Chapter Fifteen
That weekend, Eliza was back on the Metro-North train, en route to Aunt Claude’s. She hadn’t stayed much longer at Scott and Maren’s after her brother’s outburst. She and Josh had walked to the subway together, and Josh had given her his colleague’s business card and promised to ask around for a lawyer who would better suit her budget.
They didn’t talk much as they walked. Eliza couldn’t help feeling that Josh was more distant than he’d been before. More closed off. Meanwhile, she kept turning Scott’s behavior over and over in her head. He’d always been the strong one. She said as much to Josh as they parted.
“Maybe he’s not as strong as he wants you to think he is,” he replied.
When she got home, she called Aunt Claude, who was appropriately indignant upon hearing what was going on.
“Ugh. I never liked that woman.”
You and me both.
“Anyway,” Claude continued. “I was going to call you tonight. I finally had time to dig around for old photos. I found a box of your mom’s stuff that must have been at Grandma and Grandpa’s house. I forgot that I took it when they moved. Looks like it’s stuff from before she went to college. Mostly school papers, but there are some personal things, too. I was going to go through it and then thought you might want to take a look first.”
So now Eliza sat on the train, trying to focus on the book she was reading. She’d picked up the latest Lisa Jewell thriller at Grand Central, hoping it would keep her engaged and not surprise her with something that would tear her heart out. She had quite enough of that in real life.
Outside the train station in Tarrytown, the air felt colder and cleaner than what she’d left behind in Manhattan. Aunt Claude was waiting outside in her Volvo sedan, and Eliza slipped into the front seat.
“Hey, love.” Claude reached over and squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry it’s been so long since I’ve seen you. I feel terrible.”
“It’s fine. I know you’re busy.” Aunt Claude was an interior designer who focused on large commercial projects and often traveled all over upstate New York. Sometimes beyond.
“I tried to check in on Scott, but I haven’t heard back.” Claude’s smooth pageboy swung like a shampoo commercial as she looked over her shoulder to back out of the parking space.
“Yeah, well.”
Her aunt glanced at her. “What’s going on with you two?”
Eliza explained what had happened over dinner, and Aunt Claude sighed. “Scott’s a peacemaker. He wants everything to go smoothly and everyone to be okay. But I think he forgets that sometimes it can’t.”
Claude expertly parallel parked in front of a tavern that had been a favorite of theirs for years. “Thought we’d get lunch before we head back to the house.”
A few minutes later they were seated in a booth at a rustic wooden table, scanning the oversize menus.
“Ooh?—do you want to split the breaded mozzarella for an appetizer?” Aunt Claude asked.
“I’m not that hungry, but if you want it, I’ll have a bite.” Eliza had a feeling that Claude would get more food into her at this meal than she’d eaten all week. They placed their orders, and within minutes, the server was back with a plateful of golden, crispy goodness.
As Eliza spooned marinara sauce onto her plate, she told her aunt about her research. “So, Ross Sawyer is a professor at NYU now.”
“Huh. Interesting. What does he teach?”
“Education?—funny coincidence, right?”
Claude swallowed the bite of fried cheese in her mouth. “Yeah. I would have thought maybe political science. He was always all about social justice. Poverty. Racism. Making the world a better place.”
Eliza thought about NOY’s mission. “Well, that can be what education is about, too. Giving kids a better start in life.”
“True.” Claude looked thoughtful.
“What?”
Her aunt put her fork down. “I’m worried about you, Liza.”
Would there ever come a time when people weren’t worried about her?
“I’m afraid you’re avoiding dealing with your dad’s?—Jack’s?—death by focusing on Ross. Why don’t you put this aside? You didn’t even know he existed until a few weeks ago. He’s not going anywhere.”
Eliza’s jaw tightened. “And how do you know that? In my experience, parents don’t exactly stick around.”
“Oh, Lize.”
She shrugged, trying to chase away Claude’s sympathetic gaze. “Although?—what are the chances of all three of them dropping dead?”
