Follow Me

by Joanna Scott

  I bet she thinks that I’m going to tell her that my boyfriend, Sebastian, and I are engaged. Well, she’s right about that. We’ve been talking about it for a long while and finally set a date. We’ve already started drawing up a guest list. My mom won’t be surprised by this news. She will be surprised, though, to see that we’re inviting Abe Boyle to the wedding. What form her surprise will take, I can’t predict. That’s why I thought it best to tell her about my father in a public place. She’s always been a passionate person, and though she’s in a line of work where she definitely needs to keep a lid on her emotions, as one male colleague once informed her, I’ve seen that lid go flying off in the privacy of home. Her voice gets loud when she’s overjoyed. Or when she’s furious. She doesn’t lose her temper to the point of violence, but she does tend to overreact.

  Here in the crowded café at Twelve Corners, she’ll have to stay composed. People recognize her; she’s often in the local paper, especially recently, and is almost as much of a celebrity as our popular mayor. And though even to me she keeps professing reluctance to get involved any further in the dirty business of politics, I know that she’s keeping her options open and isn’t completely against the possibility of running for office. Her friends in Albany are hoping that she’ll make a bid for the state senate next election.

  While it’s been hard to pin my mother down in the last few weeks, it’s been over a year since I first heard from my father. I wrote to him shortly after I listened to the tapes. Since November of 2006, we’ve been corresponding by e-mail, we’ve had several phone conversations, and we’re planning to meet for the first time when I fly through Chicago next week, on my way to visit Sebastian’s family in Oregon.

  There were plenty of occasions in the last year when I could have told my mother about my father. But I didn’t want to reveal anything to her before I understood how the many mistakes and corrections were connected. I needed to have the whole story in place and be sure of the sequence of events.

  My father, in the course of recording his version of the story, never guessed that I already knew why he had been obliged to abandon my mother. Without having any contact with me, he had no way of knowing that I’d already heard the explanation from my grandmother. Shortly before her death, she had told me, as long ago she’d told him, that he was her son. And for a long while I’d believed her.

  I’d promised my grandmother that I wouldn’t repeat what she told me to anyone. It was important to her that my mother never learn the truth about Abe Boyle. Perhaps she was worried that my mother would be so repulsed by the knowledge of her family connection to the man she’d loved that she would be repulsed by me, the product of that love. Or else — I think this was the real reason — she was afraid that my mother had never really fallen out of love with my father, even after thirty years. If she ever discovered the truth, or what my grandmother thought was the truth, she might take desperate action. And the easiest place to act on desperation in this city, as my father demonstrated, is the pedestrian bridge spanning the gorge.

  In the last months of her life, my grandmother set out to tell me as much as she could before she was gone. She’d been fighting lung cancer, and while the prognosis was encouraging after her last round of chemotherapy, she sensed that time was running out. We’d noticed that she’d begun to get names and dates mixed up, and she’d lose her way on simple drives from the store to her home. But even in those last months, before pneumonia ended her life, she was still sharp enough to describe, as she put it, how one thing led to another. She remembered the details of experiences from the distant past with a vividness I wouldn’t have thought possible. And she could answer almost any question I asked her.

  After her death, I went through her letters and receipts, the photographs, postcards, newspaper clippings, even the old coupons she’d never used. Everything I found substantiated what she’d told me. I couldn’t prove the most remarkable part of the story — that the river ran backward through the gorge, thanks to a legendary creature called the Tuskawali. But I know something like this happened because my father managed to survive an ordeal that should have killed him.

  As my father believed for thirty years, I believed what my grandmother believed to be true. Now I know that she was wrong, and her mistake kept my parents apart. But she can’t be blamed for this. She’d done her best to sort out the facts. The Werners had deliberately misled her. The challenge, as she saw it, was to verify something that she already knew. She thought she already knew the truth when she asked her family to confirm it. She thought that the direction of her life was as inevitable as the direction of the river she’d followed, and all along she’d been destined to land in a new fix shortly after she’d left behind the last one.

  And yet she was the one who insisted that the river has secrets of its own. She believed that there was a strange magic in the Tuskee, and she warned me to be ready, for the river was full of surprises. I think about this, and I wonder if she was as certain as she pretended to be that the river was leading her where she was meant to go.

  Of course she was certain. She wouldn’t have sent my father away if she hadn’t been certain. But certainty was a choice for her. She chose to be certain that her past actions had led to trouble that only she could resolve. She couldn’t bear to hear that the baby she’d abandoned in 1947 had been killed by Daniel Werner, so she made sure to hear only the lie that her family told her. She kept her son from suffering what he’d already suffered. She went back to the start and changed the story. This was the real miracle of her life, the one that trumps that flood in the gorge. And as sensible as my grandmother grew through hard experience, she couldn’t help but believe in miracles.

