I shake my head, the light suddenly bright.
“You okay, Mrs. Byrne?”
“Yes, Josey. It’s just the heat.”
“Good day to you, then.” He takes off his hat.
Mother, it’s such a rush, Greta said last night into the phone. The line ticked, an ocean between us. I never imagined a girl could go so far. I’ll be home in three months, she said. Four tops.
You’ll be home when you’re home, I said.
London is wild. I wish you could see it.
I stood in the hall with the cord bent around the doorframe. Outside, the windows showed little but a brick wall, even the bricks crumbling now. From the kitchen two floors down, Charlotte scolded one of the cats, “I bet you did, you nasty little thing.”
Oh, no, I told my daughter. I’ve seen quite enough.
Today the lake seems more than ten blocks. The streets are nearly empty. At night, the young ones go downtown. Not here, where the workers’ houses used to be. Here, which I’d always thought the heart of the city. When the shopkeepers pull the cages over their storefronts, there’s a roaring in the street, but soon it’s quiet. There’s a man sleeping under his newspapers and I hurry by.
You have to be careful, Mother, Greta says.
But what can they do to an old lady, after everything that’s already been done? Let the young be nervous for their own sake.
The lake swells with little but stones and grass between me and it. The water has flooded its banks. My bench needs a coat of paint, but then everything worth using does. I scratch at the flakes with a fingernail, feel them cut into my thumb. It’s the time of year when the lake is warm as a bath. An old man passes, younger by at least twenty years. He keeps his hands in his pockets and nods at me as if nodding meant something. I shake my newspaper out.
RUDOLF HESS DEAD IN BERLIN
LAST OF HITLER INNER CIRCLE
My word. A suicide, no less. What was it Mrs. Keyes had said? With a name like that, it’s no wonder the man’s a murderer. But that was back in ’47, when they hanged a man by the name of Hoess. A different Rudolph. Hess, Hoess, I could hear Mrs. Keyes saying. What’s the difference? Auschwitz, Charlotte would have said to that. Greta was only twenty-six in ’47 and already in New York. The girl never did bother much with names. In every school production she changed what she called herself, as if trying on a new coat. But in New York, they might have second-guessed if Greta had gone by Hess instead of Byrne.
The men are dead. I don’t believe Greta ever knew we had such an ugly name. I had never thought it ugly myself.
Margrit Hess, Father had insisted for the top of Mother’s stone. We children hoped to have the word Mother listed first. Still we were far too young to get a say in something like that. We buried Mother in the northernmost field, close enough for her to hear the river—if hearing she wanted. It took Ray and Father a full day of digging, and not even Lee to help. Lee, who traveled two weeks on a boat and three days on a train once the telegram was sent. If he hadn’t gone to war, it would have been Lee who built the box, Lee who did most of the digging. As it was, the grave wasn’t very deep. Lee was sorry about that when he got back. We laid our flowers on the mound. At her head, a block of slate. Mother, it read, though second to her name. When Charlotte and I buried Mrs. Keyes, we inscribed Mother on it as well. I took it hard losing her, but Charlotte took it worse. The word Friend didn’t seem enough for either of us.
A tap on my shoulder. “Norma?” The name isn’t anything but a fly at my ear. “Norma?” again. And then the name I know better, the sound that fills me with something else altogether: “Myrle?” I turn my head. Charlotte stands behind me with a coat thrown over her nightdress and slippers on her feet. With her hair drained of color, she looks a ghost. The sun has set. The waves in the lake are quiet. There’s a moon as yellow as a stone. It’s the only way I can see her at all.
“You were gone so long,” she says.
I shake my head to throw off the dust. “I’m fine.”
She takes my arm and I ease myself up. Only when I press my fingers to the wood do I feel the cold of that bench. When we turn to the city, the lake stays dark at our backs. The gulls are gone. The shops are closed now. The walk feels longer than before, though I have Charlotte and her cane, tapping the cement. We are two old women leaning against each other for every step.
“Just a bit farther” she says. “We’ll get you home. You must be coming down with that fever that’s going around.”
