Miriam didn’t want to hear any more. She pushed her chair away from the table and stood, gathering up the delicate bone china plates. She carried them into the kitchen to escape the noise and yanked the door closed between the butler’s pantry and the dining room. She could still hear them quarreling.

Miriam longed for the meals around her family’s dinner table to be as they used to be, when there was laughter instead of fighting and generous platters of food spread across the white tablecloth. A time when the silver candlesticks were lit in celebration, not to save on the cost of electricity. Mother would sit down at the grand piano after dinner, and Miriam and Uncle David would take out their violins, and they would make lovely music together. Her cousin Saul would join them on his cello when he was home from the music conservatory. Sometimes Aunt Louisa would sing a Mozart aria in her beautiful soprano voice, making chills run down Miriam’s arms.

“Our lives will never be the way they used to be,” Abba shouted. “It’s foolish to expect them to.”

“This madness will pass,” Uncle Nathan replied. “We just need to be patient and wait it out. People will come to their senses, you’ll see.”

“We should apply for visas and go to Palestine,” Cousin Saul insisted.

“Don’t be absurd! Palestine is a backwards, desolate place!”

“We should go to America,” another cousin said. “They don’t hate Jews there.”

“No? Well, if that’s true, why don’t they issue more visas so we can immigrate? They turned away all those desperate people on that ship, didn’t they?” No one could forget the SS St. Louis, sailing from Germany last month with more than nine hundred Jews on board seeking asylum in Cuba. The visas the Cuban consulate had issued its passengers were declared invalid by the time the ship reached Havana, and the passengers were forbidden to disembark. Urgent appeals to the American and Canadian governments for refuge were rejected. The desperate passengers had no choice but to return to hate-filled Europe.

“We’re staying right here,” Uncle Nathan said. He was the older of Mother’s two brothers and once the wealthiest.

“But they are boxing us in,” Abba said, removing his glasses. “Our lives have grown intolerable. We aren’t wanted. We must leave.”

“It will get better.”

“It will get worse.”

Dishes and pots teetered in the kitchen sink. Miriam would help wash them tomorrow. There was little else for her to do all day besides practice her violin, and besides, it was too dark in the kitchen to see what she was doing. She waited for a lull in the arguing, then returned to the dining room to bid everyone good night.

“I wish Saul hadn’t gone out,” she heard Aunt Louisa say. “It’s past curfew.”