Chapter 11.

I WOKE UP THE NEXT MORNING TO A SUNNY DAY, THE AIR washed clear by the rain, the prisms I'd hung in the window years ago casting dozens of little rainbows on the ceiling and the walls. It was still early, just chilly enough for a blanket. I stretched, then relaxed back into the narrow bed. Outside, Andy arrived to pick my mother up for brunch, gravel crunching under his tires, the car door slamming shut, his steps on the stairs. The screen door slammed shut, too, and my mother's laughter floated out, hers and then Andy's, followed by a silence when I imagined that they kissed, standing in the sunny kitchen. More doors, floating voices, their footsteps on the stairs. I sat up to watch them depart, Andy walking around the car to open the pa.s.senger door, my mother smiling up at him as she slid into the seat.

I sat crossed-legged on the bed and pulled the laptop from the table, glancing up at the lake while I waited for the slow Internet connection, whitecaps scattered here and there against the sapphire blue. Wind chimes sounded distantly. Rainbows danced along my arms, the sheets. Yoshi had e-mailed from Jakarta that his trip had been uneventful. It was evening there. I imagined him having dinner on a terrace full of potted ferns and rattan furniture, the tropical dusk settling fast around him. We used to like to wander the outdoor night markets, picking out sticks of satay or plates of grilled fish or steaming bowls of noodles, but Yoshi's company preferred the ubiquitous international hotels; he'd be lucky if he got out even once for a shaved ice covered with syrup and corn, his favorite. That life we'd shared, those slow and careless days, seemed so far away. I tried calling him on Skype, but he didn't pick up.

Downstairs, my mother had left the coffee warming, a bowl of fresh blueberries in the fridge, and a note saying where she'd gone. I ate at the counter, the blueberries firm and sweet, leafing through the latest Lake of Dreams Gazette, Lake of Dreams Gazette, which featured articles on Keegan's Gla.s.sworks-he was standing by the furnace, the glory hole he called it, with his arm tight around Max-as well as a four-page insert on the history and evolving controversy around the depot land. which featured articles on Keegan's Gla.s.sworks-he was standing by the furnace, the glory hole he called it, with his arm tight around Max-as well as a four-page insert on the history and evolving controversy around the depot land.

The Women's Rights National Historic Park is in Seneca Falls, just over an hour's drive away. It's open on Sundays, and after I washed my few dishes, I gathered up all my notes and photocopies, along with the original doc.u.ments I'd found in the cupola, and set off. It seemed unlikely that they'd still have the boxes Joan Lowry had given them, or that those boxes would shed any light on Rose and her life, but I still felt optimistic as I drove through the rolling landscape and the ca.n.a.l towns that had prospered a hundred years ago, when Rose was young. She had perhaps been here, too, which filled me with deep excitement. Whoever she had been, whatever she had done, her story was part of the whole, and might illuminate my own.

In Seneca Falls I stopped first at the Elizabeth Cady Stanton home, where she'd lived from 1847 until 1862. A tour was just starting. The ranger took us through the simple rooms with their wide-planked floors and deep windows, which had overlooked the flats, a booming industrial area, as well as the two acres of orchards and gardens Elizabeth Cady Stanton had overseen while raising seven children. Her husband traveled with the circuit court and was often gone; she had written of how she suffered from an intellectual hunger that the busyness of her days did nothing to alleviate.

I lingered on the lawn after the tour, imagining the Stanton children scattered in play and Elizabeth striding about in her trousers and knee-length skirts. I imagined her sitting in the parlor after her guests had departed, after her children had gone to bed, writing out the Declaration of Sentiments in the long twilight evenings of early July, and then standing up to proclaim this declaration to an audience of hundreds. It must have felt exhilarating; she must have left the Wesleyan Chapel on a wave of excitement, filled with a sense of achievement and purpose. Her beliefs and her actions had opened the way for Rose two generations later, and had made my life of study and travel possible, too. But I wondered if she'd known this. It had taken seventy-two years longer for women to earn the right to vote, and not one of the speakers at the first Women's Rights convention in 1848 had lived to see it.

In the main park building life-sized statues-of Elizabeth Cady Stanton herself, Lucretia Mott and her sister Martha Coffin Wright, the McClintocks and the Hunts and Frederick Dougla.s.s-gathered in the lobby as if arriving for the convention 158 years ago. The ranger at the front desk escorted me upstairs to meet the archivist. Her name was Gail and she was tall, with a low voice and dark, intelligent eyes. She listened with a thoughtful expression as I explained my story and asked about the boxes.

