A Buried Past

by Alexandria Clarke

  “The one you grew up in?”

  “When I was on this side of the Atlantic Ocean,” I added. “I flew back and forth between my mom and my dad, remember?”

  Evelyn fiddled with the strap on her brace. She’d been refusing to ask me for help. Regardless, I reached over and pulled the brace free for her.

  “Thanks,” she grumbled reluctantly. “Your parents were so weird. Are you sure they weren’t having secret affairs or something? No other married couple I know lived on two different continents.”

  “They were happy that way,” I said. “When they met, they were both chasing after dream careers. Dad’s was in New York. Mom’s was here in England. They fell in love anyway and decided to split the distance.”

  “But was it worth it?”

  I thought back on my childhood. It was complicated, sure, and I’d racked up more frequent-flier miles than a traveling businessman, but I wouldn’t change it if I could. During the school year, I stayed in New York with my father to attend a private elementary school. On holidays, we both would head to England to be with Mom. When I turned fourteen, I decided to switch it up. Boarding school in London, where I met Evelyn, came into play, and Mom and I visited Dad during holidays. It wasn’t simple, but our family was stronger for it.

  “Yes,” I answered Evelyn. “I only have one regret.”

  “Which is?”

  “Mom was alone when she died. If my dad had been around—” I trailed off. Completing the sentence was pointless. I’d gone down this line of thought too many times, and it always took me to the same conclusion. “I can’t change what happened to my mother, and I can’t change my childhood. But I can appreciate the good things I had when I had them.”

  “I guess I should admire your parents,” Evelyn said. “Mine weren’t strong enough to survive their marriage, and they lived in the same place.”

  “I admire my parents too,” I said. “Or I used to anyway.”

  Evelyn watched my face fall. “All right, fine,” she said. “I’ll come to the party with you. You don’t have to pout.”

  “I wasn’t pouting—”

  “So that lower lip quiver is authentic?”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  The best thing about having a friend like Evelyn, who might as well have been my sister, was that she supported me despite however she was feeling toward me. As we drove to Windsor, she gave most of her attention to the passing countryside, answering my questions with one word at a time. She wanted to make it known she hadn’t quite forgiven me for butting in at her workplace the day before.

  The address Nadine had given me led us to a driveway hidden by high, thick shrubbery. As we pulled in and drove around the maze of bushes, a small house appeared set at the back of the property, right on the river. Childhood memories washed over me. I recognized the house not because I had been there before but because I had walked along the river’s path so often as a child that I knew the entire neighborhood. If we kept on, past the river’s bend to the left, we would end up right at my mother’s old house.

  Several cars clogged the driveway, so I parked behind the last one. I’d purposely intended to be late. It was easier to arrive at parties like these when I could blend in with more people. Perhaps no one but Nadine would notice me.

  “This is where you used to live?” Evelyn asked as she stepped out of the car and gazed up. The house was nice, and like most on the river, big enough to comfortably suit a family of five or six. It wasn’t garishly large, but it was much bigger than the city flats Evelyn was accustomed to. It had a terrace on the front and back, one to overlook the beautiful yard and the other to enjoy the riverside. “I’m surprised a professor can afford something like this.”

  “A professor at Oxford,” I reminded her. “It’s different. They’re, well, paid—”

  “Tons,” finished Evelyn. “Purely because of the school’s name. I get it. Nadine doesn’t commute this far, though, does she? It’s hours away.”

  “I’m not sure it’s her house.” Needing comfort, I linked my arm through Evelyn’s. “It is a bit out of the way, though. I wonder who else is here.”

  We needn’t have wondered much longer. Before we could ring the bell, Nadine came out on the terrace, a glass of champagne in one hand, and saw us walking up.

  “Ladies!” she called. “Let yourselves in. I’ll be down in a minute.”

  The back of the house was almost all glass. When I found the right handle, I pushed open a sliding door and led Evelyn inside. The first floor was packed with guests. They chatted, drank, and nibbled appetizers off plates carried by finely dressed servers. A flashy bartender flipped bottles and glasses in the far corner, whipping up a margarita and a whiskey sour at the same time. Peppy jazz music pumped over the speakers, and a few people danced in the center of the living room, where someone had pushed the leather couches and oak side tables out of the way.

