When Anna eventually reached the sixteenth floor, she stopped to catch her breath. No wonder her mother so rarely left the flat. On the floors above her resided sixty-year-olds who were housebound. Anna hesitated before she knocked on a door that hadn’t seen a splash of paint since she’d last stood there.
She waited for some time before a frail, white-haired lady, dressed from head to toe in black, pulled the door open, but by only a few inches. Mother and daughter stared at each other, until suddenly Elsa Petrescu flung open the door, threw her arms around her daughter, and shouted in a voice as old as she looked, “Anna, Anna, Anna.” Both mother and daughter burst into tears.
The old lady continued to cling to Anna’s hand as she led her into the flat in which she had been born. It was spotless, and Anna could still remember everything, because nothing had changed. The sofa and chairs her grandmother had left them, the family photographs, all black-and-white and unframed, a coal scuttle with no coal, a rug that was so worn it was hard to make out the original pattern. The only new addition to the room was a magnificent painting that hung on otherwise blank walls. As Anna admired the portrait of her father, she was reminded where her love of art had begun.
“Anna, Anna, so many questions to ask,” her mother said. “Where do I begin?” she asked, still clutching her daughter’s hand.
The sun was setting before Anna had responded to every one of her mother’s questions, and then she begged once again, “Please, Mama, come back with me and live in America.”
“No,” she replied defiantly, “all my friends and all my memories are here. I am too old to begin a new life.”
“Then why not move to another part of the city? I could find you something on a lower—”
“This is where I was married,” her mother said quietly, “where you were born, where I lived for over thirty years with your beloved father, and where, when God decrees it is my time, I shall die.” She smiled up at her daughter. “Who would tend your father’s grave?” she asked, as if she’d never asked the question before. She looked into her daughter’s eyes. “You know he was so pleased to see you settled in America with his brother—” she paused “—and now I can see that he was right.”
Anna looked around the room. “But why haven’t you spent some of the money I’ve been sending to you each month?”
“I have,” said her mother firmly, “but not on myself,” she admitted, “because I want for nothing.”
“Then what have you spent it on?” Anna queried.
“Anton.”
“Anton?” repeated Anna.
“Yes, Anton,” said her mother. “You knew that he’d been released from jail?”
“Oh, yes,” said Anna, “he wrote to me soon after Ceausescu was arrested to ask if I had a photo of Papa that he could borrow.” Anna smiled as she looked up at the painting of her father.
“It’s a good likeness,” said her mother.
“It certainly is,” said Anna.
“They gave him back his old job at the academy. He’s now the Professor of Perspective. If you’d married him, you would be a professor’s wife.”
“Is he still painting?” she asked, avoiding her mother’s next inevitable question.
“Yes,” she replied, “but his main responsibility is to teach the graduates at the Universitatea de Arte. You can’t make a living as an artist in Romania,” she said sadly. “You know, with his talent, Anton should also have gone to America.”
Anna looked up again at Anton’s magnificent portrait of her father. Her mother was right; with such a gift, he would have flourished in New York. “But what does he do with the money?” she asked.
“He buys canvases, paints, brushes, and all those materials that his pupils can’t afford, so you see, your generosity is being put to good use.” She paused. “Anton was your first love, Anna, yes?”
Anna wouldn’t have believed that her mother could still make her blush. “Yes,” she admitted, “and I suspect I was his.”
“He’s married now, and they have a little boy called Peter.” She paused again. “Do you have a young man?”
“No, Mama.”
“Is that what brings you back home? Are you running away from something, or someone?”
“What makes you ask that?” Anna asked defensively.
“There is a sadness in your eyes, and fear,” she said, looking up at her daughter, “which you could never hide as a child.”
“I do have one or two problems,” admitted Anna, “but nothing that time won’t sort out.” She smiled. “In fact, I rather think that Anton might be able to help me with one of them, and I’m hoping to join him at the academy for a drink. Do you have any message you want passed on?” Her mother didn’t reply. She had quietly dozed off. Anna rearranged the rug on her mother’s lap and kissed her on the forehead. “I’ll be back again tomorrow morning, Mama,” she whispered.
She slipped silently out of the room. As she walked back down the littered staircase, she was pleased to see the old yellow Mercedes was still parked by the curb.