by Joanna Scott
Did you ever hear the one about the chem—, the alchemist who came up with a recipe for making gold from eggs? What you had to do, he said, the secret was to beat the yolks of three eggs, to keep beating them for an hour without thinking of the word hip—, hippopotamus. Ha. I’ve been talking to you, all these months I’ve been talking into this machine as a way of talking to you, Sally, and I’ve been trying not to think of what might be changed, what will happen when you listen to this story in its entirety. I’ve been trying not to hope for anything. But I’ll tell you, Sally, Sally Junior, that I can’t stop hoping that I’ll convince you not to hate me. And maybe your mother might forgive me, if she knew the mistake that was made. And you know, when you hope for something to be accomplished, it’s impossible not to think of that hope. I’m beating the egg yolks, beating them and beating them and hoping. Yes. Hoping. Okay, but I should finish what I’ve started, shouldn’t I? Unless, maybe you’re fast-forwarding through my ramblings, my babble, all the tangents. That’s fine. I’m not in the habit of making every word count. And I’ve discovered over these past months, I’ve learned something about myself. Even if I’m not good with words, I, I like the sound of them. I like arranging them and hearing how they work in combination. And just the beat of thought when it’s given speech, dah da-dum, da-dum, dah da-dum. You probably think that’s pretty da-dumb. But still, let me get on with it. Dah da-dum, da-dum. When you’re told something shocking, and you’re thinking about it, when you’re reflecting upon the shocking revelation, thoughts have that rhythm, don’t they? Dah da-dum, da-dum. Yesterday I told you how I learned that I wasn’t, after all, I wasn’t Sally Werner’s son. I was not. Her son. I. I was not her son. As much as I wanted to hear that, as much as I’d always known it in my heart, when I heard it, I didn’t believe it. Funny, the way it is. I believed your grandmother when she was wrong. I did not believe this stranger when she spoke the truth. Dah da-dum. It took us a while even to begin to figure out the right questions to ask. The woman, after she’d come to tell me that Sally Werner’s son had died fifty-four years earlier, she kept looking across the field. We couldn’t see the house from there, but I thought she was trying to see if Loden was following her. I was leaning across Tracy from the driver’s seat, trying to talk to the woman. I asked her, because I didn’t believe her, I asked her what turned out to be the wrong question. I asked her, If Sally Werner’s son was dead, then where was he buried? I said I wanted to pay my respects, and could she tell me where he was buried? Well, that was enough for her. She said, she hissed it, Ssss, I have to go back. I’d made her angry with my question, and I’d lost her confidence. And as I watched her hurry away, I thought that she must have been much younger than Loden Werner, at least twenty years younger. It turned out she was his daughter. You see, back at the coffee shop in town for dinner, we got to talking to the woman there, and we described the woman at the farmhouse, and she said for sure dat vas Loden Verner’s daughter, not his vife, since he vas a vidover. We asked if there were others who might have known Sally Werner. Rather, Sally Verner. The woman, huh, I don’t recollect her name right now, she’d never heard of any Sally Verner. There vas no Sally Verner, she said. I thought to ask then about the other Verners, the other side of the family, Daniel Werner’s, Verner’s, side. She said she’d never heard of dat Daniel Verner eider. Okay, we thought we were at a dead end again, like the dead end we’d come to at the gate of the salt mine. I was perplexed, let me tell you. But Tracy, she likes detective work, she was ready for the hunt. I wanted to go back to Illinois, but she insisted that we stay another couple of days, at least through the next day, so she could check with the local library and see if there was anything to dig up in the archives. Leave it to Tracy. So we got a motel room one town over, and the next day we went to the county library in Peterkin. We stayed there all day looking through microfiche, microfilm, whatever, of the local newspaper. We came up with nothing but stories of foreclosures and petty thefts. I remember reading a story about a windstorm that blew through one August afternoon and lifted a cow up and over the power lines. I should mention that though we searched, we failed to find any notice about a fire in the Peterkin county clerk’s office in 1957. Huh. Well, at dinner that night, at a strip-mall Applebee’s in Peterkin, Tracy suggested going back to talk to Loden Werner’s daughter, but I wouldn’t do it. I figured they’d pull a shotgun on us next time we showed our faces. So she said we should go back to the other house, Clem Werner’s house. No one had been home before. We should try again, Tracy said. I ended up agreeing, but that would be our last effort, and then I wanted to go home and forget about it all. The next day, we were looking for Mosshill Lane, and we took the same wrong turn, and ended up at the salt mine. We turned around and found Clem Werner’s house again, and we went up to the door and rang the bell, and this time a woman came out, an old woman with a friendly, wrinkled face, with two bright blue eyes buried inside the folds of skin. There was no screen door at this house. The woman opened the door and stepped out on the porch, along with her dog, a fat blond Lab with a stub of a tail that never stopped wagging. I let Tracy do the talking. She explained that we were trying to find out about our family history. We’d thought we were related to the Werners, but based on what we’d heard up at Loden Werner’s house, we weren’t so sure. What had we heard? the old woman wanted to know. Tracy came right out and asked, Was it true that Sally Werner’s son had died fifty-four years ago? The old woman, her eyes were so bright and piercing, it was like there was a light shining through them and into us, like she could see into us, and she was trying to decide whether we were to be trusted. She didn’t make a decision right away. She told us to wait on the porch, and she brought out two glasses of lemonade. I remember that it was a hot day, and the lemonade was fresh, full of pulp, and very sweet, but not cold enough. Anyway, we sat on the porch sipping