by Audrey Braun
I lift my eyes from the page. How is it that I have never known of my mother’s love for books? For the written word? Is this where I’ve gotten mine?
The shares that I bequeath you have spent years going up and down, but overall their value outside of containing our family history has remained quite low. Even so, in honor of my mother I stipulate that you do not let your husband or anyone else try to take them from you. Should there ever be a significant amount of funds that you wish to withdraw, you will do as I have done, as my mother wished it to be, and show yourself at the bank with your head held high for everyone to see. Feel free to mention you are the granddaughter of the chemist Annaliese Hagen, founder of Hagen Pharmaceuticals. They may not remember her, but I believe the mention of her name within those walls is like a talisman, delivering us all a little something on the air.
My eternal love to you, dear daughter,
Sonja Hagen-Williams
I find myself on the balcony with no recollection of how I got there. The letter is no longer in my hands. It feels as if someone has come along and told me that my hair isn’t dark and wavy. I don’t have a dimple. My name isn’t Celia. Oliver isn’t my son. I’m not who I think I am. I never have been. I descended from a whole other group of people, from women of principle, women with backbone and talent. What am I? Who am I? Who was my own mother?
I look out across the water and squeeze the railing. Is it a coincidence that I took such an interest in German? I wonder now if my mother might have spoken it to me as a child. Did she read the German fairytales to me?
I’ve been to Switzerland, once, passing through a corner on my way to Italy with my host family during my exchange. Did I sense something about it then? I can’t remember. There’s so much I haven’t paid attention to.
Willow arrives with plates of chicken and beans and tortillas.
“You’re early,” I say as I close the door behind me. “My God, that smells delicious.”
“I decided to close early.”
“You didn’t need to do that for me.”
“I know. I did it for me. The curiosity is killing me. What’d you find?”
I hand her the letters. There aren’t any words to describe what I feel. How does one deal with the contradiction of having a new past?
I sit back and stuff the food down my throat, moaning involuntarily with every bite.
“Oh my God,” Willow says every other paragraph until she finishes. “You never knew any of this?”
“Not a thing.”
“I love these women.”
“Don’t you though?”
“So, where’s the next one?”
“What next one?”
“The one from your mother to you?”
It didn’t even occur to me. “I didn’t see anything.” I set my empty plate aside and hand Willow half of the stack.
A minute later Willow hands me several sheets of paper. They’re typed, easy to miss, blending in with everything else. My name at the top of the page has caught her eye.
I read out loud:
My sweet, sweet Celia,
I sit here before this piece of paper the way my mother once sat before hers and her mother once sat before hers so many, many years ago. It doesn’t seem real. My time has come and gone too quickly. I’m not ready yet. I wonder if anyone ever is.
But yesterday I received the shock of my life. I am not expected to survive more than a few months, perhaps weeks. I am late in my writing of this, might have been too late if I’d waited much longer.
Included in the will are the letters from my mother and grandmother. I read them again for the first time in decades. I understand now that I failed by not letting you see these letters sooner. But I was of the generation that thought the past was supposed to remain in the past, especially for those of us whose families came from other countries. Everything was about being modern. Being new. These days everyone likes to brag that his family came from this place or that. But back then we had a kind of Old World shame. We were embarrassed by our pasts. They made us less American, and now it embarrasses me that I ever felt this way about my own mother and grandmother.
I regret letting it go so completely. I should have saved a bit of history for you.
But let me move into the present for a moment to tell you that I am so proud of the woman you have become. I was already married by the time I was your age and completely absorbed into domestic life, forgetting all about what I thought I might want to be when I was young, which is a good lesson in why we should not forget our pasts, even our most recent one. Did I ever tell you I wanted to be a journalist? I loved the idea of traveling and uncovering facts about people and places, and then sharing those facts with others so that they could discover them, too. But I met your father my second year in college, and since he had already graduated we decided to get married. Once I was married, going to school seemed silly. The idea of being a journalist felt even sillier, unrealistic at best. How would I have had time for marriage and motherhood if I were traipsing around the world all alone? This was how I understood things to be at the time. This was the way things were all around me. I didn’t know a single woman who had a career back then. And I’m ashamed to say I pushed aside the legacy my grandmother left behind for my mother and me. It seemed so Old World, so insignificant to modern life, to my life. I didn’t feel repressed. Was I? My friends and I knew such things were talked about in certain circles, but they didn’t seem to apply to us. We were happy. We loved our husbands and they loved us. We didn’t feel as if we were being restrained. We didn’t feel, necessarily, that something was missing.
I admit I remained ashamed of my family history, especially where your father was concerned. I didn’t want him to know I came from a long line of what appeared to be pushy, feminist types. My mother died before he had a chance to meet her. I never had to tell the truth. It simplified things. As you know, your father’s father was a WWII veteran who had returned from the war a changed and damaged man. I could not bring myself to show your father the letters.
