Finally, I pulled my eyes away from the sky, turned the flashlight back on, and opened Claire’s Remembrance Diary.
I felt so relaxed and calmed by the meteor shower, as if I had no cares in the world.
Flipping through the diary, March 29 caught my eye, seeing a mention of a birthday. I read the entry.
Today in 1959, you turned four years old. You were such a bundle of joy to me! You woke up and jumped out of bed, ready to take on the world. It was your special day, and you knew it. You weren’t going to waste a single minute sleeping.
You pulled me out of bed. “Mama, Mama, wake up. It’s Tuesday. It’s my birthday.”
“Yes, darling, it’s your birthday.”
After saving every penny I could for months, I had been able to pull together enough money to buy you a brand new red wagon.
When you saw the wagon, your eyes grew so large, I thought they were going to pop. You immediately piled three of your dolls into the wagon and formed a parade. You were the grand marshal and proudly pulled the wagon around the entire city block, wanting only to show off your treasure.
Some would think it odd that I bought you a wagon instead of something more traditional for a girl. I guess I just know you really well.
Lunch was hotdogs and home fries, your favorite.
No day was ever again as nice as this one.
Finishing the story brought me a weird sense of déjà vu. I also remember receiving a red wagon when I had a birthday, although I wouldn’t be able to tell you which birthday it was. It was a spanking new Radio Flyer and I thought I was the king of the world that day. The thought made me smile. I had something in common with Julie.
It was almost two o’clock and time to head back to town. I walked slowly, looking up into the sky from time to time, still enjoying the last parts of the night show.
Chapter 38
“Scott.”
“Jimmy.”
I looked down the bar as Scott pulled a draft for my dad. Eventually Dad looked in my direction and nodded. “Sam.”
Every time I saw my father, he just creeped me out. He looked like a Seattle street bum that had somehow been transported into the clothes of a normal 1960s man. The roughness of his skin, his cold eyes, and his abruptness, all combined to make me want to stay away from him. Of course I couldn’t do that.
Just when I was going to ask if Marie was coming tonight, she walked in the Ladies and Escorts door and quietly moved to her barstool. She took a glance at me and smiled. I couldn’t help but feel a pull at my heart from that smile. She wore a nice baby blue dress and crossed her legs when she looked over at me.
I nodded to her. She pulled out a cigarette and took pains to light it, concentrating on her shaking fingers. I could still feel the sensation of her lips against mine, and I pursed my mouth, trying to remove the thought.
It was six o’clock on Wednesday night. Two days after my wonderful time with the Perseids. I thought of educating my parents about it, hoping they’d go out next year in search of the show. It only took a moment to shake myself back to reality, knowing how laughable an idea that was.
Dad looked over to me. “Nixon won.”
I knew the election wasn’t for another few months. “Won?”
“Don’t you guys out west ever pay attention to the news?” He took a long drag on his cigarette. “It was on CBS a few days ago. Walter Cronkite. Nixon is the Republican guy to run in the election.”
The Republican National Convention must have just happened. I hadn’t seen any news lately, but there wasn’t much about Richard Nixon I didn’t know, from the Checkers speech to Watergate and beyond. “You like him?”
Dad laughed. “Nobody likes him. Just the least bad choice. Don’t know about this Agnew guy going with him, though.”
“Probably as good as any,” I lied.
Marie said, “Maybe Nixon will stop the war.” She looked at me hopefully.
I knew that more than forty thousand Americans would die in Vietnam under Nixon’s presidency. Including Marty. “I doubt it,” I said.
Marie looked back to her beer.
“Hey, Jimmy, you ever enter the fishing derby?”
He looked at me like I was daft and didn’t reply.
“The Trout Derby,” I added. “You know, on Sunday.”
“I know about the fuckin’ Trout Derby. Jesus, you think I didn’t grow up in this goddamn city?”
“Well, you ever enter?”
“When I was a kid.”
“How about going with me this year? I don’t know the town and don’t know the best place to go.”
“I don’t fish.”
Marie’s head seemed to bob from side to side. “You could try,” she said. “You used to say you liked to fish.”
He glared at her. I think he would have hit her if we hadn’t been in a public place.
“Look,” I said, “Let’s give it a shot. I’ll get a couple cases of beer and we can spend a few hours in the sun and water. You never know what we might catch.”
Even Scott was listening in on the conversation as he cleaned some already clean glasses. I suspect my father hadn’t gone fishing, hunting, or anything else that could rightly be called leisure for a long time. Not when that meant he’d have to be away from the bar.
He finally asked, “You’ll get the beer?”
Chapter 39
The following afternoon, I went to Mrs. Williamson’s door and knocked. When she answered, she looked at me, puzzled. “It’s not the end of the month. Rent’s not due yet.”
“I’m not here about the rent. I’m actually not sure I’ll be staying much longer.”
“What, then?”
“I’d like to talk to you. May I come in?”
She looked over her shoulder, judging her home, seeming to give it a passing grade. “I haven’t cleaned,” she said hesitantly. “And I don’t have nothing to offer you but tea.”
