The Girl Who Never Was

by Skylar Dorset

  The accents are at least comfortingly Boston, as proven by the woman at the front desk.

  'I'm looking for information about my mother,'I tell her, pushing across my identification.

  The woman smiles at me kindly. 'Okay. And what was her name?'

  'Faye Blaxton,'I say and spell the name for her. I know that much from my birth certificate.

  The woman types into her computer. Then she looks back at me. 'Was she born in Massachusetts?'she asks me.

  'I don't know,'I admit. 'Maybe not.'

  The woman does some more typing'and then frowns a bit. 'I can't find anyone by that name. At least, not in the right time period to be your mother. You're sure it's the correct name? And the correct spelling?'

  I'm sure. But, just in case, I have her look up my birth certificate, and there is my mother's name on it, plain as day. Faye Blaxton.

  'It could be a glitch in the system,'says the nice woman at the desk. 'A typo maybe. Or something.'

  'Yeah,'I agree glumly. I don't want to sound glum. I want to sound like it's no big deal that I can't find my mother. I've done okay without her so far, haven't I? But I'd thought, well, that it'd be simple. Oh, Faye Blaxton, she lives out in Malden. And then, maybe, I would know that she'd never bothered to check in on her daughter, but I would also know that she existed.

  'It's a dead end, maybe,'says Kelsey when we leave, 'but there are other avenues to explore!'Kelsey is all big-picture enthusiasm, which I know is for my benefit. 'What do you know about your mother?'

  One day my father walked into his Back Bay apartment to find a blond woman asleep on his couch. I can't say that. 'Not much,'I say. And then, truthfully, after a pause, 'My aunts say she was flighty.'I know my aunts mean it as a negative, but when I was little, I always had the impression that it meant my mother could fly, that she had deposited me on that Back Bay doorstep and then soared into the never- ending sky.

  'Your aunts knew her, then,'says Kelsey.

  'No,'I reply. 'Not really. Well, I don't know, actually. I think to them she's just a woman who left her baby on a doorstep.'

  'Wait, she really did that?'Kelsey asks.

  I look at her in confusion because I've told her at least this much about myself, my family, my past. 'Yeah.'

  'I thought you meant that figuratively. Like, that you just meant your mom gave you up or something. She literally left you on a doorstep?'

  I nod. With a note. A note etched into a snowflake, sighed into a gust of wind, rustled through the trees of autumn, rippled over a summer pond.

  'Well,'says Kelsey. And then she doesn't say anything else.

  We get on the T. This time there are no delays, but I feel like people watch me the whole way, like it must be common knowledge, written all over me: I am the girl who has no mother.

  Chapter 2

  You're supposed to go to Salem in October. At least, that's what Kelsey tells me. I go though, because not going doesn't seem like an option'one of those things I do without really knowing why. I don't particularly want to go to Salem, but I feel like I need to go.

  Salem is crowded despite the fact that it's a cold and misty day. The sidewalks are so jam-packed you can't walk without stepping on someone's broomstick. I walk along, picking up dropped coins because you never know when they might come in handy. Mike and Jake are throwing pieces of cotton candy at each other. It's stupid, because you can't really effectively throw cotton candy and because it's causing chaos'people are glaring at us'and I wonder if Mike thinks this is cool and I'm going to be thoroughly smitten with him now. I try to imagine Ben ever throwing cotton candy around. I can't. It makes me wish Ben were there, but it's the sort of day Ben avoids like the plague, when he's dressed in at least one layer more than any normal person would wear and huddles under the meager shelter of the Park Street subway station entrance. I admit I kind of like weather like this. I've only started to dislike it because it makes Ben so miserable.

  I look at Kelsey. 'I've had enough,'I tell her.

  She looks at her watch. 'The next ferry isn't until''

  'I'm going to go in here,'I say. It's one of the plethora of witch museums littered all over the town, an old house, well tended, with a silhouette of a stylized witch in the fanlight over the door. There is a pot of bright bronze chrysanthemums in front of the door, but someone's knocked it over.

