The Woman in the Photo

by Mary Hogan

  “Drat.” Lights didn’t always turn red on her, but they usually did.

  Did my birth mother have more red lights than green? Is traffic karma inherited? Valerie rarely hit a red light. She didn’t know what it felt like to be constantly kept out of the flow.

  “Twenty-one, twenty-two, twenty-three . . .” Lee counted the seconds at the red light. Numbers calmed her. They were orderly and predictable. Most Los Angeles intersections, she knew, had up to two full seconds when all traffic was completely stopped. Yellow lights stayed lit for about four seconds, sometimes six, before the light turned red. It was based on some sort of algorithm designed to keep everyone moving. Unless you were late for work. In that case, red lights were endless.

  “Thirty-six, thirty-seven, thirty-eight . . .”

  The instant the green arrow lit up, Lee surged into the intersection and turned left onto the wide boulevard. As fast as possible, she raced to the parking lot in front of Bed Bath & Beyond. It was ten past nine. Already, the lot was crowded. Her favorite space—the far corner under the tree—was taken. Associates weren’t allowed to park near the door. Lee groaned. By the end of her shift, the car would be an oven.

  Swinging open the door, she leaped out, locked the car, and ran. As the rubber soles of her tennis shoes bounced across the soft asphalt, the irony of it all sprang into her consciousness: today was her birthday as well as Memorial Day. Yet tomorrow was the “birth” day she would never forget.

  CHAPTER 5

  Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association

  ABOVE JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

  Memorial Day

  May 30, 1889

  In a flurry of movement, the train doors open and passengers flood the platform. Our porter exits first, and then extends his hand to assist us down the steep steps. One, two, three. Silently, I count my footfalls. A habit from childhood. For some reason, numbers are a comfort. A lullaby of sorts.

  On the platform, the porter holds an open umbrella over our heads though the rain has yet to restart. Mother, Henry, and I are the only first-class passengers to disembark. Who else would come to South Fork off-season? The train station, however, is bustling with travelers. Muscular steelworkers, mostly, and their sturdy wives. The women carry picnic baskets; the men are dressed in their Sunday-best butternut trousers. All are on their way, no doubt, to the festivities one stop down the line.

  “Hurry now,” Mother says, with a linen handkerchief pressed to her nose. Quite unnecessary, I realize instantly. The distant smokestacks of Johnstown’s nonstop steel mill emit only the faintest puffs of white, unlike a normal summer day in which the entire train station would be enshrouded in a murky blend of smoke and fog, smelling decidedly sulfuric. Today, the bosses at Cambria Iron must have cut the workday short so the men and their families could enjoy the Memorial Day parade.

  I step out from under the umbrella and stand erect in my finery to breathe in the sodden air. Allowing, admittedly, a few moments for the townspeople to admire my dress.

  “Elizabeth,” Mother says over her shoulder. A carriage is waiting on the uphill road to the club.

  “Miss Haberlin?”

  Behind me is a vaguely familiar voice. I turn to see a face I haven’t seen since last summer.

  “Why, Mr. Eggar!”

  He has the same puckish expression, though perhaps a bit paler in complexion since the summer’s sun has yet to tint his skin. His shirtsleeves are unrolled and tight at the cuffs; his broadcloth vest lies flat against his torso. Atop the charcoal curls I remember well sits a shiny black bowler hat. It appears to be freshly brushed for the holiday.

  “What brings you to South Fork on this gray day?” I ask, feeling a slight flush to my cheeks. How fortuitous I wore such a fetching frock.

  Eugene Eggar grins. As I had last summer, I note the surprising evenness of his teeth. They are not unlike the ivory keys of my parlor grand piano in Upper St. Clair. He says, “Isn’t it more surprising to see you?”

  “It is, indeed.” I return his smile. “Though I can’t say I’m happy about it. See, Fath—”

  “Elizabeth?”

  Behind me, Mother stands with an alarmed expression. Little Henry’s moon face peers out from the folds of her skirt.

  “Mother, permit me to introduce Mr. Eggar from Johnstown.”

  “Mrs. Haberlin.” Eugene removes his hat and bows slightly. Mother, I am distraught to notice, does not offer her hand. Thank goodness she drops the handkerchief from her nose.

