The Lost Wife by Alyson Richman Page A

had a chance to plug it in.
    The box that talked. The box that broadcast a hundred happy faces beaming back at us each night. Amalia did smile. I caught the flicker across her face, like a line drawn in the sand before the water washes it away.
    We ate on trays in front of the television that night. Plates of breaded chicken cutlets, wilted asparagus with a moat of melted butter, and baked potato without any sour cream.
    I loved our new television not because I particularly enjoyed the broadcasts (I couldn’t believe Milton Berle was the best the Americans could come up with), but because it provided a welcome distraction to our household.
    With my children on the sofa, their little chins held up by their hands and their heads tilted toward the screen, I could watch them without interruption. I have never been a great one for small talk. My books have been my primary companions.
    Even my patients, whom I care for dearly and whose pregnancies I monitor as diligently and as compassionately as I can, I do not pepper with personal questions.
    I watch my daughter in front of the television and notice that her profile is identical to my wife’s. She has the same thin face, skin the color of navy beans, and hair the color of sun-bleached wheat. Her mother has made two tight braids for her that she plays with when she watches. On her elbows, with her legs stretched behind her like two straight sticks, I see her body is all sharp angles like her mother’s. The circle of her collarbone pronounced like its own necklace, and the razor edge of her jaw. I see the flash of her grin, those broad white teeth that are mine.
    My son is soft and round. His chubby limbs remind me of myself at his age. His skin is deeper, browner than my wife’s and daughter’s. His eyes look sad even when he’s happy. His kindergarten teacher told us he appeared to have no interest in playing with the other children, that he could spend hours on a puzzle yet have no patience to learn to tie his shoes. I can hear no criticism of him. I love my children like a tiger. I love my wife like a lamb.
    Amalia. Sitting there with your knees pinned together, your fingers gingerly in your lap. The black-and-white image from the screen paints you blue. I look at you and wonder how you were as a child. Were you feisty like our daughter, all words and fire? Or quiet and thoughtful like our son?
    I imagine you running home before the war, with the fateful letter from America in your hands, your face bright like a full moon. Those large brown eyes and cheekbones that could slice bread. When your parents packed you off to safety, did something else get packed away as well?
    Under the forgiving buzz of the television, I unpack my own memories.
    My own mental suitcases unlock. My father’s spectacles—a silver and round pince - nez — no longer on his narrow face, but floating in a bottle-green ocean. I see my sister’s childhood bear with its brown, matted fur. Its torn velvet paw, its glass eyes and ribbon mouth. I see my mother rushing to pack what is dear to her: her wedding handkerchief, the portraits of us as children, all her jewels that she hides in the silk seams of her coat, which she opens and recloses like a surgeon. And books that I left behind. Those that littered the shelves of my room, piled at my nightstand, toted on my back. My favorite novel about the Golem. What I would do to have that book now and read it to my son.

CHAPTER 11
     

LENKA
     
    In Mala Strana, in a café with ice-colored walls, I order a hot chocolate for Marta.
    “Tell me the story about the Golem,” she says again.
    I tell her the legend that was first told to me when I was a little girl. How under Czech lore, Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, the chief rabbi of Prague, created a protective spirit by mixing the clay and water from the Vltava River with his own hands.
    My own hands, white like powder, tremble as I try to remember the details of the myth. “The rabbi, he created this Golem to