  ''The Salem Which Museum,''reads Kelsey from the dripping black letters on the sign swinging off the house. 'They didn't even spell witch correctly.'

  I'd noticed, but the Salem Which Museum has the great advantage of, well, being only two steps away from me and so conveniently easy to disappear into. 'It's fine. It'll be something for me to do until they get tired of''I look at Mike and Jake. 'Throwing things,'I finish, because they've now moved on to throwing popcorn at each other. At least that works a little better than the cotton candy had. I decide not to think about where they'd gotten the popcorn.

  'Are you sure?'Kelsey asks.

  I nod. Now that I've seized on the idea, I kind of really want to explore this misnamed museum.

  'I think I'll stick with them,'says Kelsey, blushing. The reason for this blush is clear: Kelsey likes Jake. She thinks I haven't noticed this. It's silly because Kelsey has liked Jake for a while now. Maybe that's why Mike thinks I should like him. Maybe he thinks we should all just couple up.

  'Okay,'I agree amiably. 'I'll hang out here and meet you

  guys at the ferry.'I reach for the door then pause, my hand on the doorknob, and look back at her. 'Don't let Mike come in after me.'

  'You got it,'says Kelsey, and then she hurries to catch up with Mike and Jake, who have tired of the popcorn throwing and are looking around for the next thing they can throw. Before they find it'or can spot me'I duck into the museum.

  I'm in a tiny room with tiny windows and a short ceiling, typical for a house this age. The house is at least three centuries old, and I feel at home in it immediately. The light is murky, but that's because there really is no light today, more of a non-light. There's an open shoebox on an old wooden table right next to me, and there's an index card taped to it with 'Donations Appreciated'written on it in the kind of proper Bostonian cursive that my aunts use. Except that the final flourish is a smiley face, and I think my aunts would die before using a smiley face. There is a single dollar bill in the shoebox and several dusty coins. The coins don't even look American. Next to the table is a softly ticking grandfather clock. As I walk in, it's just finishing up chiming nine o'clock. Not the right time. Grandfather clocks never tell the right time in my experience. My aunts'is the same way.

  'Oh!'exclaims a voice to my right. The floor creaks in that way old wooden floors do, and I look up, startled. A man is bustling into the room from a doorway on the other side. He's dressed in gray corduroys and a bright red cable- knit sweater, and he's possibly in his early fifties, between my

  father and aunts in age, I'd estimate. He has glasses and graying brown hair that's sticking up a little, and he makes me think of professors and naps and my father, all at once. I have that feeling I get sometimes, of odd familiarity, instinctive comfort, being in this museum with this man. It's almost like d'j'vu, although surely I've never been here before, never met this man before. 'I'm Will,'he says. 'Welcome to the Salem Which Museum?'

  He says it like it's a question, like he's not sure whether or not I am, in fact, welcome there. 'Thanks,'I say awkwardly, and then, because he looks so thrilled to have a visitor and because I feel bad, I dig my collected coins from the day out of the pocket of my jeans and drop them in the shoebox.

  Will absolutely beams. Then he says, 'What would you like to hear about?'

  'Sorry?'I say because I have no idea what I want to hear about. I thought I'd just be able to wander around the museum, looking at displays.

  'Well, here at the Salem Which Museum? The guest decides. Which type of museum are you looking for? That is the type of museum we are.'

  'Oh.'I realize slowly. 'The Salem Which Museu
m.'

  'That's us,'he affirms, still beaming and now rocking back and forth, heel to toe.

  The kind of museum I was looking for was a museum in which I could disappear. I wonder what Will would say to that. I look around the little room, trying to find the most

  obvious thing to ask about. I could ask about the Salem Witch

  Trials, of course, but I've heard that story a million times.

  'Might I suggest,'says Will, 'family history?'

  I blink, sure I must have misunderstood. I look down. I am wearing the Boston sweatshirt Ben gave me on my birthday. There is no sign around my neck proclaiming my motherlessness. What would make this man say that?

  'The history of Boston,'Will continues, 'for all Bostonians are family. And you are a Bostonian, are you not?'

