The Woman in the Photo

by Mary Hogan

  Up the hill in North Beverly Park, a partner in Leonard’s law firm negotiated a confidential deal: the Adells would be allowed to live in their glass house for the remainder of their lives if they quietly signed over the deed and select works of art to the liquidation trust fund. An original Basquiat paid their legal fees. (Donated to his law firm, of course, for the tax deduction.)

  The only downside was: when the trustee arrived with the notarized paperwork, Delfina and the Adells’ undocumented staff saw the federal logo on his sedan and skittered out the back door.

  Down the hill in the San Fernando Valley, the bankruptcy court whipped the Parkers’ house out from under them like a magician pulling a tablecloth off a fully set table. Abrakazam. It was gone. In a tornado of dust balls, Lee lost her bed and her bedroom and her piano. Everything she owned that couldn’t easily hide behind a couch was sold or given to Goodwill. Storage was too expensive. Lee lost college and the corner where Shelby had impatiently waited for her. She lost her dad, too. Gil Parker did something Lee didn’t think parents were allowed to do: he ran away from home.

  In the aftermath of both disasters, Valerie needed a job and a home; Esther needed a maid who could keep her mouth shut. A deal was struck. Val would help the Adells maintain the illusion that they were still rich. Be the help, actually. When the Adells had company, Valerie would wear a maid’s uniform and a lacy white cap straight out of the nineteenth century. She would serve cold salmon salads and hot tea. Plates from the left, beverages from the right. She was to be neither seen nor heard.

  “A teenager?” Mrs. Adell’s face blanched when Valerie asked if Lee could live with her.

  “She’s quiet and studious. It would only be for a little while. She has a job.” Unexpectedly, tears welled in Valerie’s eyes. It happened. Life’s battering had busted her ability to control her tear ducts. A few days before, she’d broken down at the sight of three bobbing balloons in front of a Verizon Wireless store.

  Mrs. Adell patted Valerie’s arm with her clawlike hand. Unable to conceive children, Esther Adell had always envisioned herself as the type of mother who would tear up at the mere mention of her offspring. It was the sort of fantasy only childless women have. “She’ll be discreet?”

  “Absolutely.”

  They made a deal. Valerie and Lee were forbidden to talk to anyone in the main house or tell anyone where they lived. It was a rider in their clandestine landlord-tenant contract, subject to immediate eviction with the first infraction. Their “address” was a post office box in the Valley. They parked their car in a vacant strip of dirt down the hill. Friends were not allowed to pick them up even near the Adells’ electrified gate, or visit them in the pool house, or—heavens, no—ease the Californian heat with a dip in the infinity pool just outside their wall of windows.

  Esther Adell held on to the ruse that she was still rich the way a hyena clamps its jaws on a fresh carcass. Nothing could persuade her to loosen her grip. Her luncheons were repetitions of the same dance: bejeweled, crinkled women buzzed about each other with stinging air kisses. “That hairstyle never gets old, dear.” Reeking of spray gel, they spumed their importance with chatter about giving back.

  “To much is given, so much is expected.”

  All the while treating Valerie as if she had no ears and no feelings.

  “Dear me, my coffee has spilled onto my saucer. It’s literally impossible to find good help.”

  Each morning when Lee awoke on the moldy sofa bed, she was again struck by the insane setup. The Adells lived in a designer home and pretended to be rich. Below them, the Parkers lived in a pool house and pretended to be homeless.

  Crazy.

  After her shift ended, Lee sat in her sauna of a car and prayed that it would start. She once read that it takes half a teaspoon of gas to ignite an engine and that’s about all she had in the tank.

  “C’mon, baby,” she whispered, feeling the floral stink of work bake onto her skin. “Just get me to the gas station across the street.”

  The key clicked to the right. The car started. Lee crumpled in relief. Pressing her foot to the gas pedal as lightly as possible, she backed out of the parking space and drove to the exit in the middle of the shopping center. Luck was with her. The lights were green. She crossed Ventura Boulevard without idling and pulled straight up to the pump. With her last twenty—payday was next week—Lee bought as much gas as she could. Enough, she hoped, to fuel her journey downtown the following day.

