Here’s the recipe for my grandmother’s rhubarb pie, and a little something I thought you might like. My regrets about this evening, I’m sorry I can’t come. Will call, my fond regards, Andy
I shifted the groceries inside and put them in the refrigerator—the plump chicken breasts, so unnaturally huge, as large as whole chickens would be in other parts of the world, the numerous bottles of wine and sparkling water. I left Andy’s note and the red package—it was light and soft—on the counter where my mother would see them right away. Then I went back outside to get the books I’d checked out from the library and the photocopies I’d made from their microfilm collection, souvenirs of my afternoon journey to the past.
The librarian had been very helpful, directing me to some histories of the feminist movement in the general collection, as well as to a local history of the village, all of which I’d checked out. He’d also showed me how to pull up periodicals on their rather ancient microfilm machine, and I’d spent a couple of hours scanning old editions of The Lake of Dreams Gazette. Finally, in the reel marked 1938 to 1940, tucked between articles about the threat of war in Europe and reports of local crop yields, I found a brief article about the dedication of the chapel in Appleton, the small village that had later been razed to build the depot. There was even a photograph of Frank Westrum standing outside the arched doors, bearded and thin and dressed in a suit, looking seriously into the camera. The rector, Rev. Timothy Benton, stood with his wife, and an unidentified woman was by his side. Though the donation of the funds for the windows had been made anonymously, in a later article the Gazette reporter had discovered that the patron was local, one Cornelia Elliot of The Lake of Dreams, widow of a prominent doctor and a veteran of the fight for women’s suffrage. “A sensibility which will perhaps explain,” the article, written in 1938, stated archly, “the very unusual—indeed, the quite droll and eccentric—nature of her gift.”
I thought of the Wisdom window, with its rich colors and harmonious design, its human figures reaching upward, hands turning into leaves, into language. Extraordinary was one word that came immediately to mind. Vivid, lush, and gorgeous followed, but not droll or eccentric. I wondered what the rest of the windows looked like—a chapel full of such art would have been stunning, I imagined. I’d gleaned from the librarian and a few more references he’d found that Frank Westrum had been hugely out of favor in those years, his work finding its way into thrift shops and jumble sales, so maybe that explained the comment, and also why the church had left the windows when the chapel was closed. I looked closely over the next months and years, hoping for something to elucidate the article, but found nothing.
After a couple of hours my eyes ached from scanning the tiny type, so I took a break and went back to the desk to ask the librarian about Cornelia Elliot. He started nodding in recognition before I’d even finished, asked me to wait a minute, then unlocked the special collections room, which was no more than a closet behind the stairs. He came back with a brown booklet, the paper cover brittle and stained, the title in sharp black: Recollections of a Dangerous Woman, by Cornelia Whitney Elliot. Cornelia—who went by Nelia, he explained—had been a well-known and controversial figure locally at the time. She had self-published only fifty copies of this memoir, so they were rare. I couldn’t check it out, but he could photocopy it for me for fifteen cents a page, if I wanted.
I did.
So I had this to read, along with some records I’d photocopied from the town clerk’s office: the certificate of marriage of my great-grandfather Joseph to Cora Evanston, in December 1915, and records also of Cora’s birth and death, as well as of the death of her first husband, Jesse, who had fallen from the roof of a barn, suffered for weeks, and died in late May 1915. A brief, yellowed obituary had been clipped to this death certificate. That meant Cora had married my great-grandfather only seven months after her husband died, which was startling. She was seven years older than he, which was surprising, too. Everyone, including Rose and Iris, was listed in the local census taken that year, but in the following census, taken in 1925, Rose was gone, and Iris’s last name was Jarrett, not Wyndham. I’d made photocopies of all these documents, too.
I carried all these papers in from the Impala—they were hot from sitting in the backseat in the sun for so long—and spread them out on the dining room table. I opened wide the French doors to the patio, letting in fresh, damp air from the lake, then went upstairs to collect the papers I’d found in the cupola. When I came back down, I noticed that the answering machine was blinking with three messages, and I paused to press the PLAY button. There was a message from the orthopedist regarding my mother’s next appointment, a call from a contractor regarding an appraisal for a new roof, and then a man’s voice floated into the room.
