The Lost Girls

by Heather Young

He was so charming, Mother said, her eyes swimming with an apology she didn’t know she was making. Of course he was. He was educated and intellectual, and to a smart girl who never got to go to college, listening to him talk about Kant and Hegel and the power of free will had to have been thrilling. He was older, too, and had the aristocratic superiority of his well-to-do family. I can see it. I did see it, every day of my life until the summer of 1935.

  A picture of them on their wedding day sat on the fireplace mantel at our house in town. I don’t know where it is now; probably in the basement, where many of the things from that house went once the bank claimed it. In it they’re standing side by side, their faces unsmiling in the manner of the time. He is as compelling in the photo as he was in life, his eyes mesmerizing, his cheekbones sharp and argumentative. She is small, her head just reaching his shoulder. Her arms are thin beneath the silk of her gown, and she clutches her bouquet so tightly that the tendons are visible on the back of her hand. Her eyes are full of surprise and gratitude. She thought, then, that she had been saved.

  Saved. What a word that is! So full of power, yet so passive. It speaks of a force greater than we, of an agency that is strong enough to redirect the flow of our lives when we cannot. God, the love of a man or a woman, the birth of a child, the simple act of growing up—these are all things we think can save us. Father, Mother, Lilith, and even Maurie believed they could be saved by these things, at one time or another. I had no such delusions, but it didn’t matter; in the end I’m no more saved than they. As I sit in this dark house, listening to its exhalations that have worn the walls as smooth as vellum, it occurs to me that the whole tragic history of our family comes down to this: none of us knew how to save ourselves.

  I’ve often wondered what Lilith thought of Mother’s story. Because she, too, lost a sweetheart to war. Charlie proposed in early 1942, during a weekend leave between training and deployment, with that enormous diamond ring that had been his grandmother’s. He was a serious young man then, and he’d become handsome in that big-featured Lloyd way. It wasn’t the life Lilith had dreamed of on those summer nights at the bridge, but it would have been a good life all the same. He’d been accepted to the state medical college once his service was done, and someday they’d live in the Lloyds’ fine house and she would be the doctor’s wife instead of the pharmacist’s daughter. And, of course, he’d loved her since they were children. Even through her wild days, when everyone tutted and said she wouldn’t have become so wayward if her father had lived. That was worth something, right there.

  The telegram came just six weeks after he’d gone. Lilith sat with it on the porch for hours while Mother and I pretended to go about our business so she wouldn’t see us watching. Then, when I was preparing our supper, she came and set it on the table. She looked at me with that level gaze of hers, and her eyes were dry. I stood with my hands covered in flour, my faded plaid apron hanging from my shoulders. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I suppose, by then, nothing I could have said would have made any difference.

  A month later she told us she was pregnant with his child, conceived during that one, brief visit.

  The Lloyds were awful about it, of course. Agnes had been against the marriage from the start; she had higher hopes for her son than a small town beauty with a sullied reputation. She even demanded the ring back, saying she never gave Charlie permission to take it. Lilith said no. Then, after Agnes stood on the sidewalk outside Lloyds’ Pharmacy and told her Maurie wasn’t Charlie’s child—no Lloyd was ever so dark, she claimed, and we knew what she meant—Lilith never spoke to anyone in that family again.

  Years later, when Maurie learned her father was the son of the richest family in town, she was furious at Lilith. If only Lilith had given the ring back, she said, Agnes would have acknowledged her grandchild and Maurie wouldn’t have been stuck out here living on my library wages and Lilith’s hostessing paycheck. I knew Agnes would never have acknowledged Maurie under any circumstances, but Maurie didn’t see it that way. To her, Lilith had thrown away her birthright out of selfish pride. But Lilith was right to keep that ring. While she didn’t love Charlie, she appreciated his devotion, and, as I said, they would have had a fine life. I don’t blame her for holding on to the one talisman she had of the one dream she dreamed that could have come true.