"Well, let me check," she said. "We deal mostly with events and artifacts connected to the 1848 convention, so if the boxes didn't contain anything like that we probably didn't keep them." She pulled a ledger from a low shelf and opened it, tracing down the lines with her index finger. "Yes, okay, here it is-Joan Lowry, did you say? I have a record of three boxes donated."

"Really? Are they still here?"

"No, I'm afraid not. We went through those boxes four months ago. We did find three items relevant to the convention, apparently, but those are being processed. The rest-let's see. Yes, here it is. The rest we sent to the Lafayette Historical Society. We often pa.s.s things on to them. Sometimes they find illuminating items that are of no use to us. You might try there."

"You can't tell me what the relevant items were?"

"Not at this moment. I'm sorry. I can check for you, if you like."

"That would be really helpful, thanks. What about these?" I asked, opening the folder and showing her the pamphlets and flyers. "Are these of any interest?"

She looked through them slowly, giving careful attention to each doc.u.ment.

"To me they are," she said. "We wouldn't keep them here-they're from the wrong era-but you should hold on to them. Maybe check with the people who have Margaret Sanger's papers-these articles about family planning were written by her, probably around 1912 or 1913. This is an early copy, and they're relatively hard to find. Later they were censored by the post office. They violated the Comstock obscenity laws, which made it illegal, even for physicians, to explain the basic facts of reproductive health. Sanger went to jail. Her sister, Ethyl Byrne, did, too, and almost died from the hunger strike she undertook in protest of those laws."

I thanked her and gave her my address and phone number in case anything turned up. Then I drove through the expansive streets with their grand houses and wide lawns to the Lafayette Historical Society. It was located in an ornate Queen Anne house with intricate trim along the roofline, well kept but in need of paint; the second step sagged as I walked to the door. I was lucky, as it turned out. Though the building was usually closed on Sundays, it was open for a genealogy cla.s.s. I stepped into a foyer that had been perfectly restored, with deep mahogany wainscoting and wallpaper with a tiny green floral print on cream. A young woman with a pierced nose and lip sat behind a vast desk, reading, and she finished her paragraph before she finally put her bookmark in the page and looked up, the little diamond below her lip catching the light.

"I think I know those boxes," she said once I'd explained what I wanted. "I was here when they dropped them off. I don't think anyone's gotten around to looking at them yet. Come on upstairs to the reading room, and I'll check."

I followed her up the staircase, wide and curved, to the second-floor reading room, which was lined with bookcases. A grandfather clock stood against one wall, ticking softly, and a wide cherry table with heavy matching chairs took up the center of the room. The windows were bare, the gla.s.s mildly warped. She disappeared up another set of stairs and came back a few minutes later with a large box. There were two more, she said. I couldn't wait, and started going through the first one while she went up to get the others. A jumble of papers, file folders, articles: I took them out one by one.

"There you go," she said, heaving the last box onto the end of the table and brushing off her hands. She gestured to the papers I'd placed on the table. "Nothing's been sorted, like I said. It's probably a lot of receipts and ledgers and cryptic notes to self. But you're welcome to look. We close at four o'clock."

I glanced at the clock; it was already past two o'clock. "I'll have a quick look," I said, and so I began.

Lydia Langhammer had been a h.o.a.rder: everything from receipts for purchases to recipes and loose clips resided in the box. I went through it all carefully without finding anything of interest.

The second box was similar, as if someone had dumped the contents of a desk and several filing drawers. Here I did find references to Rose, however, who began appearing in the ledgers as having paid for certain expenses, and to whom some of the receipts were made. These acc.u.mulated in a low pile, though after the initial excitement of seeing her name, my eagerness slowly faded. What did these bits of paper tell me, after all, that I hadn't known before? I kept digging and sorting, mindful of the changing light in the room and the ticking of the clock. Near the bottom of the box I came upon a leather binder, tied shut with a ribbon. Another ledger, I thought, or a collection of bills, but when I opened it letters fell out, several of them, all in different sorts of envelopes but written in the same hand, a script I recognized at once from the cupola notes, sharp and slanted: Rose. With trembling hands, I opened the one on top. The paper was coa.r.s.e, yellowed, the pages filled with her handwriting, the black ink faded to the color of bark. It was dated September 21, 1914.

