Authors: Anne C. Petty
It was Nik who finally broke the silence. “Have you looked through the briefcase yet?”
“No, I haven’t.”
“Why not?”
Alice watched her feet. “I just haven’t felt like it yet.”
Nik rubbed the bridge of his nose. “I would have thought that would be the first thing you would want to do. Did your uncle tell you what’s in it?”
“Sort of. He said it was mostly letters from Suzanne that he’d saved when she went to Australia and now felt should be mine. I don’t know what else. I can’t believe he’s been keeping them for so long and never said a word.”
“He must be very good at keeping secrets.”
“Mm. Better than I ever guessed.”
They walked past the cut-off road to Judy’s house and continued on down to the divided paved road that was Magnolia Parkway. At this time of year, it was a beautiful sight, with a long line of crepe myrtles running all the way to the town, about five miles westward. Clusters of pink, white, lavender, and dark red blooms bent their necks in the breeze as bees clung to their flowers.
Alice and Nik stood at the intersection, admiring the view. A car whizzed by, and Nik grabbed Dawg’s collar to keep him off the highway.
“Ready to jog back?” she asked.
“In a moment.” Nik stepped into the shallow roadside ditch to examine a small amanita poking up through the leaf litter. Alice waited, used to his mycological diversions. He was always on the lookout for something he could photograph for the field guide that was his doctoral dissertation-in-progress.
“Not worth collecting,” he said, coming back to the road. Alice fell in step beside him and soon they were running at an easy pace. Dawg galloped on ahead, aiming for home.
Alice frowned, annoyed that she was feeling a little winded. She’d let herself get out of shape over the summer, eating too much ice cream and not burning it off. Nik could run and carry on a conversation with little or no effort, but she was having trouble keeping up. Finally she slowed to a walk.
“What’s the matter?” Nik stopped and waited for her to catch up.
“Stitch in my side.” She was feeling the tiniest bit wheezy and wished she’d stuck an inhaler in her pocket before they’d left the house.
“We’ll walk the rest of the way, then. Don’t breathe in shallow gulps like that. A stitch is caused when you don’t get enough oxygen.”
Alice nodded. He was always right about shit like that.
They turned down the driveway and stepped into the shade. There was a noticeable difference in temperature between the baking road and the cooler winding track under the trees. Alice’s hair stuck uncomfortably to her face and neck.
Her thoughts returned to the briefcase. After she’d helped Hal clean out her mother’s closet, when he’d gone upstairs to his study and brought down the case. “Go through it when you have the time,” he’d said, and that was all. No explanation beyond what she’d told Nik. She hoped it might tell her something about her father, and especially why her mother had returned from that faraway place so damaged.
She hurried across the yard and up the steps to the deck, Nik right behind her.
“What’s the hurry?”
“I think it’s time,” she said over her shoulder.
Inside, she went to the small extra bedroom that served as a home office and workspace for Nik, with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves and a computer desk squeezed in beside a day bed. Margaret was sitting at the computer, completely engrossed in web surfing, and jumped when Alice came in.
“What?” she said, looking up.
Alice saw the flash of a webpage disappear as Margaret minimized the screen. Normally, she might have quizzed her about her internet surfing habits, but not just now. The briefcase contents were more important.
“I want to go through the stuff from your Grandma that Hal gave me.” She took the small brown case down from a shelf and sat on the floor, shoving books and a basket of laundry out of the way.
Nik stood in the doorway, his expression uncertain.
“You might as well come in,” she said. “No secrets. We’ll just all three see what’s here.”
Nik nodded and stepped across Alice to the day bed, where he moved notebooks and papers out of the way and sat down.
Alice turned her attention to the briefcase and undid the latch. As Hal had told her, it contained bundles of letters and postcards. They were bound with disintegrating rubber bands that broke apart when she picked up a packet. The letters on top bore Australian postmarks: Sydney, of course, and towns in Queensland such as Brisbane and Cairns. But she sucked in her breath at the sight of the small dark green pamphlet among the letters. It was a passport. Which meant a photo.
