The Sweetness of Forgetting

Hope is confused when some of the people she calls suggest that she contact a synagogue; Mamie is Catholic. Meanwhile, Annie is still angry with Hope. Gavin persuades Hope to confide in him, and when she describes Mamie throwing the Star Pies in the water, Gavin says that it sounds like she was observing Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. Gavin’s mother is Jewish, his father Catholic. His mother lost her family in the Holocaust and survived Bergen-Belsen, a concentration camp in Germany. Gavin helps out with survivors as a volunteer. He says that many survivors abandoned their roots after everything they loved got taken away. Hope gives him pastries to take to the people he is visiting in the nursing home where his grandmother used to live.

In the morning, the smell of the sea evokes a memory of Hope’s grandfather, who adored her. She wonders if he knew Mamie’s secrets. Gavin emails links to organizations where Hope can start looking for names. Remembering that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, Hope begins her search. Of the 50,000 Parisian Jews who were murdered, Hope finds the names of all the Picards on Rose’s list except for Alain, who would have been 11 when his family was arrested and deported in 1942. Hope calls the Holocaust memorial in Paris, and the woman tells her that she will have to come to Paris to do her research.

Hope talks with Gavin about what she found and feels that she has to readjust what she knows about herself. Gavin reminds her that even if she’s one-quarter Jewish, “[i]t wouldn’t change anything about who you really are” (94). He helps Hope prepare the pastries for the day. Annie reveals that Rob is dating a younger woman named Sunshine.

Hope visits Mamie to ask if they are Jewish, and Mamie says angrily that she would be wearing the yellow star. When Hope presses, Mamie says that she is Jewish, but she is also Catholic and Muslim, too. “It is mankind that creates the differences,” Mamie says. “That does not mean it is not all the same God” (102). Hope realizes that she will have to travel to Paris to get real answers.

Rose’s chapter is introduced with a recipe for Cape Codder cookies. As she watches the sunset, Rose remembers watching sunsets in her family’s apartment in Paris, from which she could see the Eiffel Tower. The nurse enters, reminding Rose that her granddaughter visited and said that she is going to Paris. Rose remembers giving Hope the list. When she had sailed into New York Harbor and saw the Statue of Liberty, Rose told herself to put everything behind her. “But now that the present was blurred and uneven,” she reflects, “it seemed that that beautiful box of memories, closed now for nearly seventy years, contained the only moments of clarity Rose could find” (108).

Gavin offers to look after the bakery while Hope is gone. A week later, Hope flies to Paris. She visits the Holocaust Museum and finds information on the Picard family, including census information. The woman who helps her reminds Hope that 76,000 Jews were deported from France, and only 2,000 of that number survived. They do not have records on survivors, only deportations, but the woman directs Hope to a man named Olivier Berr, who keeps his own set of records, gleaned from the stories of survivors.

Hope walks to his apartment, noticing that the trees are autumn red and seeing the Eiffel Tower. Then, walking across a bridge covered with padlocks with lovers’ names, she recognizes the setting of a fairy tale Mamie used to tell her about a prince who promised to come for his princess. Hope thinks, “[t]here are not dashing, heroic princes waiting to save me. There is no magical queen to protect me. In the end, you can only rely on yourself. I wonder how old Mamie was when she learned those same truths” (121).

Olivier Berr, an older man and a survivor himself, welcomes Hope. He tells her that his entire family was killed during the war, and he alone survived Auschwitz. He began collecting survivors’ stories, and he found documentation of Rose’s family. His notes say that Rose left the night before they were taken and was never seen again. Olivier describes how horrific it was for the Jewish families to be rounded up and taken to the Vélodrome d’Hiver before being deported. He has documented the deaths of all the other Picards, including the young children, but he met Alain while he was playing chess and gives Hope an address in the Marais, the Jewish quarter.

Hope hurries to the building and presses the button for Alain’s apartment. There is no answer. She enters the Place de Vosges and looks around. She sees a sign for a synagogue, then smells Star Pies. She enters a bakery where the baker is selling the same pastries, though they are not shaped like stars. Many of her grandmother’s recipes are there. The baker asks if her grandmother is Polish, and Hope says that she is French. The baker explains that these pastries are from the Ashkenazi Jewish tradition. Hope describes more of her grandmother’s recipes, like the pistachio cakes, crescent moons, and almond rose tarts, but the baker says that those are not traditional Ashkenazi recipes.

Hope returns to Alain’s apartment and comes face-to-face with her great-uncle. He is astonished to learn that Rose is alive. He is also surprised that Hope does not know about Jacob, who “was more important to Rose than anyone else in the world” (137). Alain’s wife died many years ago; she survived Auschwitz, but they never had children. Hope shares what she knows, and Alain explains that his mother, Cecile, came from Poland, and their family had a bakery in Paris. Hope wonders why Rose would have said that her last name was Durand, and Alain guesses that it was the name she used to escape France. There was a hotel where survivors gathered after the war ended and that was where Alain learned what happened to his family, and where he spoke to Jacob. Jacob was the one who warned the Picards to run, and Alain climbed out a window and escaped when the soldiers came. Hope says that her grandfather came to Paris in 1949 to find answers and wonders why he didn’t find Jacob. Alain says that Jacob survived Auschwitz because he was sure that Rose was alive and he wanted to be reunited with her.