I remembered feeling as if I’d entered a different century when I walked into the Jefferson Building, with its soaring ceilings, statuary and mosaics, stained glass and murals. But the Madison Building, which housed the periodicals reading room, was a big white box that sat firmly in the late twentieth century and had none of the Jefferson’s beauty and grandeur.
Walking between rectangular marble columns to the door, I warned myself not to expect old newspapers to yield many answers. The story about the accident might not tell me anything new about my father and mother.
But if nothing else, the story would certainly hold one bit of information: names of survivors. Maybe I would find a picture of us all together, the young family whose father had been tragically lost. I would surely be mentioned in the story itself. I needed to see some proof of my place among the Goddards.
When I entered the lobby I stood for a moment letting my startled skin adjust to air that was twenty degrees cooler than outside. I took a deep breath and willed myself to go about this task in my normal methodical way, as if I were researching a fine point of veterinary medicine in order to help a patient.
A uniformed young man looked in my purse as I passed through the metal detector. He directed me down the hall to the periodicals room.
It was as starkly utilitarian as any neighborhood library, with bright fluorescent lighting, pink-gray industrial carpet that needed shampooing, dark paneled walls, and a couple of lackluster dracaena plants by the main desk. It was hard to believe this impersonal place held clues to my family’s very personal secrets.
While the desk clerk instructed me on the procedure for obtaining materials, a voice in the back of my mind kept whispering that I should just leave it alone, there was nothing to discover except the source of my mother’s heartbreak, something I already knew. The voice was Mother’s, silky and persistent, firmly planted and ineradicable. I couldn’t shut it up, but I wouldn’t listen to it.
The clerk directed me to one of a dozen stations where reading machines were set up, and I sat down to fill out a request slip for microfilm.
I didn’t know the date of the accident. But I knew it happened when Michelle was two and I was five, and Mother had said it happened in a snow storm, which could mean anytime from November through February. I requested four months of the Minneapolis Tribune. Retrieval time, the clerk said, could be as long as forty-five minutes.
I sat at my desk and waited. All around me in the hushed room, people were engrossed by the past events appearing before them. The machines made little whirring noises as they moved the microfilm from page to page. Footsteps scuffed on the carpet. Rising and walking around, I saw that some machines could make copies from the microfilm, and I decided I would do that when I found what I wanted.
I pulled tissues from my shoulderbag and wiped my clammy palms and the line of moisture above my lip and wished I had something to read. That struck me as funny—writing, writing everywhere, but not a word to read—and I almost laughed.
I didn’t think I could bear the waiting.
After twenty-five minutes a young man with a dark ponytail appeared at my side, rousing me out of formless thoughts. The shallow tray he set on the desk contained four cardboard boxes. “Do you know how to use the machine?” he asked quietly.
I shook my head no. He dragged a chair from an unused desk and sat elbow to elbow with me, instructing me in a monotone, an I’ve said this a million times voice. With the first roll of microfilm in the machine, he stood, moved his chair, and left me.
I sat, momentarily paralyzed. Headlines on the screen blurred into black smudges. All right, I told myself. Do it.
Taking a deep breath, I began.
The days rolled past. I carefully examined every page, catching my breath each time I came across an auto accident story. The man at the desk to my left kept turning to look at me, and I sensed his irritation with my tiny noises. I forced myself to stay silent.
When I finished the month of November I slipped the roll back into its box with a mixture of disappointment and relief that I hadn’t found the story.
December had plenty of news about weather. Minnesota seemed to have snow almost every day. My attention was caught by a photo of two small children building a snowman, and I stared at it, lost in a half-memory. Snow, snowmen, snowballs, a sled. Flying downhill on a blue sled, breathless with the thrill of it, but not alone, someone strong was with me, holding me, protecting me. My father?
The image wouldn’t gel. I was left with a piercing sense of loss.