  “This is a memorial?” Evelyn muttered in my ear. “I’ve never partied this hard for someone who was still alive.”

  I elbowed her to be quiet as Nadine descended the stairs and came over to us. “I’m so glad you came!” she said, hugging us both at the same time. “Evelyn, right? It’s nice to see you again. Did anyone show you the gift yet?”

  “No, sorry. What gift?”

  With a guiding hand at the small of my back, Nadine led me to a small table. My heart skipped when I saw the tasteful picture of my mother printed and framed upon it. She wore her favorite jacket, the one with the elbow patches, the one she always said made her feel like a distinguished lecturer who should be smoking tobacco out of a pipe. Next to the picture was a beautiful, leather-bound journal.

  “Is that my mother’s?” I asked, shaking.

  “No, no, just the same brand she favored taking her notes in,” Nadine assured me. “I asked everyone to write something memorable about Priya. We’re going to read them aloud in a few hours. Would you care to add something?”

  My mother—bleeding out in the grass as a faceless man stabbed her over and over—flashed in my head. “Maybe later,” I told Nadine.

  Nadine, sensing my hesitation, moved on quickly. “You likely know most of the people here. Feel free to roam around. Everything but the big bedroom upstairs is available to guests. Get yourselves a drink or two. It’s an open bar.”

  “Is this your house?” Evelyn butted in before Nadine slipped away.

  Nadine’s gaze flickered toward me. “Ah, it is not. The owner lent it to me for the evening. Whether she joins us tonight is up to her.”

  “That was weird,” Evelyn muttered as Nadine disappeared into the crowd. She straightened up and looked over the heads of the other guests. “Well, is it true? Do you know everyone here?”

  I scanned the room and scoffed. “Not a chance. I don’t see a single person who—”

  “Jacqueline Frye, is that you?” A woman my age—petite and blonde with eye sockets so wide you could see the whites around her irises—turned me to face her. She squealed with delight and hugged me. “It is you! I haven’t seen you in years?”

  “Poppy?” I asked, drawing back to get another look at her. “Wow, hi! God, how long has it been?”

  Poppy counted on her fingers. “Thirteen years or so? And Evelyn!”

  Evelyn let out an involuntary grunt as Poppy squeezed her too tightly for comfort. “Sorry, do I know you?”

  “Maybe you don’t remember,” Poppy said. “My mum and Jack’s were close friends. They dragged us to all the meetings and parties with the other professors. You tagged along with Jack occasionally. I could never forget you because you’re so tall!”

  “I remember the boring parties,” Evelyn said.

  Poppy laughed, unfazed. “I’ll get drinks. What would you like?”

  “Water,” Evelyn said.

  “Whiskey,” I added.

  As Poppy bounced off, Evelyn muttered, “I have no memory of that woman.”

  Suddenly, familiar faces started p
opping out of the crowd at me. It was as if seeing Poppy had unlocked the part of my memory that contained all the people from my life as an Oxford scholar’s daughter. I spotted long-lost childhood friends, several of my mother’s colleagues, and a few of her mentors, who had since retired from the academic world.

  Poppy returned with drinks and a plate of cheese and crackers for the three of us to share. Evelyn inhaled most of them and went off in search of more. That left me alone with Poppy to reunite with people who hadn’t seen me since I was sixteen or younger.

  Professor Edith Parnell burst into tears when she saw me. Like Priya, she had been tasked with watching over me when my mother was too busy. More than once, I sat in on her philosophy lectures. I didn’t understand a word of them until later in life. Edith was almost like a grandmother to me.

  “You look so much like Priya,” she said, dabbing her tears with a cocktail napkin. “Such a tragedy we lost both of you.”

  “I’m still alive,” I reminded her shortly.

  “Yes, but you went off to the States, love.”

