Looking for Jamie Bridger

by Nancy Springer

  “It is?” Jamie had heard most of the usual jokes, had felt queasy when a girl she didn’t know touched her hand.

  “In my opinion. That’s nature, ain’t it?” Shirley nodded at the turtles. “Does it have to bother you?”

  Jamie found she could not get any redder than she already was. “Um, not really!”

  “That’s right, it don’t have to fuss you. You just let the turtles do what they do, and you do what’s right for you when it’s time. You know what my mama used to tell me? ‘Just keep your drawers up and your skirts down till you’re grown.’”

  Outside of the oh-so-careful health classes in school, Jamie had never met an adult who seemed willing to discuss sex of any kind, let alone turtle sex. Suddenly she felt comfortable and triumphant. She grinned at Shirley. “You’re baaad!”

  “I have the reputation in this neighborhood of being a wee bit eccentric,” Shirley acknowledged, feeding pieces of apple and corn muffin to Otto and Mimi.

  “Nooooooo. You’re kidding.”

  “But yes. Squirrely Shirley, they call me. Nutty old spinster lady. Crazy woman with twenty-one turtles.” Shirley kept grinning, but her eyes had gone sad.

  “That’s stupid! Like your turtles really bother people? Barking all night? Running wild and attacking little kids?”

  Shirley stared, then started to laugh so hard she rocked on her haunches.

  “I think your turtles are nice,” Jamie grumbled, patting Bobo on his unresponsive shell, atop which his name was carefully lettered in black enamel. Shirley had thinly outlined the scales of his shell in red and blue. He looked tastefully well groomed, in Jamie’s opinion, and if Shirley wanted to keep turtles and dress them up it was her business. “I wish people would just let other people alone.”

  “It’ll never happen.” Shirley was still chuckling. “Turtles don’t let other turtles alone. Tell you something, turtles are a lot like people. They live long and never seem to get smarter, for one thing. You know that turtle in your lap is probably older than you are?”

  “He is?”

  “Probably. I’ve had Bobo for ten years, but God knows how old he was when I found him. He might be older than me. Box turtles live up to a hundred and thirty-eight years. Or one twenty-nine. Depending on which book you read.”

  “You’re kidding!” Jamie sat up straight and stopped patting Bobo. Lightning might strike her for patting something so venerable. No wonder Shirley rescued turtles. Imagine letting something that could live so long get mushed on the road.

  “Nope, no kidding. They’re ancient. Don’t let them fool you. They’re not always this frisky.”

  About a dozen turtles had gathered sedately around Shirley, waiting to be fed. Aside from the two in the grass still clunking their shells together, Jamie saw no frisking.

  “They just came out of their holes not too long ago,” Shirley explained. “They hibernate over the winter, and I always pity them. Sure, it keeps them alive, but they can’t like it down there in the dark. They always seem so happy and hungry when they come up to the light. Like people, again.”

  “Huh?”

  “Oh, I don’t know.” Hesitating, Shirley looked up as if the sky would help her find words. “If we’d just get out of our holes, get out of ourselves … we all have shells and they slow us down so much.”

  Jamie realized she was staring, because Shirley gave her a crooked grin. “Okay, so I’m strange,” Shirley said.

  “No stranger than my family.”

  Shirley nodded in acknowledgment. “I had this funny dream about turtles once,” she said. “There was a full moon, and they all gathered in the middle of the yard, only it was bigger—you know how it is in dreams; everything was a little different. The turtles were all different colors in the moonlight, lilac and black and silver and maraschino cherry. And they started to dance, but to do that they had to get out of their shells.” Shirley looked at Jamie owlishly, her eyebrows steepled higher than ever. “Do you know, when they did that, they were slim like spirits and they could stand up and jump like Baryshnikov? They still had their little beady eyes and their big scaly feet, but they didn’t care. They could waltz, they could fandango, they could strut their little butts. They were kind of funny looking, but whoo-ee could they dance.”

  In Jamie’s lap, Bobo tremored like an earthquake and poked his head out into the light.