I moved the microfilm forward, skimming over local news that meant nothing to me and national and international stories that meant little more. A politician was in trouble over a woman, a Renoir was stolen in Brooklyn. Violence in Angola and Northern Ireland. Nelson Rockefeller was sworn in as Vice President, to serve with Gerald Ford.
When the three-column photo of mangled vehicles popped into view, I somehow knew instantly that I’d found what I was looking for. The picture and the story it illustrated were at the bottom of the Sunday, December 22, front page under a big headline: Five Die in Snowstorm Crash.
Heart racing, I skimmed the beginning of the story for a familiar name, and found it in the second paragraph. Michael J. Goddard Jr. I paused, released the breath I’d been holding, and felt the stare of the man next to me.
I went back to the first line and started reading.
Three adults and two children died in a four-vehicle accident on W. Lake St. during Saturday afternoon’s heavy snowstorm. Police said the accident occurred about 1 p.m. when a car traveling west went out of control and crossed into the oncoming lane, striking a pickup truck head-on. The impact of the collision flipped the truck onto the car behind it, and another car struck the pileup from the rear.
Dead are Minneapolis attorney Michael J. Goddard, 34, who was driving the first car; his two-year-old daughter, Michelle Theresa; Oscar J. Lund, 47, of St. Cloud, driver of the truck; Joanna Marie Bergman, 36, of Minneapolis, driver of the car struck by the truck; and her daughter, Marcy Linda Bergman, 9.
I read the second paragraph again, then again, but still it made no sense to me. The words separated into individual letters that seemed to spin apart.
I blinked, refocused, and read on.
Goddard’s wife, Judith, 34, was admitted to Mt. Sinai Hospital with multiple fractures and a concussion and was in fair condition Saturday night. The driver of the third car, John A. Peterson, 52, of St. Paul, was released from Mt. Sinai after treatment for minor injuries.
Witnesses said the Goddard car was moving erratically and may have been speeding before it crossed into the oncoming traffic lane. Police said no alcohol was found in Goddard’s blood and they have ruled out intoxication as a cause of the accident.
Goddard was a junior partner in the law firm of Jensen, Dubie, Goddard, and Brown, where his father, Michael J. Goddard Sr., is a founding partner. The younger Goddard attracted widespread attention last year when he won a $10.5 million judgment in a wrongful death suit against chemical fertilizer giant Alco Industries. His wife is a psychologist in private practice in Minneapolis. Michelle Theresa was the couple’s only child.
Lund, married with two continued on page 10, col 1
My mind refused to absorb what I saw in front of me. Michelle slept in the room across the hall from me, she sat across the table from me at breakfast and dinner. She hadn’t died in a car wreck at the age of two.
Michelle Theresa was the couple’s only child.
The story wasn’t real. I was imagining it. I’d been sitting here waiting too long, anticipating, worrying. I closed my eyes, opened them. The words sat heavy and black on the screen.
I was dreaming, then. I gave my head a rough shake, trying to pull myself out of the nightmare, and was dimly conscious of the man beside me turning his whole body in my direction. His movement released a faint odor of perspiration.
I leaned my face into my hands. A rational explanation had to exist for what I was
reading. There was a rational explanation for everything.
With fumbling fingers I pressed a button on the machine, zipping through to page 10 and the rest of the story. I found a picture of the baker Lund with his wife on their twenty-fifth anniversary, and a school photo of little Marcy Linda Bergman, smiling gap-toothed, her dark hair in two long braids tied with ribbon bows. Between them was a studio portrait of my mother and father, the kind of formal posed picture a man keeps on his desk at work. I’d seen this photo before, in one of the albums Mother kept hidden. On Mother’s lap was a smiling child, little more than a baby. Pale wispy hair curled over the child’s head and onto her cheeks. Her eyes were big in her small face, and full of joy. I read the names under the picture: Michael, Judith, and Michelle Goddard.
