Postcards From Last Summer

by Roz Bailey

“Go fish,” she told him, pulling her cards out of view. “And no peeking. And when it’s my turn to deal we are playing hearts. I’m sorry Maisy ever taught you her favorite games.” Maisy came on set nearly every day, if only to spend a few hours with her mom. Mary Grace McCorkle was always around to supervise, and Noah said it was fine with him as long as Darcy was ready to shoot when they needed her.

  Alton came back to the table, gathered up his cards, then went back to the door, cracking it into the blistering sunshine again.

  “Would you sit, already?” Ban demanded.

  “I’m just restless, cooped up in here.” Alton started twitching, exaggerating until he was hunched over in a seizure. “Nerves, I guess.”

  “Cool your jets.” Ban frowned at his cards. “Another week or two here in the city and we’ll be heading out to the Hamptons to shoot the beach scene.”

  “Another week?” Alton pretended to be choking. “I’ll be a ball of nerves by then.”

  “Let’s get out of here.” Darcy put her cards down and peered out the window. “There’s a sidewalk café across the street. We’ll ask the PAs to come get us there when they need us.”

  “Do we dare?” Alton gasped with exaggeration. “The esteemed Bancroft Hughes may be mobbed.”

  “Oh, shut up.” Bancroft picked up a wide-brimmed khaki hat, part of his wardrobe, and pulled it low over one side. “No one will recognize me, disguised as myself.”

  No one even seemed to notice as they crossed the street and took seats at a small round table in the shade. Alton put up the table’s green umbrella to provide even more cover from curious passersby. By the time their tall, frozen, nonalcoholic drinks arrived, they were laughing over Alton’s story of how his girlfriend’s family was trying to sneak onto the set to meet the famous Bancroft Hughes. “And I keep saying, hey, girl, I’ll give you an autograph. What about me? I’m in the movie, too. Doesn’t that count for something?”

  “And they don’t care?” Darcy asked, lifting a paper parasol from her drink.

  “Nah! They just look at me with those evil eyes that say, move your black ass over, brother, and let me at the star man!”

  Ban slung his arm around the back of Darcy’s chair and gave a mock sigh. “Ah, it’s so tedious, always being the top banana.”

  “Like you’re really hurting.” Alton cocked an eyebrow, giving Ban a hard look. “No skin off your banana, if you know what I mean.”

  Darcy laughed so hard she dropped her paper umbrella to the ground. “I’ve got to save that for Maisy,” she said, bending down to pick it up. As she reached under the table she noticed a new pair of sneakered feet edging toward them on the sidewalk as Alton complained. “Hey!”

  Straightening abruptly, Darcy knocked into Ban, who slung his arm around her to keep her from bumping him in the chin. Pressed against his chest momentarily, she shot a look across the table, right into the lens of a monstrous black camera.

  And that was how the face of Darcy Love, aspiring twentysomething actress, was photographed with star Bancroft Hughes and featured in more than a hundred nationally syndicated newspapers that week.

  74

  Tara

  Almost there.

  In one week, Tara would sit for the New York state bar exam and, hopefully, get this monkey off her back.

  “Did you eat your Wheaties?” Steve had teased that morning when she took a study break to call him. “Sprint the last mile? Knock on wood and throw salt over your shoulder? You’re in the home stretch.”

  “Easy, smart-ass. I’m trying to keep a level head about this.”

  “And when have you not been level and calm? Any more level and we’d have to light a firecracker under you to get a pulse.”

  “Hey! That’s kind of mean.”

  “Oh, good. Now that I have your attention, are you going to be out east for Labor Day?”

  “I don’t know. I can’t think that far ahead.”

  “Well, Ma’s going to be at the house, and she mentioned something about you staying there, too. Like, that’d be okay. I think she’s onto us, Mugsy.”

  Tara sighed. “I can’t think about all that now. I’m just trying to hold it together until after the exam.”

  “You do that, Mugs, and I’ll hold Ma off as long as you need. Though she’s basically harmless.”

  “Unless she lets the word slip out.”