“Tea would be nice.” I squeezed through the doorway, past her, before she could change her mind.
I had never been in Mrs. Williamson’s house before. The door opened into her living room, a large room with only a few pieces of furniture. There was a brown couch and two small wooden chairs. The couch seemed as solid as a rock, covered with a clear plastic overlay to protect it.
“Sit,” she said. She went to the kitchen and I could hear her putting the water on to boil. “Don’t get many visitors.”
“Don’t go to any trouble on my behalf.”
“No trouble. I need my tea.” She was back in the room. “Helps my digestion.”
She sat in one of the wooden chairs. “Sit,” she said again.
I picked the other chair, near to her. “I’m sorry to come by unannounced. I really just wanted to talk to you for a few minutes.”
She didn’t respond, just looked at me.
“You have a very nice house. I appreciate you having taken me in all summer.”
“Wasn’t nothing.”
“I don’t think that’s quite true,” I said. “That was your daughter’s room, Claire’s, and it must have been difficult renting it.”
“She’s been gone a long time.”
“How long?”
She sighed. “I’ll check the tea.” This time, when she went to the kitchen, she used a cane to help her, and I could see her favoring her left leg.
“I’ll help you.”
I followed her to the kitchen and poured the boiling water into the worn, blue ceramic pot she had on the counter. She had already tossed two tea bags inside. She showed me a silver tray, and I placed the pot and two sets of dainty cups and saucers onto it. She didn’t say anything as I took the set to the living room and set it on the waiting coffee table.
I didn’t push her with more questions, knowing she needed the time to collect her thoughts. She took a frilly handkerchief from her apron pocket and gently rubbed her nose. Finally, she said, “Claire left me three years ago.”
I nodded and poured us each a steaming
cup. I would have liked sugar and cream, but I wasn’t going to break her thoughts now that she had started talking.
“Why did she leave?”
“She had her reasons.”
We each took a taste of the tea. Too hot for me, but it didn’t bother her a bit.
“I found the diary.”
Mrs. Williamson didn’t seem to hear me at first. She licked her lips and took another drink of the tea, seeming only to concentrate on that.
“Claire’s Remembrance Diary.”
“Yes,” she finally said. “I know the diary. I put it downstairs. She sent it to me last year.”
“She sent it to you?”
She nodded and took a deep breath. “She wrote her heart and soul into it. Wrote about Julie with all the love that only a mother can feel for her child.”
Her cup was trembling in her hand and she forced it down to the saucer.
“Why did she give it to you?”
“Claire left here on May 21, 1965. I’ll know that date from memory until the day they stick me in the ground. I lost my daughter that day.”
“And your grand-daughter,” I added.
“No, not that.”
“Not that? I don’t understand.”
“Claire left because of -- ” She took another bit of her tea, her hand no longer shaking. “She didn’t want to leave, but somebody forced her. Scared her.”
“Who would scare her?”
“When she left, she wouldn’t tell me where she was going. I still don’t know. I didn’t hear from her until last autumn, when the diary arrived in the mail.”
“She didn’t tell you where she was?” I felt stupid, asking her what she’d already told me, but I didn’t understand.
“The package came postmarked from Detroit.” She sighed. “There was no letter to me, and I don’t think she really was living there. Passing through, maybe. She just wanted to disappear.” I could see her fighting off tears. “She wanted to disappear from them.” She pointed her thumb like a hitchhiker, aiming through the wall towards my parents’ house. “Them and their awful, awful friends. That awful Bob person.”
Uncle Bob scared her away.
I almost didn’t want to know what he might have done to her. It must have been something truly horrific to send Claire packing and hiding even from her own mother.
She kept on talking. “When I got the package in the mail, I tried to find her. But, she had no phone listing in Detroit. I really don’t think she was there. Just maybe stopped to mail the diary to me.”
My cup was empty. “Why did she send you the diary?”
“She knew Julie’s life was special. To her and to me.” She looked into my eyes, and I’m sure she was asking herself why she was revealing so much to me, a more or less complete stranger. Maybe because she knew I had read the diary. Maybe because I had shared her daughter’s room. Maybe just because I hadn’t given her a reason to hate me.
“What did you mean you didn’t lose Julie when Claire left?”
Her shoulders seemed to sag and her voice was much softer as she said, “There never was a Julie. She only existed between the covers of that book.”
I took a few seconds, replaying her statements in my mind. Her words were so strange, I felt like I had to translate them from a foreign language.
“Julie wasn’t real?” I finally asked her.
“Claire loved her as if she were real. She lived for that child.” Finally, a tear did drop from each of her eyes. “But, no, she didn’t exist. Except to Claire. I tried to help, to keep Julie alive for her, but finally, when that Bob person came back, Julie was stolen from Claire’s heart and she never came back.”
Mrs. Williamson started to shake, tears streaming down her face. “I don’t know what happened. I guess I didn’t want to believe anything happened. But, I lost my Claire.”
