CHAPTER 14From One Survivor to Another
No one heals in a straight line.
One January evening in 1969, when Audrey comes home from a
babysitting job, Béla and I ask her and John to sit on the brown
Danish couch in the living room. I can’t look at Béla, I can’t look at my
children, I stare at the clean modern lines of the couch, its thin little
legs. Béla starts to cry.
“Did someone die?” Audrey asks. “Just tell us.”
Johnny kicks his feet nervously against the couch.
“Everything’s ĕne,” Béla says. “We love you both very much. Your
mother and I have decided that we need to live in separate houses for
a while.” He stutters as he speaks, the sentences last a year.
“What are you saying?” Audrey asks. “What’s going on?”
“We need to explore how to have more peace in our family,” I say.
“This isn’t your fault.”
“You don’t love each other anymore?”
“We do,” Béla says. “I do.” is is his jab, the one knife he points at
me.
“You’re not happy all of a sudden? I thought you were happy. Or
have you just been lying to us our whole lives?” Audrey has been
clutching her babysitting money in her hand—when she turned
twelve, Béla opened a checking account for her and said he would
double any dollar that she made—but now she throws her money on
the couch, as though we have contaminated every good or valuable