  After eighteen years of questions, she was about to get some answers. Nothing was going to stop her now. She would walk if she had to.

  CHAPTER 7

  Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association

  THE SOUTH FORK DAM

  Memorial Day

  May 30, 1889

  Colonel Unger thoughtfully sent his man from the lake to pick us up at the station. Unfortunately, the large trap carriage is open to the elements in spite of its attached roof. The rain is soft, but steady.

  “Here, miss.”

  Nettie hands me one of the cashmere lap robes Colonel Unger has stored in the back of the carriage. Mother has already wrapped Henry in his like a chrysalis. I shiver slightly. Outside, it is unseasonably cool.

  My maid climbs to the open perch beside the driver—not her beau, Floyd, I notice—and eases in with Mother’s maid, Ella. Maggie, the undercook, sits next to me. We will have to make do with a skeleton staff. The clubhouse dining room will be closed and Father flatly refused to part with the family’s butler and primary cook. “Two weeks without Ida’s Nesselrode pie?” he said. “Unthinkable!”

  “Did you see me up there, Mama? Did you?” Henry is still excited. Sensing his elation, the horses gnaw on their snaffles.

  “Settle in, darling.”

  “But did you see me?”

  “I saw you.” At last, Mother smiles. Her fright at Henry’s folly dissolves into the sodden air. Turning to me, she asks the question I have been expecting. “How is it you know a town boy?”

  I long to inform Mother that I have a full and intricate life beyond her reach, but of course, it isn’t true. I reply, “He was helpful last summer with Ivy Tottinger.”

  Mother’s brows press together in a dubious expression. To quiet her doubts, I add a small untruth.

  “He works in the boathouse at the club.”

  Just then, the carriage lurches forward and Henry claps his hands. He clucks his tongue the way he’s heard carriage drivers do. The horses’ ears flicker. Nettie and Ella look back at us and smile from beneath their umbrella. Little Henry’s exuberance is infectious. My leaden mood has disappeared. Perhaps a few days of solitude will soften the tautness I’ve noticed around my mouth. With so much to plan and think about in Pittsburgh, the tension of my debut has begun to announce itself in my complexion.

  Suddenly a strand of sunlight peers through the wet leaves. The rain lightens to a drizzle as the ominous gray clouds float toward the valley. As we ascend the winding mountain road, the carriage gently sways side to side. The rhythmic clip-clopping of the horses’ hooves makes me sleepy. I snuggle beneath the lap robe and settle in for the ride.

  Pinnate leaves of the ash trees hang over the road like a dancer’s graceful hands. Distant hills are a dusky purple hue. Pops of yellow daffodils delight my eyes. These mountains are magnificent—once one rises above the sooty valley. Even though the air is soggy, it’s impossible not to feel stirrings of joy at the promise of warmth. Last winter was abominable. And the Alleghenies cling to winter longer than Upper St. Clair does. Father said they were completely blanketed in deep snow. This season, Colonel Unger may be able to forgo restocking the lake. Fresh bass from the mountain streams are always better tasting than the imported variety from less pristine waters.

  “When I’m grown-up, I’m going to drive a train,” says Henry, dreamily. “Trains are . . . are magical.”

  Mother grins and tucks the blanket even more tightly around her son�
��s small body. She refrains from correcting him. Why spoil his boyish dreams with the adult knowledge of his certain future? Henry Haberlin will grow into a physician like his father, or a banker or a lawyer. If lucky, perhaps he will one day own a railroad.

  “Settle in, my love,” Mother says to him.

  We ride uphill in silence, each to his or her thoughts. As we near the crest of the long, narrow incline, the South Fork dam comes into view. As always, I am struck dumb by the utter presence of it. The dam—a massive sloping wall of mud and muck that contains our beautiful lake—seems to be a living, breathing beast. Made of puddle clay, hay, gravel, manure, tree trunks, rocks—anything and everything, really—it smells of the forest floor. Today, that is, as it glistens from the spurts of rain. In the heat of midsummer, the earthen dam is alive with aromatic material that appears to be both growing and decaying before our very eyes.