  Besides, Maurie wouldn’t have been happy even if she’d gotten the Lloyd name and money. She craved change too much, and the thrill of choosing. As soon as she could walk, she’d disappear the instant we looked away, into the woods or around the shore, reappearing covered in dirt like a wild creature. Lilith named her for Maureen O’Hara, the young ingenue—just two years older than she—who’d starred in the film How Green Was My Valley the year before, and the name was apt, for Maurie loved drama. She reinvented herself constantly, changing her hair, her clothes, and her way of talking. She was incapable of conforming. Or belonging.

  Still, she brought such life to this place while she was here. I used to take her with me to the library, and at my lunch break we’d go for fountain sodas at Father’s old pharmacy. I knew what people thought of us by then, three women living in the woods with an unsolved mystery and a bastard child, but Maurie was irresistible. Iain McNeil at the counter gave her extra syrup. At the library, Jeannette Lewis let her stamp the return dates on the checkout cards. When I read my stories in the children’s circle, she sat on my lap like a queen, turning the pages while her schoolmates watched.

  We were happy, I think now. It’s a thought that surprises me. But when Maurie was young, we thought less about what we’d lost, and more about what we had in front of us. Less about the things we’d done, and more about what amends could be made. Lilith and I even began to look at Mother differently, as a grandmother instead of a mother, and there seemed the possibility of forgiveness.

  But as soon as Maurie stormed out of here, her sails filled with rebellion and pride, we became mother and daughters once more. Into the space Maurie left crept memories of that other child, memories that had lurked patiently in the corners, waiting for an absence large enough to fill. Mother sat in her chair while the television muttered. Lilith’s travel and celebrity magazines piled up on the coffee table. I lay awake as I hadn’t in years, thinking of things long past. We became again what we’d been at the start: three women living with their sins and their ghosts, keeping an unspoken vigil, growing old.

  One day I looked at Mother and knew she was dying. It was autumn, an ordinary day, and she was stringing beans into a bowl, and in the stuttering movement of her hands I knew it. For a time she spent her days in the parlor watching television as usual, the only evidence of her decline the afternoon naps that became longer and longer. Then came the morning she couldn’t get out of bed, so we moved the television to her room, and propped her on pillows. When she could no longer feed herself, we held the spoon to her mouth. We carried her to the tub and washed her papery skin while she crossed her arms over her chest as though keeping a secret. Once a week we set her hair, a limp memory of the curls she’d wrested into a snood for all those years. Toward the end we diapered her, changing her often so she wouldn’t get sores. We sat by her bed with our books and magazines, letting the endless tremor of her voice wash over us.

  We were good daughters. We were dutiful.

  At the very end she talked only of Emily. It was all I could do to sit out my assigned hours by her bedside, listening to her voice tremble on about how she’d loved her. I was going to keep her safe, she told me, her eyes imploring my understanding, my forgiveness. She was going to be the one I saved. I wouldn’t look at her in those moments. I looked at my book, the words a blur, and tried to keep my hands from shaking.

  She died at night. Lilith was keeping watch, and she came to wake me when she heard Mother’s breathing change. I sat on one side of the bed and she the other. We didn’t turn on the light, but the moon was bright; we could see her and we could see each other. We didn’t speak. We watched her, and we waite
d. Mother’s mouth was open and her lips were cracked from the air that seeped in and out. Her hands twitched on the sheet, unable even at the end to be still. At last the sky to the east began to grow pink and the stars to fade, and it was time.

  I expected her to back out of her life without waking, just as she’d lived it. I thought this would be fine with me. But she opened her eyes, and I was overcome by a sudden, wretched need for her to see me. For mine to be the last face she saw on this earth. I leaned over her, looking into her eyes that were as pale as smoke and as dry as ash, but she didn’t see me. She looked beyond me, over my shoulder. She raised her arms. They shook with the effort it took to hold them up, but I could see them curving, the palms softening, as though cupping a face. I felt the air change, as if a veil had shifted just beyond my sight, parted by those seeking hands. Emily’s name was a whisper on her breath.

