by Webb, Wendy
Every so often, though, he would have moments of lucidity. His eyes would become clear and bright as he rose to the surface, animating the lifeless features with his familiar spark. He would know me again. He would smile and say, “Come to see your old dad, eh?” And we’d be able have a conversation, albeit a brief one. Soon enough, I’d lose him as he descended back into the depths of his being. The doctors told me that was typical of Alzheimer’s patients.
“I’ve come to ask about Mom.”
“Your mother?” He frowned at me, confused.
I knew I didn’t have much time, so I dove right in. “Did you take me away from her on purpose, Dad?” I couldn’t believe I had even said the words. They sounded so idiotic, so untrue.
He leaned in and put a finger to his lips. “I saw your mother yesterday,” he admitted, his eyes darting back and forth, making sure nobody was listening. “I looked out of my bedroom window and there she was, walking in the courtyard.”
I was silent for a moment. “You saw Mom?”
He slowly nodded his head. “She was wearing that long purple dress she used to like so much.” A smile, then. “I think she’s come for me this time, Hallie.”
His earnestness gave me a chill. “Dad.” I held his hand. “I got a letter today from somebody claiming to be Mom.”
“Madlyn wrote to you?”
I took a sharp breath. He said Madlyn, not Annie. “Did you do it?” I managed to ask. “Why, Dad? Why did you take me away from her?”
He smiled, his eyes brimming with tears as he stroked my cheek. “I had to save my little girl.”
“Save me from what?”
The tears spilled onto his face. “From that place, Hallie. It would have destroyed you.”
And that was it. My window of time was gone, at least for that day. He turned back to the birds. I held my hand to his cheek, as if I were trying to transfuse all the love I felt for him into his veins.
“And I thought he was having such a good morning.” It was his nurse, there with his lunch tray.
“He was, Janine. It’s just. . . .” My words trailed off intoa long sigh. I looked up at her in silence.
“I know, honey, I know. It never gets any easier. For us or for them.”
I hugged my father tight as I got up to leave. “I love you, Dad,” I said, hoping, wherever he was within that shell of a body, he heard me.
The next morning I got the call.
“Did he say anything?” I choked, the emotion shredding my voice to a rasp. “Did he ask for me?”
“I’ve seen a lot of death in my years here, honey,” Janine told me softly. “They almost never have any last words. Dying is too hard.”
· 3
Before I lost my father, I never understood all the rituals surrounding funerals: the wake, the service itself, the reception afterward, the dinners prepared by well-meaning friends and delivered in plastic containers, even the popular habit of making poster boards filled with photos of the dear departed. But now I know why we do those things. It’s busywork, all of it. I had so much to take care of, so many arrangements to make, so many people to inform, I didn’t have a moment to be engulfed by the ocean of grief that was lapping at my heels. Instead, I waded through the shallows, performing task after task, grateful to have duties to propel me forward.
Three hundred people, maybe more, crammed into our small church for my dad’s funeral. His colleagues and former students came, as did my friends and their spouses and parents. Old pals I hadn’t seen since high school—the entire flute section of the band I marched with in tenth grade—my colleagues at the newspaper, town restaurant owners, and shopkeepers and fishermen. Most of the stores on the main street closed for the afternoon with signs on their doors: gone to the james funeral. No matter what else he had done, my dad was beloved in this town; all these people standing with me in my grief were proof of that. Simply by being there, they were telling me what a good man my father had been, and I desperately needed to hear it, in light of what I now knew.
Midway through the service, the minister nodded in my direction. It was time. I stood up and made my way to the front of the church to deliver my father’s eulogy, my steps achingly slow, as if I were treading through quicksand. It took an eternity for me to reach the lectern, but, finally there, I took a deep breath and looked out onto the sea of stricken faces, friends, neighbors, and colleagues, many dabbing at their eyes or blowing their noses.
I could see their emotion hanging in the air. Grief covered the room like a black shroud, but I also saw relief, wispy and white, swirling around friends whose parents were still vibrant and living; it was not yet their turn to bury the most important person in their lives. Fear radiated from some of the mourners, a hazy almost colorless thread that wrapped around their throats, pulled their gazes to the ground, and twined around their hands. But it was the intense sadness that moved me the most, a blue mist that fell throughout this congregation like gentle Seattle rain, pooling on heads and laps and pews and trickling through the aisles. Somehow, I saw all this as I stood before them—I had a long history of seeing peculiar sights that nobody else seemed to notice—and I felt comforted.
I cleared my throat as I fumbled with the sheets of paper in front of me, but when I looked down to begin reading the eulogy I had written, I saw that my sadness had slipped onto the words, transforming them into vibrating, watery symbols with no real meaning. I had no choice but to speak from the heart.
“My father was a wonderful man,” I began, my voice sounding strange and foreign to my own ears. Was it really me speaking? Was my father really the one being eulogized? How can this be happening?
“I never knew my mother, so my dad was all I had. While most of us would probably agree that it’s difficult enough to bring up children with two parents in the household, my dad did a spectacular job of being both mother and father to me. It was his life’s mission. He made sure I never missed out on anything because I didn’t have a mom—he even took me to the mother-daughter picnics at school, which amused my teachers no end.”
