by Sara Shepard
My father took a big step back. “Oh, fuck.”
He turned around, stumbling over an empty chair behind me. A few patrons looked up, startled. He passed the chrome trash can near the front, which was overflowing with crimped-edged paper plates, and practically fell through the door. I watched him disappear behind a bus kiosk, then found him again across the street.
“Oh, dear.” Rosemary touched the edge of her cheek. “I’d better…” And she darted after him, pressing out into the cold street.
It all happened so fast. I was still sitting at the table, the old letter in front of me. Josephine shifted her weight, still standing. “Okay.” She let out a self-conscious laugh.
I glanced at her. The cold, icy shock had begun to thaw, not entirely, but enough for me to react. I hid my hands in my lap and curled them up, cursing my childish, incompetent father for leaving me here alone to grapple with what I didn’t quite yet understand. My mouth puckered, about to say something dismissive, perhaps an excuse that I needed to use the bathroom. I could find a back door and escape. Or I could just get up and leave, like the rest of them had. I didn’t owe this woman anything, not exactly. She probably knew much more about me than I did about her.
I had asked my father about this, of course. I had asked if the baby died. He hadn’t answered me. I hadn’t lingered on it, though—I hadn’t thought about it, because there was so much else to think about. And maybe because I hadn’t wanted to consider it.
“Jesus,” I whispered.
They’d probably been corresponding for years, my father telling Josephine much more than he told me, using his sober, unglamorous words. Rosemary seemed to know Josephine, too.
I peeked at her. Josephine fidgeted with the strap on her purse and scanned the laminated menu, just for something to look at, because she wasn’t sure of her place, or where she was supposed to go. She had a funny way of nervously smiling with only one side of her mouth. I felt a warm, bittersweet ache—Stella used to smile just like that when the irritatingly chipper nurse prepped her for her blood draws.
Something inside me reversed directions. I released my hands from the crimps in my lap and forced my shoulders down from their locked position. It was possible Josephine was more confused than I was. If she was who I suspected—it was beginning to make more and more sense—then what had her life been like? What sorts of problems did she have? What kinds of questions and fears were inside of her?
I counted three long breaths.
“They make really good espresso milkshakes here.”
Josephine jumped. My voice even startled me a little. I swallowed, then continued. “I used to get them as a little kid, probably when I was too young to really have coffee. They still have them on the menu. I know it’s cold out, but do you want one?”
Josephine’s entire face lifted. With just that, with those few words. “Oh.” She fumbled with her purse. “Well, sure. Let me give you some money.”
“I’ll get it.”
Her eyebrows rose. She looked so grateful.
“No, it’s fine. I’m happy to.”
I reached into my own purse and found my wallet. My hands were shaking so hard it was difficult for me to get the money out. While I fumbled, Josephine asked, “So you lived in Brooklyn your whole life, huh?”
“That’s right.”
“This is one of my first times here,” she said. “I’ve mostly lived in Colorado, in the mountains. But I was born where your dad’s from. Cobalt. We moved when I was about eight.”
I know, I wanted to tell her. Of course I knew. I pushed my hands deep into my sweater’s front pouch, begging them to stop shaking, and walked to the ice-cream line. Outside, my father and Rosemary stood at the curb. It didn’t look like they were saying anything, but just standing, staring. Josephine sat down at my table and looked at the letter my father had written to me, pretending he was Mr. Rice. Reading every line. And I let her. Everything was there. Things will work out as they are supposed to. You are the best person of all.
There was the button nose. Not trapped in a faded photograph, but in front of me, real. She didn’t notice me watching her, and I didn’t let her know that I was. I tried not to think, tried not to react. Parts of me screamed in surreal confusion, while other parts felt crazily, carelessly fine. I put my hand over my mouth, stifling a laugh of self-awareness, like I was looking down at this from somewhere else.