  “How do you do,” she says, stiffly.

  “And, Mr. Eggar, may I present my brother, Henry.”

  Little Henry steps forward to ask, “Did you ride the train, too?”

  Eugene laughs. “Why, yes. Just a few moments ago I arrived to check on the state of the river.” He looks at me, and I at him.

  Mother says, “Our carriage is waiting, Elizabeth.” To Mr. Eggar, she ends the conversation by wishing him a pleasant day and politely excusing herself to turn her back on him and make her way across the platform. Deep embarrassment descends upon me like morning fog over the peak of a mountaintop. It is clear that Mother is too perplexed by my association with a town boy to treat him with the respect I know he deserves. In the normal order of things, our paths would never cross. Especially not up here. Though mere miles separate the club from downtown Johnstown, its working-class inhabitants are as apart from us as heaven is from earth.

  True to his character, Mr. Eggar nods at me in understanding. He is not unwise to the ways of the world.

  At that moment, the train’s whistle trills and the conductor shouts, “All aboard!” Departing passengers scuttle to the open doors. Umbrellas pop open over the heads of those who remain. It has begun to rain again. In the commotion, Henry extricates himself from Mother’s skirt and scampers directly into the steam cloud still puffing from the locomotive at the front of the train. Its mammoth grille chuffs like an overheated Friesian stallion.

  “Henry!” Mother shouts, but he doesn’t hear her.

  Supervising the final boarding of his passengers, the conductor stands near the engine. Clad in a double-breasted suit and flat-topped hat, he grins as roly-poly Henry scuttles toward him. He checks his pocket watch. Then he says, “Quickly, lad. Give me your foot.”

  Without hesitation, Henry deposits his leather ankle boot into the center of the conductor’s interwoven fingers. In one exhilarating boost, he is lifted into the air and set upon the engineer’s perch. From inside the cab behind the engine, the locomotive driver opens the small hatch and says, “My, my. Who do we have here?”

  “I’m Henry! I’m six!”

  Grabbing firmly on to Henry’s upper arm, the engineer helps him into the cab and out of the rain. He lets him tug on the dangling wooden handle.

  Whoo. Whoo.

  On the platform, the townspeople laugh at Henry’s playfulness. As do Eugene and I. Far from disruptive, the train’s whistle is such an ordinary part of their daily existence, it simply blends into the clamor of life in the valley. Mother is not as amused. I see that her eyes are white with fright.

  “He’s fine,” I state. “Look at his happiness.”

  Clearly on top of the world, Henry yanks the handle a third time.

  Whooooo.

  “He’s a child,” she says, stepping near enough to clutch my arm. “My child.” Turning her head away, Mother presses her handkerchief to her chest and whispers, “If anything happened to him, I would die.”

  Her sincerity startles me. I want to hide from the stark vulnerability that has blanched her face. Eugene witnesses it, too. Without a word, he hurries to the conductor.

  “Sir, would you be so kind as to help my young friend down?”

  The conductor nods and hoists himself onto the steel ledge. Henry’s wide grin fades like the final sliver of a setting sun. Reluctantly, he lets the conductor encircle his waist to secure his footing earthward. Only when Henry’s feet touch ground and Eugene returns him t
o Mother does the desperate look in her eyes abate.

  “There, there,” I say to her, as if I am her mother. “You needn’t fret.”

  My brother is again swallowed into the folds of her skirt. Mother bends down to rain kisses on her son’s rosy cheeks before raising her head to thank Mr. Eggar, but he has already disappeared.

  CHAPTER 6

  SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

  Present

  In the normal order of things, the Parkers and the Adells would never have met. Fifteen miles and a universe apart, they circulated in different orbits. Until their worlds collided in a spectacular explosion of space debris.

  “I got in!”

  The previous March, Lee Parker skipped into the family kitchen brandishing a letter. Her father was sitting at the table and her mother was standing at the sink. Too excited to utter anything other than “Eeeeeee!,” she tapped her finger four times on the insignia. Co-lum-bi-a. Columbia University, that is. The Ivy that her three-point-nine GPA and SAT score over twenty-one hundred (first try) got her. One of the achievements Lee wrote about in her admissions essay was the Chamber Music Club. It met three times a week before school and it was well established that Lee wasn’t a morning person.

