Looking for Jamie Bridger

by Nancy Springer

  Kate opened her mouth, then closed it again. Better not touch that. “Well, I was going to bring you breakfast in bed,” she said too cheerfully after a moment. “I guess I’ll bring it right here.”

  “No, thank you, dear. I am not at all hungry.”

  But Mamaw had to eat! Kate’s thoughts raced—maybe if she could get Mamaw into the kitchen? “Would you like to come down and watch me eat?”

  “Not today, honey. I believe I am going to stay in here for the time being. The light is hard on my eyes.”

  Kate leaned back against the closet wall and closed her own eyes. It was going to be a long weekend.

  The address Jamie had for Attorney Lampeterson was occupied by another lawyer, or rather lawyers: G. Pettijohn, A. Fox, and Ian L. Russell, Attorneys at Law. The sign did not indicate Saturday office hours, but Jamie pushed at the door anyway. There were no Bridgers in the phone book for her to call—it was not a common name. She had looked in the yellow pages, trying to figure out where Grandpa used to work, without luck. Now she could not think what else to do except come here.

  The door swung open. Somebody was working.

  Jamie stepped into an unlit reception room. A youngish man in wire-rimmed glasses, padding across the thick carpet with an armload of files, stopped to peer at her. “May I help you?”

  Jamie felt like an idiot, but said it. “I need to find Attorney Lampeterson.”

  “He’s retired and moved to Florida.”

  At least he was still alive. “Do you, uh, by any chance have his address?”

  “His daughter does.” The man turned away and shouted, “Hey, Ian! Somebody to see you!”

  Ian?

  Ian L. Russell, Attorney at Law. Ian Lampeterson Russell, hometown girl. This was her office now.

  “Who is it?” Ian’s voice floated back from somewhere in the rear of the building. She sounded annoyed, and the wire-rimmed man grinned.

  “She gets cranky when she has to work on Saturdays,” he explained to Jamie. “What’s your name?” She told him. “Jamie Bridger!” he yelled to Ian.

  Ian did not yell back. Instead, quick footsteps sounded and there she was, a tall, redheaded woman, somehow dressed for success even in jeans, attractive, almost as gorgeous as Kate. She came rushing out, but when she saw Jamie she stopped short, looking astonished.

  “But—but you’re a girl!” she blurted.

  It occurred to Jamie that a woman named Ian should not be so astounded to see a girl named Jamie.

  “And you’re young!”

  Being young was not so amazing either. What was the matter with this woman? Jamie stared. The wire-rimmed guy was staring. Ian felt the stares and blushed.

  “I’m sorry, I’m being rude. I—I thought you were the Jamie Bridger I went to high school with.”

  Jamie’s heart started pounding so hard it shoved her a step forward. Her hand stretched out. She wanted to shout questions, but her jaw seemed to have disconnected from her brain, and her mouth wouldn’t work.

  “Are you sure you’re not him?” Ian still looked boggled. “You look just like him.”

  It had to be, it had to be, it had to be! She was named after him.

  With a fierce effort Jamie got her mouth working. “Where is he now?” she whispered.

  “I don’t know. I wish I did. I’m on the class reunion committee, and he’s one of the people we’d really like to find.” Ian looked hard at Jamie. “Hey, you’re white as a ghost. Sit down.” She steered Jamie into an armchair and held her there by the shoulders. “Andy, get her some water!”

  Wire rims hurried off.

  “Take a deep breath,” Ian instructed.

  Jamie did, but let it out in a rush of words. “Tell me about him,” she begged. “Please, just tell me anything you know about him. I’m looking for him. I think he might be my father.”

  Jamie ran down Market Street, her tote bag bouncing, hurrying to get to the Silver Valley Public Library. According to Ian, she had less than half an hour before closing time.

  She ran up the stairs to the reference desk. Twenty minutes till closing.

  “Yes?”

  “Is this where you keep the old high-school yearbooks?”

  A few minutes later, her hands shaking as she turned the glossy pages, Jamie found the other Jamie Bridger’s tiny black-and-white pictured face.

  He looked just like her.

  It was like seeing herself in some sort of time-machine mirror. It was weird and frightening and break-my-heart beautiful and take-my-breath-away strange. Jamie stared for minutes, and the other Jamie Bridger stared soberly back at her across the distance of the years, and everything Ian had told her about him floated like butterflies through her mind.