But after your father died I began to see things differently. I missed him terribly, but it was as if my eyes had suddenly opened and I could see all kinds of things that had been lost in my peripheral vision. Your father didn’t like me getting involved in our finances. He said it was like having too many cooks in the kitchen. All right. I understood that. But I was actually interested in finances, and that seemed a very unladylike thing to be. I realize now how stupid I was. I realized too late.
You’ve seen me try to make up for lost time, even chided me over what you’ve called my “obsession” at times though I never took your teasing as anything but good-natured. At first I tried to invest money in things the way my mother and grandmother had, but frankly speaking, I didn’t know what I was doing. Needless to say, I didn’t have much luck. I suppose in the end I more or less came out even. I’ve always had enough to live off of, and that was good enough for me.
There is no way to get around the fact that I should have told you about your legacy before now. My face is flushed with shame and my heart with sorrow as I write this. But some things cannot be changed, and so with the remaining days I want to impress upon you that I think your grandmothers would be so proud of the independent woman you have become. You are the first woman in the family to ever graduate from college. And not only that, you did it with honors. I admit that at times I have envied you and your successes, but I never begrudged you them, I never stopped feeling an overwhelming excitement for you. I love you more than words allow me to express.
So in keeping with tradition, I am writing this letter to ask that you please abide by the same rules set by my grandmother. You will not relinquish the shares in Hagen Pharmaceuticals. Though its name has changed, you still own those shares, even if they have failed the family time and again, and as of this writing are worth next to nothing. Your grandmothers suffered beatings and worse over what those shares stood for. I insulted them both by hiding their
memory in a drawer.
Perhaps I am going too far in my request. Perhaps I was too far one way and am swinging too far the other to make up for it. So be it. It is better than doing nothing to honor their memory and sacrifices, the way I have done for decades.
I have contacted all lawyers involved on both sides of the ocean. The dividends are to be distributed through the Bank of Switzerland, the same bank where the tellers enjoyed keeping my grandmother waiting. If there should come a day when these shares are worth something and you wish to withdraw from them, I insist you travel to the same bank in Zürich, as my mother and grandmother insisted of me, even though I never had the opportunity or the fortune to do so. But there is more. I have instructed my lawyer to liquidate all my assets and pour everything into shares at Hagen Pharmaceuticals in your name. It’s a matter of principle. I pray something will come of it someday. I pray that in your lifetime these shares will finally see their potential.
Of course, it goes without saying that should you ever marry, your husband will not be entitled to these funds. Unlike the laws my mother and grandmother were subject to, there are now laws that will protect you from such things. These funds are for you and you alone until the day you die, in which case they will be left to your own daughter should you have one—or a son, of course, you cannot begrudge a son; but in the case where there are no children I instruct that your remaining shares be left to the Women’s League of Zürich, an organization your great-grandmother helped to found.
I lower the paper from my face.
Willow picks it up and reads the final paragraph.
You are the legacy I leave behind, my sweet, bright Celia. I could not be more proud of you than I am, not just for your scholarly achievements but also for the beautiful human being you have become. I will be watching if at all possible. Loving you from wherever I go.
Your loving mother,
Gilion H. Williams
Silent tears spill down my face.
Willow rises and hands me a tissue. She sits with me and strokes my back in soft, wide circles.
I blow my nose and dry my eyes, repeatedly shaking my head.
30
I shuffle through the papers again and realize I’ve overlooked a line on Marc Jacobson’s note. I apologize for the oversight. My father passed away before this file was complete. Your address was never forwarded to the Swiss bank; therefore all of your statements were returned.
It takes the entire evening for us to comb through everything and figure out that my mother’s liquid assets after her death would have been around two hundred thousand dollars. All of that money went in to buying stocks at Hagen Pharmaceuticals, which, I discover on the Internet, has been renamed The Odin Health Institute (TOHI) since she passed away. We aren’t able to find what the stocks were worth at the time of her death, but it isn’t hard to guess that two hundred thousand dollars could buy a lot of cheap shares. Jonathon would have figured this out, too, when he requested these same copies weeks ago. He would have laughed at the coincidence of pharmaceuticals. He would have taken it as a sign. Something meant to be.
“Holy crap,” Willow says after pecking away at the computer on the tiny kitchen table. “This company makes all kinds of weird stuff.”
“Like what?”
“Like guns that shoot pepper spray.”
“Great.”
“And acne cream.”
“Sold separately?”
“Oh.” Willow’s voice turns serious. “My God.” She continues to read.
“What is it?” I linger through the letters on the bed.
“Um. You better sit down for this,” she says.
I look up. “I am sitting down.”
“Then maybe you better lie down.”
“What?”
Willow sits next to me on the bed with the laptop. “It says here that Hagen Pharmaceuticals, better known as TOHI, was the first maker of a drug called Sildenafil Citrate. They patented it back in the nineties, right after your mother passed away. Right after she bought all those shares.” She slaps the laptop shut and squeezes my arm. “Are you ready for this?”