The line crept forward, a mother leaned down and asked her kids what they wanted, the register person put a limp twenty into the till. And then it was my turn at the counter. I ordered two espresso milkshakes. The worker nodded, opened the big back ice-cream freezer, scooped out enough ice cream for two, and turned on the blender.
thirty
By the time I returned with our milkshakes, Rosemary was back at our table, explaining to Josephine that my father had to leave unexpectedly. There were prospective buyers at the apartment, she said, and he had to show it to them. My father apologized, and he would contact her tomorrow.
Josephine stood up, saying she understood, and that it was nice to meet both of us. She seemed a little relieved. After she left, Rosemary helped me gather the things from the table. “Thank you, Summer,” she said, pushing our empty dishes and cups into the slot in the chrome trash can.
I found my father sitting on one of his favorite benches on the Promenade, staring out at the water. There were a bunch of newspapers on the seat next to him that I had to move aside before sitting down.
For a while we watched the water in silence. It was so cold I couldn’t feel my toes. My nose ran and my legs were spasmed with shivers.
“Jesus, Summer,” my father finally said. He put his hands through his hair. “Jesus, I’m sorry. I don’t even know what to say. I just couldn’t be in there any longer, once I realized…Did she leave, or…? Rosemary told her I’d call her later, right?”
I said yes.
“Okay.” He drummed on his knees nervously. “Jesus. When you said you knew…I thought you meant you knew about her.” He still hadn’t looked at me. “I thought Stella had told you we were talking. I figured Stella had told you about the whole thing. She said she did.”
“She told me the first part,” I mumbled. “About you and”—I swallowed hard—“Kay. And about the accident. She mentioned Kay’s baby, too, and it’s my own stupid fault for not pushing her about whether the baby survived the delivery or not.” I looked at him. “That is who Josephine is, right?”
My father nodded.
“I asked you, but you didn’t answer. And I suppose Stella tried to tell me,” I went on. “But she was so sick, so I didn’t know whether to believe her.”
“I understand.” My father stared at his palms, then out at the boats on the water. The SeaStreak ferry chugged to Wall Street, its outdoor decks empty, all the passengers crammed inside where there was heat. “Stella and I talked on the phone when I was in college,” he said. “Nothing about what happened. Mostly just chitchat. But it helped. She even came to New York to visit me, once, later. We went to see a bunch of musicals. I took her to see the Rockettes at Radio City.”
I smiled. “Stella was always talking about how, once she beat cancer, she was going to try out to be a Rockette. She bought a video and everything. It was called the Rockette Workout.”
“I’m glad you got to know her,” my father said.
He cleared his throat. “We talked on the phone a few times while you were there. She was always telling me about you, Summer, how good you were to her. She called after the attacks, when the cancer was in her brain. Out of nowhere, she asked if I was in touch with Josephine. I’d never talked about it with her, so I was surprised that she knew. Although I shouldn’t have been. That’s why I thought she told you everything.”
I let out a stalled breath of air. “So…Josephine…they delivered her while Kay was in the coma?”
My father nodded. “Kay was kept on a ventilator until the baby was strong enough. They delivered Josephine prema
turely. I never saw her. She lived in Cobalt for a while, but then Mark got a job out West. I never went back to see her, not once.”
“Why?”
He stared out at the water, wringing his hands. “It’s not that I didn’t want to. My mother found out that Kay and I had been seeing each other. She wanted me not to meddle any further—she had to live here, she was the one who had to face everyone. She asked that I remove myself from the situation, as completely as I could. I’m not sure she realized it would be that complete.”
He stifled something, maybe a cough, maybe a sob. “But I did remove myself for a long time, until after my mother died. I thought it would be the best thing. Then I looked for Josephine when I was at the Center. It took me ages to find her—Rosemary helped me. I wrote her some letters. Then I lost her again. After the attacks, all sorts of people did crazy things. I found her again by tracking her down online. Steven gave me some great people-finding sites, although I never told him what I was using them for. I asked Josephine if we could meet. I didn’t tell her much…just that I was good friends with her mother, but some things had come between Mark and me, and we didn’t speak. I’ve only seen Josephine once before this. It’s just a coincidence she’s in New York this weekend—she’s here for a conference. She asked to see me, but I told her it might not be the right time with all of you here. I said I’d have to see how things went. So when you said you knew that I was talking to her and wanted to see her, I called her.” He put his head in his hands again.
