The Woman in the Photo (30 page)

Photo Credit: R. A. Mauer

JOHNSTOWN, PENNSYLVANIA

Present

F
rom the moment Elizabeth Parker exited the train in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, she stepped back in time. The red-brick station was a striking homage to the past. Recently restored, the old building looked freshly scrubbed. In the original waiting room, the ceiling rose up like a cathedral—all light and celestial air. Dark wood pews sat in tidy rows on the shiny
stone floor. A raised mural in the grand hallway depicted the city's history. The sweat of the workingman. The making of steel. And, yes, a massive tidal wave that washed it all away, only to be rebuilt, restored. Returned to work.

“My God.” A woman about Valerie's age, with hair the color of burned walnuts and eyelashes as thick as paintbrushes, ran headlong up to Elizabeth's face. She bookended Elizabeth's cheeks in her hands.

“I cannot believe how much you look like her.”

As she had over the phone, Vida burst into tears. She flung her arms around Elizabeth and said, “I'm your auntie. You don't have to tell me who you are. It's so obvious.”

Tongue-tied, Elizabeth stood like a telephone pole and tried to smile naturally. York stepped forward with an extended hand. “I'm the boyfriend,” he said, leaving her even more speechless.

In a flurry of sniffing and hugging, Vida sidestepped York's hand and threw her arms around him, too. Elizabeth snatched glances at Vida's face. While she resembled her more than Valerie did—same dark hair and eyes—Vida's cheeks were rounder, her nose was larger, her lips didn't peak up the way Elizabeth's did. Looking at Vida was nothing like looking in a mirror.

“Dad is at the house,” she said, “but I thought you might like a little tour around town before lunch.”

Without waiting for a response, Vida grabbed Elizabeth's backpack and chugged to the exit. At the door to the outside, she abruptly stopped and wheeled around to stare with wet eyes. “It's like my sister has come home.”

Elizabeth summoned a smile even as dread settled in her stomach like a ball of pizza dough. Now that she was here, she wanted to be
anywhere
else. Her feet itched to turn around and run her body back to the platform. The train was already gone. Still, she could hide behind a pillar until the next train pulled in. It didn't matter where it was going, as long as it would take her out of here. Away from this soggy-eyed woman who wouldn't stop touching her. This person who was a total stranger and should act like it. York would understand their escape. It would be fun. They would have a wild adventure in the Allegheny Mountains.

In another wave of emotion, Elizabeth suddenly missed her mom. Her
real
mom. Valerie. The woman who was probably shedding tears of her own in the pool house. Like a lost child at the mall, Elizabeth felt panicked guilt. As if she'd been told to wait by the information booth—“Don't move!”—and had been lured away by the smell of popcorn. Now everything was unfamiliar. She might as well be on another planet.

How could she do this to the only mother she'd ever have?

Valerie was her mom. The
best
mom. She'd gone through hell to get her: years of trying to conceive, a loan for the failed IVF treatments, do-it-yourself fertility boosters she found online. No coffee, no alcohol, piles of edamame, spinach, bananas, yogurt, and wheat germ. She bought ground Peruvian maca root at a health food store and spooned it into smoothies. She checked the stickiness of her cervical mucus and meticulously tracked her basal body temperature.

“Can't we just
do it
for once?” Gil had asked.

Valerie checked her chart. “Tomorrow,” she said. “Sperm can live inside me for three to five days. I won't shower.”

Though she admitted it to no one, Valerie suspected that her husband's drinking was part (if not all) of the problem.

Adoption—at last—was Val and Gil's way to succeed amid all their failure. Still, it took years of effort to find a baby. But they persisted. When their daughter finally arrived, she was so perfect they both wept.

“Gil, look at these little feet. And her hands, like teeny tiny pillows.”

Lee Parker was loved instantly and completely and felt it.

How could she now slap her mother in the face?

“Vida, I—”

“I know, I know,” Vida said, pulling a wadded tissue from beneath her sleeve and wiping her nose. “You're starving. We'll take a
quick
drive around town so you can see where you came from.”

Elizabeth's thought:
I'm from
California.

“I'd love a tour,” York said. “This place is a trip.”

Without a clue what else to do, Elizabeth followed them both to Vida's car and sat, shotgun, in the front seat.

J
OHNSTOWN'S TOPOGRAPHY WAS
striking. More than a valley, the town sat in a
pit
. It was impossible not to feel swallowed by the mountains. On all sides, the Alleghenies rose up like huge piles of broccoli. Orange, yellow, and red foliage was dotted throughout. Fall was on the verge.

As they crossed over the Conemaugh River—which now
flowed placidly west—Elizabeth glanced east. Where the wall of water had barreled down from the mountaintop on that horrible day in May. It was obvious that the mountain lake had once been practically overhead. As Elizabeth had read, the people of Johnstown once looked up to see sailboats crisscrossing the sky.
What curious geography,
she thought.
A lake in the heavens that caused such hell.

“Down there is the old Cambria Iron building.” Vida pointed through the windshield. “That Gothic steeple in the distance is the only downtown church to survive the big flood.”

They drove along Walnut Street in the shade of mature elms.
Fourteen,
fifteen, sixteen
. . . Elizabeth fell into the comfort of counting. Vida steered past the stately Flood Museum that was once the Cambria Free Library. Its goldenrod-brick building was built with funds donated by Pittsburgh's titan of steel, Andrew Carnegie—one of the few members of the South Fork Fishing and Hunting Club to attempt to make amends for the destruction his club had wrought. The museum's silhouette etched the sky with its pointy dormers and fluted chimneys.

Breathing with deliberate evenness, Elizabeth kept asking herself,
Am I really here?
Was
Elizabeth Haberlin
really here?
My birth mother, too?
Is this really happening?