  “He didn’t graduate. In the middle of junior year he disappeared.”

  “He was sweet. I had the worst crush on him.”

  “He was genuinely nice. I mean, a lot of people act nice, but Jamie really was nice. Back then it seemed like most of the boys were oinks, but Jamie treated girls like human beings.”

  “I never knew Jamie had a girlfriend. I didn’t think he was allowed to date.”

  “I guess there was a lot I didn’t know. I’m one of those people—I’m always the last one who knows anything.” Rueful laugh. “Obviously he must have had somebody, because here you are. But I still just can’t believe it. I can’t see Jamie getting a girl pregnant.”

  “I never heard about any baby. They must have kept you in the house, kiddo.”

  “Yes, they lived out there on Sweet Gum Lane. That was one strange family. I’m sorry, Jamie, I shouldn’t be talking about your grandparents this way, but it’s the truth. He was the nicest boy, and they threw him out with the garbage.”

  “No, no brothers or sisters. He was an only child.”

  “I walked up to Mr. Bridger once and asked him if he heard from Jamie, and he said to me, ‘Jamie is dead,’ with this look that gave me the chills. To him, his son was dead.”

  “He just disappeared. Never finished school. Nobody seems to know where he went.”

  Looking at the yearbooks, Jamie double-checked her mental math. Yes, the dates seemed about right. The boy named Jamie had left Silver Valley the winter of his junior year. The next fall, baby Jamie had come along.

  She, Jamie, must have been what he had done that was so awful it made Grandpa disown him. Jamie felt queasy thinking it, that she was the reason he had been kicked out in the cold.

  Ian’s nice. I think she really, really liked him.

  Ian had spent half the afternoon talking with Jamie, trying to help her figure things out. Ian had even phoned her father, the retired lawyer, in Florida. Once he understood the situation, Attorney Lampeterson had confirmed what Jamie and Ian had suspected: Mr. Bridger had changed his will in order to cut his son Jamie out of it. Yes, there was a baby the Bridgers had kept under wraps. A few years later the Bridgers had left town and dropped out of sight.

  They were ashamed of me.

  Jamie had been back once looking for his parents, Attorney Lampeterson said. While Ian was in law school. Hadn’t he mentioned it to her? Sorry, dear. No, he didn’t know where the young man was now.

  Did he know about me? Did he come back to take me with him?

  There were two more pictures of Jamie Bridger in the yearbooks, his sophomore-year photo and his freshman-year photo, looking very young and shy. He seemed to have had a hard time smiling. He had not been in any activities or played on any teams. Probably Daddy had not approved.

  Just like he didn’t approve of me.

  There was a tired feeling in Jamie that she recognized from longtime experience: It was anger she could not do anything about.

  There’s one thing I can do. I am going to find him.

  She got photocopies of the yearbook pages, enlarged to show Jamie’s face better, and then she had to leave. The library was closing.

  Standing on the sidewalk in front of it, she realized she felt weak with hunger. She had been so
jittery all day, she had not eaten, and now it was late. The sun was low. There did not seem to be a McDonald’s or a motel in Silver Valley. Okay, Jamie told herself, she could survive on graham crackers and apples if she had to. But night was coming, and she did not have any idea where she was going to stay.

  Chapter

  6

  “Um, Ms. Dubbs? Hi, this is Jamie, you know, I was there this afternoon?”

  “Shirley.” The woman’s voice carried forcefully over the phone line. “Call me Shirley. Of course I know who you are. What can I do for you, Jamie?”

  Jamie had already asked people on the street and in the drugstore whether there was a tourist home or a bed-and-breakfast where she could stay. Nobody knew of any. People had looked at her strangely. At the pay phone she had called Ian’s office number—no answer, and no home number listed in the book. No motels or hotels with Silver Valley addresses were in the yellow pages, either. Calling this woman who lived in what used to be Jamie’s house was a last resort, and Jamie knew it. She felt pathetic doing it, like a little lost kid—couldn’t keep her voice from quivering.

  “I was wondering. I, uh, I’m looking for a place to stay—”

  “And you want the spare bedroom? Sure, no problem, Jamie.”

