asking.
I looked around me. “Do any of you remember Allen and Sandra Simson? They would have lived here a long time ago, around thirty years now.”
The ladies looked at each other and shook their heads.
I took a deep breath. “How about Rose Carlson? Do any of you know Rose Carlson? Or her sister, Sandra Carlson? That would have been her name before she was married.”
All around were mystified head shakes. By now I felt so nauseated I could barely stand. I felt hot and cold all at once. Without further explanation, I fled to my little bathroom in the back, where I leaned both hands on the edge of the sink and looked at myself in the mirror. I was freezing. I was sweating. Peas of moisture beaded on my forehead, yet my throat was dry. I swallowed several times and just managed not to throw up. Breathe. Breathe, I told myself. Something else was bothering me, something I’d shoved to the back of my mind for all these years, something I didn’t confront, couldn’t. But something that was even now staring me in the face. I looked up at the reflection of my own face in the mirror above the sink. That beautiful, barefoot woman with the long hair was not my mother. The two in the picture were not my parents.
I could hear Johanna in the other room. “Well, ladies, let me go see how Marylee is. Keep leafing through the magazines and we’ll be right back.”
A moment later her hand was on my neck.
“Did you see the picture?” I asked.
“I did, Marylee. I did. But there’s going to be a simple explanation. After the class, I’ll come up to your apartment and we’ll figure it all out.” Her voice was soothing, and I was so glad she was my friend and that she was with me tonight.
“But why?” I asked. “Where did Beryl’s picture come from? Where did my picture come from?”
After my aunt Rose had died and my engagement had fallen apart, I’d come here to Burlington, Vermont. It was the only thing I could really do. Even despite her Cassandra-like warnings, I was born here and had lived here for the three years prior to my aunt driving us out west. The secrets lay somewhere here in Burlington. I just had to find them. Of course, I had researched the accident. Through the years, I’d pawed through my aunt’s things looking for pictures, looking for news articles, looking for death certificates. I’d found nothing. I’d searched my parents’ names on the Internet, plus any reference to a car accident in Vermont many times, and had come up empty.
Someday I would stand at the graves of my parents. Someday I would find the rest of my family. For I knew there had to be more than just me and Aunt Rose.
Yet in the seven months I’d been here, I hadn’t been able to find anyone who knew my parents or my aunt. I had scoured the cemeteries. No luck. None of the seniors in my afternoon scrapbooking class remembered the names Allen and Sandra Simson. I’d also worked my way through the newspaper archives at the public library so many times that the reference librarian was getting sick of seeing me come in. Yet I had found zilch. Google searches continued to yield nothing.
And now this! My first real clue in seven months and you’d think I’d be cheering and jumping up and down, yet here I was, my hand to my mouth to keep from throwing up.
Maybe there was a part of me that was afraid of what I would find. Or what I wouldn’t find. Maybe, after all, there was nothing to find.
TWO
After the last satisfied customer had left, I armed my store’s security system and we went upstairs to my apartment, where Johanna brewed a big pot of chamomile tea.
Somewhere during the course of the evening it had started to rain. An appropriately cold rain which matched my mood slashed at the windows like knives.
I’d managed to muddle through the class with Johanna helping. I also apologized for running off like that, but offered no explanation. No one pressed for a reason. Johanna helped me lay out their initial efforts on tables in my back room. Everyone chatted while they gathered up their coats and purses. Next week at this same time they would be back to work on them. The class was a success. Everyone was happy. I was a mess.
The framed photo that I had talked to all these years was between us on the kitchen table. Johanna carefully removed the photo from the frame. “There might be something here,” she said. “Maybe on the back.”
“There’s nothing,” I told her. “Nothing on the back. Nowhere.” And I should know. I’d scrutinized this picture many, many times for clues, a name of a photographer.
She said, “Why don’t you get all the pictures of your parents together and then you can show them to all the people who come into the shop. You could even tack them up on some of the bulletin boards around town. There are so many things you could be doing, Marylee, if you want to find out who you’re related to out here.”
“All the pictures? This is the only picture I have.” I was aware then that she was my friend, yet I had shared with her only carefully selected pieces of my life.
Her eyes went wide. “Really? Well, then, this one then, you show everyone this picture. You make copies. I could help you. We could put it in the paper, even.”
“I can’t. I can’t explain it, I just can’t do that.” I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to my friend, this reticence I felt. I didn’t know if I could explain it properly to myself. It was all bound up in my aunt and her fears. When I was little, she hadn’t even wanted me showing the picture to my friends. When I would ask her why not, her standard response would be, “You don’t know who’s out there.”
I took a sip of my tea. My fingers were shaking so badly, I put the teacup down and stared into its depths. Johanna touched my hand. “How did your parents die?”
I sighed. “I don’t know.”
“You don’t know?”
“I don’t have all the information. My aunt wouldn’t tell me. That’s why I’m here. It’s a long story.”
“We have a whole pot of tea, and more where that came from.”
So I told her. I told her I was born here in Burlington and after my parents died, my aunt Rose packed me up in her car and we drove clear across the country until we ended up in Portland, Oregon.
“Aunt Rose was the only mother I ever knew. She’s been gone about a year.” I bit my lip. “Ovarian cancer. I still miss her.”
“Oh, Marylee.”
I swallowed and continued. “But she kept warning me about Burlington. She told me not to come back here.”
Johanna’s eyes were wide. “And she never told you why?”
I took a swallow of tea and shook my head. “She was thrilled when I began going out with he-who-shall-not-be-named. I think she thought that was a surefire way to keep me from ever coming here to Burlington…”
I let my voice drift off and thought about that whole chapter of my life.
“He had stood with me throughout her six-month battle with cancer, he’d been the comfort I needed, my rock. The day after my aunt’s funeral, he proposed.” I said it quietly. “We ended up setting a date a year in