“I wrote her such crazy letters,” he went on after a moment. “At the hospital. It’s a wonder she even wanted to speak to me. I wrote a lot of people crazy letters.”
My eyes stung. The inside of my mouth tasted tart, as if I’d just eaten lemons. “Why didn’t you write me any?”
He blinked, taking me in, genuinely surprised. “Because you already know everything.”
Do I? I wanted to ask. It didn’t feel that way. I ran my fingers over the edges of the fair-isle scarf Rosemary had loaned me when she understood I was going to the water to talk to him.
“I kept this a secret for so long,” he whispered. “I told your mother parts of it, but not everything. Not about Josephine. I felt bad not telling you, but I wasn’t sure if it was right to tell you. How do you even get into something like this? And do I have the right to inflict this on other people—especially you? How much should I burden you to know? I feel like I’d put you through enough already. And I have a hard enough time grappling with it myself.”
I stared at him. “I know,” I said. And suddenly, I did. “It must be hard.”
My father and Rosemary had arrived in Cobalt the day after Stella died. Midway into the day, I remembered Stella’s obituary. I apologized to my father in advance, saying that Stella’s obituary might be crazy, but it was really, really the one she wanted to run in the newspaper.
She’d sealed the obituary in an envelope with a foil-lined sticker. When I opened it, the piece of paper still smelled a little like Stella, her peanut butter cookies, her Charlie perfume. There was her cramped, loopy script. She never printed, always wrote in perfect cursive, even the hard letters, like z and q.
Stella Rogers, age 76, died due to complications of colorectal cancer. She was married to William “Skip” Rogers for twenty-five wonderful years. She is a longtime resident of Cobalt, Pennsylvania, and is survived by her nephews Richard and Peter, her grandnephew Steven, and her grandnieces Summer, Samantha, and Josephine. Services will be held at Grinsky family funeral home in downtown Cobalt. Reception to follow.
I had turned the paper over not once but twice, certain she’d written something on the other side. But she hadn’t. There was no shipwreck or mountain climbing accident or case of the bubonic plague. The only error she had written was that she had an extra niece, someone named Josephine. Why hadn’t she said she had sixteen extra nieces? Why hadn’t she said she had twenty children and six husbands? Why hadn’t she added that she knew every contestant on Road Rules and housemate on The Real World, that she had aspirations to compete in a triathlon, or how wonderful she was, how utterly, crazily wonderful? I scratched out Josephine’s name, insulted by its paltriness.
My mouth wobbled now. It was upside down, but then it contorted, turning right-side up. My shoulders shook in laughter. The tears on my face were confused, not sure what side they were on.
My father pressed his shoulder against mine. “I understand this is a shock, honey. It’s weird, I know.”
“Actually…” I took a breath. “It’s…it’s not that much of a shock. I mean, it is, but honestly? I’m kind of relieved.”
“Relieved?” He blinked.
“Yeah.” I sniffed through tears. This was the big secret he’d been keeping from me, the one I’d built and built and built up. This was the thing I’d worried about, the big evidence that glowed red and made everything in the experiment fall into place. I would look through a microscope, and there it would be, showing me everything. And this was it. It just didn’t seem that scary.
“Huh.” My father sounded pleasantly surprised, but also confused, uncertain, as if he wasn’t sure what emotion would erupt out of me next.
“So, does she know she’s your…?” I sounded out a d, but couldn’t finish the word.
He paused. “I don’t know. And I don’t want to know. It doesn’t matter. She had a good childhood, a good life. Mark raised her. He remarried. She grew up in Colorado. Most of her childhood she was climbing mountains, breathing clean air.”
“I thought you’d been talking to Mom. I thought that’s what this was about.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Oh. Oh.”