Dear Iris, Beautiful girl. I left you this morning. You were in the garden, making a pile from the gravel by the fish pond, wearing the dark yellow dress I made for you. You are only three years old and you are so smart. You pulled the petals from an orange marigold and scattered them on the water. Feeding the fish, you said. I held you very close. Your hair, like dandelion fluff when you were small, lies flat now, so smooth and shiny. You smelled like soap and sunshine. Then Mrs. Elliot arrived and Cora called you inside for lunch. You climbed the steps one by one-they are too tall for your little legs. You turned, laughing, to wave to me. Then you disappeared beyond the door.

Mrs. Elliot called to me to hurry but I could not. I kept looking at the porch, willing you there, but you did not come.

I used yellow ribbons on your dress. I have one tied around my wrist. It flashes beneath my cuff as I write. The other pa.s.sengers don't notice, they go on with their business. They seem very ordinary and I wonder if I seem that way myself. It makes me wonder what secrets they carry in their hearts. The old woman across from me, who gazes out the window-what is she remembering? Or the gentleman beside me, adding numbers in his ledger, or the young farmer and his wife exclaiming at the sights-what are their secrets, their dreams?

I am dressed plainly-my one suit, brown, a blouse the color of golden-rod. I sit quietly with my satchel at my feet. What do they see, looking at me? They could never imagine you, turning, laughing, to wave one last time from the stairs.

You did not know I was leaving.

It is better that way. I tell myself again and again.

I promise-I promise-I will come back for you soon.

Meanwhile, I will write every day. Maybe you will never read these letters. Maybe I will be back so quickly that you will not remember I was ever gone. Still, I will write. Someday when you are older you will have these to keep and see how much I loved you, even though today you woke up from your nap, stretching in that patch of sunlight that falls across the bed in the midafternoon, to find me gone.

They will take good care of you, I pray.

Despite the scandal, Joseph loves you, because he loved your father. And Cora, though she does not like me, dotes on children since she has none of her own.

There was a page break, and I paused. Muted voices and laughter floated up from the genealogy cla.s.s. My hands were shaking a little. The story I'd imagined hadn't included Rose leaving Iris. The note I'd found in the cupola had been dated 1925, eleven years later, when Iris would have been fourteen. It seemed Rose had never come back. I thought of my mother's warning, I hope you aren't disappointed, I hope you aren't disappointed, and realized that I might be, that Rose could turn out to be less heroic and interesting than I'd imagined. The letters fanned out against the polished cherry table. I took a deep breath, turned the page, and read on. and realized that I might be, that Rose could turn out to be less heroic and interesting than I'd imagined. The letters fanned out against the polished cherry table. I took a deep breath, turned the page, and read on.

At the station, Mrs. Elliot gave me a poem. She copied it from a magazine. A poem for travelers, she said. The poet is a woman but she is called only HD. Mrs. Elliot always says I am thirsty for words and she gave me books. I read this poem again and again. "Wind rushes over the dunes, and the coa.r.s.e salt-crusted gra.s.s answers". I do not understand it really, yet the words say the sadness I feel.

Iris. Where are you at this moment? I named you for the flowers. They are the color of your father's eyes. This is the story I want you to know. Your uncle cannot tell you, he doesn't understand.

Also, he would begin with the comet, which is the wrong place to start.

The story begins earlier. An ordinary summer day. I was weeding in the vineyard. I paused to drink from the bucket. That's when I saw the line of rising dust, the bright flashes of silver through the trees.

"What's that?" I asked. My friend Ellen stood, too.

"I don't know".

"I think it's an auto-mobile!" I was excited, I had never seen one before.

"It must belong to the Wyndhams".

"It must".

"Let's go and see".

So we left our work and ran to the village.

By the time we reached the commons people were coming from their shops and homes, shading their eyes to look. Mr. Marcus, the grocer, said it was a Rolls Royce-a Silver Ghost, he called it.

The vehicle drew closer. It made no sound at all, not even when it stopped at the village green, bright as a mirror. Everyone who looked at it saw something different reflected back-a dream of speed, of a factory job, the promise of change. Your uncle leaned over the engine. I stared at its silver hood where a small silver woman with silver wings stood about to leap, to soar.

"Do you like her?" Geoffrey Wyndham was next to me. I nodded, too shy to speak. His family owns most of the village. In the church graveyard you can see tombstones with their name all the way back to 1134. One winter we skated on the pond and Geoffrey chased me until the color of the ice changed suddenly, from opaque to clear, the darkness of the water visible. He shouted and grabbed my arm, pulled me away from that dangerous edge. Now he was tall. My chin only reached his shoulder.

"Go ahead", he urged. "Touch her".

So I ran my hand over her silver form.

At supper that night all we talked of was the auto-mobile. Our father sat in the middle of the conversation like a boulder in a current. Finally he dropped his fork and stood.