Her attempt at gallows humor failed spectacularly as Claude’s eyebrows drew closer together. “Liza. Are you okay?”
“No. No, I am not okay. But I am getting up every day and getting dressed and doing what I need to do.” Pretty much. She knew she sounded petulant, and she didn’t mean to take it out on Aunt Claude. But sometimes she just couldn’t control the anger. The anger about everything she’d lost. She forced a small smile. “Can we just change the subject?”
Claude opened her mouth and closed it again. “Sure. So. Let’s see... Nora has a new boyfriend.”
Eliza listened to her aunt go on about her kids and her latest work project?—an open-plan office that wanted to go back to walls and doors?—and managed to eat a quarter of the club sandwich she’d ordered.
A little while later, they were at Aunt Claude’s house, a Craftsman-style bungalow with a generous front porch. As Claude unlocked the door, the sounds of frantic scratching came from the other side.
“I guess Millie hasn’t calmed down,” Eliza remarked.
Claude looked over her shoulder and smiled. “Never,” she said. As soon as she began to open the door, a small black nose appeared in the crack. “Come on, Millie, inside.”
Millie, a curly-haired mini doodle, leaped up at her and then, noticing Eliza, scrambled over the tile floor to her, too. Eliza crouched down to let her lick her hands and face. “Yes, Millie, I missed you, too!”
Claude looked down at them, her hands on her hips. “Maybe that’s what you need, Liza. A dog.”
Eliza glanced up. “In Manhattan? I don’t think so. But maybe I do need to come visit Millie more.” She grabbed the squirming dog and cuddled her.
“Looks like our baby girl is happy to see you.”
“Hi, Uncle Mitch.” Eliza rose at the sound of his voice, and he enveloped her in a hug.
“How you hanging in, kiddo?” He patted her on the back before releasing her.
“You know.” She shrugged.
“You’re welcome here whenever you want,” he said, rubbing a hand across his stubbled cheek.
“Were you napping?” Aunt Claude rose on tiptoe to give him a quick kiss.
He chuckled. “Is there a better way to spend a Saturday afternoon?”
Eliza loved the ease of her aunt and uncle’s relationship, at least what she saw of it. They always seemed so relaxed and casually affectionate.
Claude put her hand on Eliza’s shoulder. “Why don’t I make us some tea?” She turned to Mitch. “You want some, Sleeping Beauty?”
“No thanks. The caffeine might keep me awake.”
The large kitchen was bright and white, and Claude filled the shiny yellow enamel teapot with water. “The box I found is in the dining room, if you want to take a look.”
With Millie at her heels, Eliza headed that way, quickly spotting the carton in the corner next to the buffet cabinet. She dragged it away from the wall and sat down on the area rug, its abstract pattern a muddle of deep blues and greens.
It felt strange to sift through things that had belonged to her mother and that she’d never seen before. She opened the box and peered inside. Mostly stacks of paper. Rifling through, she found neatly typed and carefully handwritten term papers, the staples holding them together slightly rusty with age.
“I’ve got your tea.” Claude set the mug down on the table near Eliza’s head.
Eliza looked up from a title page that read “The Genius of Madame Marie Curie.” “How come you never gave me this stuff before?”
Claude pulled out the nearest chair from under the table and sat. “I honestly forgot about it. When Grandma and Grandpa sold the house, they found this box in the attic. It was so soon after your mom died, and you... well, you know what a hard time you were having. We weren’t sure it would be a good idea to give it to you, so I put it in my attic. And as time went on, it completely slipped my mind.”
“ We weren’t sure?”
“Your dad and me.”
Eliza wasn’t surprised. Jack had often resisted talking about Laura. At the time, she thought he didn’t care as much as she did?—and when he got together with Carol, she was surer of that than ever. But maybe it was more complicated than that.