  “Well, there’s that, and she does have a gift for conversation.” Steve had agreed not to “crack anything open” before the test, and Tara had returned to her work, reviewing the multistate section of the computerized law review course. She’d set her laptop up in her small bedroom on the fourth floor of the West Sixty-eighth Street brownstone—a small room, as most of the upstairs rooms were tight on space, their ceilings tilting under the dormers—but it afforded her a view of the street, and she’d always enjoyed watching traffic pass, keeping tabs on her own parents and brother and sister over the years.

  A few hours later she stood up and stretched. The days to the exam were ticking down, and she opened her registration packet to see what she’d need to bring to the test. Her driver’s license and birth certificate. She’d mentioned that to her mother, but Mom still hadn’t extracted it from the strongbox in the closet containing family documents—the box Mama guarded so carefully, as if it contained jewels instead of yellowed contracts and certificates. Mama was out, she’d seen her head down the street around an hour ago from her fourth-story vantage point. Tara headed down to the den to pluck her birth certificate. She could run out and get a copy made while taking a break, and Mama wouldn’t have to be bothered with it.

  The precious box was kept inside a bench at the foot of her parents’ queen-sized bed. The scarlet and gold brocaded seat lifted to reveal a metal box, fireproof, her mother used to say. Tara hoisted the metal box out of the bench and rested it on the thick Chinese rug on her parents’ bedroom floor. The box was more densely packed than she remembered, containing expired passports for her parents, packets of collector’s coins, the deed for the Manhattan brownstone, and even an old family Bible that she and her sister used to joke about as a “valued” inheritance. “Mom and Dad are leaving it to you,” she’d tell her sister. “You’re the oldest.” And her sister Denise would respond, “But I’m sure you’ll get it, since you’re the baby.” Underneath the Bible she found her sister’s birth certificate, then a packet of old photographs that she set aside.

  At last, Tara found her own birth certificate. She set it aside and started replacing the other papers. As she lifted the packet of photos, the yellowed envelope gaped open, the glue giving way, and a few small black-and-white photographs slipped out.

  Tara smiled at the people in the photos, ladies dressed from head to toe in all their finery, including a smooth coat with velvet trim, a snaky mink stole, and a coat with military-style piping. But the crowning glory of their ensembles were the hats—bonnets embellished with arched feathers and fat berries and blossoms exploding with lush blooms. These ladies knew how to step out, and skimming the photos of their men in zoot suits and pinstripes, delis with vintage DRINK COCA-COLA! signs and the old facade of the BMT subway station, Tara imagined the wonderland New York must have been back then.

  On closer examination she recognized her Grandma Mitzy in many of the photos—obviously in her younger days before her hair was streaked with white. Hard to believe those dark, shiny lips and slender hips belonged to her grandma, but then those laughing eyes were unmistakably Grandma Mitzy’s.

  “You were a very handsome lady,” Tara said to the photo, recalling how this woman had hugged her so close, admiring her ears. “Like little shells. Wouldn’t surprise me to find a baby pearl inside. Reminds me so much of my man Willy. Mmm!” And she’d pulled Tara to her ample breast, hugging the stuffing out of her. Grandma Mitzy was undoubtedly Tara’s favorite, especially since she always took such pleasure in Tara. Though Tara never understood what Grandma meant by “my man Willy,” since Grandpa was named Elwood Jamison.
Once she asked her mother if Willy was a nickname for Elwood, but Mama just shushed her, told her to show respect.

  As Tara went further in the stack, she noticed Grandma Mitzy on the arm of a white man in many of the shots—a beanpole of a man with medium dark hair, freckles, and a military uniform in some shots. Who was he?

  The last few pictures made Tara’s eyes bulge. Grandma Mitzy wore a wedding gown and veil, arm in arm with the skinny white soldier.

  What? Who was this guy, some stand-in for Grandpa Woody?

  As Tara leafed through the photos, she heard the familiar creak of the stairs. Someone was here, and she wasn’t supposed to be meddling in these papers.

  “Tara?” Serena Washington paused in the master bedroom doorway, hands on her hips. “What are you doing in here?” As her mother’s stern gaze swept down over the floor, taking in the extent of the damage, Tara sensed her mother’s composure unraveling. “Oh, no.” Mama pressed her eyes closed. “Those are my private papers.”

