by Sofia Grant
Your loving sister,
Euda
* * *
June 2, 1937
Dear Caroline,
You and Hugh left four hours ago and I have been sitting in this chair almost the whole time while the laundry is still on the line and supper never got started. Paul took the children to visit with his mother but he will be back soon and I know he will want an answer from me. At first, after you left, he told me he would never allow it but I begged him to remember that you and Hugh are a mother and father who have lost their only dear child.
It is a very hard thing that you have asked of us. I wish you had told me all these years the suffering you had been through with all the babies that didn’t take. I had no idea. You have always had so many friends, but it should have been your sister who was by your side.
I keep thinking about what you have asked us to do. Paul says it would be impossible to keep people from finding out, but I think mostly he cannot conceive of a child of his not being raised by us. He says he could not bear even to look at it if we are not to keep it. I think when we almost lost Pammy, something changed in him, and he became fearful of things that might come to pass. But he says it is my decision and if I ask him to do this he will never tell another soul.
I did not want to say this in front of Hugh but we cannot accept money as he suggested. Hugh is a very kind man and I know he meant no insult but Paul went out to the shed after he left like he does when things are heavy on his mind. Please understand, the only way Paul and I could ever give you this child is out of love for you and Hugh and never for money.
I know that you have a plan which you explained in some detail but I confess I didn’t pay attention as well as I should have. I still don’t understand how you would convince your neighbors and friends that you are pregnant. For me it would be easier. No one will question if we say we lost this one, since we came so close last time.
I want to say I need more time to think about it but as I read what I have written, it seems I have already made up my mind. I expect I’ll feel more certain in the morning. It’s just a shock, that’s all.
Do you remember when we used to talk late into the night? You always said I was all elbows and knees, but I remember all the times you fell asleep first. I used to like to hold the hem of your nightgown in my hand. You didn’t know it, but I always held on until I fell asleep too, and sometimes I woke up still holding on.
Please tell Hugh that Paul didn’t mean anything when he didn’t come back to say goodbye.
Your loving sister,
Euda
* * *
October 2, 1937
Dear Caroline,
I am enclosing the children’s thank-you notes. I helped Amy and Pammy write their names, otherwise you’d never know what their chicken scratches mean! Lassiter hasn’t wanted to part with his slingshot for a moment. Yesterday his teacher threatened to take it away from him and so today he left it at home, but I know when he gets back from school he’ll be at it again with the acorns. And the dolls that you sent for the girls are beautiful, but I fear they are much too fine for children that age. I let the girls play with them for a little bit each day but mostly they are up on a shelf where they will stay nice.
I know it is hard for you to travel right now but you really shouldn’t send gifts, especially because Lassiter was asking me whose birthday is it? Also it must be very hard to keep up this ruse day after day. You did make me laugh with your description of your maid finding the pillow in the bedclothes and having to hide in the dressing room until she went away so you could tie it back on. It seems like an eternity since we used to play those silly pranks on Mam but how amazed she would be to know what we have got ourselves up to this time.
Caroline, do you ever wonder if we are doing the right thing? I wonder if you ever wish we hadn’t made this decision. If you do, please tell me, because I have a feeling this one isn’t going to wait like the others did. And after it comes it will be too late.
You were kind to inquire after my health. I’m big as I always get, but this one is carrying low. She likes to tap-dance in the afternoons, and I’m up every other minute to visit the toilet! The doctor says I should be eating more, but by the time I’m done seeing to the children’s supper I hardly have an appetite.
Your loving sister,
Euda
* * *
December 26, 1937
Dear Caroline,
I’m sorry I never sent the Christmas letter I promised. It has been a whirlwind here, Lassiter was hopping up and down all week waiting for Saint Nick to visit and the girls were cross because he kept teasing them that they were only getting lumps of coal. Paul’s mother still hasn’t recovered from that fall she took and the doctor is worried about her lungs. She stayed with us for Christmas but of course she can’t help with anything and also she needs someone to go with her to the bathroom, so I didn’t get the roast out of the oven until almost six o’clock.
