“I think I know those boxes,” she said once I’d explained what I wanted. “I was here when they dropped them off. I don’t think anyone’s gotten around to looking at them yet. Come on upstairs to the reading room, and I’ll check.”
I followed her up the staircase, wide and curved, to the second-floor reading room, which was lined with bookcases. A grandfather clock stood against one wall, ticking softly, and a wide cherry table with heavy matching chairs took up the center of the room. The windows were bare, the glass mildly warped. She disappeared up another set of stairs and came back a few minutes later with a large box. There were two more, she said. I couldn’t wait, and started going through the first one while she went up to get the others. A jumble of papers, file folders, articles: I took them out one by one.
“There you go,” she said, heaving the last box onto the end of the table and brushing off her hands. She gestured to the papers I’d placed on the table. “Nothing’s been sorted, like I said. It’s probably a lot of receipts and ledgers and cryptic notes to self. But you’re welcome to look. We close at four o’clock.”
I glanced at the clock; it was already past two o’clock. “I’ll have a quick look,” I said, and so I began.
Lydia Langhammer had been a hoarder: everything from receipts for purchases to recipes and loose clips resided in the box. I went through it all carefully without finding anything of interest.
The second box was similar, as if someone had dumped the contents of a desk and several filing drawers. Here I did find references to Rose, however, who began appearing in the ledgers as having paid for certain expenses, and to whom some of the receipts were made. These accumulated in a low pile, though after the initial excitement of seeing her name, my eagerness slowly faded. What did these bits of paper tell me, after all, that I hadn’t known before? I kept digging and sorting, mindful of the changing light in the room and the ticking of the clock. Near the bottom of the box I came upon a leather binder, tied shut with a ribbon. Another ledger, I thought, or a collection of bills, but when I opened it letters fell out, several of them, all in different sorts of envelopes but written in the same hand, a script I recognized at once from the cupola notes, sharp and slanted: Rose. With trembling hands, I opened the one on top. The paper was coarse, yellowed, the pages filled with her handwriting, the black ink faded to the color of bark. It was dated September 21, 1914.
Dear Iris,
Beautiful girl. I left you this morning. You were in the garden, making a pile from the gravel by the fish pond, wearing the dark yellow dress I made for you. You are only three years old and you are so smart. You pulled the petals from an orange marigold and scattered them on the water. Feeding the fish, you said. I held you very close. Your hair, like dandelion fluff when you were small, lies flat now, so smooth and shiny. You smelled like soap and sunshine. Then Mrs. Elliot arrived and Cora called you inside for lunch. You climbed the steps one by one—they are too tall for your little legs. You turned, laughing, to wave to me. Then you disappeared beyond the door.
Mrs. Elliot called to me to hurry but I could not. I kept looking at the porch, willing you there, but you did not come.
I used yellow ribbons on your dress. I have one tied around my wrist. It flashes beneath my cuff as I write. The other passengers don’t notice, they go on with their business. They seem very ordinary and I wonder if I seem that way myself. It makes me wonder what secrets they carry in their hearts. The old woman across from me, who gazes out the window—what is she remembering? Or the gentleman beside me, adding numbers in his ledger, or the young farmer and his wife exclaiming at the sights—what are their secrets, their dreams?
I am dressed plainly—my one suit, brown, a blouse the color of golden-rod. I sit quietly with my satchel at my feet. What do they see, looking at me? They could never imagine you, turning, laughing, to wave one last time from the stairs.
You did not know I was leaving.
It is better that way. I tell myself again and again.
I promise—I promise—I will come back for you soon.
Meanwhile, I will write every day. Maybe you will never read these letters. Maybe I will be back so quickly that you will not remember I was ever gone. Still, I will write. Someday when you are older you will have these to keep and see how much I loved you, even though today you woke up from your nap, stretching in that patch of sunlight that falls across the bed in the midafternoon, to find me gone.
They will take good care of you, I pray.
Despite the scandal, Joseph loves you, because he loved your father. And Cora, though she does not like me, dotes on children since she has none of her own.
There was a page break, and I paused. Muted voices and laughter floated up from the genealogy class. My hands were shaking a little. The story I’d imagined hadn’t included Rose leaving Iris. The note I’d found in the cupola had been dated 1925, eleven years later, when Iris would have been fourteen. It seemed Rose had never come back. I thought of my mother’s warning, I hope you aren’t disappointed, and realized that I might be, that Rose could turn out to be less heroic and interesting than I’d imagined. The letters fanned out against the polished cherry table. I took a deep breath, turned the page, and read on.
At the station, Mrs. Elliot gave me a poem. She copied it from a magazine. A poem for travelers, she said. The poet is a woman but she is called only HD. Mrs. Elliot always says I am thirsty for words and she gave me books. I read this poem again and again. “Wind rushes over the dunes, and the coarse salt-crusted grass answers”. I do not understand it really, yet the words say the sadness I feel.
Iris. Where are you at this moment? I named you for the flowers. They are the color of your father’s eyes. This is the story I want you to know. Your uncle cannot tell you, he doesn’t understand.
Also, he would begin with the comet, which is the wrong place to start.