  The carriage driver pulls back on the reins and slows the horses just beyond the first “No Trespassing” sign. Henry squeals, “Whoa!” The driver then makes a sharp right turn and steers us directly atop the flattened breast of the mammoth South Fork dam. Through the wheels, I feel the dam’s throbbing. Its heartbeat. As other drivers do each summer when Pittsburgh’s finest families arrive one by one for their getaway at the mountain retreat, our driver stops in the very center of the crossing to allow us a moment to enjoy the breathtaking—and hair-raising—view. To the left is a sheet of beryl blue as far as the eye can see. From this vantage point, our private lake looks almost like an ocean. To the right: a vertical drop is as deep as Pittsburgh’s courthouse tower is high. Or deeper. Far below us, I see pointed treetops and jagged rock. A curving, snaggletoothed ravine that snakes steeply downhill into darkness. I cannot stare into that black valley without a loss of equilibrium. Even now that we are not as high up as we once were. The club’s governors hired workmen from town to lower the top of the earth-packed dam a few feet so that the dirt road would be wider. Crossing the top of the dam is the only convenient way in and out of the club. Naturally, a wider road makes it easier to accommodate the passage of our carriages.

  “Progress.”

  It’s the word I overheard Mr. Frick use to describe widening the dam’s crossing by lowering its top. So certain is he that motorcars will soon replace horse-drawn carriages, he is pleased that the more forward-thinking members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club had the foresight to create a wide enough road to handle modern transportation.

  Not everyone agreed. More than once, men in the clubhouse parlor hotly debated the decision to lower the dam. Enveloped in cigar smoke, they tugged at the satin collars of their dinner jackets.

  “The dam should be higher,” one said.

  “Rebuilt entirely,” added another.

  “Where is the discharge pipe? When is the last time Unger cleared out the debris around the spillway?”

  “We’re tempting fate.”

  The opposition was a large chorus with one refrain: “Have you any idea of the cost?”

  A thoughtful silence most often ensued. Followed by the stroking of chin beards or the curling of wax-tipped mustaches or the flagging down of waiters for more refreshment. Ultimately, four words prevailed.

  “Evolve or go extinct.”

  Was that Mr. Frick’s voice I heard utter that persuasive statement? Probably. It was spoken with his usual confidence. Often I overheard those words uttered to end an argument flat. Henry Clay Frick is a man who often gets his way without tedious debate. Father once privately described him as a capitalist. He meant it not as a compliment. I have heard that Mr. Frick’s steelworkers at the Homestead mill despise him. His reputation is one of a cruel boss who values profit over humanity. A robber baron. When workers in the Johnstown Valley bitterly dubbed our mountain retreat the “Bosses’ Club,” Mr. Frick laughed and bellowed, “Damn right we’re the bosses.”

  Why shouldn’t he feel proud of his accomplishments? I thought when I first heard tell of it. Ungrateful workers were forever grumbling about one thing or another. As if they expected the men of the Bosses’ Club to give them every dime from their pockets. Cruel? Ridiculous. Whenever the impeccably dressed Mr. Frick saw me, he self-assuredly took my hand and lifted it to his lips in the most graceful manner. “The lovely Miss Haberlin,” he said, his eyes twinkling. “How well you look.”

  What do people expect? A man who is in charge of other men must at times be ruthless. As Mother has taught me, a leopard that is born a leopard and raised a leopard will never be a house cat.

  One thing is for certain: with the lake lapping up to the dam’s top on the left side, and the vast drop into the valley on the right, it’s both a thrilling and terrifying sight. Even Henry is silenced by awe.

  On that soft, damp dirt road across the dam top, I listen to the muted roll of the carriage wheels as we get under way. Contentedly, I sigh as my mind drifts back to that same crossing last summer when my heart was thrumming in anticipation of seeing my friends and winning the summer’s competitions.

  The biggest competition, of course, was for James Tottinger.

  CHAPTER 8

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  Day after Memorial Day

  Present

  All those women do is not eat!”