I’m sorry to keep complaining, I must sound terribly ungrateful. Everyone enjoyed the package that you sent. Lassiter says he could eat oranges at every meal for the rest of his life and not get tired of them. The girls love the nutcracker and they fight over who gets to pull the crank and none of the rest of us ever have to shell any because they’re like a couple of little squirrels.
You asked if the doctor had changed his mind about when the baby is coming but he still says middle of January. I asked him twice.
Your loving sister,
Euda
CERTIFICATE OF LIVE BIRTH
* * *
PLACE OF BIRTH—STATE OF TEXAS—COUNTY OF HARRISON
Full Name of Child—MARGARET ANNE PIERSON
Father Full Name—HUGH TRACE PIERSON
Residence at Time of This Birth—NEW LONDON TEXAS
Race/Color—WHITE
Age at Time of This Birth—43
Mother Maiden Name—CAROLINE FAY WILLEMS
Residence at Time of This Birth—NEW LONDON TEXAS
Race/Color—WHITE
Age at Time of This Birth—30
NUMBER OF CHILDREN BORN TO THIS MOTHER INCLUDING THIS BIRTH—2
NUMBER OF CHILDREN BORN TO THIS MOTHER AND NOW LIVING—1
ATTENDANT’S SIGNATURE—
This is to certify that this is a true and correct copy of the official record which is in my custody. —M. A. Selmond, December 28, 1937
Chapter Thirty
March 1998
Margaret flicked the dust rag at the crevice of the window frame, wishing she’d been able to find that clever little attachment that had come with the vacuum cleaner, the one that could be used in tight spots. But lately she was forgetting the oddest things. Nothing to worry about, according to Dr. Pancioni—he did her the favor of including himself in their conversations: “at our age,” he’d say, though Margaret knew for a fact that he was almost ten years younger than her sixty years.
He’d prescribed her verapamil at her last visit and Margaret had been dutifully taking it, though it interfered with her digestion and she wished she’d thought to skip a few doses so that she could manage to get down more than a few bites of lunch. She’d planned to make Georgina’s favorite, a dish called Thrifty Tetrazzini that she’d discovered long ago in Family Circle and copied onto a recipe card that was now so worn that it was almost impossible to read her handwriting, which didn’t matter because she knew it by heart. (Maybe she should tell Dr. Pancioni that the next time she saw him.)
But yesterday in the supermarket, as she held a can of pimentos in her hand, she was beset with worry. What eleven-year-old child eats pimentos nowadays? The kids she saw around town were always snacking on chips and pizza. The more processed the better, which had given her an idea—cruising the prepared foods, she discovered a packet of seasonings for sloppy joes and added it to her cart. Ground beef, soft white buns, iceberg lettuce for a salad none of them would eat, a box of baker’s chocolate with the foolproof brownie recipe on the back.
> Now, at eleven forty-five on the appointed Saturday morning, the brownies were cooling on the counter, the sloppy joe mixture was slowly congealing in its greasy orange sauce on the stove, and the salad—she’d added a chopped tomato and slices of cucumber—was in a bowl in the fridge with plastic wrap on top.
The table was set with a cloth that Margaret was very much hoping Georgina would recognize, because it was the olive branch in the tableau she’d spent all week preparing. At seventeen, Georgina had brought it home from one of her mysterious haunts, claiming it had been imported from India. And indeed, its pattern of jewel-tone paisley swirls was plenty exotic. Margaret suspected its provenance was considerably more ordinary, based on the “easy-care” tag she’d found sewn into the seam when she threw it into the wash, but what mattered was that years ago Margaret had thrown it out because she had found a nest of spiders in its skunky folds, and Georgina had retrieved it from the trash and stuffed it into a drawer, where it had languished all these years.