  Really she had been going to ask Shirley to give her a ride to a motel somewhere. Shirley’s offer caught her by happy surprise, and she started to stammer. “I—I’ll pay you—”

  “To stay in your own room? You don’t have to pay me, Jamie. Just come on out.”

  You barely know her, Jamie reminded herself after she hung up the phone. Be careful. Yet walking out to the little house on Sweet Gum Lane felt like going home.

  Shirley was waiting at the door. She had a funny face, steepled eyebrows over round bright eyes, a pointed chin, teeth fit to drive an orthodontist crazy. “Hungry?” she asked.

  Oh, good grief. Jamie decided to leave some money under the pillow if Shirley wouldn’t accept it any other way. “I, uh—”

  “Of course you’re hungry. Come on, dinner’s on the table.”

  Dinner was bits and pieces thrown together: some take-out Chinese fried rice, a couple of barbecued chicken wings, red grapes, Pepsi, a deviled egg, a kiwifruit, Irish soda bread, carrot sticks, butter-almond ice cream. It was good, especially once some items got help from the microwave, but it was not like any meal Grandma would ever have fixed. Grandma was just not the microwave type.

  “How old are you, Jamie?” Shirley wanted to know as they were eating. “Sixteen?”

  “Fourteen. Almost fifteen.” Well, in five months.

  “Jailbait. And you’re here in big bad Silver Valley all by yourself?

  Jamie nodded.

  “Anybody you need to phone? Anybody worrying about you?”

  Was Grandma worrying? Jamie thought about it, then shook her head. If anything, she was worrying about Grandma.

  Shirley sighed, then tried the direct approach. “You mind telling me what’s going on?”

  Why not? Jamie told her. Telling Shirley everything she knew so far helped her sort it all out. Shirley’s round eyes got more and more thoughtful as Jamie ate and talked.

  “Huh,” Shirley said. “Well, you could contact the courthouse of the county where you were born. Those numbers on your birth certificate go to a file where the long form is kept. See, what you’ve got is the short form. Somebody can find the file and look at the long form and tell you who it says your parents are.”

  For a moment Jamie felt furiously stupid. As if sensing this, Shirley got up to bring the ice cream.

  “Um, yeah,” Jamie said in a small voice. “I’ll do that. But, like, I already know who my father is, and how do I find him?” As usual, she found herself more interested in her father than in her mother. Especially now that she knew his name. Jamie Bridger. Like hers.

  “Huh,” Shirley said thoughtfully again, handing Jamie her bowl of butter almond. “Well, pretty much the way you’ve been doing. As I was gathering my wits to tell you before you kited off this morning, kiddo, there is one old couple across the street, Mr. and Mrs. Wolgemuth, who’ve lived here longer than me. Maybe they might remember something. They go to bed kind of early,” Shirley added as Jamie jumped up. “You can talk to them tomorrow.”

  Jamie went to bed kind of early herself, after helping with the dishes and watching a little TV. It had been a day as long and crowded as Shirley’s teeth. Jamie knew so much more than she had known twelve hours before that her head felt leaky.

  It was leaky. She was crying.

  Lying there, gazing at the streetlamp patterns on the walls just the way a very small girl used to do, Jamie felt the tears running soundlessly down her temples into her hair. Where was that little kid now? Who was she really? Had anybody—did anybody—want her?

  Dry up, Jamie told herself, looking around, feeling a need to blow her nose. Damn, there’s no Kleenex. Dry up, Jamie. Why are you crying when it’s coming together?

  The house seemed to want her. The bedroom felt glad to have her back. Jamie turned her pillow over and went to sleep. Usually she slept badly in a strange bed, a strange place, but in this place she slept soundly till morning.

  A sunny May morning. Jamie woke up feeling better than she had since Grandpa died. Ten minutes later she was downstairs throwing together some breakfast with Shirley. She liked the way Shirley explored the refrigerator like an unknown country, and the way Shirley used mismatched flea-market china. And the way a plush, oversized stuffed cow sat in its own chair at Shirley’s table. There seemed to be a lot to like about Shirley.

  Jamie ate apple slices dipped in honey and some corn muffins. “Good muffins,” she told Shirley.

  “Thank you. I bought them at Safeway all by myself.”