  Valerie shook her fists inside the car. She was frazzled. They were late. Mrs. Adell’s luncheon had gone overtime. At the wheel, Lee sat as upright as the obelisk in Griffiths Park, hoping a still posture would calm her. Today was the day. Would they be too late? Would she have to take another afternoon off work?

  “For an hour, I watched them move food around their plates like they were playing checkers.”

  Blowing a clump of bangs out of her eyes, Valerie grunted with exasperation. No one could sour her naturally sweet disposition as readily as Esther Adell and her ridiculous “yellow jackets”—the name Valerie gave to Mrs. Adell’s luncheon friends. Wearing belted silk dresses or nubby tweed suits in pale lemon—Chanel, Dior, YSL—they crammed their bony old-lady feet into low-heeled pumps with brass piping on the toe. What did they know of genuine need? Fear so insistent it felt like a chronic migraine.

  “One yellow jacket had the gall to pat my hand,” Valerie railed. “Pat. My. Hand. Like I was the family dog.”

  Still dressed in her uniform, minus the lacy white cap, Valerie appeared as though she was on her way to a costume party. A lady’s maid from Downton Abbey. Mrs. Adell insisted Valerie call her “ma’am” and her husband, “sir” and back out of rooms with her head down.

  Steadily inhaling and exhaling to quiet her thrumming heart, Lee held her head up. Although she was certain they were doomed, her mother was (of course) unwilling to give up. The barest glimmer of hope was all she needed to fuel her desire to outwit L.A. traffic and make it downtown before the state office closed.

  “We’ll take the canyon,” she said, as if no other driver ever had the very same notion.

  They took the canyon. Lee counted mailboxes. She ignored the sound of blood pulsing in her ears. The curves of Beverly Glen were clogged with cars, but moving. Droopy eucalyptus branches shaded empty driveways, their leaves crispy from the drought. From somewhere, a dog yapped. Small and white, thought Lee. With one of those pink rhinestone collars. All four windows were rolled down. Her armpits were damp. Again, the air conditioner was off to save gas. Twenty dollars had barely moved the gauge. Valerie was broke, too.

  “If you ask me,” Valerie said, “a little fat looks good on an old woman. Who wants to hug a brittle bag of bones?”

  Lee glanced at her mother and they both erupted in laughter. Esther Adell was the personification of a brittle bag of bones.

  “Not many brake lights on Sunset,” Valerie chirped in the blistering car as the canyon drive spilled onto the main artery to the freeway. “Things are looking up!”

  CHAPTER 9

  Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association

  SOUTH FORK FISHING AND HUNTING CLUBr />
  The previous summer

  1888

  Mother dislikes summer as much as I adore it. The heat seeps through my skin and warms my bones. When I tilt my head back and let the sun bathe my face, all the cares in the world melt away. It’s as deliciously forbidden as an extra slice of Battenberg cake.

  On this particular day, Lake Conemaugh twinkles in the late-morning sunlight. There isn’t a cloud in the Tiffany-blue sky. At this elevation, high above the grit of Johnstown, the ordinary world and its troubles feel blessedly far away. My friends, Julia and Addie, join me on the clubhouse veranda, pretending to inhale nature.

  “Shall we go for a sail?” Addie asks me.

  I laugh. We all do. Addie wears her best sporting dress—a burgundy pleated frock of silk and cotton. Despite the warmth of the day, she has buttoned the matching jacket to her neck and placed a satin-edged hat over her painstakingly frazzled fringe. Julia’s corseted shirtwaist and ankle skirt are more appropriate for the casual atmosphere of the club, but they are clearly her finest activity clothes. I, too, am wearing my best and newest. The lavender cotton of my underskirt is patterned in paisley swirls; the swag is striped in glorious cobalt. Earlier, I had Nettie take extra care to secure my hair with the amethyst-tipped clips I bought on my last trip to New York. None of us would even consider the risk of soiling today’s clothes by venturing onto the lake in a wobbly sailboat. Or worse, a canoe. Last summer, with Julian at oars, the canoe capsized us into the water. Thank heavens we were mere feet from the dock.

  “They should arrive any moment,” Julia says, excitedly. “I hear their family’s bloodline can be traced back to a relative of Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf, grandmother of Queen Victoria herself.”