Margaret had experimented with several different table settings, using Caroline’s several sets of china, but in the end settled for her trusty “Spice of Life” Corelle, which didn’t fight with the tablecloth. She added sunny yellow napkins she’d bought at the Walmart in Harrison and a bouquet of flowers from the garden.
In recent years Margaret had become considerably more relaxed about housekeeping. Why it had seemed so important to keep the unused bedrooms dusted, she could no longer even remember. For several years running, she’d made a halfhearted effort to clear out the clutter for the Ladies Auxiliary tag sale, but then she’d had a falling-out with the president and quit going to club meetings. She’d considered calling an appraiser to look at some of her mother’s things, which she suspected might be valuable, but every time she picked up a crystal stem or opened one of the drawers in Caroline’s old silver chest, she was overcome with emotions that she didn’t care to sort through: it was easier to leave all of it undisturbed.
This idea of hers, to invite the grandchild she’d never met to lunch, had actually sprung from a chance afternoon when she’d been searching for her mother’s scrapbook. The New London History Guild was mounting a retrospective on the disaster, and they’d put out a call for memorabilia to fill the display cases in the public library. Some of the members of the Society remembered Caroline’s scrapbook, which her mother had kept with obsessive care. Many other families had done the same, but the Piersons’ wealth and connections had allowed her to amass and preserve a bigger trove than most.
Margaret continued to receive far more communication than she would have preferred from the New London History Guild: not just the photocopied and stapled quarterly newsletter, but regular announcements of events and the occasional invitation to speak or participate in school lessons. She turned them all down, suggesting, without coming out and saying it, that her mother’s passing had made the past too painful for her. The members of the Guild—the former Daisy Club had renamed itself ages ago, now mostly a group of descendants and busybodies and people with nothing better to do—claimed to have adored her mother, which Margaret also found suspect.
The decade since Caroline’s death had passed at a pace that seemed both eternal and lightning quick, depending on the day and Margaret’s mood, but one thing that had remained constant was her unease with her association with the disaster that had taken place before she was even born. The other ten Daisy children seemed to feel the same way; a majority had moved away, and the few who remained seemed no more interested in the past than she did.
Ever since her mother’s deathbed confession and plea, Margaret had preferred not to think about it at all. Because, of course, it wasn’t as simple as her mother believed: How could she atone for a wrong of such magnitude, committed so long ago? And why should she have to? Especially because she was as much a victim, in her own way, as the rest of them.
It didn’t help that Pammy McGovney now sent her a Christmas card every year, chatty photocopied missives full of misspellings and news about her two children, relentlessly optimistic despite all the trouble they seemed headed for. The older one had given up after a year at community college and was working at the cannery; the younger, the girl, had had a baby out of wedlock before she was even out of high school. Margaret threw these letters away as soon as she read them.
If there was one thing that life had taught Margaret not to do, it was to wallow in the past, wasting time and energy on things that had happened an eternity ago.
That was why she had been searching for the scrapbook, planning to donate it and then never look at it again. Instead she’d stumbled on the photograph, the one her father had been holding the day she’d found him crying in the garage. She’d never seen it after that day and assumed it was lost—but there it was in the attic, wrapped in tissue and tucked into a silver-plated tureen.
Ruby Pierson, 11 years. The passage of time had faded the photograph, but the lively spark in the little girl’s eyes was unmistakable, the slight gap between her teeth adorable as ever. Margaret had touched the photograph with her fingertip and thought: my sister. It was the first time she’d ever allowed herself the thought.
The photograph had ignited a curiosity—well, it was more than that; a longing—to see the granddaughter who was now the same age as her sister had been when she died. There was a sense of everything coming full circle. Margaret was reasonably healthy and didn’t anticipate her demise anytime soon, but seeing the lines in her face in the mirror, feeling the aches in her knees and wrists in the morning—well, it had added a sort of urgency to the notion of reconnecting with her child and grandchild. She didn’t let herself think about it too hard—she dashed off a succinct note and when the reply came (a piece of typing paper with her daughter’s handwritten response as stiff as her own: Dear Mother, Thank you for the invitation, Katie and I will see you at noon on the 22nd—no Love, just Georgina) she was surprised.