  I sat back. My chest was tight, and I swallowed hard to loosen it. Lilith watched me. Her cheeks were wet with tears she had shed without a sound. Then she seized Mother’s hands and pulled them down to the bed. She held them there as they fluttered like moths, trying to break free. She held them as the lake took on the color and sheen of mercury in the gathering light. She held them as Mother’s eyes pleaded and then were still. She held them until Mother was dead.

  Justine

  The next morning Maurie came with Justine to drive the girls to school, saying she wanted to see what the town looked like these days, so after they dropped the girls off, Justine drove around the square. It was overcast, and in the milky light the buildings looked even more timeworn than usual. The few passersby walked with their shoulders hunched into the wind, past mounds of graying snow that clogged the street corners. Maurie looked out the window through huge black sunglasses, her face expressionless.

  Justine pulled the Tercel into a spot in front of Ray’s. She felt an oddly proprietary desire to show her mother the diner and its inhabitants. She’d felt the same way about Dr. Fishbaum’s office when Maurie visited her in San Diego. She’d invited her mother to come with her to work one day, and Maurie spent the morning chatting with the old and befuddled patients in the waiting room. They seemed younger with her there. Dr. Fishbaum and Phoebe liked her, too. Justine had been proud of her, and proud of the office—it was her office, her job, her coworkers. Her place.

  Now, though, Maurie kept her sunglasses on as they slid into Justine’s usual booth. Not until she’d established that she didn’t know anyone did she take them off. Justine cataloged the now-familiar faces—Maisy and Mike and Roberta, Lorna and Steve from the general store—and felt a rush of affection for them even though she’d never exchanged a word with any of them. She was about to tell her mother how she came here every morning and how great the coffee was when Ray came out of the kitchen.

  “Maurie. What a surprise.”

  Maurie gave Ray her most brilliant smile. “Ray Spiver. I thought you got out of this place years ago.”

  Justine looked from Ray to her mother. It had never occurred to her that they were the same age. Maurie seemed so much younger.

  Ray shrugged. “I came back.”

  “And whatever happened to—what was his name? Jimmy?”

  “Vietnam.”

  “Oh, what a shame,” Maurie said, with what seemed like sincere sympathy.

  “What can I get for you?” Ray’s manner was friendly, but Justine knew her well enough by now to sense the distance. It made her think about what her mother had said the night before, about this town and her reputation in it.

  “Just coffee,” Maurie said, again with that wide smile. As soon as Ray left she leaned across the table and hissed to Justine, “God, I hated that bitch.”

  “What?” Justine shot a glance at Ray, who thankfully had her back to them. “Why?”

  “She always looked down that fat nose of hers at me, even though she was nothing but trailer trash from Mahnomet. When she got that scholarship, you’d have thought she’d been crowned queen of England. Now look at her. Right back where she started.” Maurie’s face contorted with malicious satisfaction, but when Ray brought her coffee she smiled at her as if she hadn’t just called her an ugly bitch, and asked after a few old classmates. Ray, unsurprisingly, knew the latest on all of them. When Ray asked what she’d been up to all these years, Maurie waved a hand. “Seeing the world,” she said, and Ray nodded, as though she knew exactly what that meant.

  Justine drank her coffee quickly, anxious to get out of the diner. She’d brought Maurie here to show her a place she considered hers, but as soon as Ray recognized her it had become Maurie’s instead. This whole town, Justine reminded herself, belonged to Maurie far more than it would ever belong to her. So did Lucy’s house, no matter what Lucy’s will said. That was yet another reason to leave.

  When they got back to the lake, Maurie launched into the living room with a fury, and it was soon apparent her mission was broader than just a missing ring. By the time Justine cleaned the breakfast dishes, the Hummel figurines from the curio cabinet lay stacked in one paper bag, and the knickknacks that had littered the living room tables were piled in another. A third bag was crammed with papers from the rolltop desk. This was fine, Justine told herself. She needed to sort through the house anyway, and she could use the help. Still, watching Maurie cram unused stationery and broken reading glasses into the trash bag made her queasy. It was a little like watching a grave robber.