“. . . an historic block,” Vida continued. “The old post office is on that corner, City Hall is on that corner, an apartment building from the 1900s, one of our first theaters . . .”

Elizabeth listened through the loud pulsing in her ears.

Vida steered the car along Locust Street, past a perfectly square park with a starfish-shaped pathway in the grass. All points led to the round fountain with its gurgling water arching from—
one, two, three
—Elizabeth counted
four
open mouths of watchful marble lions.

“Our Central Park,” Vida said with a sweep of her open palm. “Not quite New York City, but home.”

At the mention of the word “home” Elizabeth winced slightly. Next to her in the front seat, Vida noticed.

“This must be overwhelming,” she said.

From behind her, York rested one hand on Elizabeth's shoulder and squeezed. Elizabeth confessed, “It is a bit surreal.”

Slowing, Vida said. “I have an idea. Can you handle a small detour?”

“Um—”

York asked, “Where to?”

“Someplace that will make it more real.”

From the backseat, York said, “I'm in.”

Despite her nerves, Elizabeth laughed. York was so easygoing, so sunny, so very like Valerie, what was he doing with a dark cloud like her? She shrugged. Then nodded. She was in, too. Of course she was. After coming this far, how could she not go all the way?

After circling the square park, Vida backtracked down Main Street to Market. Then she took a left. At Lincoln, she made a right. Elizabeth stared out the window and breathed.
In. Out. Repeat.
She had never seen such an old town. Sturdy square brick structures with arched windows, slate roofs, buttresses,
peaked dormers, rectangular columns. And she thought the Beverly Hills Library—built in the 1960s—was old!

“What the . . . ?” At the end of Vine Street, York leaned forward. Elizabeth tilted closer to the windshield. She, too, was agog. Ahead was an extraordinary sight. She'd never seen anything like it. A long, thin strip of railroad track ran
vertically
up the side of a steep mountain.

“That can't possibly be a train track,” York said, astonished.

Vida grinned. “You'll see.”

She steered her car straight to it. At a small kiosk at the base of the mountain, Vida bought a ticket. Then she slowly drove into the belly of a single railcar at the base of the mountain and cut the engine. Other cars were parked inside the rail carriage, too. With a small jolt, the railroad car began to rise.
Straight up
the mountainside. Impossibly, they were all being ferried up the hill. Seemingly floating upward in midair.

“Is this even possible?” York asked, grinning.

“It's called the Inclined Plane. Our version of an express elevator.”

“Like the one at Kittanning Point near Horseshoe Curve?”

“Similar, but steeper. Wait till you see the view.”

She was right. At the top of the mountain, Vida drove out of the railcar and parked. They exited the car into a perfectly warm day. Outside, Elizabeth felt the sun on her face and the mountain breeze ripple through her loose hair.

“Check this out.” Vida waved them over.

An observation deck jutted out from a ledge in the mountain. At its railing, Elizabeth and York saw a truly stunning sight.
The whole of Johnstown stretched before them. They were so high up, the buildings looked like Monopoly pieces. “That's the library down there,” Vida said. “The Flood Museum over there,
way
over there is the old iron works, and around that little bend . . . see it? There's the stone bridge.”

“
The
stone bridge?” Elizabeth's jaw dropped.

“Yep.”

York asked, “What about it?”

“If not for that old bridge,” said Vida, “there would be no Elizabeth and no me. For us, that bridge connected two worlds.” She paused to let the notion sink in. Then she added, “Speaking of which—” With a wave of her hand, she motioned for Elizabeth and York to get back in the car.

In silence, they snaked through fields of pink and white mountain laurel, past dirt paddocks and farmhouses. In the saffron sunlight, Elizabeth felt herself relax. Her outing began to feel more like a great field trip than a journey into her genetics. Vida, while still a stranger, was nice. Now that she'd stopped pawing her.

Onward they drove. Through shade tunnels of yellow birch dotted with the flickering green tails of the towhees. Dogs barked from front porches as they drove past. Neighbors acknowledged one another with nods. At the crest of a hill, Vida slowed and flipped on her turn signal again. The tires made a crunching sound as she veered off onto a patch of gravel and parked. Again, Elizabeth's jaw dropped. “Is that—?”

“Can you believe it's still standing?” Vida grinned.

“What is that?” asked York.

“The
clubhouse,
” Elizabeth said in a near whisper. “Oh my God. I saw pictures of it online, but I didn't realize it was still here.”

Opening the passenger door, Elizabeth stepped out of the car and into the past. Almost in a trance, she walked across the gravel parking lot to the side stairs. She stood where Elizabeth Haberlin had stood—at the foot of the clubhouse stairs, where debutantes chattered with one another, gazed out over their lake, waited for servants to bring tea cakes and lemonade. Where the moneyed once met for croquet and archery. Where Elizabeth's great-great-great-grandmother turned her back on her birthright.

“In a way,” Vida said to Elizabeth, “you began right here. As did I.”

The clubhouse—long abandoned—was now a sagging three-story structure of splintered wood. Locked to visitors, it was owned by the National Park Service. Elizabeth ventured up the front steps onto the weathered porch that ran the length of the building. She turned and stood at the railing as Elizabeth Haberlin had for so many summers, so many years ago. She looked at Lake Conemaugh. Only now, impossibly, the dry lakebed was filled with houses. A whole
neighborhood
. In the gently sloping valley that was once the bottom of a lake, there were backyards and tipped-over bikes and barbecue grills. Sidewalks and roads. The muck at the bottom of the lake was now patches of front and back lawns.

Is this really happening?
Am I really here?

“The boardwalk was
here
.” Vida pointed to a residential
street in front of the clubhouse. “Over there, the stables. Back there, the outhouse.”