There was a knock at the door. Panicked, Margaret looked at the clock. Still ten minutes before noon! But that was Georgina for you, always on her own schedule. Margaret stuffed the rag under a seat cushion and wiped her hands on her skirt as she went to the door, whispering, “Okay, okay.”
She opened the door and there was her daughter, her hair dyed streaky blond and cut like that TV star, wearing white pants and a slinky emerald-green blouse and a guarded expression but otherwise utterly unchanged. Her hands were on the shoulders of a little girl so innocently beautiful that Margaret gasped, and Georgina gave her a little shove and she held out her hand and politely said, “It’s very nice to meet you, I’m Katie.”
THE LUNCH WAS eaten (though not much of it, as it appeared Margaret had guessed wrong about the appetites of her guests) and the coffee perking when Georgina touched her daughter’s hand and said, “Katie, why don’t you go see Grandma’s garden and let us visit for a few minutes.”
“Oh, the garden’s not—I haven’t—all right,” Margaret stuttered, catching her daughter’s frown. She hadn’t done a thing back there in years—the only efforts she made were in the front yard, where passersby still stopped to sniff the hedge roses.
“I’m sure it’s fine,” Georgina said. “Now, scoot.”
Katie, who’d been perfectly polite all through lunch but obviously bored and only pretending to be interested in Margaret’s attempts at conversation, made her escape gratefully, letting the screen door slam just like her mother always had.
“Okay, I’m going to make this fast,” Georgina said. Now she sounded nervous, like she’d practiced for this moment. Her hands twisted tightly in her lap, and Margaret noticed for the first time the nest of fine lines at the corners of her eyes, the ones all that makeup didn’t quite conceal. “I came today because I thought Katie had a right to at least meet you. But I’m not interested in a relationship, Mother. The emotional damage you caused me is too great and I need to look forward instead of backward and honor my own journey.”
Margaret blinked. “I beg your pard
on?”
But Georgina was shaking her head. “I’m sure you never thought I’d survive a day after you threw me out.”
“I didn’t—”
“Stop!” Georgina slammed her hand down on the table. “I’m talking. I’m entitled to be heard. I came to you, about to have a baby, hungry and having just escaped an abusive relationship, not that you were interested in my problems, and you wouldn’t give me a dime.”
“What? You never said one thing about being abused. You sat right there in that chair throwing it in my face about all the men you’d been having sex with.”
“That was a cry for help! God! This was stupid.” Georgina got up with a clatter, her face flushed with anger. “My therapist warned me not to come. I should have listened to her. But I won’t let the damage you did to me in my childhood affect my daughter.”
She went to the back door and called for Katie, who came running with dirty knees and twigs in her hair. “There you are,” she said brightly, ignoring Margaret, who was gasping like a gutted fish. Damage? Abuse?
“Wait,” she stammered. “I have— I wanted to give— Katie, dear, I have a present for you.”
Katie looked to her mother pleadingly and Georgina hesitated, then let out an aggrieved sigh. “All right. But make it quick. We’re already running late.”
Margaret led the way numbly into the living room, her hopes for the afternoon splintering. She had planned to make a presentation of sorts, had practiced the words she would say. Your great-great-grandmother Griseldis Willems brought only one treasure from the old country, she would begin, and then explain how Griseldis had scrimped and saved to add a second delicate porcelain teacup to the collection before passing it on to her own daughter; how Hugh had taken to giving Caroline cups to mark their wedding anniversaries, until there were nine cups hanging from the polished walnut rack he’d had made for her. Margaret had planned to offer Katie the newest of them today, reasoning that if it broke it wouldn’t be the end of the world, and then each year on Katie’s birthday she’d receive another until, on her twentieth birthday, Margaret would present her with the most precious, the original delicate blue and white Mosa Maastricht all the way from Holland.