"There's still work here to do, and plenty of it", he said to Joseph. "Let's go."

"Ah-for what?" Joseph's voice was rough. "Who will need wooden wheels for wagons when auto-mobiles travel twice the speed on rubber tires?"

It was as if the air left the room. Father turned without speaking and went into the shop. Joseph rose and followed him. A few minutes later the argument began. We cleared the table, not speaking, as the words rose and ebbed and rose again.

It is night now, I can hardly see to write. The young couple has gone to the dining car. The old woman took off her hat and ate a beef sandwich spread carefully on a cloth napkin she unfolded from her bag. The accountant next to me has begun to doze. For a time we pa.s.sed endless rows of houses and flats, moving so slowly that I caught glimpses of people eating dinner at their kitchen tables, or reading in a chair, or reaching to close their curtains. Then we picked up speed as the flats ended and factories began. Then it was dark again. I ate a roll, trying not to notice the scent of roast meat.

Time is different when you travel. This night is less like last night, when I lay awake in our little room, listening to your soft breathing, than it is like the night years ago when Joseph and I were traveling to this new land. On that trip I woke each time we stopped, lights and voices from the stations drifting down the darkened aisles.

Joseph was sleeping, his eyelashes dark against his cheeks, his coat folded carefully beneath his head. He looked like the carefree brother I knew before our troubles, before he changed, and I changed, and everything we knew was lost. The train moved on then, into the night, taking us closer to our new lives. I closed my eyes, matching my breathing to my brother's. When I woke the sun was golden on the new wheat, on the dark blue lakes.

You are there still, in that place. My hand aches from this writing, my heart from the steady turn of the wheels.

Love from your mother, Rose I sat back in the chair, still holding the fragile paper with its careful, slanted handwriting. Toward the end of the page the letters became wider and more wobbly, and twice the words ran off the page entirely. The pages trembled in my hand and I put them down, pressing my palms to my face and running my fingertips along the arch of my eyebrows, down my cheeks and the curve of my neck.

Everything changed with this letter. The story that had shaped my entire life and the lives of everyone I knew had changed. He would begin with the comet, which is the wrong place to start He would begin with the comet, which is the wrong place to start.

Then what had happened, I wondered, to make them flee everything they had known? What were the troubles that put them on that train, Rose with my great-grandfather, dreamy and carefree in his sleep? I flipped through the remaining envelopes in the binder. I imagined Rose bent over these pages, writing in the dimming light, her heart tightened with loss.

The little clock on the mantel struck four, delicate tones falling through the air, m.u.f.fled in the carpet. A moment later the light footsteps of the curator sounded on the stairs. Without letting myself think what I was doing, I slipped the remaining letters back into the leather binder and shoved this into my bag. Blocks away, the town clock started ringing the hour, and then she was in the doorway, the low afternoon light catching on the silver hoops that climbed her ears.

"Wow, how many earrings do you have?" I blurted out, nervous; the letters were visible inside my bag, if she thought to look.

Startled, she touched her pierced lobes, then smiled.

"Eight in the left ear, nine in the right. Last week I pierced my navel, too. I haven't quite gotten up the nerve to do my tongue."

"Doesn't it hurt?"

She smiled a little wearily, as if she heard the question often. "Not so much. The very tops of my ears, a little. How did the research go? Did you find anything?"

"A letter," I said, tapping the unfolded pages on the table. "Amid lots of other papers. It has some references that are useful. I wonder-could I take it for a few days?"

"I'm sorry." She shrugged, then crossed the room and picked the letter up. I didn't want her to touch it, and kept my hands clasped in my lap with great effort as she scanned the lines. "It hasn't been cataloged, you see. Probably I shouldn't have let you see it at all. Is it important?"

"To me it is. To my family. Probably not to history-you know, with a capital H H. It's personal, that's all. That's why I'd like to borrow it."

"Sorry. Really-I would if I could."

"Okay. I'll come again tomorrow."

"Sorry, we're not open tomorrow. Usually we are, but because of this cla.s.s, we're not. It's kind of an experiment, to see which days get the most traffic. We'll be open Wednesday and Friday, though, nine to one."

Slender filaments of panic fanned out around my heart; there was one more box I hadn't seen at all, but Wednesday was the day Keegan had arranged to see the chapel on the depot land. Friday was the soonest I could come back. But I smiled and shrugged, sensing that it would be better not to make too big a deal of this.

"Ah-that's too bad. No exceptions?"