  Best of all, Lee’s parents had the tuition in the bank. By her tenth birthday, Lee knew what a 529 savings plan was.

  “One day you’ll thank me for having your birthday party in the backyard with a homemade cake,” Valerie had said.

  For Lee, her college fund was like a fudge brownie wrapped in foil and stashed in a far corner of the freezer. Knowing it was there was delicious.

  That day, in their Valley kitchen, with the harvest-yellow refrigerator that didn’t match anything, Gil Parker lifted a glass of scotch to his lips. Val stood at the sink with a tissue pressed to her nose. A faint aroma of vomit infused the air.

  “What’s wrong?” Lee skidded to a stop. The black energy between her parents was so thick it literally smacked her in the face. “Has somebody died? Did Scott—?”

  “Heavens, no,” her dad said, gruffly. Only then did Lee wonder why he was home in the afternoon. “Are you okay?” she asked her father as fear blanched her face. He said nothing. Her mother still hadn’t turned around. Lee wobbled in place. Her feet seemed to weigh more than her whole body. She had the sensation of being one of those dashboard figurines, as if she could fall all the way forward on ankles made of springs.

  Gulping the remains of his drink, Gil held the glass to his face until the half-moon ice cubes crashed down to his lips. With a grunt, he stood up. Placing one meaty hand on his daughter’s back, he stiffly guided her through the kitchen doorway into the living room. Past the piano. He sat his daughter down on the white damask couch that was reserved for company. Valerie followed with her chin on her chest.

  In a ripped-off Band-Aid sort of way, Gil blurted the news.

  “Your college money is gone.”

  Lee looked at her parents, still standing in front of her. “Gone?” Her eyes darted left and right. She wondered if “gone” might be some obscure financial term meaning, perhaps, invested offshore? Maybe a foreign word she misheard? Gund? Kahn? Blinking, she waited for an explanation or a hidden camera to be revealed. Her father’s eyelids hung heavily. He shoved his hands in his pockets and jiggled his keys.

  At last her mother spoke. “Your father had been investing it—”

  “Yes,” Lee interrupted. “In the five twenty-nine.”

  “Well, there was no five twenty-nine.”

  “No five twenty-nine?”

  “Initially, there was one, yes. But, see—”

  Over Lee’s head, Valerie said to her husband, “Gil?” She then turned away as if she couldn’t bear to look. Though Lee didn’t want him to, her father sat next to her on the company couch and took her hands in his. She felt his failure in the sticky dampness of his palms, smelled his acrid breath. Intermittently, he squeezed her fingers so hard it hurt. It felt intentional, though she was sure it wasn’t. Was it? Gil muttered something about a broker and bad advice and a housing bubble back in 2008 and Wall Street crooks who made promises they had no right to make.

  “The system is rigged,” he said. “Where’s my bailout?”

  The 529, he spat out indignantly, was earning a measly 6 percent. “Six percent? That would have been criminal when the housing market was on fire.”

  Lee’s brain swam with numbers. Six percent compounded annually. Times seventeen. Plus reinvested dividends. Carry the one. Had her father forgotten how good she was at numbers?

  Even with the early withdrawal penalty, Gil Parker droned on, the credit default swaps his broker set up made it look like a no-brainer. He laid it out on a spreadsheet, a spreadsheet, for God’s sake. Why, the guy at work who turned him onto the broker took his family on vacation to St. Bart’s!

  “Only a fool would have played it safe, Lee. Don’t you see?”

  While her father spoke, Lee stared at his lips, marveling at his ability to form words with a tongue and teeth. Stunningly, the man could string entire sentences together with fancy words like “derivatives” and “subprime collateral debt” while she could barely breathe. He said, “I believed our time horizon was sufficient to recoup. But here we are.” Gil blathered on about some whale in London and filled the stale air in their living room with the smell of low tide. Not once did Lee hear the two words she was expecting: “I’m sorry.” Or better still: Plan B. Instead, Gil gave Lee’s hand a one-two pat. He then let go and clapped his knees in a what’s-done-is-done sort of way. It seemed to her a period on the discussion, as if he were slapping blood back into his legs, readying them to leap up and trot him out of responsibility.