The story begins earlier. An ordinary summer day. I was weeding in the vineyard. I paused to drink from the bucket. That’s when I saw the line of rising dust, the bright flashes of silver through the trees.
“What’s that?” I asked. My friend Ellen stood, too.
“I don’t know”.
“I think it’s an auto-mobile!” I was excited, I had never seen one before.
“It must belong to the Wyndhams”.
“It must”.
“Let’s go and see”.
So we left our work and ran to the village.
By the time we reached the commons people were coming from their shops and homes, shading their eyes to look. Mr. Marcus, the grocer, said it was a Rolls Royce—a Silver Ghost, he called it.
The vehicle drew closer. It made no sound at all, not even when it stopped at the village green, bright as a mirror. Everyone who looked at it saw something different reflected back—a dream of speed, of a factory job, the promise of change. Your uncle leaned over the engine. I stared at its silver hood where a small silver woman with silver wings stood about to leap, to soar.
“Do you like her?” Geoffrey Wyndham was next to me. I nodded, too shy to speak. His family owns most of the village. In the church graveyard you can see tombstones with their name all the way back to 1134. One winter we skated on the pond and Geoffrey chased me until the color of the ice changed suddenly, from opaque to clear, the darkness of the water visible. He shouted and grabbed my arm, pulled me away from that dangerous edge. Now he was tall. My chin only reached his shoulder.
“Go ahead”, he urged. “Touch her”.
So I ran my hand over her silver form.
At supper that night all we talked of was the auto-mobile. Our father sat in the middle of the conversation like a boulder in a current. Finally he dropped his fork and stood.
“There’s still work here to do, and plenty of it”, he said to Joseph. “Let’s go.”
“Ah—for what?” Joseph’s voice was rough. “Who will need wooden wheels for wagons when auto-mobiles travel twice the speed on rubber tires?”
It was as if the air left the room. Father turned without speaking and went into the shop. Joseph rose and followed him. A few minutes later the argument began. We cleared the table, not speaking, as the words rose and ebbed and rose again.
It is night now, I can hardly see to write. The young couple has gone to the dining car. The old woman took off her hat and ate a beef sandwich spread carefully on a cloth napkin she unfolded from her bag. The accountant next to me has begun to doze. For a time we passed endless rows of houses and flats, moving so slowly that I caught glimpses of people eating dinner at their kitchen tables, or reading in a chair, or reaching to close their curtains. Then we picked up speed as the flats ended and factories began. Then it was dark again. I ate a roll, trying not to notice the scent of roast meat.
Time is different when you travel. This night is less like last night, when I lay awake in our little room, listening to your soft breathing, than it is like the night years ago when Joseph and I were traveling to this new land. On that trip I woke each time we stopped, lights and voices from the stations drifting down the darkened aisles.
Joseph was sleeping, his eyelashes dark against his cheeks, his coat folded carefully beneath his head. He looked like the carefree brother I knew before our troubles, before he changed, and I changed, and everything we knew was lost. The train moved on then, into the night, taking us closer to our new lives. I closed my eyes, matching my breathing to my brother’s. When I woke the sun was golden on the new wheat, on the dark blue lakes.
You are there still, in that place. My hand aches from this writing, my heart from the steady turn of the wheels.
Love from your mother, Rose
I sat back in the chair, still holding the fragile paper with its careful, slanted handwriting. Toward the end of the page the letters became wider and more wobbly, and twice the words ran off the page entirely. The pages trembled in my hand and I put them down, pressing my palms to my face and running my fingertips along the arch of my eyebrows, down my cheeks and the curve of my neck.
Everything changed with this letter. The story that had shaped my entire life and the lives of everyone I knew had changed. He would begin with the comet, which is the wrong place to start.
Then what had happened, I wondered, to make them flee everything they had known? What were the troubles that put them on that train, Rose with my great-grandfather, dreamy and carefree in his sleep? I flipped through the remaining envelopes in the binder. I imagined Rose bent over these pages, writing in the dimming light, her heart tightened with loss.
The little clock on the mantel struck four, delicate tones falling through the air, muffled in the carpet. A moment later the light footsteps of the curator sounded on the stairs. Without letting myself think what I was doing, I slipped the remaining letters back into the leather binder and shoved this into my bag. Blocks away, the town clock started ringing the hour, and then she was in the doorway, the low afternoon light catching on the silver hoops that climbed her ears.
“Wow, how many earrings do you have?” I blurted out, nervous; the letters were visible inside my bag, if she thought to look.
Startled, she touched her pierced lobes, then smiled.
“Eight in the left ear, nine in the right. Last week I pierced my navel, too. I haven’t quite gotten up the nerve to do my tongue.”
“Doesn’t it hurt?”
She smiled a little wearily, as if she heard the question often. “Not so much. The very tops of my ears, a little. How did the research go? Did you find anything?”
“A letter,” I said, tapping the unfolded pages on the table. “Amid lots of other papers. It has some references that are useful. I wonder—could I take it for a few days?”
