hospital, an X-ray reveals that his TB has returned. He looks more
unraveled and pale than he did the day I got him out of jail, the day
we Ęed to Vienna. e doctors transfer him to a TB hospital, and
when I take Marianne to visit him every day aer work, I am rigid
with the fear that she will see him coughing up blood, that she will feel
the possibility of death despite our efforts to hide from her how sick he
is. She is four years old, she can already read, she brings picture books
from Mrs. Bower’s to entertain her father, she tells the nurses when he
has ĕnished his food, when he needs more water. “You know what
would cheer Daddy up?” she says to me. “A baby sister!” We haven’t
allowed ourselves to try for another child, we are too poor, and now I
am relieved that we don’t have the pressure of another person’s
hunger weighing on Béla’s recovery, on my pitiful paychecks. But it
breaks my heart to see my daughter yearning for a companion. To see
her loneliness. It makes me long for my own sisters. Magda has a
better job now, in New York, using the tailoring skills she learned
from our father to make coats at London Fog. She doesn’t want to start
over again in a new city, but I beg her to come to Baltimore. In
Vienna, in 1949, that is how I brieĘy imagined my life might turn out
—bringing Marianne up with my sister instead of my husband. en,
it was a choice, a sacriĕce, to spare my daughter life in a war zone.
Now, if Béla dies, or if he becomes an invalid, it will be a necessity. We
live in a slightly bigger apartment now, and even with two of us
working we struggle to eat. I can’t imagine how I will afford to pay for
it alone. Magda agrees to think about coming.
“Don’t worry,” Béla says, coughing into a handkerchief. “I won’t let
our girl grow up without a father. I will not.” He coughs and stutters
so badly he can barely get out the words.
* * *Béla does recover, but he is still weak. He won’t be able to resume his