“Andy here. Guess I’m missing you again. Ha—that sounded a little weird, didn’t it, kind of too much like a country music song. I meant we weren’t crossing paths yet, but maybe I meant it the other way, too. Anyway, I wanted to make sure you got my note. Happy solstice, Evie—a very happy solstice to you.”
He cleared his throat then and hung up without saying anything more. I played the messages again, listening to the timber of his voice, his choice of words, trying to picture his face. Gravelly and low, his words were careful and a little formal; he sounded ill at ease, maybe even nervous, at leaving a message for my mother, and that was endearing. I imagined him as a large man, someone comfortable in jeans, comfortable in his own skin. I listened to the messages again so I could consider his voice once more, thinking how strange it was to find myself examining my mother’s suitor, wondering about his character, even his intentions. When his voice ended the second time I pressed SAVE, then poured myself a glass of wine and sat down with my treasure trove of papers. It was the photocopy of Cornelia Elliot’s little book I reached for first, published in 1927 and dedicated to her older sister, Vivian Whitney Branch.
Vivian Branch. I closed my eyes, seeking the connection, then remembered the Internet biography I’d found, and searched through the papers to find it. There it was, in the brief note about Beatrice Mansfield—she’d known Vivian Branch. Here was a connection, and an exciting one, too, for Vivian Branch was a name I vaguely recognized; someone in my high school history class had done a presentation about her. She’d been a nurse as a young woman, and had become very active in feminist circles in New York City at the turn of the last century and beyond; she had known a number of first-wave feminists, as I recalled, but I hadn’t realized how deeply she’d been involved in the suffrage movement, or that her sister had lived in The Lake of Dreams. Was it possible that Rose had known her? I turned the dedication page over and began to read:Readers of this little book will no doubt wonder as to the history and perspective of its author, Cornelia Whitney Elliot. Let me say that I write this as a woman 57 years wise, who has witnessed much in this new century of ours. I write to leave a legacy to generations which will follow me, a first-hand account of the struggles I and my sisters in suffrage faced in obtaining for all women the right to vote. Already a new generation is rising for which this right is never questioned, but is, instead, a fact of life. They can hardly imagine the time, so recently past, when their voices would have gone unheard. While they cannot be truly grateful, having never been deprived, nonetheless they can learn—they must learn—to appreciate the history of their good fortune through the experiences of those who not only witnessed history, but made it. It is for that purpose that this little book is written.
Wow. I put the pages down on the table as if they were flaming. Well, the librarian had warned me about the tone. Just before she wrote this book, Cornelia Elliot had been voted out of the leadership of the group she’d helped to form; younger women had bristled at her old-fashioned and sometimes autocratic ways. She’d been swept aside by a wave of history, and she was understandably angry. I scanned through the rest of the pages, looking for dates or events that were relevant to Rose.
I didn’t find any. No
r did I find any references to Frank Westrum. Instead, most of the text focused, as she had stated in her introduction, on her involvement with the suffrage movement, particularly the events she had orchestrated after she moved to The Lake of Dreams from New York City. Her husband, a physician, loved the natural beauty of the area, but for Cornelia, who loved the amenities of the city, the experience had been a trial. She had compensated by becoming deeply immersed in her social justice work, and it seemed, in the subtext, that the more her activities had irritated her husband, the better she had liked them.
The suffrage march she had organized in October 1914, inspired by the march in Washington the previous year, took up a full chapter and was written about with great vigor and delight. Cornelia Elliot described the marchers, spirited and determined despite the unpredictable and sometimes hostile crowds. She seemed thrilled to have been arrested and thrown in jail, not only for marching but also for distributing information about human physiology and family planning, which was illegal under the Comstock laws at the time.