I moved to her and carefully put my arms around her, the frail old woman falling desperately into me. I held her for ten minutes, neither one of us speaking any more.
Afterward, she left to go to her bedroom. I thanked her and quietly let myself out of her house.
Chapter 40
That night, I woke, feeling restless at about two in the morning. I stretched and got up for a trip to the bathroom.
I had left the bathroom window open an inch or two and a cool breeze greeted me. I yawned and splashed water on my face. There wouldn’t be any more sleep tonight for me, so I thought I’d not even try.
The problem was Claire. The more I knew about her, the more I felt the need to find out what had happened to her. What had really gone on between her and Uncle Bob? And why in the world would she invent a fictitious child, even going to the trouble of cutting out a photo of another girl and pasting it onto the cover of her Remembrance Diary?
The clock was ticking on my ability to find the answer.
I walked outside and felt a chill in the air for the first time that summer. Every other evening I had come outside at night, the air was cooler than the daytime but still warm. Tonight was different. The first subtle approach of the autumn, the first tentative departure of summer. No cicadas sang for me tonight. It was dead quiet.
I only have a few days left, I thought. My summer visits to Nelson were about to end. Somehow I knew that. Maybe this was my last trip or maybe there’d be one more, but I knew they were ending and I was damned glad they were ending. I just wanted to be back to a normal life with Jenny.
If a normal life was an option after my magical summer.
I had a promise to keep before I lost all hope, though. A promise I had made to my mother.
Moving back indoors, I poured myself a glass of ice tea, and then sat down to read Claire’s diary for a couple of hours. I was drifting off to sleep when the first rays of morning sunshine broached my room.
I slept solidly until about ten o’clock. When I finally woke, I took a long shower, shaved, brushed my teeth, and used every other distraction I could before returning to my promise.
I left the room and walked over to my parents’ house. They’d both be gone for the day, my father working at the cement factory, my mother working mornings at a coffee shop.
Marty answered my knock. “Yeah?”
“Hi, Marty.” My older brother had always seemed so grown-up to me. Even though we had spent almost no time together when I was young, he had been my idol. I wanted to be him when I grew up almost as much as I wanted to be a major league ball player. That adulation would crash and burn when he was killed.
Now, Marty stood in front of me, not a grown-up in any sense of the word. He was a tall kid, ungracefully tall and thin. His hair was burnt almond with a few lighter streaks. The biggest surprise I noticed was his eyes. My boyhood hero was stern, solid, brave. I’m sure my memories of him molded that image, the image of a war hero, killed while fighting for his country.
In contrast, Marty’s eyes now shifted around, not landing directly on me. The confidence I always associated with him simply wasn’t there. In its place was hesitation and self-doubt. Fuck.
“Oh, hi,” he said. We had chitchatted a bit over the summer, but hadn’t really spoken in any detail about anything. “Mom and Dad are out.”
“Yes, I know. I came to see you.”
“Me?”
“I heard about the draft. I was in World War II and thought I could share some of my experiences with you. I know how exciting it is to fight for your country.”
“It’s an honor,” he said flatly. From the inflection in his voice, it seemed like he was having some misgivings about this whole thing.
“Come on and sit out here.”
He banged the screen door behind him and sat out on the back porch with me. The same porch my father had sat on when he asked if I would look after him when he was 64. Now, I was the father figure, and my job was to save my surrogate son, my brother.
“I was 24 when I joined the army,” I began. “They gave us six months of basic training. Then the Japs bombed Pearl Harbor.”
“Where were you stationed?” he asked.
“We were fighting two wars at once, it seemed. Mostly the air force took the fight in Japan, while the rest of us went to Europe to fight the Germans.
“We were dropped behind enemy lines. Our mission was to secure and destroy one of the supply lines that ran out from Berlin into the north. Our early reconnaissance told us the buggers were lined up sporadically along the route. We just needed to pick them off at one critical junction. It was a perfect setup, with a concrete pillar that was supposed to provide us protection so we could take over control of a small bridge.” I paused for effect. “Ten of us trained for two months for this one mission. We parachuted into the area in the middle of the night. My nine companions were all killed.”
He was full of questions, but politely asked only one. “How did you survive?”
“By going crazy. By killing more people than you can imagine.” I shook my head. “But, I’m not here to talk about that. I want to tell you a different story.”
He waited, wondering where I was going.
“This is your story. The story of your army career.”
“What do you mean? I haven’t even been to get my haircut yet.”
I ignored his sarcasm. I just stared into his eyes, making him understand this was not a laughing matter.
“On September 6, you go to catch the bus. That’s three weeks from now. It’s going to meet you at the church and six other young men from Nelson and the surrounding farms will be there, all of them bursting with pride and excitement, all of them a bit scared, all of them very naïve. You actually will be the most naïve of all, because you actually do think it’s an honor to fight this war. The others don’t think that, but they have no choice, so they get on the bus with you.
“You only get three months of basic training, which is held in Fort Jasco in California.
The Memory Tree Page 14