“I’m sorry.” She shrugged, then crossed the room and picked the letter up. I didn’t want her to touch it, and kept my hands clasped in my lap with great effort as she scanned the lines. “It hasn’t been cataloged, you see. Probably I shouldn’t have let you see it at all. Is it important?”
“To me it is. To my family. Probably not to history—you know, with a capital H. It’s personal, that’s all. That’s why I’d like to borrow it.”
“Sorry. Really—I would if I could.”
“Okay. I’ll come again tomorrow.”
“Sorry, we’re not open tomorrow. Usually we are, but because of this class, we’re not. It’s kind of an experiment, to see which days get the most traffic. We’ll be open Wednesday and Friday, though, nine to one.”
Slender filaments of panic fanned out around my heart; there was one more box I hadn’t seen at all, but Wednesday was the day Keegan had arranged to see the chapel on the depot land. Friday was the soonest I could come back. But I smiled and shrugged, sensing that it would be better not to make too big a deal of this.
“Ah—that’s too bad. No exceptions?”
She hesitated, glancing from the boxes and back. “I would, you know, but I’m leaving town. I’m going camping with my boyfriend.” She roused a little, curious now, and read the last part of the final page out loud. “ ‘You are there now, in that place. My hand aches from this writing, my heart from the steady turn of the wheels.’ Sounds like a love letter.”
“It is, kind of. A mother to her daughter, actually.”
“Are you sure it’s not important? Maybe I should call the director.”
“Oh, no, don’t bother. Really.” I stood up, making myself step away from the boxes with their tantalizing contents. “Like I said, it’s nothing earth-shaking. Not important to anyone but me. I can wait, though I can’t come until Friday. What time did you say?”
“Nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be here.”
I crossed the room and started down the stairs before her, holding my bag close to me, my left hand running down the carved and polished railing. She followed me to the door with its panes of etched glass; the lock, I noticed, was electronic, well beyond my expertise. I really would have to wait.
The car was stifling hot and smelled of dust, having been sitting in the sun all afternoon; I opened the window to the lake breeze. My stomach growled—I hadn’t stopped to eat all day, I realized. Still, I slipped the second letter from its envelope.
Across the street, the door of the museum opened. The curator came out, slipping on sunglasses. She paused to make sure the door was locked behind her and hurried down the steps toward her adventure, car keys dangling from her left hand. She walked swiftly, passing one Victorian home after another, slipped into a lemon-colored VW convertible, and drove away.
I imagined Elizabeth Cady Stanton walking these very same streets with her children in tow, words like an undercurrent in her mind, rising up, pressing, as she bought flowers or stopped for sugar and eggs, hurrying home and leaving her packages scattered on a table as she made some swift notes, catching the idea that was pressing itself, necessary, essential, jotting down the words I’d read earlier that day: “We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us. . . . Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” Children, calling in the background until she sighed, put her pen down, and went to them. I imagined her standing on the street corner with Susan Anthony and the scandalous Amelia Bloomer in the daring split skirt that allowed her the ability to move unconstricted—scandalous, all of them, Elizabeth, Susan, and Amelia, three young women with their fierce intelligence and their dreams, talking together on an ordinary summer day.
I turned the letter over in my hands. Rose Jarrett stood behind that veil of time as well, traveling in her brown suit and yellow blouse—where, exactly? Why had she left her brother and gone off without her child? In the midst of what scandal had she fled? It worried me, not knowing what had happened to them both. And I wondered, also, with a growing sense of anger, why I’d spent my life not knowing Rose Jarrett had existed, when I might have learned from her life something about how to live my own, something beyond the bright fleeting streak of a comet and the parameters of life
fixed in place. I had so many questions. How had she come to influence Frank Westrum’s beautiful windows, those mosaics of glass filled with light, and to write these passionate letters? The historical society was quiet behind its wrought-iron fence, holding its secrets fast.
A breeze flowed into the car, smelling of water. I thought of my little charges in Japan, our walks beside the sea, the words I had taught them—wave, water, stone—and the words they had not understood: someday, little ones, your grandchildren may even drink your tears. I unfolded the second letter, written on a ledger page with faint blue stripes and columns, and began to read.
15 September 1914
Dearest Iris,
What a gloomy letter I wrote last night. But I woke feeling better.
My accountant’s head drifted to my shoulder as he slept. He was so embarrassed. He has given me a blank page torn from his book of numbers to apologize. He lives in Poughkeepsie and he does accounts for a paper company. That sounds like a dull life, but he seems happy. He told me all about the city. He has a house there and has never married. He looked at my hand and saw no ring and began to ask more questions. Briefly, I imagined setting up housekeeping in his tidy house. Then I told him about your father, fighting in France. Missing there.
He nodded, as if I’d moved a set of numbers from one column to another. He went back to work. I ate two apples from my bag.
Mrs. Elliot can see the window of your room from her house. She promised to watch over you. She promised to give you the blanket. I wove it at night when I knew I must leave. Joseph was gruff and did not say good-bye, but he left a note in my pocket with five dollars. I could buy an egg for breakfast, but I will save it instead. Each penny brings me closer back to you. I am not to worry, Mrs. Elliot said. Her friends are kind and will meet me at the station. I am not to worry, but I do.