Chapter 3
MY MOTHER WAS ON THE PATIO WHEN I GOT UP, WEARING A dark purple jogging suit and drinking coffee; her silver hair was pulled back in a purple scrunchie. She had moved the vase of glads with their supple pink throats to a shady spot beside a low stone wall. The lake was as smooth as glass, silvery blue. It felt good to be outside, in so much space and fresh air after the density and bustle of Tokyo.
She pushed the list she was making out of the way and poured me some coffee from the thermal pot, the rich scent drifting over the table.
“Did you sleep okay?”
“Thanks.” I took the cup, sipped—it was strong, very hot. “That’s good. Thanks. I slept okay, I guess. I was up a lot—jet lag.”
“No wonder. Such a long trip.”
“Not so long. At least I didn’t have to walk.” She laughed, and I missed Yoshi. “What’s that—a grocery list?”
“It is indeed. You’re just in time for the solstice. It’s the day after tomorrow—everyone will want to see you.”
“Oh, the solstice party—that’s right.” All the years I was growing up, my parents had star parties whenever there was a minor celestial event—an eclipse of the moon, an alignment of planets, Venus drawing close. The adults brought telescopes and had bonfires on the shore and we children ran until we were so tired we fell asleep on blankets on the grass or curled up in the hammock. I remember being carried inside from those parties, my father’s arms so strong around me, falling into the softness of the bed, sleepy and safe, into clean sheets that smelled like wind. “I forgot about the solstice.”
“Then you’ve been away too much,” she said.
“So you say,” I replied. “Every time I come to visit.”
“Oh, don’t be so sensitive,” she said, and finished her coffee. “Sweetie, I need to go to work today. I wish I didn’t, but I’ve missed so much time with the accident. So here—take these.” She slid a set of keys across the glass-topped table, the bones of her hand moving visibly beneath her skin. “The Impala,” she explained, though I knew. “It’s all tuned up, ready to go. There’s an extra house key, too.”
“Thanks.” I remembered my father taking us for drives on Sunday afternoons, hours when we’d meander with no particular destination, taking in the bursting forth of spring or the trees with their autumn leaves, golden or orange or fiery red against the deep blue sky. “Blake says you might sell it?”
She nodded. “Probably. It’s hard to let it go, but it’s time. No one in the family wants it, and it’s silly to have it just sitting out in the barn.” She paused before she spoke again. “I’m thinking of selling the house, too.”
I didn’t answer right away. “Seriously?”
“I know—it must be shocking. For a long time I couldn’t think about it. Your dad is so much a part of this place. And what you said yesterday is true, he loved the lake, and the marsh, especially. So it’s hard. But look at this place, honey. I’ve become pretty handy over the years, believe it or not, but I still can’t keep up with it all. I’ve been thinking about it for quite a while, but it was talking about the gardens in the ER—how beautiful they’d once been—that finally made me realize how far gone things really are. You see something every day, and you don’t notice. But when you really look”—she gestured to the tangled jungle of vines and weeds and flowers, the peeling paint on the porch—“I have to admit that it’s beyond what I can handle.”
“But wouldn’t you miss living here?”
“Of course I will. But I won’t miss the responsibility. Or the taxes! Anyway, I’m just starting to think about it, honey. No need to panic.” She smiled. “It would probably take a couple of years just to clear the place out.”
“It might take a couple of decades, actually,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. “There’s so much stuff everywhere.”
“Well, you don’t want it,” she said thoughtfully, and I realized she really was quite serious about selling. “You’re off gallivanting around the world, and Blake can hardly leave his boat for dry land, much less take on the upkeep of this place. Still, it’ll be the end of an era.”
I didn’t say anything for a few seconds, trying to sort out how I felt. Everything my mother said made sense, and yet I hated the thought of someone else living in these rooms, even though it was true that I didn’t want to live in them myself.
“The end of several eras,” I mused, thinking of Blake and Avery with a baby on the way, which I could not mention. “Oh, speaking of old stuff, I found something last night that I want to show you.”
Upstairs, I collected the pile of dusty pamphlets I’d left on the table by the bed. When I came back my mother had been deadheading the flowers, and spent blossoms were piled on the stone wall; she was talking on her cell phone, laughing.
“They’re beautiful. They’re right here in front of me. Thanks so much—so thoughtful. And your stitches? Oh, good. Tonight? I’m sorry, I can’t. My daughter just got in and I don’t know our plans.”
I splayed the papers and pamphlets out against the glass table, trying to pretend I wasn’t listening in on my mother’s conversation. In full daylight they looked older and more worn, the paper brittle, the edges stained, the dust of decades woven into the fibers.
“Your secret admirer?” I asked when my mother finished.
“Andrew,” she said, flipping the phone closed. “He’s very jovial this morning.” My mother put the phone down so she could pick up a leaflet.
“It’s okay if you want to have dinner with him tonight.”
She looked up and smiled, amused. “I know.”
“Okay with me, I mean. You don’t have to entertain me twenty-four- seven, that’s all.”