Putting the letters aside, she opened it to the first page and read: IN CASE OF DEATH OR ACCIDENT NOTIFY THE NEAREST AMERICAN DIPLOMATIC OR CONSULAR OFFICE and Harold Blacksburg, Miami, Florida. Alice swallowed. She turned the page, and there they were, Ned and Suzanne, sitting together in an obvious studio passport, shot in color. The date stamped beside their photo was November 20, 1969. Alice stared, speechless, at the man who had been a phantom all her life but now appeared in the flesh beside a young-looking Suzie Blacksburg. The date on the passport would make her twenty-four. The man beside her seemed not much older—anywhere from twenty-five to thirty-five, Alice guessed.
“Can I see?” Margaret reached down for the booklet. Alice gave it to her without a word. She was blinking, trying to clear her vision.
“Wow, he’s hot! Is that your dad?” She handed the passport over to Nik, who looked at the photo, then at Alice, then at the photo again.
“I can see the likeness,” he said, smiling. He gave it back to her.
It was true. His hair was a shade darker, but tawny like hers, and about the same length. His nose was sharper and his cheekbones higher, but the mouth was the same. His eyes were the same yellowish-bluish-hazel. Suzanne sat in front of him, leaning against his chest, and both were turned slightly to their right, looking into the camera with open, smiling faces. Suzanne’s hair was flame-red and long enough to trail down her chest and out of the picture. She wore a string of “love” beads in several loops around her neck. Ned Waterston, whose signature appeared on the opposite page, wore a black T-shirt and a silver hoop in one ear.
Alice couldn’t stop staring. Here they were, setting out on a great adventure together. What could possibly have happened to them so far away on the other side of the globe? She closed the passport and lifted out the remaining bundles. There were three, labeled in the broad strokes of Hal’s pen, from different chunks of Suzanne’s young womanhood: college, her post-graduation tour abroad, and Ned. A few unbundled Christmas cards and some folded sheets of paper lay at the bottom of the case.
Alice unwound the disintegrating rubber band, peeling off a piece that was stuck to the paper. The envelopes were in chronological order, with the most recent on the bottom. How like Hal, she thought. Nothing in his life was helter-skelter, not even his collection of letters from his sister. The fact that he had saved such a collection for so many years was vaguely unsettling to Alice; was this something siblings typically did?
“Looks like she sent him a bunch of postcards when they first landed in Sydney,” Alice said, fanning out half a dozen cards with colorful images of Sydney Harbour, the controversial opera house under construction, the Sydney Harbour Bridge, Bondi Beach, the Great Barrier Reef, and Ayers Rock, now called Uluru. She turned them over—they were all dated within a few weeks of each other, from late November to early December of 1969.
“This one says, ‘Hi, we made it here safely. Sydney is beautiful, it’s springtime! More later. Hugs to all, Suzanne.’ They’re all like that, just touristy-type messages.” She handed the cards to Margaret.
Margaret stared at the image of Ayers Rock at twilight, then turned it over. “What’s she mean by ‘Please don’t be angry at us’? What did she do?”
“Huh? Let me see.” Alice took the card back. “I don’t know. Hal never said anything about being mad at her when she and Ned went overseas.”
“Maybe they eloped,” said Nik.
“Yeah, I bet they did! Hey, this is getting good.” Margaret swiveled the computer chair around to face Alice. “What else is in there?” She poked the briefcase with her toe.
Alice put the letters down and took out the remaining papers. There were Christmas cards mailed from France and Italy, postmarked 1967. “She must have spent the holidays in Europe after college,” Alice said, reading the inscriptions inside the cards. She was shocked to see that they included greetings to Hal in both French and Italian, respectively. This was something she’d never known, that Suzanne had learned enough of two foreign languages to compose brief notes in them. A picture of Suzanne was emerging that had nothing to do with the distant yet controlling individual she had grown up with. This Suzanne was exuberant, accomplished, vibrant—worlds away from the emotionally constricted woman Alice had yearned to embrace as a child, then rejected with dislike as an adult. Such a waste of a life. What could have happened?
Alice opened the two folded pages and caught her breath. They were watercolors.
“Awesome!” Margaret reached for them.
Alice’s chest constricted, sweat dampening her neck. Hard as she might wish, there was no denying the fact that she recognized that surreal landscape—she’d stood there in her dreams. She felt lightheaded.
“I like his style,” Nik said. He was holding up one of the paintings to get better light on it. “Too bad it’s creased. You could have these framed.”