A few things floated down the river. A Coke can. Driftwood. Gum wrappers. We could hear the cars on the BQE rumbling beneath us, swishing to far-flung parts of Brooklyn. My father must have been thinking of the BQE, too, because he said, “Our first apartment here was right by a BQE overpass, out near the tennis bubble in Prospect Park. Your mother hated it.”
“She did?”
He nodded. “She wanted to be in New York City proper, not Brooklyn. And especially that neighborhood. It was full of old Polish women wearing head scarves. And car thieves. Every morning, we would have coffee and look out the window, and we’d see these guys drive a car up to a spot in front of our building, get out, and start ravaging through the trunk. Sometimes they’d leave the car there. And then the car would sit there until someone finally towed it away. It would take days, but then the tow truck would come, and if we were home we’d both watch it. Once, the tow truck screwed up and ripped a car’s fender right off. Your mom thought it was just awful. She always threatened to call the police but she never did.”
My father had a faraway look on his face. “She cried a lot, those first few years. She was so scared.”
“She was scared?”
“Everything about New York scared her. The subways, the people, the noise, the muggers, Times Square…everything. It was overwhelming to her.”
The idea of anything scaring my mother was unfathomable.
“It was a big change,” my father said. “Everyone’s afraid of big changes.” He looked up at the sky. “We had fun, though. Once we moved here, to this apartment, and had Steven. He had the buildings on the skyline memorized by the time he was two. He knew exactly which companies occupied which building. He also knew the distance from the Promenade to the East River down to the last inch.”
“That sounds like Steven.”
“Yeah,” my father said. He swung his feet in front of him, almost kicking the Promenade’s wrought-iron fence. “There used to be times where I thought everything was perfect. Where I convinced myself nothing was wrong.”
I looked at him. “So you always knew something was wrong?”
“I don’t know. No. Maybe. Maybe I was deluding myself. Maybe I do that a lot.”
I turned my hands over, considered my thoughts. “Do you think you’re deluding yourself with Rosemary?”
&nbs
p; He thought for a moment. “I don’t think so. I guess I’m an optimist. I still believe things can work. It’s scary to try, but you have to try, don’t you think?”
I stared at him, my eyes frozen. “Maybe,” I whispered.
A series of horns sounded out from the BQE. When they finished, I asked, “When Mom called you back when the towers were hit, did she tell you where she was living?”
He shook his head. “She just called to see if I was okay. She didn’t say anything else. Actually, I said I’d call her back. But I was in such a state that day, I didn’t get her number.”
“It’ll probably be another ten years before she calls again.”
“Probably.” He stretched out, crossing his ankles. “It’s a strange way to live, surfacing only every once in a while to check in on this huge part of her life. It reminds me of dolphins, or maybe whales. One of those can remain under the water for huge amounts of time, holding and holding and holding their breath. It makes me claustrophobic just thinking about it.”
“Me, too,” I said quietly.
“But that’s her way of living. It’s not ours, is it?”
I brought my mittens to my face, his words washing over me. “No,” I whispered. “It’s not.”
Last month, at the pool with Claire and Frannie, I followed them as they marched for the platform diving board. Frannie’s little legs scrambled up the stairs—it was so high, there was an industrial-looking staircase to get to the top instead of a ladder. After a while, Frannie appeared at the top and walked to the very edge. We watched her fall, her little arms crossed over her chest to make her body more aerodynamic. When she hit the water, she plummeted under, then resurfaced. She waved to her mother, just a tiny red speck among the lapping blue. The lifeguards leaned forward, poised to jump in and rescue her, but she paddled easily to the ladder. Then Claire climbed up to the platform, waved at me, and jumped off herself.
When it was my turn, I teetered at the top, the platform rough under my bare feet. The edge was solid, without any spring to it. I could see the old men in the sauna in the corner, the lap swimmers making flip-turns at the far end of the pool. I could even see the parking lot through the windows, and wished I were sitting in one of the parked cars instead of shivering here, practically on the ceiling. Even when I was younger, I shied away from jumping off diving boards or skiing down mountains. I didn’t like the idea of dropping from great distances.