A slight chuckle rumbled through the congregation.
“He took me whale watching even though he hated the water; he went shopping with me for my prom dress. And he made hot chocolate on damp winter nights, when we’d sit up talking about everything from the beauty of the universe to small-town politics to the latest dramas in my life, whatever they happened to be. He was always there with his mathematician’s mind, making sense of the nonsensical, calmly explaining that there had to be a reason for even the most absurd event. In these ways and countless others, my dad protected me from the harshness of the world, as he also tried to do with many of the students he mentored. I felt safe when I was with him; I knew he could ward off any impending storm.”
More nods and smiles from the crowd.
“And now he’s gone ahead to prepare the way, for me and for everyone in this room. When it’s our time to go, he’ll be there to greet us with hot chocolate, helping us make sense out of the unfathomable reality of death and what comes next.”
I looked out across the room, and although it was probably the tears welling up in my eyes and clouding my vision, I could’ve sworn I saw my dad standing in the back of the church, smiling. Good job, Peanut, I heard him say softly, in my ear. Thanks for the kind words. I love you, too.
After the service and the reception were over, after my friends had put the last plate in the dishwasher and turned it on, packed the remainder of the food into the freezer, and left, I heard a knock at the door. I didn’t have to open it to know who was standing on the other side.
He was just as I had last seen him, black overcoat, slightly rumpled hair, electric blue eyes. He smelled of salt air and memories, pain and forgiveness. We didn’t say anything for a moment, and then I flew into his arms.
“God, I’m so sorry, Hallie,” my ex-husband whispered into my hair. “I know how much you loved him. I loved him, too.”
Finally the tears came. I burs
t into sobs, there in Richard Blake’s arms, crying for my father and for a little girl who had lost the only parent she had ever known—and the one she hadn’t known—in the space of a few days. The crushing sadness I felt at the passing of my dad mixed with confusion and rage. I had been grieving for my mother my whole life, and she apparently was there all the time, while she spent a lifetime mourning the loss of a child who was very much alive. All because of the man whose death now left a gaping hole inside me.
Richard led me to the living-room sofa, my body shaking with the force of the grief running through it. I don’t know how long I lay there, my head in his lap, as he stroked my hair. When I finally dried my eyes, he got up and opened a bottle of wine for both of us. “I think you could use this.” He smiled sadly, handing me a glass, the rhythm of his accent reminding me of our years together in London. It seemed like a lifetime ago.
A mouthful of cold, oaky chardonnay slipped down my throat. “You came all this way. I can’t believe it.”
“Of course I came,” he said softly. “Where else would I be?”
I could think of a thousand places, none of which was at my side. “You might have just sent a card.” I took his hand.
He squeezed back. “What other chance would I have to travel halfway around the world from one depressingly rainy city to another?”
I suddenly ached for the lack of his wicked sense of humor in my life. I was grieving every loss now, it seemed. “Did Ethan come with you?” I asked, referring to Richard’s new husband. The man who was once the love of my life had sealed a union with the love of his as soon as they were able to do so in London. I hadn’t gone to the ceremony—I was invited—but I did send a place setting of their china. What else was I to do? The battle had been lost long ago, when I realized it was never really mine to win.
He nodded. “He’s got friends in Seattle and is staying with them. I rented an utterly dreadful car and drove up here alone. I thought you’d rather . . .” He didn’t finish this thought. He was right; I was grateful he hadn’t brought Ethan, but I didn’t want to get into that conversation just now.
I grinned at him instead. “You drove? In America?”
“Apart from everyone else driving on the wrong side of the road, it went fine,” he replied, sighing and slumping into a chair. Both of us were trying to lighten the mood, but it wasn’t catching fire. “Seriously, I missed the funeral, didn’t I? I didn’t get here in time.”
I shook my head. “Don’t worry about it. I was in a daze anyway. The last few days have been a blur. But I’m so glad you’re here now. I didn’t know what I was going to do with myself, after it was all over and everyone had gone home and I was alone.”
“You’re not alone,” he said gently. “ ‘Ain’t no river wide enough.’ Isn’t that what they say?”
I held his gaze for a long time, both of us, I think, remembering how much we loved each other, until I broke our silence. “And what do you say, Rich? Dinner? More wine?”
“Both would be lovely. And then let’s sit and reminisce about your dad for a while.”
Later, after we had laughed and cried, remembering my father, I handed Richard the envelope that had flung my entire existence into the abyss a few days earlier. “I haven’t told anybody else about this.” I fidgeted in my chair, eyeing him as he began reading the letter from Madlyn Crane.
He looked up at me with wide eyes. “Good Lord. Is this true?”
I nodded, shrugging. “I asked my dad about it the day before he died. I told him I got a letter from someone claiming to be my mother, and he said her name. Madlyn wrote to you? he asked. That was all the confirmation I needed.”
Richard took my hands and held them tightly. “But why?” His eyes were searching mine for answers I didn’t have. “Why the devil would he do something like that? I know your dad. He wouldn’t—”
“I have no idea. He said something about saving me. That’s all I know.”