“I know, sweetie. Thank you.” She went back to the pamphlet. “My goodness—this was published in 1913.”
“Interesting, isn’t it? I found these in the cupola this morning. Stuffed away in a window seat.”
She met my gaze, her eyes pale gray and curious. “I didn’t realize any of those seats opened.”
“There’s a little keyhole below the lip of the seat facing the lake. With the cushions gone, you can see it. Dad’s tools are still on the ring.”
“Ah—you picked the lock?”
“I did. First try.”
She smiled, her expression suddenly wistful. “Your father would have been very proud.”
I looked out at the lake until I could speak again. “Mostly, that’s why I tried to open it—just because he’d taught me how. Nothing inside but dust, though—and these.”
We sat at the table and leafed through the papers, drinking our coffee. It was an eclectic collection. There was an obituary for the last passenger pigeon in Cincinnati, Ohio, in 1914, and beneath a drawing of her was the word extinct. There was a page listing all the births in the county in March and April 1911—I scanned it, but none of the names seemed familiar. I found the wedding announcement of my great-grandfather to Cora Evanston, who was noted in the article to have shaken hands with Teddy Roosevelt when she was five years old. She was the widow of my great-grandfather’s cousin, Jesse Evanston. The rest were pamphlets, most published in New York City between 1911 and 1914, though there were a couple of flyers from much earlier, and some from other cities. Two little magazines were devoted to the work of women artists. One flyer, more intense in tone, advertised a rally in support of the right to vote for women, to be held in Canton, New York, in May 1914, with Carrie Chapman Catt as the featured speaker. “Just think,” I said, handing that one to my mother. “Maybe a suffragette lived right here in this house.”
“Maybe so,” my mother said, pulling a pair of reading glasses from her pocket. “Well, this was certainly the area for that sort of thing. I’m trying to remember—I think the house was built in the 1880s, and then fell into disrepair for a while.” She waved her hand at the verdant chaos in every direction. “Not unlike now, perhaps. That’s how your great-grandfather got it for a song, or so the story goes. I think he bough
t it around 1925 and set about restoring it.”
At the bottom of the stack, several more newsprint articles were held together with a rusty paper clip, the paper so brittle it crumbled at the edges, the type blurry.
“Listen to this,” I said, touching my mother’s hand. “From 1913. It’s hilarious.
“ ‘Fortunately, we have come to realize that healthy outdoor play is as good for the little girl as it is for the little boy, and the ideas of our grand-mothers’ day—that boys were to play ball, ride horseback, swim, shoot, etc., while the girl’s play was restricted to sedentary pursuits, such as sewing, doll-playing, etc.—have been placed on the relic heap, and the girl today keeps pace with her brother in physical freedom and activity.’ ”
My mother laughed. “Well, I’m glad I was born when I was,” she said. “No way could I have made you play with dolls all day, Lucy.”
“Imagine living in this house and not being able to swim in the lake.”
“I bet they snuck out and swam anyway.”
“I hope so.”
Between the last two articles I found a small envelope, square, made of heavy paper, the size of an invitation. The flap was tucked, not glued, and inside was a single sheet of paper, folded once. A dried flower, mostly brown but faintly purple in the center, slipped out and crumbled into fragments as it touched the glass-topped table.
The handwriting was faded, pale brown, the letters slanted, sharp, and certain.
21 September 1925
If Iris is to leave your household, Joseph, then I beg you, do not have her go to strangers, but have her come to me, or if she will not, send her instead to the address I enclose, to Mrs. Alice Stokley, a friend of my friends here, who will provide her with schooling and employment suitable to her age—she is only 14.
My heart aches to write this. I understand the expenses you list of clothes, books, and housing, but I cannot see how the money has not been enough. I have sent all I have. If you say it is so, then it must be, though today I cannot sign this note with love, R.
I read the words over and over, trying to puzzle out a meaning, my image of a well-dressed suffragette quickly fading. Joseph must certainly be my great-grandfather, the dreamer, who had climbed the church tower to view the comet. But who was R, the writer of this note? And who was Iris? The letter was forceful, intimate; this was no passing acquaintance.
“Do you know who these people are?” I asked, handing my mother the paper.
She read the note, shaking her head, while I wondered about the author of this note, and who had saved it. Was it perhaps Cora, my great-grandmother, who had hidden these papers? Maybe she had even attended this speech by Carrie Chapman Catt. We knew very little about Cora—only that she had married my great-grandfather Joseph Jarrett after her first husband died in a fall. Like so much of the rest of the family, she existed largely in the shadows cast by my great-grandfather’s unremitting light, so it was exciting to consider her inner life, to imagine her sitting in the cupola, reading avidly, sliding her pamphlets into the window seat if footsteps started up the stairs. “No. I’ve never heard them mentioned. There are so many Jarretts here and there and everywhere, maybe I’ve forgotten—but no, I don’t think so. I’ve never heard those names.”
“Poor Iris,” I said. “Whoever she was. Being sent off to work at fourteen.”