Alice wiped her face with her shirttail. “I don’t think so,” she managed. “Are they signed?”
Nik nodded and handed her the paintings. “Down in the right-hand corner. See?”
N.W, 1964 the inscription read, in a small crimped hand.
“Mom, are you crying?”
Alice wiped at her face. “He … always felt imaginary to me, like I was spontaneously conceived or something. And now, here he is and there they are, together.” Alice sniffed. “It’s just a little overwhelming.”
“I’ve never seen you cry,” said Margaret. She looked embarrassed, but Alice didn’t care. The discovery that she and her father had seen the same dreamscape was a revelation she had not expected. And then something else dawned on her—was this a landmark somewhere in Australia?
Nik sat down on the floor beside her. “You all right?”
Alice nodded. “Let’s see what else is here.” She smoothed the two watercolors out flat and put the postcards on top of them. Then she turned to the letters. There were only three, two in regular envelopes and the third a folded blue aerogramme. She opened the first one and read aloud.
“‘Dear Brother. Just want to say we’re fine. Went to see the historic convict buildings near Sydney but Ned was spooked and didn’t want to stay. He’s very sensitive to surroundings and places, says he can feel who’s lived there. I have no idea what he means, but it’s part of why I love him. I know you hate to hear that, but it’s true. If you got to know him better, I’m sure you would come to like him. I want the two men I love most in this world to become friends. When we return, which we think will be after Christmas, I hope you will think better of us both. Please hug Mama and Daddy for me. Love, Suzie.’”
“Where were they when she wrote that?” asked Nik.
Alice looked at the letterhead. “Townsville, Queensland. Pretty fancy hotel stationary.”
“Bet it was the honeymoon suite!” said Margaret.
Alice opened the second letter. “This one’s from Cairns.” Alice tried to locate Cairns on her mental map of Australia; it was somewhere on the eastern coast, up near the Daintree rainforest that had a lot of rock art sites.
Nik sat up straight. “Cairns is where the International Mycological Congress will be held next year.”
“They have mushrooms in Australia?” Margaret seemed genuinely surprised.
“Of course. It’s not all desert. They have Panaeolopsis nirimbii and Amanita muscaria, lichens, giant boletes, truffles. We ought to consider attending.”
Alice gave him a wry face. “And what am I supposed to do while you’re chasing down Outback fungi?”
“I’m sure they have a spouse program with sightseeing and other—”
“You guys aren’t going without me! And she’s not a spouse, anyway.”
Alice looked at Margaret, startled.
Nik cut his eyes to Alice and then looked away. “What I mean is, anybody who comes as a guest of a conference attendee can take advantage of being there.”
An uneasy silence settled over the room. Alice was thinking hard about things she and Nik had not talked about in the open.
“Can we table that discussion for now? But you’re right,” she said, looking at Margaret’s pinched face, “if we make any more trips overseas, we’ll all go.” She picked up the letter from Cairns. Unlike the previous one, it was several pages long. She scanned through them, seeing nothing worth reading out loud until she hit the last page.
“Listen to this, she mentions the watercolors.
‘Ned has been showing his pictures around, trying to find anybody who might recognize the location. He says he needs to find these places. I don’t know about that, but it does seem like fate because we met this Aboriginal man on the beach at Nielson Park in Sydney who told him those places were in Queensland, and then Neddy met some people at the Foundation of Aboriginal Affairs who said the same thing, so here we are in Cairns. It’s hot and humid, but no worse than Miami, and since we are both Florida natives, we are not suffering too much.’
Alice looked up. “My father was born in Florida? I never knew that.”
“It looks like your uncle is extremely good at keeping family secrets,” Nik said.
“But why would he not tell me something like that? I don’t get it.”
“Call him up and ask him. Now that your mother is gone, he’s not obligated to protect her anymore, for whatever reasons he may have been doing so.”
Alice looked back at the letter and chewed her lip. “Maybe I will.”
She scanned the rest of the letter, but there wasn’t much else of interest, just more apologetic language about Suzanne’s marriage to Ned. It was pretty clear they had eloped, or at least married against the family’s wishes. The more facts she uncovered about her father, the more questions surfaced. She looked at the passport photo again. What sort of man was he? Was he educated, did he love animals and children, could he be trusted? If Hal knew, he’d never let on. It was time to call him on that.