  Yes, I am wearing the Boston sweatshirt, although how many Bostonians wear Boston sweatshirts? But I just nod.

  'Oh, the words I could tell you about the history of Boston,'says Will. 'But better you read them for yourself. Written words'that's where the real power is. And, of course, the history of Boston depends on who has done the writing of it. Come along.'

  He scurries out of the room, through the doorway he came in.

  I hesitate, then follow.

  The room connects to a kitchen that looks as if it was last redone in the 1950s, and there is a huge iguana on the counter. I stare at it. It stares at me, reptilian eyes blinking without interest. Will's head pops through another door at the other end of the room and he notices my showdown with the creature.

  'Oh,'he says. 'That's just Iggy.'

  'Iggy,'I repeat dubiously.

  'Yes. He's an iguana,'Will points out, like I'm an idiot. 'Come here,'he says and disappears into the other room.

  The other room turns out to be much bigger than the rooms I've been in so far, with a much higher ceiling. Maybe it was the carriage house or something. Whatever it used to be, it is now a storage space for books. They are piled sky high, toward the rafters above. I'm not sure how they're not toppling over. There are narrow windows way up there, and that's where all the light is, barely making it to the floor where I'm standing. Something about the room makes me shiver, makes me stand on its threshold, unwilling to step forward, unsure what might happen if I do. The air seems dusty and different somehow'difficult to breathe.

  Will, in the meantime, is busy impossibly climbing an impossible pile of books. He plucks one off the top of an adjacent pile, shimmies back down, and tosses me the book. 'About Boston,'he says helpfully and then runs off to scale another pile of books.

  'That doesn't look safe,'I say.

  'What?'he shouts down to me and then throws me another book, which I catch instinctively. 'Also about Boston.'

  'Oh,'I say, not sure what to make of this, but Will is already down that pile and up the next, and I'm holding two books so dusty that I can't even see their titles. I try to blow the dust off their covers, but the dust is so thick my breath doesn't even dislodge it.

  'You should go read them,'instructs Will, handing me

  another book. He has apparently reached the ground safely once again.

  I figure I've got time to kill. I look at the dusty floor. 'Is there somewhere I can sit?'

  'Oh!'exclaims Will, as if that never occurred to him. 'You want to sit! Oh! Yes! Of course! In the front room!'

  I edge back past Iggy and into the front room. There's a couch in there that doesn't look like anyone's sat on it since 1672, but it doesn't collapse when I sit on it, so that's something, I suppose. The fragile fabric probably crushes into dust underneath me, but it's better than the floor in the other room. I keep one ear open for the sound of books tumbling onto Will (What will I do? I wonder. Call 911 and say a mountain of books toppled onto him?) and flip open my books. The first one is some kind of epic poem about the first winter of the Plymouth Plantation, the second is a more traditional history, and the third, practically crumbling in my grasp, seems like some odd combination of the two, serious stories and anecdotes about kraken all mixed up into one. This is the one I decide to look through, and there, in the middle of it, is a list of Boston's first settlers. I look for Blaxtons, but there are none there. And then I decide to look for Stewarts. After all, I think, smiling to myself, my aunts have lived in the townhouse on Beacon Street since the beginning of time.

  And then their names are there.

  True Stewart

  Virtue Stewart

  Etherington Stewart

  My aunts. And my father. Their names. Right there.

  I stare at them for a long time. Coincidence, I think. The Stewarts are an old family, one of Boston's oldest. And the names True, Virtue, Etherington'not exactly modern ones. Maybe old family ones. Maybe recurring, from generation to generation.

  I pick up the history and let it fall open where it wants, to a well-worn page in the middle, and it is a portrait of old, dour-looking people. The date of the portrait is 1753. I study it, wondering how many of these people were still alive when the Revolution broke out twenty years later.

  I turn the page, and there are my aunts'faces, staring out at me. I blink, startled, but there is no mistaking it. It is them'as much them as a portrait can be. Their wide, deep, dark eyes, sorrowful and ageless under perfectly sculpted dark eyebrows. Their dark hair pulled back from their high foreheads. Their pursed, unsmiling lips. Their sharp cheekbones under unlined, olive skin.