  “With my birth certificate.” Tara turned back to the photographs she’d fanned out on the floor. “Who is this man with Grandma Mitzy? The white soldier at her wedding.”

  Her mother let out a strangled breath. “His name was William Rockwell, and he was killed in the Korean War.”

  “That’s sad, isn’t it? I mean, if he was a friend of Grandma’s?” From the way Mitzy smiled at him in one photograph, Tara sensed that her grandmother had cared a great deal for this man.

  When there was no answer from her mother, Tara glanced up and saw wet streaks down her mother’s cheeks. Tears. “Mama?” she stood up, approaching her cautiously. “Mama, what is it?”

  “He was more than a friend. He was her first husband, her Willy.” Her voice cracked on his name.

  A white man? Tara squinted, trying to focus on the facts despite the fact that the world seemed to be shifting. Shaky ground. “Grandma was married to a white man? But what about Grandpa Woody?”

  “She married him later . . . after her Willy passed in the war.”

  “Oh.” At least she understood what Grandma had meant about “my Willy.” “So . . . this was a big family secret?”

  “It’s not something anyone likes to discuss. But obviously, my sisters know, and your father . . . I told your father, and he said it didn’t matter that . . .” Sobbing, Mama pressed a hand to her mouth.

  Tara touched her mother’s arm gently. “Mama, what are you trying to tell me?”

  “That man in the photos . . . don’t you see? He was my father. Willy Rockwell was my father. That white man is your grandfather.”

  Tara had never cried on a subway train before, but today seemed to be a day for firsts . . . first glimpse of your grandfather’s photos, first time your mother was honest with you about your genealogy . . .

  The upside of crying on the downtown number three train was New York City passengers generally avoided eye contact, so Tara suspected few people noticed. Though when she felt her face crumple in a restrained sob, the gray-haired woman sitting by the door did tip her head in sympathy.

  As the train raced downtown, she pulled a pair of wide oval sunglasses out of her bag and tried to sort through the pain. It didn’t help that all this had been sprung on her during pre–bar exam mode, when she’d been trying to maintain a modicum of control over her life to maintain focus. The worst part was that she’d been so blindsided by her parents’ subterfuge, by the way they’d pushed her so hard to embrace the black culture and ignore her pale skin tone, all the while knowing they were forcing her to live a lie.

  Feeling like a zombie, she exited the train at Forty-second Street, emerged upon the blazing sign-fest of Times Square, and headed east, toward Bryant Park, where Lindsay had promised to meet her.

  “Tara?” Lindsay waved from a park bench, looking cute in her A-line skirt with a silk tank—her work clothes. She screwed the top back on a bottle of iced tea as Tara joined her.

  “Thanks for meeting me.” Tara sat on the bench, too distraught to worry about sitting on pigeon droppings or someone’s spilled soda. As she’d stumbled out of her parents’ brownstone in a haze, Tara had started calling her friends from the alphabetical list in her cell phone. Darcy was on set with the movie and couldn’t talk. She’d left a message for Elle, then finally, Lindsay had answered at Island Books. “Don’t panic,” she’d said. “I’m on my way out now. Meet me at Bryant Park, soon as you can get down here.”

  As she adjusted her sunglasses, Tara searched for a place to begin. “I’m so sorry to pull you from work, but—”

  “Don’t even think about it. I told the managing editor I had a medical emergency, and he’s so squeamish I know he’ll never ask me about the details.” She circled her fingers around Tara’s wrist. “What happened, honey?”

  Tara told her everything, how she went looking for her birth certificate and found the photographs, how her mother walked in and confessed that this man, this Willy Rockwell, was her grandfather.

  “And why did they keep it a secret all these years?” Lindsay asked.

  “Embarrassment?” Tara shrugged. “My mother didn’t quite admit it, but I think it made her feel separate from her half sisters, who had a different, darker-skinned father. You know, I’ve always noticed some tension among them, but I just chalked it off to my mother’s stubbornness. I guess my instincts were right.”

  Lindsay’s short A-line cut bobbed as she shook her head. “I can’t believe your parents would do that to you. I mean, families keep a lot of things private, but to lie to you and then make you feel bad because you looked different from your aunts and cousins . . .”

