A Private State: Stories by Charlotte Bacon Page A

fine, she's gone to Miami." He waved his free hand in the air. Elizabeth remembered that Vera had mentioned she was thinking of spending a week in Florida; but Elizabeth knew she hadn't said anything about a cousin. "I'm looking after the house. And she told me to help you with your chart," the man said patiently, as if that were enough to explain. "Let's go downstairs." What was strange to Elizabeth was that it seemed like the only proper thing to do.
The man led Elizabeth to the drafting table in the study where a rectangle of archival paper was thumbtacked smooth. It was a tree

 

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she was tracing for Vera Kosovsky, her neighbor and a survivor of a labor camp in Poland. Her tree was difficult, the way they often were for Jewish clients, with no way to avoid the many branches pinched short by the war. Families that should have run to the bottom of the page, run right off it, stopped in the middle, hanging there like black and broken chandeliers. Elizabeth imagined Vera looking at all the gaps and saying, in her decisive way, "Well, we can't change what happened. There is no way around the facts."
The man pointed. "There. That's where I should be: Joseph Krystowicki, Lodz, 1925. Son of Avram and Magda." Elizabeth traced the line from Vera: he was her second cousin, born in the same town. Why had she never talked about him?
Elizabeth looked at her feet. It was hard to assert yourself when you weren't wearing shoes. She said, "Mr. Krystowicki, I don't mean to be rude, but Vera hasn't ever mentioned you." He was a formal man. Despite his intrusion, she would never have called him Joseph. He looked as if he were in slight and constant pain. His knuckles were flat and huge as if they had once been smashed.
"We don't spend a lot of time together. But I wanted a change of scene and she wanted someone in the house while she was gone." He looked at her, calm, measuring. "Vera said you were doing this project for her. She said I should help you. My memory is better than hers, for certain things."
Elizabeth felt slightly dizzy. "Would you like some coffee?" she said.
"Please. With sugar." Joseph dipped his head, looked courtly.
When she returned with steaming cups, Joseph was sitting in a chair at the sunny end of the room. Despite his age, his unclear status as visitor or intruder, he made her feel like a hostess still mastering the etiquette of entertaining. Sugar tongs? Why hadn't she thought to arrange a plate of cookies? At least she'd found her sneakers. Standing there with her tray, she realized she often felt

 

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callow around those who had lived through the war. They had stood things she could hardly fathom. He was older than Vera, but had her same dry vigor.
Joseph sniffed his coffee. "This makes me think of Rome, those pigeons and statues." He put his nose to the brim and sniffed again. "I am sorry I surprised you."
"That's all right," Elizabeth said slowly, "I was taken aback. I don't usually leave doors open. I'm careful about it, in fact."
"Quite right," he said. "Vera told me about your Kate." He sipped his coffee and closed his eyes for a moment. His accent was strong, Eastern European.
"When was the last time you saw Vera?" Elizabeth asked.
He opened his eyes. "Two years ago. We bumped into each other in Miami. Before that, not since before the war. Imagine that," he said and closed his eyes again.
Elizabeth wondered if he was asleep. Then she asked, "Mr. Krystowicki, why didn't you knock harder? I would have come downstairs."
His eyes snapped opened. "Because you would never have let me in," he said. "You don't like strangers."
It was true. Friendly once she knew who it was, she let her sympathies grow slowly. She often woke in the middle of the night convinced someone was trying to jimmy a window. An historian, she'd tried to train herself to assess sources just as critically, a skill that kept her attuned to personal detail. She taught two classes at the local college: one on U.S. presidents and the