The Choice: Embrace the Possible

Edie now lives in Baltimore. The toy factory where she works elicits memories of the German thread factory, and so she works relentlessly—“an old necessity, a habit impossible to overthrow” (133). Her family lives with Béla’s brother, George, who is tense and bitter after many humiliating years being an immigrant. On Edie’s commute one day, she forgets that Americans pay the bus driver up front (in Europe, the conductor approaches the passengers). Everyone stares at Edie, and the driver screams in a language Edie cannot yet understand. Edie freezes, her danger radar blaring a warning. She falls to the floor crying, and a sympathetic fellow immigrant helps her pay the fare and calm down. Edie later jokes about the incident with Magda, but this episode deeply affects how she views herself and her capabilities.

Marianne adapts well to her new life in America, and she acquires English quickly. Despite their family’s poverty, Edie scrambles to fulfill her daughter’s every desire, longing to spare Marianne from her painful immigrant experience. Edie encounters anti-immigrant prejudice everywhere; people interpret her cultural ignorance and heavy accent as stupidity, ignorant of the lifetimes she has already experienced before age 23. One day, Edie treats her daughter to a movie at the theater. The film, The Red Shoes, written by a Jewish Hungarian immigrant, tells the story of a dancer and evokes Edie’s long-neglected memories.

Like Edie, Béla struggles to adapt to their new American life; his stutter worsens, and his temper shortens. His tuberculosis returns, and he winds up in the hospital. Béla’s doctors grow fond of his charm, and they supply him with a career aptitude test to help him find work that won’t strain his lungs. His new career path seems promising: He is employed as a CPA’s assistant while he takes classes and studies to earn full licensure. However, he fails the CPA exam and is unkindly informed that his stutter will make him unemployable regardless of his credentials.

While Béla explores this career opportunity, Edie jumps from job to job seeking belonging and affirmation of her worth. Time and again, she encounters anti-immigrant and anti-Semitic prejudices, which tear her apart. Magda finally moves to Baltimore to live with her sister, and Edie gives birth to her second child, Audrey.

Béla’s cousin Bob Eger encourages him to move west to El Paso, Texas. Edie is initially nervous, reluctant to risk dashed hopes again, but this town proves more inviting than Baltimore. When Edie takes Audrey to the park one afternoon, she overhears a woman speaking Hungarian to her child. Before Edie loses her nerve, she asks the woman in Hungarian whether she knows an old friend who now lives in El Paso, Laci Goldstein—the man who rode the train with Magda and Edie after Gunskirchen’s liberation. The woman tearfully exclaims that she is Laci’s sister; Laci is now a doctor and goes by the name Larry Goldstone. Edie finds Dr. Goldstone in the phonebook, and they develop a lifelong friendship.

Marianne slowly becomes aware of her mother’s difficult past through her aunt’s hushed warnings to her cousins and the intense way Edie watches the Melbourne Olympics gymnastics events. One day, Marianne—an avid reader—asks about the pictures in a hidden book she discovers. One picture illustrates a pile of skeletal Jewish bodies, like the one in which the Nazis left Edie to die. Edie bolts and vomits in the bathroom, overhearing Béla explain to Marianne, “You must understand that you are a survivor’s daughter, you must always, always protect her” (151).

Edie’s third child, Johnny, is born with athetoid cerebral palsy, which hinders his motor functions. Johnny’s obstacles and slow progress frustrate Béla, but Edie commits to giving Johnny a high quality of life. She pauses her education and takes him to every doctor and specialist who can help. One day in 1966, after Edie reenrolls in school, a young university student asks if she’s an Auschwitz survivor. The question distresses her, but she confirms his suspicion, and the student gives her a copy of Viktor Frankl’s A Man’s Search for Meaning. She accepts the gift reluctantly, but it sits in her bag. Late that night, unable to push the book from her mind, she begins reading and soon finds her experiences echoed; instead of oppressing her, she finds Frankl’s story lifting some burden. In this moment, she realizes that “we can’t choose to vanish the dark, but we can choose to kindle the light” (156), and this idea changes her life.

Three years later, Béla and Edie tell their children that they are getting a divorce. Edie reflects on her motivation for marrying Béla: security, not love. Edie feels that Béla hinders her dreams. She hides under the shadow of his natural charm, which inhibits her sense of self and belonging. In hindsight, Edie recognizes how she can’t blame Béla for her denial and other unhealthy coping mechanisms, but at the time, she “misapplies” her constricted feelings onto Béla. Edie’s journey to impacting the others’ lives must begin with herself. Initially, she believes the divorce will heal what’s broken inside her. She attends therapy and continues her psychology studies. She accepts a middle school social studies teaching position, where she passionately shows students how much they matter and teaches that the negative influences in their lives can only affect them if students choose to believe them. Later, she teaches a high school psychology class, but she intuits that she hasn’t yet discovered her life’s true calling.

On a vacation in Mexico, Edie’s friends gently encourage her to process her trauma. She reflexively dismisses the idea, but the thought remains in her mind, “something that will sprout and take root with time” (167). Edie misses her husband, and she grows jealous of his new girlfriend. She allows herself to feel and accept these emotions, knowing that they aren’t permanent. Edie realizes the “gift” of her divorce: “If I am really going to improve my life, it isn’t Béla or our relationship that has to change. It’s me” (165). Béla invites Edie out to dinner one evening, asking her to reconsider their relationship. Edie now understands that the same demons haunt her even outside of marriage and that no one can free her from an internal prison. Edie must face those fears herself. Two years after their separation, Béla proposes again. They have a proper Jewish wedding and feel more stable in their relationship than ever before.

In 1972, Edie receives the El Paso Teacher of the Year award. At her principal and therapist’s encouragement, she begins a doctoral program. She learns that victims who survived circumstances with no escape opportunity or alternatives remain “imprisoned” because they subconsciously believe they have no choice, even when presented with options. People are often unaware of the core beliefs they hold about themselves, and until they can identify exactly what those beliefs are, they can’t choose to pursue a different path. While people equate unideal circumstances to their self-worth, they will remain discontent. Edie’s practice centralizes around the power of CHOICE: “choosing compassion, humor, optimism, intuition, curiosity, and self-expression” (173). In the process of self-examination, Edie realizes that her “achiever” tendencies are her attempts to externally legitimize her self-worth; however, no number of awards can manufacture self-acceptance. Edie completes her doctoral dissertation in Israel, interviewing other Holocaust survivors and studying how their post-war mindsets influence their circumstances later in life. While Edie assigns blame where it’s due—to the perpetrators—her research supports the central idea that “we can choose to be our own jailors, or we can choose to be free” (175).

One work day, Edie meets two Vietnam war veterans with the same diagnosis and prognosis, but she has two entirely different interactions with each man. The first patient, Tom, rages against his country and situation. Privately, his anger inspires Edie, and she later explores her own repressed rage with a therapist. Chuck, on the other hand, is grateful for life and chooses to embrace the best of all his life’s changes.

After receiving her PhD in Texas, Edie pursues certification in California; it’s the most difficult exam to pass, but this certification qualifies her to practice anywhere in the country. She initially doubts that she passed the rigorous oral exam, but one of her interviewers chases her as she leaves the building, congratulating her impressive achievement.