Distributing information about family planning. I found the note Rose had written when she’d read that simple pamphlet and locked her door to look at herself in a mirror for the first time ever. How shocked she had been by facts that seemed so ubiquitous to me, so basic! Had Rose known Cornelia Elliot then? Had she gotten the pamphlet from her? Had they ever talked about these matters? The note seemed private to me, something Rose had written but never meant to send.
I paused and did an Internet search for Cornelia Elliot, but turned up nothing more than I already knew. Then I tried Vivian Branch, her older sister. This time I found several entries, including one that noted the gift of her collection of papers to Serling College. I wrote a quick e-mail to Special Collections at Serling College, asking if there was any correspondence that might illuminate Cornelia Elliot’s life as well as her sister’s. Then, because I was starting to feel overwhelmed by all the swirling dates, I took a fresh sheet of paper and wrote down all the names and facts I knew: Westrum, Frank, 1868-1942
Westrum, Beatrice Mansfield, 1873-1919
Jarrett, Cora, 1887-1958
Jarrett, Joseph, 1894-1972
Jarrett, Rose, 1895-????
Jarrett, Iris, born 1911
Suffrage March in Washington, 1913
Suffrage March, The Lake of Dreams, 1914
Dream Master founded, 1919
Womens suffrage granted, 1920
Iris leaving, 1925
My grandfather born, 1925
Windows finished, 1938
Depot built, chapel closed, 1940
Arthur born, 1952
My father born, 1953
I sipped my wine, considering. The air smelled so clean; buoys clanked faintly. Voices floated across the lawn and into the room. I gathered up the papers and put the pile on the liquor cabinet by the stairs, next to my stack of books. Outside, Blake was helping my mother from his boat onto the dock, holding her good hand while she gained her balance. Then he reached to help Avery, who was carrying two canvas bags over her shoulder; she staggered when the boat shifted and caught Blake’s arm in both of hers. Light flashed off the smooth surface of the lake, casting them all in silhouette as they crossed the lawn, making it hard to see them in any detail. Still, as they reached the patio I sensed that something was different about my mother. She was wearing a white linen skirt and a light blue knit tunic shot with silver threads, along with silver sandals and silver earrings. At first I thought she was wearing her hair up again. Then I realized she’d cut it short, very short, so it feathered across her scalp, full and lovely.
“Your hair!” I said.
“Like it?” She tilted her head a bit self-consciously. “I had this moment of inspiration, I guess. Inspiration or pure craziness. I went in just to have it trimmed, but then I found myself telling Josh to take it all off. I love it, I have to say. It’s so light. I feel like my head could simply float away.”
“It looks good,” I said as we walked inside, and it did. “It’s just so different.”
“Twelve inches came off. I gave it to Locks of Love. What’s all this?” she asked, nodding toward the books and papers stacked on the cabinet. She and Avery were already at the counter, unloading the canvas sacks: containers of tabbouleh and hummus, a roasted pepper salad, a pasta salad, loaves of fresh bread.
“Research, that’s all. Is it in the way?”
“No, you’re fine. Leave it,” she said, turning to take a plate of sliced watermelon out of the fridge, the line of her neck long and elegant. How strange that something as simple as a haircut could make her look so different. I found myself wondering how Andy saw her, remembering his voice, low and warm, on the answering machine. “I’m free,” she said, smiling and touching the nape of her neck. “I feel absolutely free.”
By the time I changed into my only dress and came back downstairs, Blake had fired up the grill and Avery was carrying bowls of food out to the patio. My mother had invited friends from work as well as family and neighbors. People began to arrive, parking on the grass near the road and carrying bottles of wine or plates of food across the lawn to the house. The balloons we’d inflated that morning floated like small suns and moons in the trees, and the tiny lights sparkled like emerging stars.
