The Longest Ride

what.”

“I did know,” I say. “And that was why I couldn’t tell you.”
     

     
    I did eventually tell her, of course, on a cold evening in early March. I had called her at home, asking her to meet me in the park, where we had strolled together a hundred times. At the time, I wasn’t planning to tell her. Instead, I convinced myself that I simply needed a friend to talk to, as the atmosphere at home had become oppressive.

My father had done well financially during the war, and as soon as it was over, he went back into business as a haberdasher. Gone were the sewing machines; in their place were racks of suits, and to someone walking past the shop, it probably looked the same as it did before the war. But inside, it was different. My father was different. Instead of greeting customers at the door as he used to, he would spend his afternoons in the back room, listening to the news on the radio, trying to understand the madness that had caused the deaths of so many innocent people. It was all he wanted to talk about; the Holocaust became the subject of every mealtime conversation and every spare moment. By contrast, the more he talked, the more my mother concentrated on her sewing, because she couldn’t bear to think about it. For my father, after all, it was an abstract horror; for my mother – who, like Ruth, had lost friends and family – it was deeply personal. And in their divergent reactions to these shattering events, my parents gradually set in motion the largely separate lives they would lead from that point on.

As their son, I tried not to take sides. With my father I would listen and with my mother I would say nothing, but when the three of us were together, it sometimes struck me that we’d forgotten what it meant to be a family. Nor did it help that my father now accompanied my mother and me to synagogue; my intimate talks with my mother became a thing of the past. When my father informed me that he was bringing me in as a partner in the business – meaning the three of us would be together all the time – I despaired, sure that there would be no escaping the gloom that had infiltrated our lives.

“You are thinking about your parents,” Ruth says to me.

“You were always kind to them,” I say.

“I loved your mother very much,” Ruth says. “Despite the difference in our ages, she was the first real friend I made in this country.”

“And my father?”

“I loved him, too. How could I not? He was family.”

I smile, recalling that in later years she was always more patient with him than I was.

“Can I ask you a question?”

“You can ask me anything.”

“Why did you wait for me? Even after I stopped writing? I know you say that you loved me, but…”

“We are back to this? You wonder why I loved you?”

“You could have had anyone.”

She leans closer to me, her voice soft. “This has always been your problem, Ira,” she says. “You do not see in yourself what others see in you. You think you are not handsome enough, but you were very handsome when you were young. You think you are not interesting or smart enough, but you are these things, too, and that you are not aware of your best qualities is part of your charm. You always see so much in others – as you did in me. You made me feel special.”

“But you are special,” I insist.

She raises her hands in delight. “This is what I am talking about,” she says, laughing. “You are a man of deep feelings, who has always cared about others, and I am not alone in recognizing that. Your friend Joe Torrey sensed it. I am sure that is why he spent his free time with you. And my mother sensed it as well, which was why she held me when I thought I had lost you. Because we both knew that men like you are rare.”

“I’m glad you came that night,” I say. “I needed you.”

“And you also knew, as soon as we fell into step at the park, that you were finally ready to tell me the truth. All of it.”

I nod. In one of my final letters, I’d briefly told her about the bombing run over Schweinfurt and Joe Torrey. I mentioned the wounds I’d received and the infection that had followed, but I hadn’t told her everything. On that night, however, I started at the beginning. I related every detail and I held nothing back. On the bench, she listened to my outpouring of words without speaking.

Afterward, she slipped her arms around me and I leaned into her. The emotions washed over me in waves, her whispered