Transfixed, I sat for a long time, waiting for the flat grainy image to give back a spark of revelation that never came. I leaned closer and tried to examine the face of the little girl. The picture separated into a field of shaded dots, it wouldn’t hold together, wouldn’t allow inspection.
When a clerk passed I turned and said in the most ordinary of tones, “Excuse me, could you help me make a copy of something?”
He did it for me. He copied the entire story, complete with pictures, and handed the sheets to me. I thanked him and went back to my desk. I placed the roll of December microfilm back in its box and carried all four rolls to the main desk.
***
When I emerged from the cool building, the humid hot air slammed into me, making me recoil. I stopped for a moment to get my bearings. I couldn’t remember how to get back to Union Station, where I’d parked my car. I walked half a block, past the Capitol on one side of the street and the Cannon and Longworth buildings on the other, before I realized I was going the wrong direction.
I retraced my steps, one hand tight on my shoulderbag strap, the other crushing the copy sheets. After a time that could have been minutes and could have been an hour, I was driving toward the 14th Street Bridge on my way home.
Home. I glanced at the two sheets of paper lying wrinkled and twisted in the seat beside me. Home to Mother and Michelle.
Michelle. My dead sister.
The couple’s only child.
I couldn’t let myself think about this while I was on the road. I pushed it back, back, until it was a monstrous dark thing looming at the edge of my mind.
I drove in heavy traffic along the George Washington Parkway, my fingers tight around the steering wheel. Just past the Key Bridge I glanced down at the Potomac and saw a blue heron, motionless on a spit off the bank. Farther out, gulls bobbed where surface ripples hinted at the river’s undercurrent, and along the far shore the white trunks of sycamore trees gleamed like ghosts in the late day sun.
Chapter Twenty
On Wednesdays Michelle always came home in mid-afternoon and spent the rest of the day working at the computer in her room. She was at her desk when I walked through her open door.
“Hi,” she murmured absently. She didn’t look up, but kept her eyes fixed on the word-filled computer screen.
I stood over her, my gaze following the curve of her long neck, the plane of her left cheekbone, the fall of her silky hair.
Who was she?
Who was I?
She glanced at me, a frown forming between her brows. “Did you want something?”
The folded copy of the newspaper story was in my right hand. “I need to talk to you.”
She gave a little sigh. The computer had already regained her attention. Touching an index finger to a key, she said, “Can it wait till after dinner?”
“This is important, Mish. Maybe the most important conversation we’ll ever have.”
She laughed and sat back. “My goodness.” Then she looked at me more closely, and a mask of wariness and reluctance came down over her face. “Rachel, I don’t want to talk about Mother. I don’t want to talk about our father. I don’t want—”
“Michelle!”
She flinched as if I’d struck her. Telling myself to calm down, I moved away from her, to a window, and watched two squirrels chase each other in a circle on the side lawn below. Mother would be home soon. I couldn’t imagine what was coming, what must come.
I turned back to Michelle. “Please hear me out, no matter how crazy it sounds.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake—”
“Please. Can’t you just listen? Can’t you do that much for me?”
She let out a sharp breath and folded her arms. “Okay, I’m listening.” Her whole attitude said she didn’t want to hear a word I had to say.
“I thought if I could find out everything about the accident that killed—” I hesitated. What should I call him? For now, what Michelle would accept. “The accident that killed our father—”
“I knew it,” she said. “You’re obsessed, Rachel. It’s not healthy.”
“You said you’d listen.”
She unfolded her arms and lifted her hands briefly in a gesture of surrender.
Taking a deep breath, I started over. “I thought if I found out more about his death, I’d be able to understand all the secrecy. Why Mother won’t talk about him.”
“You know why. It hurts to dredge up those memories.”
I let this pass and hurried on. “So I went to the Library of Congress and looked at issues of the Minneapolis newspaper on microfilm.”
“Oh, I don’t believe this,” she said, shaking her head.
“I found the story.” I looked down at the papers I clutched.
