“Just me.”
Vivian kept her head down as she wrote on the page. The Daily Record article had mentioned that Mildred and her second husband “had a youngster,” because that was what Edward had told Vivian. She wondered where that youngster was now. He or she would’ve been younger than Charlotte. Cooped up inside, Brucie had gone back to barking from what was probably the living room, and Vivian thought if Mildred were a friendly sort she might’ve made a joke about Brucie living there with her. She wasn’t, and she didn’t.
“And in 1950? Was there anyone else living here then?”
“No.” Mildred drew on the cigarette, then blew the smoke over Vivian’s head. “My son was here a few times, but the landlord knew all about it.”
“Ah.” Vivian tensed at the mention of the son. “That’s fine. We don’t share these results with the landlords. That is not our business. So, children. How many children do you have?”
“Just my son. YOU SONS OF BITCHES!” Mildred’s attention had gone from Vivian and the clipboard to something just to the left of the porch and she marched through the piled-up snow to lean over the rail. “GET OFF OF THERE!”
Vivian followed Mildred’s shouting to the birdhouse with a feeder that stood in the side yard. A couple of squirrels had been chitter-chattering and snacking on the bird feed, but scattered with Mildred’s bellowing.
“Durn rodents,” Mildred muttered as she clomped her way back to stand in front of the screen door, stomping her feet and brushing the snow from her ankles. Vivian’s attention stayed on the birdhouse.
It sat on top of a wooden post and was shaped like a little bungalow. Her heart gave a pained squeeze as she recognized Edward’s handiwork. She’d seen enough of the things he made on his workbench to know he’d been the one who’d made that birdhouse. The little curved eaves of the house. The shape. He’d even added a chimney, which he loved to do. The dollhouse he’d made for Charlotte had a real chimney. And their birdhouse in the backyard did, too. “Makes it look like a real house. The birds’ll love it!” Oh, goddammit, Edward.
“We done here?” Mildred had finished her cigarette and begun rubbing her arms with her hands.
Vivian looked back at her, then back down at the clipboard.
“How old is he?”
“How old is who?”
“You said you had a son?”
“Yeah. He doesn’t live with me. What difference does it make how old he is?” Mildred crossed her arms over her chest and jutted out her chin, her eyes narrowed.
Vivian remembered she was supposed to be Shirley from the Census Bureau and forced herself to continue, being careful not to press her luck.
“Yes, you’re right. That is only important if the child lived in the house with you. I’m so used to asking out of habit, sorry. And what is your age?”
“Forty-nine.”
Well, that explained her appearance. But she was three years older than Edward. That was a surprise.
“Well, Mrs. Ta—” Vivian stopped herself as she realized she had started to say Mildred’s married name, and then made a show of checking her clipboard, “I’m sorry, Mrs. Fischer. Thank you, Mrs. Fischer, for your time. The Census Bureau understands this is sure a bother.”
She flipped the cover page back down over what she had written, and opened her pocketbook to deposit the pencil. The contents of her purse were in such a state of jumble and disarray that when she lifted the purse flap, a few things flew right out and landed at their feet.
“Oh, for garsh sakes,” Vivian exclaimed, as she reached for the cigarette lighter and packet of Sen-Sen. At the same time, Mildred Fischer Dalton Taggart bent down and picked up Vivian’s driver’s license.
Vivian disliked admitting to personal weaknesses. She’d prefer you just didn’t notice them. One of the things she might not have bragged about was being quick on her feet. She wasn’t clumsy, but she also probably wouldn’t catch anything you threw at her.
“Oh, thank you!” she cried, as both women rose from their bent positions, and Vivian tried to snatch the driver’s license from Mildred’s fingers. But Mildred held firm with those nicotine-stained fingers, pulled the license closer toward her face, and squinted at it.
“Shirley, you said your name was?” Mildred’s tone had gone from generally unfriendly to downright nasty as she looked from the license to Vivian’s face and back again.