  Chapter

  7

  Lily sat on her closet floor, facing away from the light that slanted in from the upstairs hallway. The bedroom itself was dark now, because it was after sunset, but the hallway light was on, and that well-meaning child Kate insisted that the doors be left open. Katie was a dear heart, but she just did not understand: Lily would have felt better if the door were closed, the heavy oak barriers all stoutly in place. Terrible things could happen if the barriers were opened. The closet, having three solid walls, was preferable even with its door open to the fearsome space and lucidity of the bedroom, with its glassy windows through which a person could lose herself. But it would have been better yet if the door were closed. When Kate went to bed, Lily would close the door.

  When she got up to do that, she planned, she would first walk carefully to the bathroom and use the toilet. It was all right, though frightening, to leave the closet to use the toilet. Certainly Daddy would have to agree it was all right.

  Daddy would approve. Daddy would approve. When Daddy had been alive, he had been like the thick oak door, strong to close out evil and its terrifying consequences. He had been the barrier between Lily and everything dangerous and forbidden that tried to make her a bad girl. But now he was gone, and the wind was always tearing at the house corners, and who knew what wrong things Lily’s hands might do, what wrong words might come out of her mouth, what wrong thoughts might breach her mind?

  Downstairs she heard someone at the front door—but she must not hear that. Someone she must not remember was always knocking. Someone she must not remember was always calling through the windows, calling to her, calling to her. She must not hear. Evil, evil. She must not ever hear his voice again.

  Someone was—coming up the stairs!

  “Mamaw?”

  Lily breathed out. It was just that sweet child Kate.

  “Mamaw, I’m going to turn on the light. Jamie’s back.”

  A sudden squeezing feeling in her heart made Lily gasp. For some inexpressible reason, Lily had not truly believed that her granddaughter was ever coming back, no matter how many times Kate had said that Jamie would be back Sunday night. When the light blazed on and Lily blinked, tears ran hotly down her cheeks.

  “Grandma?” She felt Jamie’s strong young arms around her. “Grandma, don’t cry. I just took a little bus trip, and I’m back now. Grandma, I won’t go away again for a while. Why are you sitting here in the dark?”

  Lily could not answer.

  “Grandma, c’mon out. Come on downstairs with me.” Jamie got up and tugged at Lily’s arms, and Lily obeyed those commanding young hands. There was a lot of Daddy in Jamie. Lily followed Jamie down the stairs to the kitchen.

  “How about something to eat? A piece of cinnamon toast? Grandma?”

  “All right,” Lily said. Now that she was spending most of her time in the closet, it was all right for her to eat. Daddy would approve. In the closet Lily’s actions were so few that consequences seemed under control.

  It was even all right for her to sit at the table and hold onto it while she let Jamie and Kate prepare the snack. At night, when darkness made a barrier against the windows, it was all right, but she could not have done it in the daytime, when daylight streaming in made her feel as weightless as dandelion fluff, without substance, so that every stray word threatened to carry her away.

  Jamie would take care of her. Jamie had substance. Jamie looked tired, or maybe somber, as if she felt the weight of being a wall. Jamie knew, had to know, that she was the only thing standing between her grandma and the whole world’s sorrow.

  At the ot
her end of the kitchen the girls were carrying on a whispered conversation. Lily did not try to hear what they were saying. When they came to sit with her, she continued to listen without hearing as they chatted about school. She ate her toast, and some sliced peaches they gave her, and smiled at them. She answered bravely and politely when they asked her how she was feeling. Such sweet, beautiful girls. Such a good girl, Jamie, her granddaughter. It was so much safer with a girl, a granddaughter. Jamie would not—would never …

  Lily could not remember. Must not remember.

  “Grandma,” Jamie was saying to her earnestly, “I have to tell you something.”

  Lily sat blinking in the light. Jamie came and crouched by her chair, looking up at her, holding Lily’s chilly old hands in her warm young ones, gazing into Lily’s eyes.

  “Grandma,” Jamie said, “I’ve been back to Silver Valley. Do you remember Silver Valley?”

  “No,” Lily whispered, but it was not in answer to the question.

