Page 22 of My Dearest Mackenzie

I’m sorry I can’t invite you into my home, and all I can offer is a perch on my window since my bedroom is in the back and private. It’s the best I can do.

I love all our moments we steal away from watchful eyes, and I promise to bring Connie’s and my special soup next time I see you. It’s not fair that I’m allowed to be friends with Constance and not fall for you. It’s a cruel world, but my papa would never allow it and my zayde would sit shiva for me. That means mourn my death.

But it’s a new year, and maybe something will change in the way the world sees you and me. I just see us as two people who care about one another.

I am counting the minutes until we walk through the zoo like we talked about.

Until then, don’t forget me.

Your Dearest Rosie

One letter, and my stomach was lodged in my throat.

Acid burned in my chest and a swell of emotions threatened to spill out from me. I hoped Frances stayed firmly planted on the other side of the apartment.

After being emotionally in check for decades, the cement walls I’d poured around me were about to be bulldozed by my grandmother’s long-lost love story.

Closing my eyes, I swallowed and put the letter on the table and opened the next.

This one was more of the same. Why couldn’t they love one another freely? Milly was already afraid of her parents learning of their affections…all of it heart-wrenching, and it was only the second letter.

They’d seen a monkey at the Prospect Park Zoo and secretly held hands while walking around. James had brought a pepperoni roll, not knowing my grandmother couldn’t eat it, and she would never forget their combined laughter over it.

My mind spun with the details. Milly took me to that zoo when I was young; she didn’t speak a word of going there in the past. It had been around since 1935, I learned from a quick Google search on my phone.

“Because she was Jewish…she couldn’t…love,” I was muttering to myself when I heard footsteps padding into the room.

“Mack, are you okay?”

Her words were soft, compassionate…while my eyes burned and my chest ached. “Please,” I said, my voice gritty and angry and raw.

“Please what?”

I didn’t know. My mind said to say go. My body said, “Stay.”

My grandmother hadn’t asked me to find love only because she wanted that for me, but also because she couldn’t have it herself. And my dad had so royally messed up in that department, and I was beginning to think my grandmother blamed herself.

The sofa depressed next to me, and my brain wanted to violently scream at Frances to get out. Except my forehead met her shoulder, and I breathed her in, allowing all that she was to calm me.

Her hand ran along my forearm, goose bumps breaking out along my bare skin, and I was shocked at my decision to let it be. We stayed like that for a while—no syllables spoken, feelings swirling, and the air-conditioning blasting.

“Want to get out of here?” My mouth formed the words as my eyes connected with Frances’s green orbs.

“Are you finished?” She took in the open letter on the table.

Shaking my head, I spoke. “No. I can’t. Right now. Can I keep them? I see how special they are. I promise, I will not do a thing and I’ll return them just as they are.”

She nodded, her palm still singeing my skin.

“I’m sorry,” I said, noting she wasn’t answering my question about leaving. “I shouldn’t have left you the other night. It was rude and inconsiderate.”

Her gaze cast away from me, I caught a small tear in the corner of her eye.

“I won’t do that again. I get why this is so important to you. It feels like a piece of history we’re just discovering. Of course it only matters to us, but it is giving off paramount vibes.”

She still didn’t look at me.

My thumb reached up and swiped the tear. “I mean it. When I say something, I take it to heart. I’m sorry.”

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