“I only lost a little time.”
Charlotte squeezes my arm and doesn’t let go. She studies me out of the corner of her eye. “We’ll get you home.”
I strain to look back. There’s a young girl on my bench. Her name is Myrle. She was always murkier than anyone could have guessed. I watch as she walks into the lake, the water lapping her shins. She’ll go deeper yet. Mother knew it when she filled our heads with the names of things. Because who says a person can’t live more than one life?
“It was me,” I told Charlotte after Greta was born. “I was the one who wanted to go.” And Charlotte pretended that was the way it had always been. “Esther was too jittery here,” she said. “But all you wanted was to get out of your room.” She traced a finger across my palm. “Besides, you talk in your sleep.”
That night before Esther and I left home, when everyone had gone to bed, I took Father’s key while he slept and fit it in the lock. We’ve got to know we’ve stolen the right one, Esther had said. The bolt turned, the door opening. When I stepped out, there was nothing but a thin moon and my feet bare on the wooden planks. I felt my way down the porch steps, through the yard where the grass wet my shins. Come right back, Esther had said, but I wouldn’t. Not yet. The river was quiet against the rocks as I picked my way out.
I had long hoped to try it. Since I’d found Mother so quiet in her bed. Since Tom had left me in the hayloft and Patricia made her announcement: That boy’s gotten himself engaged. All those days spent in my room with my eyes closed, holding my breath—they were only practice for this.
At the river, the dirt turned to mud, the grass higher than my knees. I threw my nightgown on the bank and hugged three stones to my chest. As I waded in, the water was cold enough to burn. The moon barely showed itself. The river cut a trail between the fields. The cold changed to numbness the deeper I went, the current tugging at my feet. The water was soon at my hips. When it reached my throat, I dove in.
There is a place where a person is nothing. Where water is the same as breathing. This was it.
I sat on the muddy floor with the stones pressed to my chest and listened. My ears rang. My heart beating in them. I was more than frozen, the key sharp against the inside of my hand. For a while, it seemed the bottom of the river was what wanted me most. The weeds were knots, the mud pulling at my heels. But this was the agreement I had made with myself. I would pinch my nose. I would dive in. And if something in me wanted to stay with the river, I would.
But soon I felt it, that swelling in my stomach. My arms, that swelling said, they didn’t want stones. I loosened my grip, let them sink. The key I held tight in my fist. I pushed at the mud with my feet, felt myself breaking through the surface. The air was clear and easy in a way I’d never known.
I made my way to the bank, heaving. On a rock, I sat out in the open and let the wind dry me as it could. There were the cicadas again. Farther out, the barn steamed with the animals sleeping. A noise in the meadow—a snake, a rabbit, a bird. I pulled my nightgown over my head, walked until the house showed itself. It seemed low and dull sitting there. I unlocked the door again and drew it fast.
A lantern blazed in the hall. “Why, Myrle,” Nan said, “you’ll catch your death.”
The key I hid behind my back. The river ran down my leg. Nan’s face showed sharp and pale, her arm trembling with the lantern’s weight. Her eyes swept the mat under my
feet. When she raised them to my face again, her look softened. She opened her mouth as if she might say something. Instead she smiled.
Oh, Nanny, you can come with us. I took her hand.
Nan’s smile faltered. I wondered if I had spoken aloud. But Nan would never leave. She had let me go weeks before with the draft of that window. For her, she was as much a part of that house as the planks over our head.
“Go on,” Nan said. She jerked her chin at the stairs. I squeezed her hand and ran. At the top, Esther closed the door and sat me on her bed. I was shivering enough for the two of us.
“Where were you?” she asked.
“By the river.”
She frowned. “I don’t think we should go. It’s too far.”
I held out the key to her and she gasped. My hand was bleeding. I’d gripped it so hard, it had made its mark.
“It’s your turn,” I said. “It’s our only chance.”
Esther stared at my hand.
I closed it and opened it again, bloodier now. “Take it.”