  “I wonder if Denise and Wayne know?” Tara’s brother might not care so much; with chocolate brown skin like their father’s, he’d never suffered the same identity crisis. But Denise would want to know. “I’m going to call Denise.”

  Just as she took out her cell phone, it beeped with a call. “Elle,” Tara said, reading the caller ID. “Hey . . .”

  “Got your message,” Elle said breathlessly, “and I’m running, I tell you, fleeing a restaurant near the old meat market, where I just had yet another lunch date from hell. Meet me at my place in ten.”

  At Elle and Darcy’s apartment in Hell’s Kitchen, Lindsay ordered Chinese food and Tara called her older sister, who wasn’t quite so interested in hearing about the family scandal. “We’ll talk about it next time I see you, Ta,” Denise said. “Right now, I’ve got to pick up Jordan from soccer camp and pull a dinner together for Curtis’s clients.”

  “She makes it sound as if I overreacted,” Tara said, closing her cell phone.

  “She’s in another world,” Lindsay said as she handed Tara a bottle of water.

  “No come, sit.” Elle crimped her short red curls as she flopped onto a giant gold cushion in the living room. “Fill me in. You know how I hate to miss anything.”

  Tara felt better going through the story a second time; now that the initial shock of discovery was fading, the bald facts seemed clearer and easier to absorb, and the nugget of truth—the fact that her grandfather was white and she was a woman of mixed race—no longer seemed like such a scandal.

  “Maybe I overreacted, but it just derailed me.” Tara was curled in a ball on the corner of the burgundy chenille sofa.

  “And you’ve been keeping such a low profile, hacking away at the bar review.” Lindsay sat on the wide windowsill, her ankles crossed above tweed kitten heels.

  “I’d be freaked,” Elle said. “It’s like someone pulling the floor out from under you.” She punched the pillow and collapsed on it facedown. “I’ve been there. When I had to move back here, that feeling that there was no room for me in my own family, that they just couldn’t fit me in anymore. And I didn’t see it coming. I was totally blindsided.”

  “Blindsided, that’s it,” Tara said, recalling the sting of revelation. “There’s the shock, and there’s the realization that it’s all been a lie, that my mother concocted this whole cultural identi
ty that was a ruse.”

  “Yeah, the lies suck,” Elle agreed. “I hate lies.”

  “But actually,” Tara said thoughtfully, “this could be a blessing in disguise. I’ve always struggled with my cultural identity, always felt a little out of sorts, trying to be someone else. I guess it’s a relief to know there’s a reason my skin is pale, and it’s not a bad thing. I’m not an anomaly anymore.”

  “Oh, honey . . .” Lindsay sat down beside her and squeezed her hand. “You never were.”

  “But sometimes I felt that way.”

  “You know,” Lindsay said, “your grandmother was a social pioneer. Grandma Mitzy must have truly loved William to break the rules of social convention, fighting so many obstacles.”

  Tara took a deep breath as images swirled in her mind: her mother’s tear-streaked face, Grandma Mitzy’s ample-bosomed hugs and her Willy, the soldier in the photographs with the million-watt smile. “My Willy. She never stopped talking about him. I just didn’t know who the hell she meant, and no one would fill me in.”

  “But now you know.” Elle popped up suddenly. “There is a certain level of resolution in all this, don’t you think?”

  “Yes,” Tara said definitively. “The truth is empowering.”

  “Hold that thought—it’ll make a perfect fortune cookie,” Elle said, jumping up as the doorbell rang. “That’s our food.”

  Over lemon chicken and moo shoo pork, they talked about plans for the last weeks of summer. Tara hadn’t let herself think that far ahead, and now, realizing that the bar would come and go, she entertained Elle’s invitation to spend two uninterrupted weeks at Elle’s place in the Hamptons.

  “You deserve the break,” Lindsay said, “and that house is magical. I’ve been working away in the attic this summer, and it’s very conducive to writing. I feel a certain spirit there . . . I guess I feel free.”

  “I could use some of that,” Tara said.

  They were about to open their fortune cookies when the doorbell rang again. Lindsay went to answer it and returned with her brother Steve behind her, his necktie hanging from the open collar of his white dress shirt.