by Edwards, Kim
Before we left, Oliver gave me the contact information for the executrix of the estate—her name, Joan Lowry, as well as her address; he even gave me directions to the house nearby where the estate auction had been—probably because he was so sure I’d turn up nothing more than he had. He wrote the information on an index card, holding the pen oddly with the tips of his fingers, copying the address carefully from a Rolodex on the credenza—no BlackBerry for Oliver—and handed it to me, asking in an offhand way what day we planned to view the chapel.
“Wednesday at nine o’clock,” I replied, regretting the words even as I spoke them, feeling I’d somehow walked into a trap. Maybe this was why I’d been invited.
“Oh, good,” he said. “Keegan mentioned it would be happening soon, but your Reverend Suzi hasn’t let me know when. Maybe she didn’t get my messages. That’s fine, though, that date. I’ll put it in the calendar right now. And I suppose I’ll see you then.”
He held out his hand and I shook it.
My mother’s hand he kissed, saying that he’d been enchanted, which made her laugh in a flustered way.
“He’s slippery,” I said as we opened our umbrellas—it was raining hard again—and made our way down the wide stone steps. “He probably arranged this whole meeting just to get that information about the viewing.”
My mother slipped into the passenger seat. “Sweetheart,” she said. “I don’t think so. You’re starting to sound a little paranoid. I thought he was charming.”
She shut the door and I started the car, letting it warm up for a moment, wiping away the condensation that had begun to gather on the windshield.
“He was certainly charming to you. He likes you, I think.”
My mother smiled, but didn’t reply.
“Anyway, I’m not paranoid. I’m suspicious. Wary. There’s a difference.”
“Suspicious of what, though?” My mother looked up from the damp pamphlet in her hands. “I mean, really, Lucy, what difference does it make if Oliver Parrott ends up with these windows? Maybe they belong here. After all, it is a museum. It’s not like he’s selling them on the black market or grinding them up.”
“I don’t know,” I said slowly. I opened the map and searched for the address Oliver had given us. “I feel possessive about Rose, I guess. It’s personal for me, probably in the same way Frank Westrum is personal for Oliver. To find this woman, Rose, who was part of the family story, but never included—well, it matters to me, that’s all. She matters to me. Plus, I think Oliver knows more than he’s revealing. Did you notice how he reacted when you told him about Iris? I wish you hadn’t done that.”
“Why in the world not? I didn’t notice anything strange at all. It was fine.”
“I don’t want him to know everything we know,” I said. “I just don’t trust him, that’s all.”
“Oh, Lucy. That’s ridiculous. Well, I hope you can find out what happened,” my mother said. “And I hope you aren’t disappointed if you do.”
I gave her the map and the directions and she navigated us through the city. We drove by a tall brick town house just a few blocks away, where Oliver had found the windows. Then we headed out of town. Joan Lowry’s retirement community was just off the highway, in a modern three-story building with porches made of dense plastic formed to resemble wood and windows with plastic strips made to resemble panes. It was an assisted living unit, where you lived in your own apartment as long as your health was good, though the nursing home was right there, in another building, should the need arise. It made logical sense, but I didn’t like to think about it.
We found Joan in good spirits. She was in her own apartment, and when the desk clerk called upstairs and explained who we were, she said she’d be glad to see us right away. My mother and I took the elevator up to the third floor and walked down a hallway with wide wooden railings along each wall until we reached number 354. Joan opened it almost before we’d finished knocking, a slight woman with thick gray hair and stylish glasses. She was dressed in blue polyester pants and a dark blue sweater, sturdy shoes. Her apartment was small, painted a neutral beige, filled with furniture she must have taken from her old house, a velvet couch and a massive entertainment center across from it, a heavy round table with carved legs, set for one. She made a pot of tea and insisted that we sit on the sofa while she carried the pot and cups to the coffee table on a wooden tray. I glanced around as she poured, her hands shaking slightly. There were Scottish terriers with red bows everywhere—in framed prints, stenciled onto the wall in a border, in the fabric of the curtains, statues perched along the windowsills.