She grabbed hold of the key. Closing her eyes, she slit her palm. It took her three tries.
“Promise,” I said.
“Promise.” She pressed her hand into mine.
“We’re going,” I said. “And we’re never coming back.”
Norma Byrne opens the door to the house. Norma Byrne climbs the stairs. If there is any part of me inside that old woman, it’s the part that remembers Mrs. Keyes opening the door to our room all those years ago. Mrs. Keyes who was as wide as the rails. There seem a great deal more steps now than there were then.
I count them as I climb, though already we’re halfway. “One, two,” I start. “Eight,” I say when I reach the landing. “Eight,” Charlotte echoes without asking why.
In our room, Charlotte pulls back the sheets and I rest my head.
“Water?” Charlotte asks. She kisses me.
“They reversed the Chicago River, Charlotte. Did you know that?”
“Of course they did.”
She turns off the lamp. Above my head, the ceiling shifts and the lights from the street, all those circles and lines, move as quickly as water in a glass.
The phone rings. Charlotte hurries into the hall.
“Who is it?” I ask.
“No,” she says into the phone. “There’s no one here by that name.” The phone snaps in its cradle. “Norma?” she says, closer to me now.
The phone rings a second time. Charlotte turns her head and listens. “Must be her again.” Then she’s out in the hall and picking up the phone. “Well, yes. But Norma doesn’t know anyone like that.” The snap in the cradle again.
Charlotte grumbles as she returns to the room. Her neck is flushed with that old Irish blood, something I haven’t seen in years.
“Some woman who says her name is Renie,” Charlotte explains. “Do you know a Renie?”
“Renie?”
“She says she’s someone’s daughter.” Charlotte shakes her head to think. “Bernadette’s daughter, that’s what she said.”
“My sister Nan.”
“I thought she said Bernadette.”
“Is she all right?”
Charlotte drops her hand on my forehead. “What did you say?”
The phone rings again. Charlotte hurries into the hall. “Yes, yes, I might have been wrong. But she’s feeling ill. Can I take your number?”
“Nan?” I call out.
“Yes, that’s right,” Charlotte says into the phone. “I have it. I’ll be sure to give it to her when she’s better.”
Nan with a child. But of course that’s what the letters said. I would have liked to see my sister’s face again. I would have liked to know my niece, the one who’d rather do chores than dress for weddings. Maybe if I have energy enough, I could make the trip. The train isn’t so many days now. When I try to imagine the place, it seems like a foreign country—if I ever knew it. But with those faces again, I might.
“Norma?” I hear.
A hand on my forehead. The hand is cold and smells of salt. “Is it Greta?”
“Are you all right?” Charlotte asks. “Can you hear me? I’m going to call the doctor.”
“The doctor now?”
But Charlotte is on the phone again. “Yes, come at once. She seems very confused. Must you keep asking your questions?”
Greta is in England, I remember. The daughter doesn’t feel the distance, but the mother always does.
“Look,” Charlotte says. I open my eyes. Charlotte holds a yellow square of paper with numbers written in small sharp lines.
“Nan was like a mother to me,” I say. “I never should have left.”
“Norma?” But Charlotte’s voice is distant now. I try to raise my head to hear her better.
“You stay still,” Charlotte says. “They’re coming. Can you wait?”
The bed lifts. A hand sweeps my face. Charlotte and her worries, but it’ll be all right. They’re coming. I’m not so far from home as I thought. So easy to have a number, to drop a line. So easy for them to be here at the door, less than a day’s travel now, or so I’ve heard. Nan and her daughter, Renie. Father with his cane. Lee walking across the hill with his limp, but maybe he doesn’t limp so badly now. Ray and Patricia, arm in arm. Agnes with her trio of children, taller than she ever was. And Esther, she’s running ahead of them. She’s already in the alley. She’s knocking on the door. She knows just where to find me. We’re here for a room, she says. Of course. We just have to make the bed. Never mind your papers. How far have you come?
Epilogue
August 18, 1987
Dear niece,
I have made a discovery. Do you remember the story I once told you about your two great-aunts who disappeared? I believe the youngest may be alive.