“Okay, now are you satisfied? Did it help at all? I’ll be really surprised if you say yes.”
I met her gaze. Her cold blue eyes regarded me as if I were a nutty stranger who’d accosted her and forced her to listen to gibberish.
I had to make her see. The proof was in my hand. I unfolded the two sheets of paper. “The story wasn’t what I expected.”
“Oh?” A trace of curiosity.
“Mother was in the car with him.”
“Yes, I know.”
I stared at her. “You do?”
She nodded. “Mother told me.”
Wounded, thrown off track, I groped for words. “She told you, but she wouldn’t talk about it with me.”
“I don’t get hysterical when the subject comes up.”
Her superior tone jolted me into anger. She thought she knew everything, but she knew nothing, so cozy in her ignorance.
“Did she tell you a little girl was in the car with them?” I said. “Did she tell you that little girl was killed too?”
I watched the color drain from her face and her mouth open slightly. For a split second I wavered, as the enormity of what I was doing came clear. One step farther, and I would destroy my sister’s world. But I had to do this. I had no choice.
“The child’s name was Michelle Theresa,” I said, “and she was two years old. She died that day, with her father.”
I held her gaze, braced for anger, denial, an outburst. But she sat perfectly still, hands limp in her lap, and didn’t speak. A wren sang outside the window, a burbling happy sound.
“Mish,” I said, stepping closer. “I don’t know what it means, about you and me—”
She drew herself up in one long motion and was on her feet facing me, her body a rigid column.
Her voice was low, quiet. “You need help, Rachel. You’re not rational anymore.”
I shook my head. “Mish, read this—”
I offered the two sheets of paper in my outstretched hand. Her eyes didn’t waver from my face.
“Read this.” I held the papers up, in her line of vision.
Her sharp slap across the back of my hand caught me by surprise, making me release the sheets. They fluttered to the carpet. I bent to retrieve them. When I straightened her face was contorted with fury.
“We’ve had enough of this from you,” she said. “You’re making Mother ill, she’s worried half to death about you. You need help, Rachel. If you refuse to get it, we—”
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I grabbed her arm and shoved the story in her face, an inch from her eyes. “Read this, for God’s sake, read it! They had a daughter named Michelle and she died in that accident, and the story says she was their only child. And I’m not in those pictures, all those pictures Mother’s got hidden away, you’re in them—that girl is in them—but I’m not—”
With a jerk she freed her arm, then she backed away. “It always comes down to this. You’ve always been jealous of me. You’ve never been close to Mother like I am, and you’ve always resented it.”
I groaned. “No. This has nothing to do with—”
“What are you saying? That I’m not even alive, I died in an accident?” Her sudden laughter rose to a shrill note. “That makes a lot of sense, Rachel.”
“I don’t know what it means,” I said. “We have to find out. You have to read this, and we have to find out what it means.”
She’d closed herself off from me, put up a wall I couldn’t penetrate. Her voice cold and even, she said, “Don’t you dare bother Mother with any more of your weird ideas. This obsession is your problem, and you have to stop imposing it on other people. You need help, Rachel. You need to see a psychiatrist.”
I didn’t believe this. The story was here in my hand, in front of her, and I couldn’t make her read it. Even if she did, would she accept it as real, or would she think I’d gone to great lengths to fake it? Yes, that was exactly what she’d think. She’d rather believe I was losing my mind than face the secrets I’d uncovered.
Stepping back, I folded the sheets of paper. I would do this alone. I’d been alone from the beginning. Without speaking again, I turned and walked out of her room.
Sitting on my bed, holding the story, I listened to the small sounds of Mother’s arrival, the muffled slam of the car door on the driveway, her voice calling a greeting as she came up the stairs. She exchanged a few words with Michelle, but I couldn’t make out what they said.
The Heat of the Moon: A Rachel Goddard Mystery (Rachel Goddard Mysteries) Page 20