  So she went upstairs. She started in Lucy’s room, where she spent the morning packing her great-aunt’s clothes for donation. Lucy seemed never to have gotten rid of anything, including her own mother’s prim dresses, which still smelled of flowery perfume. Justine assumed there’d be nothing here worth keeping, but way in the back of the bedside table drawer, behind a Kleenex box and two bottles of Sominex, she found something odd. Carefully wrapped in a small silk handkerchief was a crude wooden pendant the size of a quail egg on a leather string. In its heart was carved the letter L. The wood was stained and worn smooth, as though it had been held often in someone’s hand. A dear possession, obviously. Was it Lucy’s? Or Lilith’s? Maybe Maurie would know, though Justine doubted it. She set the pendant on the bedside table beside the photos of herself and her mother and of Lucy and Lilith.

  Downstairs she heard metal hangers being tossed in a pile—Maurie must be plowing through the hall closet—so she went to the lavender bedroom. A quick survey of the dresser confirmed that Maurie, the consummate vagabond, had already moved in. The rest of the room was empty, except for a large, dust-covered trunk in the closet. Justine pushed open the heavy lid. The acrid smell of mothballs made her eyes water.

  The trunk was filled with a child’s clothing: dresses and skirts and blouses with round collars and pearl buttons, all in soft pastels; a little girl’s underwear and socks, a pair of white sandals, and black patent leather party shoes. Everything but the shoes was neatly folded in white paper.

  They must be Emily’s. All the things her mother had brought to the lake for her daughter that last summer, she had kept. Of course she had. She’d hoped Emily would come back and wear them again, and as the years passed she hadn’t been able to give them away. So she’d kept them here, in the room Maurie had borrowed. Justine remembered how the old woman had tottered to the chair when her surviving daughters lit the candles beneath the painting. At nine, Justine had been too frightened of her to pity her. Now the thought of her folding these clothes with such care brought an ache to her throat.

  Gently she placed the clothes in paper bags. They were too small for her daughters, but she couldn’t leave them for the house’s next owner to throw away or give to Goodwill, to be sold for fifty cents or a dollar. There must be a vintage clothing shop in Bemidji that would take them and sell them to someone who would value them.

  At the bottom of the trunk, she found a Buster Brown shoe box. Inside was a child’s blue slipper, trimmed in satin. Its sole was caked with long-dried dirt. Justine picked it up with her thumb and index finger.
That Emily’s mother had kept even this solitary, dirty slipper was somehow more heartbreaking than everything else put together.

  “I see you found the Emily shrine.”

  Maurie stood in the doorway. Startled, Justine nearly dropped the slipper. “It’s awful, what happened to them.”

  “I know. That damned Emily messed everything up for everybody. Though you’d never know it to listen to them. Growing up, it was like having a sister that everybody loves better than you, except she’s dead, so you can’t say anything bad about her and she’ll never grow up and crash the car.” Maurie laughed. “You’re lucky you’re an only child. You didn’t have to share me with anyone.” Before Justine could think how to respond to this, Maurie held up a pair of ancient white ice skates. “Look what I found!”

  They were hers, she said, a present from Abe Miller. He’d seen how bored she was during the long winters, so he used his plow to clear a patch of ice on the lake. She skated there every fair day, and every time it snowed he plowed the lake again. She got pretty good; she could skate backward and do spins on one foot, even. Abe watched from his upstairs window while she did shows for him like in the Ice Capades. As she talked Maurie held the skates to her chest, and Justine could picture her as a young girl skating in circles, her arms out for balance and her breath in white clouds.

  When Justine brought Angela and Melanie home from school, Maurie presented them with the skates as though they were Hans Christian Andersen’s silver prize. “Who wants to learn to skate?”

  Angela threw off her boots, but Melanie looked around with horror at the brown paper bags that were everywhere now, filled with Art Deco letter openers, midcentury ashtrays, and Victorian vases.

  “We’re going through Lucy’s stuff,” Justine said. “We have to do it before we leave.”

  Melanie walked to the closest brown bag. She picked up a candlestick, one of the two that had sat on the table beneath the portrait of Emily. She looked at Justine and tightened her lips. For once Justine knew what her daughter was thinking. “Before we go we’ll see if there’s anything we want to keep,” she told her.