It was a lovely party, the sort of pleasant evening where the conversation drifted from one topic to another, settling lightly here, then there, laughter floating out over the water. I moved between groups, hugging people who remembered me. Mr. Hardesty from next door patted my back, and I was struck by how thin he’d gotten in the years since my father died, since I’d seen him last, holding on to my mother and Blake that terrible morning as if they might fly away if he let go. He had retired from being a weatherman, he informed me, and no longer looked at weather reports at all, preferring to carry umbrellas and boots in his car and let each day surprise him however it would. Georgia from across the street, however, had hardly aged. She was still making pottery—the wind chimes on her porch and the porches of the neighbors all sounded faintly, even at this distance—and she was excited about Keegan’s Glassworks, but she told me she’d started teaching art at the community college, too, for the steady income and the health insurance, now that their son was in college. At this she scanned the party and called out to Jack, whom I remembered as a wiry boy, full of energy, darting across the fields with his friends in games of hide-and-seek, and who was now a junior at NYU, studying acting, his hair pulled back in a ponytail: young, and supremely confident, in a way I never remembered being.
“You know, I invited Keegan,” my mother said, pausing on her way to the patio, a glass of wine in her good hand. “He was at the bank today and I thought, why not?”
She smiled, and I thought of the place where Keegan’s hair tapered to his neck beneath the ponytail, the heat of his arm against mine as we’d studied the windows.
“Is he coming?”
“He said he’d try to make it. He asked if you’d be here,” she added. “I think he was really glad to see you.”
I nodded, trying not to reveal the charge I’d felt, knowing he might stop by. Not on his motorcycle, I reminded myself, and maybe with Max, but that only made the idea more attractive. “Keegan’s changed a lot,” I said. “He’s so calm, and so accomplished.”
“He probably says the same about you.”
Someone I didn’t know touched my mother’s arm before I could reply and she turned to her guests. Talk and laughter floated. I poured drinks and offered Avery’s delicate spinach and goat cheese appetizers. Art arrived with Joey, his voice a notch deeper and louder than the other voices, so I always seemed to know where he was—in the kitchen, greeting my mother on the patio, putting an arm around Lawson, Georgia’s husband, who’d come here straight from work, his shiny shoes looking odd against the grass. Joey got a beer and stood by the shore with Blake, talking quietly, while Zoe, with the mercurial moodiness of teenagers, planted herself in the hammock with a book, looking up now
and then to gaze at the water. I couldn’t tell if she wanted to be left alone or simply to look like a tragic nineteenth-century heroine to the audience of assembled guests.
“Oh, don’t give her the satisfaction,” her mother said when I asked if she thought Zoe might like some company. Auburn-haired and very thin, Austen had started selling real estate in recent years, and looked glossy to me, burnished. She waved her drink in exasperation at Zoe’s moody presence. “She’s driving me absolutely crazy these days. I suppose that’s her job, right, at this age? But everything’s such high drama. From the way she storms around the house you’d think we locked her in a cupboard every night. We ruin her life. She has nothing that her friends have. Et cetera. Lucy, if you ever want a visitor over there in Japan, I’d be happy to send her to you for a few weeks. Oh, well,” she added when I didn’t respond, taking a long swallow of wine. “I lived through Joey, who was no saint, so I suppose I’ll live through this, too.”
I glanced at Joey, remembering our high school days, his careless disregard, his clothes hanging from the branches where I’d thrown them.
We ate, and opened more wine, and the evening deepened into twilight, stars emerging. As darkness fell, the moon, nearly full, rose over the horizon. I thought of Rose, the beautiful border of pale interwoven spheres in the blanket and the windows. Avery started bringing out slices of cake, and my mother put bowls of whipped cream and strawberries on the glass-topped table. I stepped into the shadows, watching the party as if it were taking place on a stage, feeling a strange sense of distance, knowing that this sort of gathering happened all the time and would carry on once I was gone again, as well. I slipped my phone from my pocket to check the time. Almost ten already. If Keegan hadn’t come by now, he probably wouldn’t; he, too, was in the midst of a life that had gone on quite well without me. I walked down to the dock and kicked off my shoes, sitting on the end with my feet dangling in the water, and dialed Yoshi. He picked up on the second ring, the pulse and murmur of his office in the background.