  “There are loans,” Valerie said quietly. “And financial aid.”

  Financial aid? Had Lee known there was no money—had she not been lied to for years—she would have applied for financial aid while she had the chance. She never would have let the deadline pass. And school loans? At Columbia University? Well, at an estimated $64,000 a year, she would graduate with more than a quarter-million dollars in debt. Seriously, had her parents forgotten all the math tests she’d aced?

  “This is a speed bump in life,” Valerie said, attempting to summon a silver lining from the stash of optimism she kept on her person at all times. Still finding it hard to expand her lungs, Lee wanted to spit out, Hear that ditty from Dr. Phil? but she knew it would sound mean. Her mother wasn’t to blame. Her dad—the man they both believed in—had blindsided her, too.

  In a similar yet altogether different way, Esther and Leonard Adell had also been knocked off their feet. It happened one evening in September. They were sitting in the teak-paneled den of their multimillion-dollar home. The one with the moldy pool house.

  “Isn’t that Kenneth?” Esther Adell pointed an arthritic finger at the television screen. Beside her, Leonard ate his dinner on a Lucite tray. Their formal dining room was too large for the two of them. Especially since old age was shriveling them up. Watching Fox News in the den with supper prepared by their maid, Delfina, was an evening ritual. Leonard adored her chicken with rice.

  “Look. There.” Esther’s forefinger resembled a dog-chewed stick. “I’m quite sure that’s Kenneth in the crowd.”

  An old friend from law school, Kenneth Derrid had roomed with Leonard Adell their senior term. Over the years, they’d kept in touch. Gold-printed holiday cards. Collegial backslapping at charity events. No question: Kenneth had done well. He had a $7 million mansion on Long Island, a Central Park West pied-à-terre in the city, a beachfront condo in Miami, a blinding Rolex that hung heavily on his wrist. Leonard had done well, too. As an attorney who schooled corporations on tax inversion and other legal ways to avoid paying what they owed to the United States, his business was booming for much of his career. His lifelong passion for modern art and architecture had been an expensive hobby he could well afford.

  When Kenneth launched his own hedge fund, he quietly invited Leonard and Esther into his
exclusive investment group. They were honored to be regarded so specially. Though Leonard would never be so gauche as to brag, he was heard to remark, “My chum Kenneth is our bank.” Eyes cast floorward like a coquette’s, Leonard would sip Camus Cognac from an etched Fostoria tumbler, his professionally buffed fingernails gleaming.

  For years, the Adells gave the Bank of Kenneth all the cash they didn’t spend on art and the construction of their gallery of a home. He invested their money and made them wealthy. The Adells lived in an obscenely large house made almost entirely of glass, designed by an architect with one name. Like Cher. Or Ludacris. The house sat like a fallen asteroid—glowing and otherworldly—above Mulholland Drive. It had taken so long to build, the architect never got around to updating the creaky pool house down the hill.

  Investing in Kenneth’s fund had been a no-brainer. Only a fool accepted a federally insured interest rate. The Adells’ monthly financial statements were like opening a holiday gift. Many happy returns. Until the night they ate chicken and rice while watching the evening news.

  Leonard looked up from his plate and stopped chewing. He tried to swallow the masticated rice, but couldn’t. His mouth had gone dry. There, on the television screen—jostled by reporters and jabbed with phallic microphones—was indeed Kenneth Derrid. Their bank. He had the same sappy smile Bernie Madoff had had during his perp walk. Those thin upturned lips made the Adells sick to their stomachs.

  “This can’t be,” Leonard mumbled, mouth full.

  “Impossi—” At that moment, both Esther and her husband had no choice but to deposit their bites of supper into their linen napkins.

  It couldn’t be . . . but it was. Kenneth’s hedge fund turned out to be a feeder fund to another fund that had been a sham. Like the Madoff scheme, it had been an elaborate way to enrich brokers with fees while the paper profits reported on their investors’ monthly statements were exactly that: paper. Unbelievably, Leonard Adell—an expert at hidden assets—hadn’t suspected a thing. Frankly, he hadn’t even thought to look closely. How could he be swindled by a friend? A roommate, no less. They’d shared late-night secrets in beer-muddled whispers.