“Aren’t they cute?” she asked wistfully when I remarked on them. “I used to have a little Scottie. I always had one, actually, but when the last one died I didn’t get another. No pets in this place,” she explained, sitting across from us in a wingback chair. “Though I do think Mr. Kitteredge down the hall is hiding a cat.”
My mother and I sipped at our tea while she talked, filling us in on the residential gossip. I was grateful to my mother, who managed to keep the conversation focused. I saw why Oliver had felt frustrated, and kept trying to steer her into conversation about her aunt. Her great-aunt, it turned out.
“It must have been quite a task to settle the estate,” I said. “We’ve been going through a few boxes at our own house this morning, and I’m already exhausted.”
“Oh,” she said. “It nearly did me in, I can tell you. There were boxes and boxes and more boxes of things—in the attic, in the basement, in the extra rooms. She was a pack rat. All sorts of memorabilia, everywhere. She never married, so there was no one else to see to it all. And she had been so active, in so many different things. Plaques from this and certificates from that. Plus, I had all the stuff from her former housemate; all of her boxes were in the attic, too.”
I put my cup down carefully on its saucer. “Did you say she had a housemate?”
“Yes, from ages ago. She died a long time back. In the 1940s, I think. But all her things were still there.”
“Do you remember her name?”
“Oh, yes, her name was Rose. They were great friends, apparently. Even at the end of her life, my aunt used to speak of her. They were radicals together, you see. Free spirits, thumbing their noses at convention, that sort of thing. My aunt was something of a black sheep in the family,” she confided. “You know, never marrying, having a career. In those days, it wasn’t the done thing. She was making a statement, at least that’s how other people felt. Really, though, she was just living her own life. She said she liked me because I showed some spirit, and when I went to college she sent me money for books every semester. We kept up a correspondence.”
“She sounds remarkable.”
“Indeed, she was. She was a suffragette, you know, and the first woman in this county to cast her vote in 1920. There was an article about her in the newspaper.” She gave a wave of her hand. “I saved it here somewhere.”
“I wonder,” I said, trying to sound more casual than I felt, “what happened to all those things that belonged to Rose?”
Joan pressed her hands together for a second. “Well, let me see. I had the auction people come—they took the stained-glass windows, for instance, that your Mr. Parrott was so keenly interested in having. They took all the biggest furniture, too. Then I had a great big garage sale. You know, pots and pans, glassware. My neighbor Bobbie Jean helped me get it organized. She’s good at that sort of thing, a little bossy, but she means well. And after everything was gone, there were still boxes and boxes of papers. Bobbie Jean took them all. She said she was dropping them off at the Women’s Rights National Park in Seneca Falls. Because you realize my aunt, Lydia Langhammer, was arrested once and thrown in jail overnight. I remember how she used to like to tell that story. It was something she and Rose had in common, too. One of the reasons they were such good friends.”
I’d been letting the commentary wash over me, listening for key words, and at this I interrupted.
“Well, yes. I think that’s what Aunt Lydia said. More than once, as I recall. Aunt Lydia used to call Rose the fire to her oil. Or maybe it was the oil to her fire. It’s terrible, you never think to write these things down and then later they’re just gone. Poof!”
I let my breathing slow, forced myself to be calm as I asked the next question.
“I wonder—did they take those boxes full of papers? The Women’s Rights National Park?”
“As far as I know, they did. Bobbie Jean didn’t say otherwise. More tea?” she asked, as she saw me glance at my mother.
“No, thanks so much.”
“I’m afraid we have to get going,” my mother added.
“I wish you’d have more tea. I wish you’d stay a little longer.”
“We’re already late. It was so nice of you to see us, though.”
She walked us to the door, talking all the while, and didn’t stop even when we’d stepped out into the hall. Finally, I put my hand on her arm. She glanced down and paused in the stream of words.
“Thank you,” I said. “I’ll let you know if we find out anything.”