  “Do you think those people are up yet?”

  “Wolgemuths? They’ll be getting ready for church. Around noon would be the best time for you to catch them. You finished eating?” At Jamie’s nod, Shirley got up, leaving the breakfast dishes on the table. She took two corn muffins in one hand and some apple slices in the other. “Why don’t you come on out in the yard and meet the gang?” She opened the screen door with her rump.

  The gang?

  Jamie followed Shirley out to the big, fenced yard, where the grass, she noticed, grew long and shaggy and seemed dug up in spots, as if a little ghost girl had been making mud pies.

  “Breakfast!” Shirley shouted. She pulled a wooden spoon out of the crotch of a maple tree and used it to beat on a big old turkey roaster hanging from a branch. WHANGG, WHANGG, WHANGGG. When the vibrations seemed to shake the world, Shirley stopped whanging and waited a moment. Nothing happened. “C’mon, breakfast!” Shirley hollered, and she beat on the roaster again.

  Very slowly, the grass started to move.

  Shirley put the spoon back and sat down on the ground under the tree. “Pull up a piece of backyard,” she invited Jamie. “This is going to take a while.”

  Jamie sat, mouth open, watching. Something-or-others were creeping at her from all different directions.

  “C’mon Toby, Burp, Lola!” Shirley yelled. “They can’t really hear me,” she said more quietly to Jamie. “I just like to make noise. Somebody has to shake up this neighborhood.” She bellowed, “C’mon, Bink, Lou, Cher, Poo! Suzy, Wink, get the lead out! Breakfast!”

  A thumb-shaped, yellow polka-dot head parted the grass near Jamie. She flinched—for a moment she thought it was a snake. Then she saw a wrinkled, clawed foot. The foot scrabbled and strained, heaving a yellow-and-brown high-domed shell an inch closer to Shirley.

  “Turtles!”

  “Just sit real still, and they won’t mind you. Well, good morning, Bobo!” Shirley offered the nearest turtle a bit of apple. “Hungry?”

  “Box turtles,” Jamie amended. “Big old box turtles. The whole yard is full of them!” She saw grass moving everywhere.

  “There’s twenty-one of them right now. Every time I see one trying to get itself mushed on the road,
I bring it home. Whoa, they’re really motoring. Just look at ’em tearing up here for their goodies.” Several of the lumbering land tortoises were now visible, and Shirley eyed them with a fond smile. “Good morning, Otto. Good morning, Mimi.”

  “How can you tell—oh, I see!” The names were painted on top of the shells, calligraphed there in small, elegant red and bright-green and enamel-blue letters. Mimi had a border of little pink hearts running around her shell as well. “You, uh, you label them.”

  “And customize them a bit sometimes. I try not to interfere with their natural beauty.” Shirley said this with a straight face, feeding Bobo (he had finally crossed the remaining three feet to reach her) a tiny wedge of apple from her hand.

  “May I pick one up?”

  “By all means. Take Bobo away before he gets fat.”

  Jamie lifted the box turtle. From the heft of him, he was fat already. Being handled by a stranger, he pulled himself into his shell. The hinged part of his plastron closed with a hissing sound.

  “Sit him in your lap and he’ll come out eventually,” Shirley said.

  Jamie cradled Bobo, so full of questions that she had actually forgotten about Grandma and all the rest of it for the moment. “How do you name them?”

  “Short, to fit on the shell.”

  “I mean, how do you know which ones are girls and which ones are boys?”

  Shirley tilted her head toward two turtles not far away. “That’s how.”

  Jamie looked. One of the turtles was trying to crawl on top of the other. “Oh!” Jamie felt herself turn pink.

  “What can I say? It’s spring.” Shirley grinned toothily.

  “Oh.” Jamie tried to think of something sensible to say but only succeeded in blurting out, “So they’re going to have babies?”

  Shirley peered at the turtles involved, then smiled more gently. “Not them. Okay, really how I tell is the males have red eyes. And what we got there is Sam and Burp. Two males.”

  Jamie felt her blush progress from pink to a shade so hot it felt like fuchsia.

  “I am embarrassing the heck out of you,” Shirley said, concerned. “I don’t mean to. Don’t matter to me if the boys play with the boys sometimes, and the girls with the girls. It’s natural.”