  “Well, anyway, that’s where I went,” Jamie said. “Silver Valley. And guess what?” Jamie sounded gentle. Jamie was smiling but talking a little too fast. “You’ll never guess. I heard about a boy with the same name as me. Well, a man now, named Jamie Bridger. Do you know him, Grandma? Is he any relation to us?”

  “No,” Lily whimpered, not at Jamie but at the storm. It was shaking her chest, a hurricane, roaring in her mind, a tornado, spinning the kitchen around so that the barriers were falling, falling, falling, the walls in splinters, the windows open to the sky. Punishment would come pouring in. “No!” Lily screamed, lurching up, pulling away from her granddaughter. “No! No!” She ran, staggering, nearly falling, out of the kitchen and up the dark stairs to her closet, where she cowered.

  The end of the world was always knocking at the door. She must not let him in. She must not let him in. She must never come out again. She must never come out again.

  “Oh, my God!” Kate whispered, gazing at the enlarged photocopies Jamie had brought back with her, gazing at the other Jamie Bridger’s yearbook face. “I can’t believe it! He looks so much like you!” Still staring, Kate began to smile. “He’s cute!”

  Jamie smiled a little but did not answer. It was hard to come up with something to say when she kept thinking about Grandma, Grandma, Grandma, Lily who had taken her tranquilizer pill like a good girl, Lily who was asleep upstairs on the closet floor. Jamie folded her arms on the kitchen table, laid her head down on them and sighed. “I shouldn’t have said anything to her,” she muttered.

  Kate sighed too and put the yearbook pictures aside. “Maybe she just needs some time.”

  Jamie stared at the wall, trying to sort it out. If she called the doctor, would he want to put Grandma in a hospital? Would Jamie be able to keep him from doing that?

  “She’s not hurting anybody,” Kate said, answering Jamie’s thoughts. “So she’s living in a bedroom closet, so what? At least she’s eating now. And it’s not like she’s going to take a gun and kill people.”

  Jamie said without looking up, “Face it, Kate, she’s crazy.” Jamie could say this only because she knew her friend loved Grandma as much as she did.

  There was a long silence before Kate admitted, “Maybe. I guess it depends on what you call crazy. But she’s not dangerous.”

  “It’s enough to make anybody crazy,” Jamie said fiercely. She sat up, glaring. “Her son thrown out, and she’s never supposed to mention him again—do you think that was her idea? That was Grandpa. I would like to take him and shake him and break him into little pieces.”

  “He’s dead, doofus.”

  “Yeah, well, I could kill him again. He dragged her here, away from her family—the Wolgemuths said she had family that used to visit, a sister from Chicago—”

  “The Wolgemuths?”

  “The neighbors. Old people. They remembered me from when I was a baby.” Jamie quieted down, thinking about her talk with them. “You think I’m an okay judge of people, Kate?”

  “Sure. You like me.” Kate grinned.

  “That doesn’t count,” Jamie teased. “I grew up with you. I’m stuck with you.” Then she got serious. “But like, Ian, I’d never met her before, but I knew she really wanted to help. And Shirley, I just knew she was okay.” Jamie had already told Kate a lot about Shirley and her turtles. “Shirley is great. But the Wolgemuths—they seemed nice, but I got the feeling they didn’t want to talk to me.”

  “Why not?”

  Jamie gave her friend an exasperated look. “Like I know? Maybe they just don’t like teenagers.” She hesitated. “But I got the feeling they knew something they didn’t want to tell me.”

  “Like what?”

  “Kate, give me a break! If I knew what, I—I might see a way out of this mess.”

  The two of them sat silently. The dowdy house seemed very quiet, the way Grandma was quiet and dowdy most of the time. In the next room the grandfather clock was ticking.

  “I’ve got to do something,” Jamie whispered. “If people find out how bad Grandma is, they’ll send her to a mental hospital and me to a home or something. I’ve got to find some answers.”

  “You did do something,” Kate told her softly. “You found out a lot.”

  “Yeah, most of it bad. I found out my grandfather was a total son of a bitch. I found out I might have a father, but he ran away and only came back and tried to find me once.”

  Kate said sternly, “Jamie, lighten up. He was a kid.”