I nod slowly.
“It’s a drug known today by the name of Viagra.”
My eyebrows shoot up. I blink, and blink again.
“Those shares must be worth a fortune,” Willow says. “All the ones that were already there, plus the ones your mother bought?”
I’m too stunned to speak. The letters shake in my hand. Has my mother turned out to be a brilliant investor after all?
“Your husband knows those shares are worth a fortune,” Willow says.
It takes a moment for this to sink in. Thoughts race around my head. I can barely get a grasp. “I don’t understand. Why did he take me to Mexico?”
“Didn’t you say that when you first called Oliver he told you your husband was in the garage getting another suitcase for a business trip?”
I nod.
“And then when you called back that afternoon, Oliver said your husband told him you were in Switzerland and they had to go get you.”
I’m following the same trail.
“Right.”
“Why would he say that?” Willow asks. “You obviously weren’t in Switzerland.”
“I don’t know. That’s the part I don’t—”
The inside of my head feels as if it’s caught fire. My forehead breaks out in a sweat.
“Are you all right?” Willow asks.
My pulse races. My vision sharpens. I jump off the bed and grab my hair by the roots.
“What is it?”
“I need a suitcase, a backpack, something.” I scramble around the room gathering my things. “I need clothes. Warm clothes.”
“Why?”
“I have to go.”
“Where?”
“He needed to get me there. This whole time this is what he was trying to do. I threw it off when I escaped. I need to get it back on track.”
Willow grabs me by the shoulders. “I don’t understand.”
I jerk loose and reach for the computer. I type as fast as my fingers will allow.
“Please tell me what you’re doing.”
“The thing is, it’s like he’s reading my mind. Do you think he knew I’d come to this conclusion? Is it just a coincidence that I had those copies faxed? That I found all of this out just like he did?”
“What conclusion?”
“I think Benicio is in on it, too. He never overheard them say anything about Switzerland. It was a setup.”
“Wait! What are you saying?”
I stop in the center of the room and draw a deep breath. “Switzerland. I need to get the next flight out. Where is the closest international airport besides Puerto Vallarta? I don’t want to be seen.”
“Guadalajara. Are you sure you know what you’re doing?”
“No. I can’t be sure until I get there.”
Part Three
31
I stumble slightly when asked about the nature of my visit.
“Finances,” I say.
“Finances?” The female customs agent in a crisp blue uniform scrutinizes my passport a moment longer. “You are here to do some banking,” she says, half-question, half-correction of terminology. She types something on her keyboard.
“Yes. Banking.” I like the sound of it. “Here to do some banking.”
“And what is the reason for your one-way ticket?”
I rehearsed the answer to this question with Willow on the way to catch my flight. “I have various business deals to take care of afterward. I wasn’t sure at the time of my departure which part of the United States I needed to return to first.”
“What is your business?”
“The book business.”
“You sell books?”
“No, not sell. I edit them. Make sure the English is correct.”
“And you do not know which part of your country you need to go to in order to correct the English?”
�
�No, I, it’s that…” Dear God. “Sometimes I have meetings in New York, and my son is currently out of town so it’s possible I might need to pick him up at the same time I’m working…” and on I continue for what feels like a bloated minute before I finally stop myself and force a smile onto my face.
“What were you doing in Mexico?”
“Vacation.” Still smiling.
“One moment please.”
She leaves her station for one of a series of small rooms along the wall, each with a window whose blinds are mostly closed. She enters one and closes the door. The line of people behind me groan. My nerves burn like tiny candelabras beneath my skin. I have to stop my foot from bobbing on the floor, my fingernails from tapping the counter. I shove my hands into the pockets of Willow’s pea coat so I won’t have to feel them shake.
The door opens, and she walks back to her station without looking me in the eye. She punches something into the computer, briskly hands me my passport, and without a single word gestures me into Switzerland.
“Please be careful,” Willow whispered as she hugged me good-bye in Guadalajara. Her words linger in my ear. I’m wearing her clothes and can smell her as I make my way out of customs, feeling a little less frightened in her pea coat, blue sweater, the soft leather shoes I insisted on paying for. Over my shoulder is her backpack stuffed with more of her warm clothes. I was given all of this in exchange for a promise that I’ll return everything in person before the weather cools again in Victoria, British Columbia, where Willow is from and plans to spend two weeks in the fall.
I promised.
But as I hop on the S-Bahn in a country so far away, so vastly different from Mexico, those words feel as if they were spoken years ago by someone other than me.
The train doors close, and a sly, burning panic fills my chest. I take a seat and breathe deeply, the smell of newness and cigarettes and cold. People chatter in German. Finally a language I can understand. The weather is a popular topic of conversation, along with who just got back from where on holiday. I lower my nose to Willow’s jacket and feel a flicker of something short of happiness.
