, however, through my jealous lens, was his attempt to flaunt his familiarity with Jewish ritual, when I was well aware that he often engaged in boxing on Friday nights (this I had overheard in the store). Whatever your grandfather’s obsessions with rigid observance, Mendl was never one to boast of his religious devotion, in word or deed. His sincerity was simply evident to anyone who knew him.
It was all I could do not to slam down my glass and spill wine all over the linen tablecloth. Sensing my irritation, Camilla glared at me, her smile fading to a barely concealed grimace. If Harry noticed, he was at least polite enough not to comment.
Tensions eased when I served the meal. Harry especially enjoyed my poulet with apples and cinnamon. We probably would have survived the rest of the evening if Camilla hadn’t brought up the suffragettes again.
“It’s high time, Maman, that women had the right to vote. We have brains, we have responsibilities. We raise the next generation, for goodness sake! Some of us run our own businesses, like you. We should have a say in who makes the laws.”
“I don’t have time to concern myself with politics,” I retorted, heat flooding my cheeks. “Especially now.”
Camilla furrowed her brows but fell momentarily silent.
“Mrs. Levitsky, as a businesswoman, don’t you want a voice?” Harry’s question appeared earnest, but to my wounded ear he seemed to be baiting me for Camilla’s amusement.
She nodded vigorously. “He’s right, Maman, you have every reason to march.”
“The last thing I will ever do is join one of those public demonstrations! Even if I agreed with your premise, I would never engage in such undignified behavior.” I hid my trembling hands under the table.
“Oh, Maman, you’re so old fashioned! If it were up to you, we’d still be wearing hoop skirts.”
Round and round we went, as Harry watched, barely able to conceal his smile. Mendl was no longer there to mediate. Humiliated and exhausted, I cut the evening short. Harry thanked me as he rose to leave, but I detected a hint of amusement in his hazel eyes. Camilla insisted on seeing him out.
An hour later, she tramped back up the stairs. I had long since finished washing the dishes and was sitting at the table with a cup of tepid tea, waiting. My fingers ached from clenching. I grasped for your grandfather’s wise words, but his empty chair just stared back at me.
I can still hear that harsh exchange, as clearly as I can see her face in yours.
“Just what were you doing for so long out in the cold?”
“I walked Harry home, if it’s any of your business.”
“You walked him home? And then he let you walk back alone?”
“Yes, Maman. I’m a grown woman. I’m quite capable of walking home by myself.”
“Camilla!”
“I have nothing more to say to you.”
She stormed off to her room. We were each far too proud and convinced of our own victimhood to repair the rupture.
Three days later, after we had shuttered the store and come upstairs to make supper, your mother announced in the middle of the kitchen, arms akimbo, that she was quitting school and leaving with Harry to volunteer for the French war effort—as ambulance drivers!
Despite their blatant naiveté about this fantastical plan, despite the fact that barely ten days had passed since her father had been laid to rest, nothing I said or did could stop her. I argued until I was hoarse, but she simply dismissed my words. Her insouciance so enraged me that (I’m ashamed to admit) I raised my hand to slap her face. She caught my wrist in a firm grip. I will never forget her ice-blue stare. I turned away in a futile attempt to hide my tears. She merely snorted in contempt. Neither of us ate that night.
The following morning, on Tuesday, January 19, Camilla disappeared before I awoke. There was no note. Her favorite yellow blanket, which I had knit when she was five and sick with whooping cough, lay jumbled on the floor. I clutched it to my breast and collapsed on her bed and wept and wept until my throat ached, thinking of Mendl beneath his frozen mantle and of how I had utterly failed my only child.
That, my dearest Zoé, is how your mother and I parted ways in the first year of the Great War.
—
Author’s Statement
Inspiration for a novel comes unexpectedly. Twice, while I was traveling on business, museums sparked my interest in writing a novel set during World War I. The first was a 2010 exhibit of Otto Dix’s haunting engravings, Der Krieg, at the Neue Galerie in New York City; the second, in 2014, was a display of a woman ambulance-driver’s uniform at the National World War I Museum in Kansas City, Missouri.
Reading about the Great War, I discovered profound parallels with our fraught times—rapidly evolving social roles; advances in medicine, communications, industry, and technology; the creation of ever more precise and hellish weapons to fight devastating wars. I wanted to understand how people had experienced that epic period and how it had changed them. What had it cost them to survive? What endures through tragedy and trauma?
Set in 1915, LINE OF FLIGHT follows the journey of Simone Levitsky, recently widowed by her husband’s death from influenza, as she searches for her estranged daughter. Camilla has run off with her beau, Harry Geller, from their tightly knit Jewish community in Massachusetts to volunteer for the French war effort. Seeking the fastest route to Europe, Simone departs on the doomed last voyage of the Lusitania but survives the torpedo attack with the help of a fellow traveler. Eventually, they find their way to the Paris hospital where Camilla was volunteering for the Croix Rouge, only to discover that she has disappeared once again. Determined to find her daughter, Simone risks her life across battle-scarred France to track down Camilla and learn the true cause of their bitter parting.
Told as Simone’s written account for Camilla’s daughter, Zoé, LINE OF FLIGHT interweaves Simone’s tumultuous journey with Camilla’s letters to Harry and Simone’s struggles while raising Zoé, later, on her own. Carrier pigeons fly in and out as messengers of love and loss. My novel explores the intricate dance of mother-daughter relationships across four generations, during a period of massive upheaval and a global pandemic that cracked the boundaries of women’s societal roles. The mother of two grown daughters, I didn’t need to research those family dynamics.
Evelyn Herwitz lives in Worcester, Massachusetts. A professional writer, she has taught feature writing at Clark University and told stories professionally as a public-radio and award-winning print journalist, a marketing and communications specialist, and an author. Her environmental history of Worcester, Trees at Risk (2001), was cited as “a major historical work with a strong environmental message” by the Journal of Political Ecology. She is now devoted to writing fiction, and her short story “Nachtmusik,” about a WWI medic lost in No Man’s Land, was published in Chautauqua in 2019. LINE OF FLIGHT is her first novel. “The Sinking,” another excerpt from the novel, appeared in the Spring 2024 issue of The Writing Disorder.
Embark, Issue 20, April 2024
Embark 