And before she could start talking again we were striding down the hall. I took the steps two at a time, and burst out into the cool, damp air. The rain had stopped and the sky, though overcast, was lighter.
“She seems very lonely,” my mother said.
“I know,” I said, glad for my skin, my clear eyes, but aware of how fleeting youth is. There had been a photo of Joan as a young woman on the wall above the table; she’d once been just as strong and agile as I was now.
We took the highway back, passing the signs for Geneva, Seneca Falls, Waterloo, winding through the countryside on local roads for the last few miles. There were deep puddles in the gravel driveway, and rain dripped from the foliage, so dense around the fence. The bucket on the porch was overflowing; inside, the boxes waited, their contents strewn across the living room floor.
“It’s this hour I don’t like,” my mother said. “This, and when the wind is up, that’s the other time this house seems like a hostile place.”
“You’d be happier somewhere smaller?”
“Absolutely,” she said, turning on the lights. “A maintenance-free condo, that’s what I have in mind. It’s beautiful here, but sometimes this house feels like my enemy.”
That night I lay awake for a long time, listening to the steady rain on the roof, thinking over the events of the day, so excited about the boxes at the Women’s Rights National Historic Park that I couldn’t sleep, worried because I hadn’t heard from Yoshi in two days, except for his brief e-mail. When I called him, he was packing, heading for his flight, so we didn’t talk long; he’d be in Jakarta by evening. I closed the phone and lay awake in the darkness, remembering my argument with Blake, what he’d said about change, wondering what it was I’d set in motion, and whether I’d be glad, at the end, that I had.
Chapter 11
I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING TO A SUNNY DAY, THE AIR washed clear by the rain, the prisms I’d hung in the window years ago casting dozens of little rainbows on the ceiling and the walls. It was still early, just chilly enough for a blanket. I stretched, then relaxed back into the narrow bed. Outside, Andy arrived to pick my mother up for brunch, gravel crunching under his tires, the car door slamming shut, his steps on the stairs. The screen door slammed shut, too, and my mother’s laughter floated out, hers and then Andy’s, followed by a silence when I imagined that they kissed, standing in the sunny kitchen. More doors, floating voices, their footsteps on the stairs. I sat up to watch them depart, Andy walking around the car to open the passenger door, my mother smiling up at him as she slid into the seat.
I sat crossed-legged on the bed and pulled the laptop from the table, glancing up at the lake while I waited for the slow Internet connection, whitecaps scattered here and there against the sapphire blue. Wind chimes sounded distantly. Rainbows danced along my arms, the sheets. Yoshi had e-mailed from Jakarta that his trip had been uneventful. It was evening there. I imagined him having dinner on a terrace full of potted ferns and rattan furniture, the tropical dusk settling fast around him. We used to like to wander the outdoor night markets, picking out sticks of satay or plates of grilled fish or steaming bowls of noodles, but Yoshi’s company preferred the ubiquitous international hotels; he’d be lucky if he got out even once for a shaved ice covered with syrup and corn, his favorite. That life we’d shared, those slow and careless days, seemed so far away. I tried calling him on Skype, but he didn’t pick up.
Downstairs, my mother had left the coffee warming, a bowl of fresh blueberries in the fridge, and a note saying where she’d gone. I ate at the counter, the blueberries firm and sweet, leafing through the latest Lake of Dreams Gazette, which featured articles on Keegan’s Glassworks—he was standing by the furnace, the glory hole he called it, with his arm tight around Max—as well as a four-page insert on the history and evolving controversy around the depot land.
The Women’s Rights National Historic Park is in Seneca Falls, just over an hour’s drive away. It’s open on Sundays, and after I washed my few dishes, I gathered up all my notes and photocopies, along with the original documents I’d found in the cupola, and set off. It seemed unlikely that they’d still have the boxes Joan Lowry had given them, or that those boxes would shed any light on Rose and her life, but I still felt optimistic as I drove through the rolling landscape and the canal towns that had prospered a hundred years ago, when Rose was young. She had perhaps been here, too, which filled me with deep excitement. Whoever she had been, whatever she had done, her story was part of the whole, and might illuminate my own.