Richard let out a sigh and leaned against the back of his chair, staring at Madlyn’s letter as if trying to will the words to reveal their secrets. “I can’t believe Madlyn Crane is your mother,” he murmured. “I mean, of all people.”
“You say that as if you know her.”
“Well, I don’t know her, but I know of her. So do you. I’ve got one of her books on my coffee table. You’ve seen it a million times.”
An image shot into my mind: Richard and me, sitting with cups of tea in our flat, looking through a book of photographs of London.
“Where’s your laptop?” he asked, and I pointed up the stairs. In moments he was back with it, sitting next to me at the table and typing her name into the search engine.
I watched as page after page of hits came up on my screen. Time, Travel & Leisure, National Geographic, Vanity Fair, Vogue, and many more, all having published her work. Madlyn Crane was famous.
“Let’s go to her website,” I suggested, and I held my breath as it loaded.
A list of headings ran down the left side of the screen: WATER, ANIMALS, PORTRAITS. Richard clicked on them, one by one. We found photos of celebrities dressed in finery or in nothing at all, ordinary people in sidewalk cafés or on street corners, children playing in foreign lands. I could not look away from these photos, because somehow I could see beyond the subject’s façade. It was as though their inner thoughts were captured there on film. It sounds absurd, but I thought I could hear those people whispering to me.
Behind one celebrity’s eyes, I saw an impending divorce. In the next photo, intense fear of failure. Cancer was lurking deep within the esophagus of the third. I cannot explain how I knew these things just by looking at their portraits, but I am quite certain they were there. I felt hypnotized, as though I could, at any time, be sucked into the world captured on film by Madlyn Crane.
And then we found something that caused my own spirit to catch in my throat. Richard clicked on a heading called love and there was only one photo, the black-and-white image of a child. She was jumping off a swing attached to the limb of an enormous oak tree. The photographer had captured her at just the right moment, the midair flight before hitting the ground. Her eyes were looking right into the camera—she obviously knew someone was taking her picture—and she had an enormous smile on her face, radiating the sheer thrill of being airborne. But behind those sparkling eyes and exuberant smile, I could sense something else. That little girl whispered to me: Help me. I’m afraid.
Then I saw the name under the photograph: HALCYON CRANE, 1974–1979.
“It’s you, my dear,” Richard said. We looked at each other in silence, neither knowing what else to say.
Hours later, with Richard snoring in the guest room, I padded back downstairs and opened the laptop again, its bright screen glaring in the darkness. I’m not quite sure what I was looking for—more information about her? A way to know her better somehow? What I found was this article on the Chicago Sun Times website:
“SOUL CAPTURER” DIES OF HEART ATTACK
Photographer Madlyn Crane died in her home on Grand Manitou Island on Thursday of an apparent heart attack, said William Archer, Ms. Crane’s attorney.
In four decades as one of this nation’s preeminent photographers, Ms. Crane shot travel pieces, newsmakers and landscapes, but she was best known for her haunting portraits. Whether she was shooting celebrities for a magazine layout, people she met on her travels, or animals, Ms. Crane had a reputation for illuminating a subject’s inner being, thus earning her the nickname of “Soul Capturer,” which, as it happens, was also the title of one of her books. As her wendy webb fame grew, many celebrities refused to allow Ms. Crane to photograph them during times of personal strife or distress, for fear of showing too much to Ms. Crane’s eerily penetrating eye.
Ms. Crane leaves no survivors.
“Apparently, she did,” I said to myself. I retrieved William Archer’s letter from the drawer in the kitchen where I had stuffed it and dialed the number on the letterhead. I’d only reach his
voice mail at this late hour, but I wanted to call immediately, while I still had the nerve to set something in motion that I might think better of in the light of day.
“This is Hallie James,” I said, to Mr. Archer’s machine. “I got your package, and I’m calling to let you know I plan to travel to Grand Manitou Island on Monday. Please get in touch with me tomorrow to confirm the date.”
I put the phone down and sighed in the darkness of my kitchen. And then I crept up to my empty bed, where I tossed and turned all night long. The next morning, early, the phone rang.
“Is this Miss James?”
“I can’t remember the last time anyone called me that, but yes.” I smiled into the receiver. “I’m Hallie.”
“Hallie, I’m William Archer,” he said. “I’m calling about your visit to this island next week. I was very well acquainted with Madlyn, and I want to assure you that everything you say to me will be kept in the strictest confidence.”
“Thank you, but I’m not sure—” He interrupted me.
“If I may? A couple of factors are in play here that I suggest would best be discussed in person, when you arrive. Suffice it to say that one of them is Miss Crane’s sizable estate and the other is the rather delicate nature of—well, if I may be blunt here—your actual existence.”
“I’m not sure what you mean.” I began to get a knot in my stomach. Maybe this wasn’t such a good idea after all.
“Hallie, I’m aware of the fact that you’re Madlyn’s daughter. But nobody else on the island knows, not to my knowledge anyway. That’s because certain events surrounded your . . . departure so many years ago. I was just a child myself when it happened, but the circumstances are well known here.”
Well known? “Can you tell me more? I feel like I’m totally in the dark.”