  A few minutes later, a handsome man in a suit and tie approached me. He claimed to be Trevor Quimby, though the Trevor Quimby I remembered from horseback riding lessons had protruding front teeth and rounded shoulders, and was dead terrified of the animals we were meant to be controlling.

  “I gave up horseback riding,” he told me, chuckling, when I mentioned this. “Gained a bit of weight and switched to cricket.”

  Evelyn, who’d returned from her quest for cheese and crackers, jumped in then, eager to discuss sport rather than academics. I used her broad shoulders to ward off the attention of another well-meaning past acquaintance and escaped up the stairs and onto the back terrace. Most guests had gone inside to avoid the chill. I leaned over the balcony with a fresh glass of whiskey and let the cool breeze from the river sweep the heat of social obligation away from my person.

  Someone draped my coat across my shoulders. Nadine, who somehow kept her boot heels from clicking loudly across the rooftop, leaned next to me. She faced away from the river, studying me instead.

  “Doing all right so far?” she asked gently.

  “I suppose.”

  “I planned this get-together ages ago,” she said. “I had no idea you were going to be in town. I hope you haven’t been bombarded with bad memories.”

  I watched my cube of ice dissolve into my whiskey. “They aren’t bad memories, just old ones. I wasn’t expecting to see so many people who knew my mother. It’s like they all remember her better than I do.”

  Nadine rubbed my back, the same way she used to when she would put me to sleep as a child. “You were her daughter, Jack. No one remembers her as well as you do.” She checked her watch. “Speaking of which, I promised everyone we would read the journal entries around eight. Are you coming down to listen?”

  Every part of me wanted to remain rooted to my spot on the terrace. “Sure.”

  I accompanied Nadine downstairs, but we parted on the first floor. She went to fetch the journal while I wrenched Evelyn away from a heated debate on the importance of women’s clubs in the male-dominated cricket world. Nadine, journal in hand, ascended to the third step of the staircase and cleared her throat. The room quieted.

  “As you all know,” she began, cradling the journal to her chest, “we’re all here to celebrate the life of my best friend and mentor, Priya Pearson.”

  A few people lifted their glasses or clapped politely.

  “Priya was one of the funniest, kindest, and most intelligent people I have ever had the privilege of knowing,” Nadine went on. “When I first arrived at Oxford, I felt out of place. Imposter Syndrome might as well have beat me over the head.” A chuckle echoed through the crowd. “But I was lucky enough to have Priya, or Professor Pearson as I knew her back then, as my instructor for an introduction to anthropology class. As a fresher, I intended to study literature, but we all know how that turned out.”

  I couldn’t help but grin as another laugh rang out. As a student, Nadine had had a bad habit of never finishing the assigned readings. She’d told me story after story of how her literature professors would scold her for lack of initiative. She almost dropped out of university.

  “Thanks to Priya, I discovered a passion for anthropology,” Nadine went on. “I was lucky enough to earn a spot as Priya’s teaching assistant. That was when I truly began to know her. In the long hours after class, we graded papers, gossiped about the students, and shared our love of higher knowledge. I believe those conversations shaped me into the person I am today.”

  Nadine’s expression grew serious, and all movement in the room ceased when she said, “Ten years ago, Priya was taken from us. We will never understand why such a senseless act of violence so upset our lives.”

  Someone let out a small sob, and a spark of anger lit within me. Yes, these people had been acquainted with my mother. They spent a good deal of time with her, but did they truly know her well enough to warrant tears ten years later? I hadn’t simply lost a teacher or coworker; I had been robbed of a parent.

  “Tonight we honor Priya’s memory,” Nadine said, sniffling as she opened the journal, “by sharing some of our favorite memories of her. I’ll start. The first time I met Professor Pearson…”

  The stories floated through my head without much permanence. The anecdotes ranged from funny to profound to trivial. One woman remembered when my mother had loaned her a few pounds for lunch. Another recalled the time she and Mom had discovered an entire, intact skull during an archaeological dig in Greece. Trevor Quimby, who it turned out had studied under my mother, read aloud the comments Mom had written on a paper he’d cobbled together at the last minute.