  Wednesday morning, at eight minutes past the hour. Outside on the sidewalk in front of the window a woman is leaning over a stroller, tying the strings of her baby’s wool hat. Two women at the table to my left are talking about an upcoming bat mitzvah. Local high school kids on their morning break are draped over the arms and backs of the lounge chairs by the counter. A white-haired man in the middle of the café is reading the Science section of today’s New York Times, mouthing the words. I read the same article this morning and know that among the questions it asks, three stand out: What’s the probability of being born compared to the probability of being reincarnated? How do we think about probability in an infinite universe in which everything that can occur does occur infinite times? And why can’t we unscramble an egg?

  It’s twelve minute past the hour. I still have more I want to write, but my mother will be here soon. She is usually about fifteen minutes late for any appointment. She likes to call herself an old hippie, and though she lives a life where she’s expected to be responsible, she never passes up an opportunity to be carefree and resist the tyranny of the clock. And here she is, right on time, her own time, here she comes across the parking lot.

  Sally Werner

  Penelope Bliss, at the age of twenty-one, was home from college, working as a lifeguard at a local country club, and she’d finished her shift, hitched a ride from a friend, and was stepping out of the car just as Sally was inviting her sister Tru to come inside to have a cup of coffee and share a smoke.

  Tru Werner didn’t smoke; of course she didn’t smoke. That’s what she was telling Sally as Penelope crossed the lawn. And without saying it directly, she was conveying that she’d been a good Christian, unlike poor Sally, who had gone astray. Trudy Werner had always stuck to the straight and narrow. She worked as a nurse at the hospital in Lafayette and sang in the choir at church. She would go on to tell Sally this, and more — that she’d never married, never had children. Sally’s other siblings had families of their own. As did Sally. Sally Werner was the mother of two children. Two. All this information would be exchanged, but first, there came Sally’s daughter, Penelope Bliss, wearing jean cutoffs and a tank top, feet in flip-flops, hair stringy from air-drying on the way home from the pool.

  Sally said, “Penelope, say hello to your aun
t Gertrude.”

  Who’s Aunt Gertrude? Of course Penelope didn’t say this aloud. But she couldn’t be blamed for being puzzled. Her mother had spoken of a sister, sure. She’d reminisced about her childhood. But had she ever mentioned that her sister was named Gertrude? Penelope had to think about this for a moment: Gertrude? Aunt Gertrude?

  Sally had a sister. True. For some reason, Penelope had heard it as an adjective. Sally’s sister-true. True, she was her sister. Trudy the True, whom Sally had always cast as the one Werner with an unblemished soul. But even so, she had seemed as unreal to Penelope as any dream Sally had recounted over breakfast. The True Dream, here in flesh and blood. Oh, that Aunt Gertrude. Of course. Hello.

  A late spring afternoon in the city Sally Bliss insisted on referring to as Rondo, in the year 1974, and Penelope was meeting her mother’s sister for the first time. Her aunt was a tall woman, a few inches taller than Penelope, who was taller than Sally. From the heights, Trudy looked down on her sister and niece, perused them, compared one with the other, and with obvious bewilderment pronounced Penelope a beautiful young lady.

  It must have been a shock for Trudy to consider how much time had passed since she’d last seen her sister — enough time for Sally to have a grown-up daughter. So little had changed in Trudy Werner’s own life. She lived within an hour’s drive of her hometown. As a nurse she’d witnessed so many passings that death hardly seemed remarkable anymore. She went to work and came home, watched television, and fell asleep. Meanwhile, a girl named Penelope had been born and grown up into a beautiful young lady. How did that happen?

  To understand better, she asked Penelope a set of questions. Was she in college? Could she drive? Did she have a car of her own? And had she ever considered nursing as a career? Sally volunteered her own ambitions for her daughter: Penelope was going to see her name in lights someday. Penelope could only roll her eyes in response to Sally’s prediction. Yeah, right. She had other plans for herself. She’d just finished her junior year, she explained, and she was majoring in history. She didn’t say that she was in love with a young man named Abraham Boyle. She did say that she was thinking about going to law school.

  Law school? Why, this was the first Sally had heard her daughter talk about law school. What was the point of law school? Penelope was too beautiful and talented for law school. Trudy should see her dance.

  Darling, dance for your aunt.

  But Penelope wasn’t going to dance right there in the foyer. If Aunt Gertrude would excuse her, her date would be here any moment.

  “Yes, go.” Tru waved her away. She seemed genuinely glad to meet her niece, but she needed some time alone with her sister, who definitely would want to hear what Tru had to tell her.

  In the living room, sitting at opposite ends of the sofa, the sisters balanced their coffee cups on saucers and traded a few niceties. Tru complimented Sally on the décor of the house. She especially liked the printed upholstery of the chair in the corner. And the flowered wallpaper in the hall was an unusual pattern, with rose blossoms that seemed about to spill onto the floor. The mirror above the sofa — why, that was an expensive-looking item. Sally admitted that she’d bought it at a yard sale. Her sister praised her for finding a bargain.

  “You look swell,” her sister said.

  “So do you,” Sally offered. “You look youthful,” she added, a comment that provoked Tru to touch her hair, as though by feeling it she could remember that it was starting to go gray. Sally said that her own was a box dye job, Clairol’s Desert Dawn, on sale, she added, two for the price of one.

  They laughed together at that, and Tru let her cup tip, spilling coffee onto the saucer.