Vivian’s heart was pounding as she shoved the lighter and Sen-Sen back into her handbag.
“That’s . . .” She let the word hang in the air and as Mildred’s eyes met hers she made a mad grab for the license, swiping and scratching Mildred’s hand with her Fire & Ice fingernails. But Mildred, counter to her slow lurching to answer the door, had the quick reflexes Vivian did not, and snapped the scratched hand, still holding the license, to her chest. Vivian stared into those angry, muddy-brown eyes, which did happen to match the hair dye, for a split second more before turning on her heel and scrambling down the porch steps, clutching the clipboard and her pocketbook to her torso.
“DALTON?” Mildred screamed at her from her front door. “YOU TELL EDDIE HIS SON WANTS TO SEE HIM!”
Vivian heard it, but kept shuffling down the street, her nylons rubbing together under the constrictive girdle and skirt. She rounded the corner to where she’d parked the car, out of sight of Mildred’s house. She dropped everything she was clutching right there onto the snow-packed street, and then picked up the pocketbook, fumbling around for the car key as her heart pounded in her ears. She grasped the key tightly and poked around the lock until it finally slid into the slot. The lock sprang up, she flung the door open wide, scooped up the clipboard from the ground, and threw her purse onto the front seat before scrambling into the car.
The car peeled out of the parking spot, and she was willing to bet if there hadn’t been snow on the ground she would’ve left skid marks like Bill Parker did as she tore down the street. At the sight of the black-and-white police car driving toward her she pulled her foot away from the accelerator and let the Buick coast as he passed. Careful! She could hear Edward’s voice in her head from the afternoon way back when he’d taught her to drive.
“Oh, shut up, Edward,” she wheezed aloud in the car. Makes my ass tired even when he’s not here.
She passed four more stop signs before she felt like she could breathe normally. When she spotted a farm supply store she pulled the car into one of the vacant parking slots and turned off the motor and sat there with her chest rapidly rising and falling. The rearview mirror showed her exactly how frantic she’d become in the last five minutes and she gasped at the wild hairdo sticking out every which way from under her hat.
His son wants to see him.
Edward had said Mildred had a “youngster” with her second husband. Was that another lie? Something just for the papers? A wife, a son, and maybe even the damned dog. Brucie. How long did dogs live, anyway, if they didn’t run after a squirrel out into the street and get hit by a car? Vivian closed her eyes and huffed through her nostrils in frustration. In her mind, all she could see was Mildred standing there in her doorway, shouting. Shouting and holding Vivian’s driver’s license in her hand. Oh, Jesus Christ.
It was a Friday. She didn’t have time to worry about the driver’s license. She also didn’t have time to waste, going to sit in some restaurant with a nice hot cup of coffee and trying to collect her thoughts and work through what she had just seen and heard. A-tisket, a-tasket, she hummed, trying to calm herself with the nursery rhyme that had popped into her head as she ran from Mildred’s house . . . Easter basket . . . I can’t believe I dropped it, I dropped it, I dropped it. She pulled the car out of the farm supply parking lot and headed to the county courthouse.
Son wants to see him swam around her brain with the image of her driver’s license. Jesus Christ almighty. Her hands shook as she steered into a parking space in front of the beige brick building. It had to be today. The office would be closed Saturday and Sunday, and she did
n’t have enough money to extend her stay at the hotel. Never enough time, never enough money. What Vivian did have enough of was questions. And more now than when she’d started out from the hotel that morning. She took the little brown notebook from her pocketbook with still-shaking hands, and flipped through the pages until she found what she was looking for:
Clerk’s Office, Court House, Syracuse, New York—Ada M. Carr, Reg. Vital Statistics
Ada M. Carr. The gatekeeper of information at the Syracuse Clerk’s Office.
Chapter 32
Ada M. Carr sounded like a tidy woman. Someone sharp and efficient. She probably wore her hair in a tight bun and said things like “disclosures” and “proceedings.” Vivian made her way from the car to the front door of the building, taking careful steps up the narrow, icy walkway, and wondered if she should have a cigarette first.