  “‘Weak thesis,’” he announced to the tittering crowd, holding the paper out so everyone could see the slew of red pen marks in the margins. “‘Few supporting details. Not enough research to back up your claims. Absolute swill.’”

  The crowd roared at that, and Trevor blushed appropriately. As he stepped down, Nadine closed the journal with a sense of finality. Relief washed over me.

  “Feel free to add more stories to the journal throughout the night,” Nadine said. “Tomorrow, Oxford is setting up a presentation in the anthropology department to honor Priya. The journal will be displayed there.”

  A door creaked open overhead, and everyone’s eyes wandered upward toward the second floor. The master bedroom, which had been off-limits to guests, was now open. A tiny woman wrapped in a traditional sari emerged from the bedroom and approached the top of the staircase. She wobbled there, uncertain, as if waiting for an invitation to come down.

  “Please join me in welcoming Deepali Pearson,” Nadine said hurriedly, sweeping her arm toward the woman. “She was gracious enough to let us use her home for the memorial tonight.”

  As the woman descended the stairs with one trembling hand on the railing to steady herself, her deep brown eyes surveyed the guests. When she saw me, her gaze locked on to mine. My throat closed up, and my chest tightened.

  Evelyn caught sight of my distorted face. She glanced back and forth between the woman on the stairs and me. “Pearson? Does that mean—?”

  As the elderly woman reached the first floor, I rushed off, bumping my way through the other guests until I found the back exit. I made a run for it, my feet carrying me down to the river path without conscious thought. The wind tore through my hair and made my eyes water. I’d left my coat on one of the luxurious sofas inside, but I didn’t care. I had to get as far away from that house as possible.

  I ran all the way home, or to the memory of home. My mother’s old house was still there, but it looked nothing like I remembered it. The new owners had gotten rid of the sturdy brick wall around the backyard and put up an ugly white fence. The yard was littered with annoyingly bright children’s toys in various states of disrepair. When I approached, a massive white dog burst from a hidden door and warned me away. I threw a stick to distract it and kept running.


  I lost my breath a short minute later and collapsed in the cold dirt beneath a familiar-looking tree. I hugged my knees into my chest and focused on breathing. As I watched the river ripple, my mind eventually calmed. The tightness in my chest loosened. I looked up at the moon, and for a moment, I envisioned my mother sitting beside me.

  Not five minutes later, I heard the rumble of a car engine. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw Evelyn’s car idling in the road, as close to my spot by the river as she could get without breaking any laws. She peered at me through the side window but did not get out until I waved her over.

  “I don’t want you driving one-armed,” I reminded her as she paid no mind to the damp ground and sat next to me. She’d brought my coat with her. “You should have waited at the party.”

  “I had to make sure you were all right.” She dusted her good hand on her pants. “That woman—Deepali Pearson—is she who I think she is?”

  “Yes. She’s my grandmother.”

  “I didn’t know you had other family here.” She examined my face. “I’m guessing you didn’t either?”

  I wished for my glass of whiskey back. “I had no idea she lived so close. I never knew her.”

  “Your own grandmother? Why not?”

  “We didn’t speak to her,” I explained. “Or my grandfather. They disapproved of my mother’s choice to marry an American.”

  “Pearson isn’t an Indian name, though,” Evelyn said. “Your grandmother must have married outside her culture as well.”

  “She married an Englishman,” I confirmed. “Which was quite bold of her back then. It wasn’t so much a culture thing. They didn’t like that my father wouldn’t commit to living with Mum here in London. It drove a wedge between Mum and her parents. By the time I was born, they weren’t on speaking terms anymore. I never met them.”

  Evelyn squeezed my knee. “So that’s why you ran out of there so quickly.”

  “Mm.”

  I gazed upward, through the branches of the tree. The leaves were beginning to drop off. The trunk of this tree split about halfway up, twisted around itself, and came together again. A jolt of recognition pushed me to my feet. I ran to the river and emptied the whiskey, cheese, and crackers from my stomach.