In Seneca Falls I stopped first at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton home, where she’d lived from 1847 until 1862. A tour was just starting. The ranger took us through the simple rooms with their wide-planked floors and deep windows, which had overlooked the flats, a booming industrial area, as well as the two acres of orchards and gardens Elizabeth Cady Stanton had overseen while raising seven children. Her husband traveled with the circuit court and was often gone; she had written of how she suffered from an intellectual hunger that the busyness of her days did nothing to alleviate.
I lingered on the lawn after the tour, imagining the Stanton children scattered in play and Elizabeth striding about in her trousers and knee-length skirts. I imagined her sitting in the parlor after her guests had departed, after her children had gone to bed, writing out the Declaration of Sentiments in the long twilight evenings of early July, and then standing up to proclaim this declaration to an audience of hundreds. It must have felt exhilarating; she must have left the Wesleyan Chapel on a wave of excitement, filled with a sense of achievement and purpose. Her beliefs and her actions had opened the way for Rose two generations later, and had made my life of study and travel possible, too. But I wondered if she’d known this. It had taken seventy-two years longer for women to earn the right to vote, and not one of the speakers at the first Women’s Rights convention in 1848 had lived to see it.
In the main park building life-sized statues—of Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself, Lucretia Mott and her sister Martha Coffin Wright, the McClintocks and the Hunts and Frederick Douglass—gathered in the lobby as if arriving for the convention 158 years ago. The ranger at the front desk escorted me upstairs to meet the archivist. Her name was Gail and she was tall, with a low voice and dark, intelligent eyes. She listened with a thoughtful expression as I explained my story and asked about the boxes.
“Well, let me check,” she said. “We deal mostly with events and artifacts connected to the 1848 convention, so if the boxes didn’t contain anything like that we probably didn’t keep them.” She pulled a ledger from a low shelf and opened it, tracing down the lines with her index finger. “Yes, okay, here it is—Joan Lowry, did you say? I have a record of three boxes donated.”
“Really? Are they still here?”
“No, I’m afraid not. W
e went through those boxes four months ago. We did find three items relevant to the convention, apparently, but those are being processed. The rest—let’s see. Yes, here it is. The rest we sent to the Lafayette Historical Society. We often pass things on to them. Sometimes they find illuminating items that are of no use to us. You might try there.”
“You can’t tell me what the relevant items were?”
“Not at this moment. I’m sorry. I can check for you, if you like.”
“That would be really helpful, thanks. What about these?” I asked, opening the folder and showing her the pamphlets and flyers. “Are these of any interest?”
She looked through them slowly, giving careful attention to each document.
“To me they are,” she said. “We wouldn’t keep them here—they’re from the wrong era—but you should hold on to them. Maybe check with the people who have Margaret Sanger’s papers—these articles about family planning were written by her, probably around 1912 or 1913. This is an early copy, and they’re relatively hard to find. Later they were censored by the post office. They violated the Comstock obscenity laws, which made it illegal, even for physicians, to explain the basic facts of reproductive health. Sanger went to jail. Her sister, Ethyl Byrne, did, too, and almost died from the hunger strike she undertook in protest of those laws.”
I thanked her and gave her my address and phone number in case anything turned up. Then I drove through the expansive streets with their grand houses and wide lawns to the Lafayette Historical Society. It was located in an ornate Queen Anne house with intricate trim along the roofline, well kept but in need of paint; the second step sagged as I walked to the door. I was lucky, as it turned out. Though the building was usually closed on Sundays, it was open for a genealogy class. I stepped into a foyer that had been perfectly restored, with deep mahogany wainscoting and wallpaper with a tiny green floral print on cream. A young woman with a pierced nose and lip sat behind a vast desk, reading, and she finished her paragraph before she finally put her bookmark in the page and looked up, the little diamond below her lip catching the light.