Stop wasting time.
She crossed the threshold into the somewhat heated entryway and had to walk a little ways down an echoing hallway before coming to an internal door marked “City Clerk.” Her nerves hit again, the way they had as she’d climbed the steps to Mildred’s porch with her well-rehearsed Census Bureau story. She hadn’t prepared a story for this. With a deep breath, she pulled open the door and stepped into the office. The office appeared empty until she looked beyond the counter and spied a young man sitting at a desk near the back. He didn’t look up. She cleared her throat and leaned against the counter to keep her balance as she shifted from left foot to right.
“Just a minute,” the man called without looking up.
A minute passed. And then another. Vivian had removed her gloves and was tapping her Fire & Ice fingernails on the polished wood.
“I’m here to see Mrs. Ada Carr,” she called out.
“Do you have an appointment?”
Shirley Smith from the United States Census Bureau probably would’ve had an appointment. Vivian wondered if she’d be turned away without one. She hadn’t thought of that. Of course Ada M. Carr was a busy woman, and would have to schedule appointments. A woman who wore her hair in a tight, tidy bun would also run a tight, tidy schedule, wouldn’t she? Vivian wondered if she should lie. Was there an appointment book he could check to see if she was lying? She was tiring from all her earlier lies that day and took a chance.
“No, I don’t.”
The young man heaved a sigh, then pushed himself away from the desk and strode over to the counter, still in his shirtsleeves, his suit jacket hanging on the back of the chair.
“Mrs. Carr is out sick,” he said brusquely, offering no apology.
Well, she’d probably made herself sick from all that stress of keeping schedules and whatnot, was what Vivian was thinking when the door behind her swung open and a large man entered. She turned to see he was holding his hat in his hand and seemed to be in a hurry.
“Please . . .” Vivian gestured for the man to go ahead of her, while she tried to think of what to do.
The young man behind the counter raised his eyebrows at Vivian and then shrugged, turning his attention to the large man holding the hat.
“How can I help you?”
The large man nodded at Vivian and stepped up, laying his hat on the counter.
“I need to register this deed for my property,” the large man said, pulling a crumpled envelope from his coat.
“Yes, sir,” the man behind the counter said. “Do you have an appointment?”
“Um . . .” The large man cleared his throat. “No.”
The younger man sighed again, and a smirk sneaked up around Vivian’s lips.
“Well, did you bring your identification?”
The large man began rummaging around his inside coat pockets and finally withdrew a black leather wallet.
Identification. Vivian’s smirk pulled into a frown as she looked down at the floor. She then very slowly turned on her heel and walked out the door to the office with her gloves in her hand, down the hallway, and out into the cold daylight. The fresh air would help her think, and the cigarette was something she should’ve had before she went in there. Her hands shook as she held the lighter up to the end of the cigarette balancing from the corner of her lips and she cursed under her breath. Goddammit.
She looked around for somewhere to sit. Why wasn’t there a stupid bench at this stupid place? She looked all around her at the stupid civic building, which was supposed to be there for the stupid citizens of the stupid place, wasn’t it? She leaned up against the beige bricks and tried to untangle the mess in her head. Mildred. Son. License. Jesus Christ almighty. Brucie. A black-and-white police car rolled by the building and her heartbeat sped up as she watched it pass. It took her seven minutes to smoke the Lucky Strike, and seven minutes to figure out a way around the identification problem.
She stomped the Lucky out under the toe of her nice new ankle boots, which did make her smile when she looked at them, and then walked back to her car, unlocked the door, and climbed into the driver’s seat. Vivian thought about the young man behind the counter, and her own job at Bell. She remembered those early days at the switchboard when she’d connect or disconnect callers based on her moods and whims, the day she’d stood and wiped out a dozen calls with one sweep of her arm.