She hesitated, glancing from the boxes and back. "I would, you know, but I'm leaving town. I'm going camping with my boyfriend." She roused a little, curious now, and read the last part of the final page out loud. " 'You are there now, in that place. My hand aches from this writing, my heart from the steady turn of the wheels.' Sounds like a love letter."

"It is, kind of. A mother to her daughter, actually."

"Are you sure it's not important? Maybe I should call the director."

"Oh, no, don't bother. Really." I stood up, making myself step away from the boxes with their tantalizing contents. "Like I said, it's nothing earth-shaking. Not important to anyone but me. I can wait, though I can't come until Friday. What time did you say?"

"Nine o'clock."

"I'll be here."

I crossed the room and started down the stairs before her, holding my bag close to me, my left hand running down the carved and polished railing. She followed me to the door with its panes of etched gla.s.s; the lock, I noticed, was electronic, well beyond my expertise. I really would have to wait.

The car was stifling hot and smelled of dust, having been sitting in the sun all afternoon; I opened the window to the lake breeze. My stomach growled-I hadn't stopped to eat all day, I realized. Still, I slipped the second letter from its envelope.

Across the street, the door of the museum opened. The curator came out, slipping on sungla.s.ses. She paused to make sure the door was locked behind her and hurried down the steps toward her adventure, car keys dangling from her left hand. She walked swiftly, pa.s.sing one Victorian home after another, slipped into a lemon-colored VW convertible, and drove away.

I imagined Elizabeth Cady Stanton walking these very same streets with her children in tow, words like an undercurrent in her mind, rising up, pressing, as she bought flowers or stopped for sugar and eggs, hurrying home and leaving her packages scattered on a table as she made some swift notes, catching the idea that was pressing itself, necessary, essential, jotting down the words I'd read earlier that day: "We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us. . . . Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another." Children, calling in the background until she sighed, put her pen down, and went to them. I imagined her standing on the street corner with Susan Anthony and the scandalous Amelia Bloomer in the daring split skirt that allowed her the ability to move unconstricted-scandalous, all of them, Elizabeth, Susan, and Amelia, three young women with their fierce intelligence and their dreams, talking together on an ordinary summer day.

I turned the letter over in my hands. Rose Jarrett stood behind that veil of time as well, traveling in her brown suit and yellow blouse-where, exactly? Why had she left her brother and gone off without her child? In the midst of what scandal had she fled? It worried me, not knowing what had happened to them both. And I wondered, also, with a growing sense of anger, why I'd spent my life not knowing Rose Jarrett had existed, when I might have learned from her life something about how to live my own, something beyond the bright fleeting streak of a comet and the parameters of life fixed in place. I had so many questions. How had she come to influence Frank Westrum's beautiful windows, those mosaics of gla.s.s filled with light, and to write these pa.s.sionate letters? The historical society was quiet behind its wrought-iron fence, holding its secrets fast.

A breeze flowed into the car, smelling of water. I thought of my little charges in j.a.pan, our walks beside the sea, the words I had taught them-wave, water, stone-and the words they had not understood: someday, little ones, your grandchildren may even drink your tears someday, little ones, your grandchildren may even drink your tears. I unfolded the second letter, written on a ledger page with faint blue stripes and columns, and began to read.

15 September 1914 Dearest Iris, What a gloomy letter I wrote last night. But I woke feeling better.

My accountant's head drifted to my shoulder as he slept. He was so embarra.s.sed. He has given me a blank page torn from his book of numbers to apologize. He lives in Poughkeepsie and he does accounts for a paper company. That sounds like a dull life, but he seems happy. He told me all about the city. He has a house there and has never married. He looked at my hand and saw no ring and began to ask more questions. Briefly, I imagined setting up housekeeping in his tidy house. Then I told him about your father, fighting in France. Missing there.

He nodded, as if I'd moved a set of numbers from one column to another. He went back to work. I ate two apples from my bag.

Mrs. Elliot can see the window of your room from her house. She promised to watch over you. She promised to give you the blanket. I wove it at night when I knew I must leave. Joseph was gruff and did not say good-bye, but he left a note in my pocket with five dollars. I could buy an egg for breakfast, but I will save it instead. Each penny brings me closer back to you. I am not to worry, Mrs. Elliot said. Her friends are kind and will meet me at the station. I am not to worry, but I do.

The tracks are close to the river, a muddy silver blue. There was a river near our village, too, it flooded almost every spring. For a few strange days and miraculous days we could catch fish in the streets and set the withy baskets in the fields for eels.

I must finish my story. I was walking along this river with a basket of eggs when Geoffrey Wyndham drove over the rise. Joseph was beside him.