lemonade, with that dog at our feet, his tail thumping the whole while, and the old woman introduced herself. She was Clem Werner’s wife. And where was Mr. Werner? Mr. Werner was no longer. That was the way she put it, in response to Tracy’s question. Mr. Werner was no longer. Huh. It seemed she was offering that as a way to end the conversation. But Tracy kept at it. She asked if she’d known Sally Werner, Mr. Werner’s sister. Mrs. Werner was silent, but we knew she had more to tell us. And she did tell us more. She said, Yes, she’d met Sally just once, when she came for a brief visit. I asked her if her husband ever spoke about his sister. She said he’d mentioned that his big sister had gotten into trouble. Clem’s big sister had gotten into trouble. What kind of trouble? Tracy asked. The woman answered by staring across the road, at the slope covered with pine trees on the other side of the road. It really seemed like there were little sparks of light in her eyes. I said, Sally had a baby when she was sixteen. The woman said, Oh? First she said it as a question. Oh? And then she said it as an answer. Oh, yes. I started to say then, I was that baby. But Tracy stopped me. She touched me on the arm, I remember, to shut me up. And she asked, How did the baby die? Well, I could see then that Loden Werner’s daughter had been telling the truth. I could see from the way Clem Verner’s, I mean Werner’s, Clem Werner’s widow flinched that Sally Werner’s baby had died, that was the truth. He had died, and no one wanted to talk about it. They sure didn’t want to talk about it with your grandmother back in 1974 when she’d come looking for her son. They couldn’t, no, they really couldn’t admit to your grandmother that they had let her baby die. Once they figured out what she expected to hear from them, that’s what they told her, they gave her what she wanted. They gave her back her son. But they had to tell the truth to Tracy and me or otherwise they’d have to pretend that we were family. We weren’t family, they knew it, and these women, the daughter of Loden Werner and the widow of Clem Werner, they didn’t want to pretend. They were sick of pretending. Well, that day on the porch drinking warm lemonade, we heard again that the baby Sally had left behind had died. Mrs. Werner couldn’t say how it had died. Daniel Werner had been raising
it, but the baby died. There was talk that he had been rough with it. No one could say for sure. There was no official announcement of the death and no funeral. Daniel Werner went away, and most people figured he’d taken the baby with him. He left the area and never came back. But the family knew the truth. The family knew, was what old Mrs. Werner told us. She didn’t use the word truth. The family knew, was what she said. The baby disappeared, and so did Daniel Werner, and after that no one ever mentioned him, or mentioned Sally. Everyone got on with their lives. But I guess it bothered some of them, living with that secret. And after Clem married, he told his wife about it. And one day his wife told the daughter of Loden Werner. And one day she told us, too. She told us that I couldn’t be the son of Sally Werner because that son was dead and buried somewhere on the mountain, whatever mountain she was talking about, I don’t know. But that’s how it was. And after she told us this, we just said thanks and got up and drove away. I mean, what could we do? Your grandmother was gone. Her son was gone. Daniel Werner was gone. And there were only a handful of people in Tauntonville, Pennsylvania, who remembered them.
It’s November the first, 2006, and I’m done with my story. Well, not quite. There are some loose ends. I could tell you how I went back to Long Island that summer and found out who my mother was. My mother, the woman who’d given birth to me, was June’s sister, June Boyle’s younger sister. She lived in Florida, though officially the adoption in fact did go through the Diocese of Pittsburgh. My parents felt they needed to keep this information from me. June’s sister had troubles of her own. But that’s another long story for another time. I wanted to tell you that I’m not really your grandmother’s son, and now that I’ve told you, I’m done. I’m going to put these tapes in a box and take the box to the post office. I’m not even certain if the address I have for you is correct. Well, I hope, I hope the box finds you, one way or another. Did you know, by the way, that the speed of sound at sea level is — I think this is right — it’s seven hundred and sixty miles per hour. But at an altitude of thirty-six thousand feet, up that high in the sky, sound travels at, what is it, sixty, I mean six hundred and sixty miles per hour. That’s why you hear the sonic boom. The boom is the shock wave produced by the jet, by a fast jet flying nearby, when it passes through the sound barrier. Why am I telling you this? Why have I told you any of this? I have no expectations. I’m not fishing for an invitation to come meet you. I wouldn’t expect either you or your mother to want to have anything to do with me after all these years. But you’re my daughter. If you feel inclined to reply, my address will be on the front of the box. Or you can contact me at the Vergonia Middle School, Vergonia, Illinois. Good-bye, Sally. Good-bye.
January 16, 2008
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I’m at the café at Twelve Corners right now. It’s a nice change from my desk at home. I’m supposed to meet my mother here, but not for another couple of hours. I came early to wait for her. She’s with the mayor, who is announcing tomorrow that the state legislature has approved a billion-dollar economic revitalization fund for our region. My mother has been appointed to head the committee that oversees the distribution of aid.
She keeps herself busy. First as a lawyer, then as a family court judge, then at the level of the state supreme court, and finally as a government official, she has always had plenty of people demanding a piece of her time. It’s not the career my grandmother had envisioned for her, but, as my mother puts it, she’s found a way to make a difference. The past few weeks have been more hectic than ever for her because of her new position. Just to get her over to this café in the middle of the morning is something, especially now that she’s in charge of a billion-dollar fund. We’d tried to set up a time to have dinner, but twice she had to cancel.