  “So am I, a kid.” Jamie found herself blinking back tears. “Why am I stuck with all this? I need to find Jamie Bridger, but I can’t leave Grandma alone when she’s like this. What am I going to do?”

  Kate surprised her by smiling a big, warm, slow smile. “You’ll think of something,” she said, getting up and hugging Jamie good-night before she went home. “I know you.”

  Starting the next morning, Jamie did what she could think of.

  She biked to the Dexter Public Library, asked to see a Chicago telephone directory, and found the number for the courthouse. As Shirley had suggested, she phoned, asking for the information in her birth-certificate file. She was told to submit her request to the prothonotary in writing. She did so, but knew she could not expect a response for days, maybe weeks. By then Grandma would be in a mental hospital. She had to find Jamie Bridger.

  While she had the Chicago directory, she looked up everybody named Bridger or Lutz. Over the next two days she phoned them all. None of them knew a Cletus Bridger or a Lily Lutz. Or an Amaryllis Lutz, which was what the Wolgemuths thought Grandma’s sister’s name might have been. The sister was married, though, and even if she was still in Chicago, her last name wasn’t Lutz anymore.

  One of the people she talked with suggested she might want to try the Salvation Army. She called them, and they said yes, they searched for missing family members, and they sent her forms to fill out. She sent back two—one for Amaryllis Lutz and one for Jamie Bridger.

  She phoned Ian, and got Ian’s father’s number, and phoned him in Florida, and talked with him for a while. When she hung up, she had that odd feeling again: There was something he did not want to tell her.

  She went through Grandpa’s desk again, finding nothing that helped. She searched his bedroom, Grandma’s bedroom, the kitchen and basement and attic, opening drawers and boxes, looking for something, a stray envelope maybe, or old letters, or an old address book, any piece of paper that might give her a name, a clue, an address. There was nothing.

  She phoned the Dexter police. They told her they couldn’t help her. She slammed down the phone, then cooled off and tried the state police. They told her the same thing.

  She phoned the tooth factory and asked them to look in her Grandpa’s records and tell her where he used to work. Then she phoned Product Technical Services outside of Silver Valley and asked for anybody who could tell her anything about former employee Cletus Bridger or his family. Nobody remembered him.

  She knew Grandpa’s birthplace,
from the obituary. She phoned 555-1212 and asked for any Bridgers or Lutzes listed there. None were.

  She studied the amount in Grandma’s bank account, then called a private detective. “How old are you?” he asked. She told him. “You’re wasting my time,” he said, and he hung up on her.

  She phoned Shirley. “This is Jamie.”

  Shirley seemed not the least bit surprised. “Jamie, good to hear from you. How’s it going, kiddo?”

  “Awful.” Jamie poured it all out. “I’m trying everything to find my father, and nothing works. I’m getting behind in all my subjects, and the school is talking about sending a truant officer. Grandma just sits in the closet, and I try to talk with her, but she just smiles and says yes and no and oh dear. I’m doing all the laundry and shopping and cooking—”

  “Whoa,” Shirley said. “Back up, and explain to me about Grandma in the closet.”

  Jamie did. “I have to find the other Jamie Bridger.” Most of her waking thoughts and a lot of her dreams were focused on finding Jamie Bridger. She wanted a father. She wanted a hero, a rescuing savior. If losing him had made Grandma crazy, wouldn’t getting him back make her well again?

  “Yes, I’m sure you do,” Shirley said slowly, “but don’t expect him to ride in on a white horse and fix everything, Jamie.”

  “I’ve got to find him!”

  “Tell me what you’ve tried so far.”

  Jamie did.

  “Damn good job,” Shirley said. “One thing, though. If he’s alive and in this country, you might be able to trace him through his credit record.”

  “Huh?”

  “Most people use credit cards.”

  “They do?” Grandpa never did.

  “Yes, they do. Believe me. And there are credit bureaus—”

  “And they wouldn’t want a kid wasting their time,” Jamie interrupted bitterly. She had been having trouble sleeping, and went around all day every day with her chest aching. She needed to find Jamie Bridger; her small supply of patience was entirely used up on Grandma, and she had none left for the stupidity of other adults. Luckily, Shirley seemed to understand a lot of this.