She angled the rearview mirror down to see her face and then carefully applied her lipstick. After puckering her lips, and then blotting them with her handkerchief, she picked up the clipboard and flipped past the first blank page, and then the second page, where she had written the answers to her phony census survey. The third page was the letter she had received from the city clerk’s office. It stated the following:
We have Birth records on file from 1873 to the present. However, these records must be on file for seventy-five (75) years if you are not a relation.
Marriage records are on file from 1907 to the present. In order for marriage records to be searched, both husband and wife must be deceased and proof of death must be submitted along with the request.
It hadn’t been seventy-five years since the birth of Mildred Fischer Dalton Taggart’s son, and Vivian no longer had her driver’s license to use for identification, but there were exceptions to every rule. Vivian needed to get back in that office and see how exceptional the exception needed to be.
Vivian guessed that the extremely unexceptional twerp in the shirtsleeves behind the counter was in his late twenties. Obviously, his mother hadn’t raised him properly, or whoever had trained him here at the clerk’s office had done what Edward would call a “piss-poor job” and hadn’t taught him how to treat people. She supposed she shouldn’t have expected much from a local government that couldn’t even be bothered to put a bench outside their building. (If she hadn’t just had her cigarette she might’ve said “a goddamned bench outside their goddamned building.” Thank goodness she was feeling a little more relaxed.) Even Mayor Reed made it a point to add extra benches around Wooster’s Public Square, so people had somewhere to sit, for chrissakes.
She approached the counter once again. The large man with the hat (who had not had an appointment) had gone, and there was no one else in the office that she could see.
“Back again?” the man asked wearily from his desk.
“I am.” Vivian smiled, as she mentally turned her charm dial from one to ten. The eyelashes were fluttering, the finger was tracing coy little circles around on the countertop, and then she sneezed and one of her clip-on earrings dropped from her earlobe, bounced and clanked onto the counter and onto the floor. She’d been aiming for smooth and sly, like Rita Hayworth in The Lady from Shanghai, but the operation was probably looking more like Lucy and Ethel in anything.
“Ohh, no, Looooocy,” she muttered to herself in her Ricky Ricardo voice as she groaned and bent down to pick up the earring.
The file room was enormous, lit with horrible fluorescent light that cast a blinding white-greenish hue over everything. It smelled like paint, metal, and lemon floor cleaner. There was almost an echo as Vivian followed the young
man, whose name she now knew was Nicholas, through the doorway and into the center of the room as he pointed out which filing cabinets held which records.
“I’ll leave you to it,” he chirped with a grin and a wink.
Nicholas, as it turned out, was a truly devoted I Love Lucy fan.
Vivian winked back and then waited until he closed the door behind him before setting her pocketbook down on the long table farthest from the door.
The vital records were grouped by date in the filing cabinets, and then alphabetized by last name. Vivian pulled out one group at a time, and then spent fifteen to twenty minutes seated at the table, flipping through the files. Some of the records were on full 8.5″ x 11″ pages, some were on half sheets, and still others were transcribed onto index cards. It was a messy mass of information.
For the most part the records were in proper alphabetical order, as Mrs. Ada Carr probably demanded, but as Vivian sat at that long table shuffling through folder after folder she suspected Mrs. Carr may have been out sick for quite some time, and that the careless Nicholas had taken to doing his own special brand of filing. (In fact, she’d watched him hastily stuff the hat-holding man’s deed registration into a wooden tray marked “Marriage License Applications” before guiding her back to the records room.) Vivian had thought she was looking in the E–Fs, but as she shuffled through Ingraham, Jefferson, James, Ikehorn, she realized the records had been misfiled. She kept flipping the records in case an E–F might show up, because the tab on the outside did say “E–F,” and then she did see that one of those misfiled records had a name she recognized, and it wasn’t Mildred Fischer.
“Jesus Christ,” Vivian whispered aloud.
She held her index finger to the page under the names on the record, and thought if it’d been one of her movie magazines it would’ve said “Illicit!” and “Scandalous!” For the next five minutes she couldn’t look anywhere else other than at that misfiled record.
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