She’d gone through a period where she felt compelled to go through family photo albums over and over again, poring over images of them at Disney World, at school concerts, in front of the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center?—an annual tradition after which they’d go home and light their Hanukkah menorah. She knew what would happen whenever she opened those albums and almost welcomed the hot tears that rolled down her cheeks.
Jack came upon her observing this ritual a few months after her mom’s death. The next day, he taught Scott how to repair the hole he’d subsequently punched in the drywall in the bedroom he had shared with Laura.
Now Eliza lifted the stacks of school papers out of the box. Underneath, she found an autograph book scrawled with the childish signatures of her mom’s friends. On the first page, Laura had carefully printed FOURTH GRADE . Beneath that were drawings. Some crayon and splatter paint, but a few more sophisticated sketches. Based on the dates Laura had penciled in the corners, it looked like they were from high school art classes. Eliza held them up for Claude.
“Oh, wow! I’d forgotten what a good artist Laura was.” Her aunt reached for them and paged through the sheets. Then she handed one back to Eliza. “This is Ross.”
She took the page, still unable to process that this man she’d never met was her biological father. She studied the three-quarter profile, sketched in charcoal, recognizing the thick, unruly hair and intense gaze from the yearbook photograph. His eyes, as drawn by Laura, were even more like her own. Gently running her fingertip over the contours of his face, she wondered if her mother had ever done a sketch like this of Jack.
Further down in the box was a manila envelope, its flap clasped shut. Easing her fingernail under the clasps, she bent them upward to release the flap. Inside were photographs.
Eliza uncrossed her legs and moved up to the table to take a sip of her tea while she removed the contents of the envelope. So this was where Laura had put all the photos of her and Ross. She spread them out on the table. There was Laura in a pale yellow floor-length prom dress. It was held up by spaghetti straps, and its skirt cascaded in soft tiers that made Eliza think of a wedding cake. Next to her, Ross wore a powder blue, very seventies tuxedo. In another photo, Laura wore a bright red bikini held together by wooden rings on her hips and between her breasts. She was sitting on Ross’s lap. They looked so comfortable with each other?—it was almost hard to tell where Laura’s limbs ended and Ross’s began. Eliza tried to remember if Laura and Jack had had that easy way with each other. They must have. Right?
She paged through the photos slowly, feeling like she was looking at images of a stranger. It was clearly her mother. And yet not her mother. Did Laura look as much like a stranger in her wedding photos with Jack? Eliza didn’t know that woman, either, but had always accepted her as the person who gave birth to her.
Aunt Claude pointed to one of the photographs. “There’s me.”
Sure enough, it was. Claude with her hair parted in the middle and feathered back, wearing a pair of patchwork bell-bottoms and a snug white T-shirt. She was sitting on a bench with Laura and Ross.
“That was at Rye Playland. Your mom hated roller coasters, but I loved them. Ross took me on the Dragon Coaster three times that day.”
“When was this?”
“Right around when they graduated from high school. I can’t remember exactly.”
“Did you guys spend a lot of time together?”
“Not a lot.” She smiled. “I was the annoying little sister. But sometimes.”
Eliza replaced the photos neatly in the envelope and bent down to lift out what remained in the box. Birthday and Valentine’s cards from Ross. A small box containing a dried corsage. Its shriveled petals made her think of Miss Havisham and her decaying wedding finery. Also in the box was a tiny key. Perhaps a pendant? And all the way at the bottom of the carton, an old-fashioned diary. It had a patchwork design on the cover, and a clasp with a tiny keyhole.
“Did she write in this?” Eliza asked, showing the diary to her aunt.
Claude shrugged. “Beats me. Is it locked?”
Eliza tried to open it. “Seems like it.” And then she went back to the corsage box. Sure enough, the tiny key fit the tiny lock. Flipping it open, she recognized Laura’s handwriting, written in blue ballpoint ink. Rifling through, she saw that more pages were blank than were written on, and the dates were widely spaced apart. Laura clearly hadn’t journaled every day. Or even every week. She closed the diary again.
“Not sure how I feel about reading this,” she said.