“That’s what happened in those days, though. It happened to my grandmother, too. Relatives took her in when she was orphaned, but not out of kindness. They needed an extra pair of hands. I don’t think she was treated very well.”
“I wonder if Iris was orphaned, too?” I said softly.
“I wonder.” My mother was thoughtful. “You know what? There’s a note I found, years ago, that might be connected to these papers. Let me get the key, and I’ll see if I can find it. It’s packed away upstairs in the trunk.”
“Everything’s open,” I said. “I unlocked all the rooms.”
“Did you?” She considered this, an expression of sadness and then annoyance passing swiftly over her face. I knew I’d crossed a line. “Well. I suppose I’ll have to look at that stuff sometime, won’t I? Anyway, hang on a second. I’ll be right back.”
Her footsteps sounded lightly on the steps. I wondered how many years had passed since she’d been up there, what she’d feel to find the rooms all open again. I went through the articles, reading more carefully. A slip of paper, inscribed with the same sharp, slanted handwriting of the previous note, fell out from between the pages.
I have read these pages so many times. I have to write it down, how I feel. No one has ever spoken about these things, not in my whole life. We had no mirrors in my parents’ house—my own body, and I had never seen it. So I locked the door. There is a mirror on its back. I took off my jacket and my skirt, and folded them on the bed. And then my shift, my drawers, my stockings.
I think I am thin, my skin is so white. Am I beautiful? I cannot say. The room is very dim. I seem to collect all the light.
My cheeks, my collarbones, like wings. Those drawings show wings inside the body, too, a mystery. My body has a pattern. I did not know. Oh, I knew so little, I knew nothing at all! The air was so still and hot, and the door was so far away. I wanted to leave but I did not want him to hate me, and I was afraid. In that strange light he walked around me, his eyes never left me, saying beauty my beauty, I’ll marry you, I will. And I believed him.
I read the brief note twice, caught up in its anger and loss and passion, which stood in such contrast to the factual articles in which it had been hidden.
My mother came back out, the screen door slapping shut behind her, holding in her good hand a small package wrapped in dark blue paper and tied with light blue grosgrain ribbon. She put this on the glass-topped table and took her seat again.
“Here’s the card that was with it,” she said, handing it to me. “Years ago, when I redid that old trunk, I found the package behind the lining. I think the handwriting is the same.” The faint scents of cedar and lavender and must floated up when I opened the envelope and took out the single piece of cardstock.
Dearest, this was fashioned for you with love.
I studied the sharp slant of the letters, the loops of the l and the e almost collapsing on themselves. “Yes, I think it’s definitely the same writing. That’s really interesting, because while you were gone, I found this,” I added, showing her the scribbled note. “It’s the same handwriting, I think, though the tone is really different.”
My mother read. When she finished, she put the paper gently down on the table.
“This poor woman,” she said. “Imagine never having seen your own body in a mirror. I suppose even reading these articles about physiology would have been scandalous at the time. I think it may have been illegal to publish them. No wonder someone stuffed all this in a window seat.”
I nodded. “So, what’s in the package?” I asked.
“It’s beautiful. Wait until you see.” My mother untied the ribbon and the papers rustled like leaves as she opened them, layer by layer. “I found the famous trunk your great-grandfather made hidden away back when I was first married. It was in the loft of the barn, pretty beaten up, the bands all rusty, everything coated in dust. I had this crazy idea I could fix it up and earn my way into the family’s good will—what a disaster! The trunk was out there in the first place because no one could agree who it belonged to. Your grandfather thought it should go to Art, but your father wanted it, too, and your grandmother took his side for once. After the argument had gotten pretty heated and gone on for several weeks, your grandfather hauled the trunk up to the loft and left it there. He was none too pleased to see it again, let me tell you. But at least the experience wasn’t a total loss. By then I’d found this, tucked behind the tattered lining. Here.”
She caught the edges of a cloth and stood, letting it unfurl, silvery white and delicate—not sheer, but finely woven. A row of circles in a slightly thicker texture floated like overlapping moo
ns along the border, caught in tendrils of woven flowers and vines.
“It is beautiful,” I said, reaching to catch its edge, as soft as silk.
“Isn’t it? The minute I found this it felt like mine. I never told anyone about it, except for your father, of course.” She ran her fingers along the edge. “All these moons, these nests of flowers. This was the inspiration for my moon garden, actually. That, and Virginia Woolf.” She smiled and recited, “Every flower seems to burn by itself, softly, purely in the misty beds; and how she loved the grey-white moths spinning in and out, over the cherry pie, over the evening primroses.”
I just nodded. I didn’t want to think too much about my mother’s moon garden, run ragged with neglect. “I wonder who made this. Because it’s hand-woven, I think. A very fine flax, maybe.”
The cloth lifted on the breeze for a second.
“I don’t know. I think of her sometimes, though, all the care she took.”
“Maybe she lived here; maybe she’s the one who collected all these pamphlets.”
“Maybe. Funny that you found these other papers, hidden away all this time.”