  “Oh, you’re still a klutz,” Sally said. “I’m glad to see that some things don’t change. Remember how you used to flap your arms and try to fly? Gee, sis, it’s good to see you.”

  “It’s good to see you, too.” Tru set down her cup, and she rolled her shoulders as if to loosen them and get ready for the effort ahead. “I’ll tell you,” she said, “it sure was hard to track you down, Sally Werner.”

  Sally didn’t correct her. She’d been Sally Bliss for many years, but it would take some doing to explain to her sister why she had a different name but didn’t have a wedding ring. Unmarried, she could only be Sally Werner, and so it was as Sally Werner that she listened to her sister tell her what had gone on in Tauntonville in her absence. It was as Sally Werner that she was brought up to date.

  First of all, Tru regretted having to share the news that their father had departed from this world on June 12, 1970, and their mother had followed him two and a half years later. As gently as this news was delivered, Sally felt it as a slap in the face, for it forced her to give up the last shred of hope that she’d ever earn her parents’ forgiveness.

  After giving Sally a moment to absorb the news, Tru resumed her account. She explained that their mother, for the last four years of her life, refused to speak anything but German. But none of her offspring or grandchildren spoke German, so her conversations were limited, especially after Dietrich Werner passed away. Tru went on to explain that Loden and Clem and Willy had married and moved into houses of their own by the time of their father’s passing. Laura had married a city man and was living in Philadelphia. They all had children. Loden had a daughter, Clem had three sons, Willy had a son and twin girls, and Laura, at the age of thirty-eight, was pregnant with her fifth child. She already had four boys and was hoping for a girl. Tru had her worries about Laura, whose husband was, as Tru said, severe. And one of Laura’s sons had been born deaf. But Tru promised to tell Sally more about that situation later. First, she wanted to tell Sally about their mother, who in her widowhood could not take care of herself, so Tru made the sacrifice and moved back home in the summer of 1970.

  It wasn’t hard for Sally to imagine what her sister’s life must have been like in that crumbling farmhouse. She pictured their mother sitting on the frayed sofa, maybe with dentures in a glass beside her and one of the barn cats who’d found refuge in the house dozing on her lap. The old woman would have been in a sour mood by the time Tru put dinner on the table, railing at her daughter in German, the pitch of her voice expressing better than the words that Tru didn’t understand the rage her mother must have believed was the best way to honor her righteous husband.

  How do you say in German, Woe to the forsaken, they shall be bruised with a rod of iron and broken into pieces like a potter’s vessel?

  Or, O come hither, and behold the works of the Lord, what destruction He hath brought upon the earth?

  What Sally heard in her sister’s description of their mother’s last years was that she herself was to blame. Tru didn’t say it, not aloud, but Sally could guess that it was the shared opinion among the Werners that the oldest daughter had ruined the family. Sally Werner had seduced her cousin and then refused to marry him. Sally Werner had saddled her parents with an extra mouth to feed and then gone off to enjoy herself. Now her parents were both dead, and there was no chance of ever reconciling with them.

  “I wrote to Mama and Pop,” she said. The words sounded pathetic to her. She tried to explain: “I wrote to them, to all of you, year after year.” But Tru couldn’t have known that Sally had written to the family. If she had known, she would have written Sally back.

  “I know,” Tru said.

  “You knew?” Sally must have sent more than one hundred letters over the years. Her sister had chosen, along with the rest of their family, to ignore them.

  The sense of betrayal was so overwhelming to her that Sally stopped hearing what her sister was telling her. And when she stopped hearing the words with their separate meanings, she began making up her own story — she told it to herself in a rush — about how Tru never had a chance to read her letters because they were never opened. They were saved, yes, they were saved and shoved in a drawer and periodically the bundle of them was produced by her parents and burned ceremoniously in front of the rest of the family, thrown
into the fireplace because we must rise up against the wicked and wipe them out for their iniquity, yes, with the help of the Lord our God we will wipe them out.

  She could guess what her mother and father had to say about their eldest daughter. Sally Werner was nobody’s fool. Though she wrote to them regularly for several years, she hadn’t expected to be reconciled. Say what you will. Even while they burned her letters, she’d been living the high life. Oh yes, they were right about her. While they were sitting around watching her unopened letters burn, she’d been making friends and making money, raising a child, falling in love. She’d done all right. She didn’t need nothing. Anything. How could she make a mistake like that?

  “How much money did you send, Sally?”

  “What?”

  “How much money was in those letters?”

  “What letters?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “I mean, you said, what? Could you repeat that?”

  “I was talking about your letters. You did write those letters, didn’t you? I’m not mistaken, am I?”

  Sally gave up trying to hide her confusion. “Please, start from the beginning, Tru.”

  “You poor dear. It must be hard to hear it all at once.” With more pity in her voice this time, Tru explained again: Their mother had been taken by the good Lord on the day after Christmas in 1972. The following October, while Tru was cleaning up the house and getting it ready to sell, she’d been sorting the linens in her mother’s cedar trunk and had found the letters. “Your letters, right? You did write those letters.”