Your Uncle Lee has found a letter intended for him in our late Aunt Esther’s belongings, though we don’t know why she would have hidden it. The letter is undated but looks very old. It was written by one Mrs. Mary Keyes of Chicago. Lee would read me only part of the letter, but it was clear that Mrs. Keyes was trying to make amends: “Lord knows how heavily this has sat in my heart and for how long. Now that I’m ill, I’ll never be able to forgive myself if I don’t write. This is the truth: Your sisters were indeed living at this address when you came for your visit some years ago, and Myrle is living here still. She goes by the name Norma Byrne.”
The letter troubled Lee, more than he seemed willing to explain. Still he thought it might prove that Aunt Myrle, your grandmother’s last remaining sister, hadn’t died, as was the family’s belief. I wrote down the name “Norma Byrne” and called the residence. The woman who answered hung up on me twice only to listen the third time. She told me she was Norma’s companion. I identified myself as Myrle’s great-niece, her sister Nan’s only daughter, and said I was interested in how my aunt fared. The woman sounded elderly and quite distracted. She said Norma was very ill, but she would give her the information at a later time. If she found what I told her to be true, Norma would call back. Then the woman hung up.
Lee said he couldn’t understand it. He was speaking of Esther’s hiding the letter, of course. When it came to Myrle, Lee said, Esther was sensitive. He thought it nearly killed her when Myrle had drowned. She only mentioned it once, the way Tom Elliot had “done Myrle such a wrong.” Lee said Esther never spoke of it again. I doubted I needed to tell him that the letter meant Esther had lied. Your uncle nursed Esther to the end in the old family house, though she’d grown irritable. When I last visited, she gripped my hand in the parlor where we sat near the fire and whispered something I never will forget. “I let her do what she wanted.” That’s what she said. When she repeated it, Lee hushed her. Back then, I thought it was Myrle and Tom she meant. Now I’m not so sure. I worry for Lee alone out there without his sister. Since the lette
r was found, his health has turned, and he won’t speak Esther’s name, even when asked. I don’t know what bothers him more, that Myrle might be living or that Esther hid the truth from him. Strangely enough, I think for him the latter might be worse. Aunt Pat said she’d send over one of Agnes’ girls to look in on him and see to it he has food in his stomach. I’ll check on him myself.
As for me, when I was young, I remember a woman stopping by the farm. I never thought much of it. But after she left, your uncle took to carrying around a white stone. Mother said she’d never seen him so pleased, not since the day his sister Esther had come home. He didn’t give his reasons, Mother said, almost as if he didn’t understand it himself. Still Mother seemed pleased when hearing of the woman’s visit as well, though she never said why.
It has been two weeks now and I’m still waiting for Myrle to call. If she doesn’t soon, I will call her again. I’ll keep you updated.
Much Love,
Aunt Renie
Acknowledgments
Thanks for the support and encouragement of my readers Steven Beeber, Karen Halil, Laura Harrison, Daphne Kalotay, Linda Schlossberg, Dawn Tripp, and Lara Wilson. Thanks also to my longtime writing friends Patti Horvath, Jane Rosenberg Laforge, Kate Southwood, Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes, and Michelle Valois, as well as my writing cohorts Sari Boren, Steven Brykman, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, and Ilan Mochari.
Thanks to the GrubStreet staff and friends for doing what you do and being who you are, especially Lisa Borders, Eve Bridburg, and Chris Castellani, for helping build the Novel Incubator Program, which made me a better teacher and writer. Thanks to all our Incubees for your energy and talent. You inspire me every day.
Thanks to Brandeis University for allowing me to teach and write “in residence.” Thanks especially to Steve McCauley for shepherding me through the process.
Thanks to my editor, Corinna Barsan, for her continued zeal this second time around and her exceedingly smart pencil, as well as to the entire Grove Atlantic staff. Thanks to my agent Esmond Harmsworth and the Zachary, Shuster, Harmsworth agency team, notably Janet Silver and Lane Zachary.
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