  I look at the caption. True and Virtue Stewart, it reads. 1760. I look back at them, at their faces. Family resemblance, I try to think. The Stewarts are an old family, I remind myself. Their names and features might be recurring.

  I flip through the rest of the portraits in the book. No Etherington Stewart turns up. Just True and Virtue, posed in stiff black dresses, looking exactly like the True and Virtue

  Stewart in my house, the True and Virtue Stewart who have raised me.

  I reach for the epic poem, let it fall open as well, and the first lines on the page are not even a surprise to me at this point. The house of the Misses Stewart / Theyre brother late returneth / Frome an excursion to a newe settlement / Fulle of truth and virtue / Befitting of theyre names.

  I look from the poem to the portraits. I can hear Will humming to himself in his weird library place, and following one of my usual spur-of-the-moment impulses, I reach out and rip the portrait out of its book. I do the same for the lines of the epic poem. I pick up the history and thumb through it until I find the list of settlers again, and I rip that out as well. Then I fold the pages up and stick them in the kangaroo pocket of my Boston sweatshirt.

  What have I done? I have ripped pages out of old, priceless books belonging to a museum. A really strange museum but still. And what am I going to do with these pages? What am I doing?

  I'm finished here. I have to be before Will comes back and asks why I'm vandalizing his books of power, his museum's only exhibits. I get up and walk to Iggy's kitchen, and I call to Will, 'Thanks for letting me look at the books on Boston! I'm leaving now!'

  I step out into the mist without waiting for him to reply. Here on the streets of Salem, Halloween is still in full swing, witches roaming around, modern day and centuries old, like

  the pages of my family's ancient history tucked in my pocket. I hurry away from the Salem Which Museum, oblivious to the press of the costumed, festive crowds, preoccupied with the words of the pages in my pocket. Stewarts, Stewarts everywhere. And not a single Blaxton.

  x My aunts move through our house like ghosts. They always have, for as long as I can remember. They glide silently from room to room, dressed always in long-sleeved black blouses tucked carefully into knee-length black skirts with black boots gleaming underneath them. I find myself wondering now for how many centuries they have done this.

  'How was Salem, dear?'Aunt Virtue asks me vaguely, because they are focused on other things. Mainly, the arrangement of the furniture. They are always convinced that the furniture is being moved on them'tiny, infinitesimal adjustm
ents in its angles. They blame gnomes. This is the kind of life I lead: my aunts are genuinely convinced gnomes are real, as real a plague on Beacon Hill as the mice and rats are.

  'Fine,'I answer.

  I'm not even sure they hear me.

  'Insufferable gnomes!'curses Aunt True as Aunt Virtue tips a picture frame an unseeable amount of space to the left. She is standing tiptoe on top of a pink-and-gilt Queen Anne chair to do this. The house is an odd combination of styles,

  and I always assumed it was inherited from generations of Stewarts past. Now I wonder if Aunt True and Aunt Virtue have been collecting through the centuries.

  This is madness, I think. I'm losing my mind.

  'It looks better,'Aunt True tells Aunt Virtue, and Aunt Virtue leaps down from the Queen Anne chair with a nimbleness that belies her age.

  'Damnable gnomes,'says Aunt Virtue, stepping back so she can study the picture for herself.

  Aunt True nods in firm agreement. 'Come now,'she says. 'I do believe they pushed the chaise lounge a bit to the left in the conservatory.'

  I watch them march down the hallway to the conservatory. I swallow trepidation and follow them. I love my aunts, of course I do, but sometimes I feel like, even though they've raised me from infancy, they have no idea what to make of me. They look at me sometimes like I'm not what they expected, but other times they look at me like I'm exactly what they expected. Either way, I feel like they're not sure how they feel about who I've turned out to be. I always feel loved, but there is usually an undercurrent of something like dread too. I have no idea why, but the dread has infected me. They are afraid for me, and to me it seems like more than the worry of other people's parents; it is genuine fright. So I always try not to say anything that might alarm them, but now I find that I just have to. There are too many questions welling up inside of me.