The Woman in the Photo (8 page)

“Elizabeth, please eat more than a sparrow.”

Forever, Mother is after Father to eat less and me to eat more.

“I ate two eggs, five bits of potato, and half a bowl of porridge,” Henry chirps from his perch at Mother's right elbow.

“Fine boy,” Father booms, though his attention is fully focused on bacon and the next item of news in the paper.

“Henry, a gentleman never boasts about his abundance,” Mother says, sipping her own milk tea.

I yawn behind my hand. As I always do. In Pittsburgh—in spite of my recent intensification in debutante training—life is a series of minutes, gathered into hours, twisted into days,
braided into months, and coiled into years. Never have I been able to embrace the monotony. Most often I feel like a racehorse trapped in the starting gate.

Until summer. Oh, how I love summer at the lake.

At that precise moment, a warbler opens its black beak and calls to me.
Swee, swee
. Or is it the eastern bluebird? The chirping begins just outside my window, then grows fainter. Did the bird fly to the opposite shore? Was it silenced by the sight of an animal wandering through the woods?

I rise from my desk and return to the window seat. Opening my window as wide as it will go, I lean out to inhale the fresh mountain air. My lungs lusciously expand to their full capacity. A whispery breeze tickles my loose hair. I decide to compose a poem.

Water of azure, sky of teal
. . .

Surely there are hundreds of words that rhyme with “teal.” In my head, I begin listing all I can recall: zeal, conceal, real, reveal, meal, feel.

When no adequate couplet enters my head, I wander over to my full-length mirror and gaze at myself, turning this way and that, examining every inch of my reflection. My nails, I notice, are imperfectly oval. How careless of Nettie not to remark upon it. Thank goodness I caught it before Mother noticed. Returning to my dressing table, I use the sterling file Mother gave me to slowly shape each fingernail to flawlessness. I massage a touch of rose oil into each cuticle and camphor cream into my elbows. Around and around I rub until the cream disappears. Then I add a dab more for good measure. Around and around and around.

By the time Ida knocks on my bedroom door with a lunch tray, I can stand it no longer.

“Set it anywhere,” I say, brusquely, attempting to secure my hair into a top twist. It falls lopsided, the amethyst-tipped clips creating only the barest semblance of a proper bun. How does Nettie do it so expertly every day?

A shocked look flares in Ida's eyes when she sees my state of dress.

“Are you unwel—?”

“Never felt better.”

With tendrils springing onto my face and neck, I leap up and grab the stockings I'd worn that morning, rolling them onto my feet. Ida stands there, befuddled, as I hastily step into my boots and haphazardly secure the laces. Dashing past her, down the stairs to the side door, I leave her standing in my room holding a steaming tray of roasted beef and summer squash.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Present

A
s Valerie feared, Lee was instantly obsessed with her new identity. “Maybe the woman in the photo was a
nurse,
” she said in the car as Valerie drove them home from Social Services. “Have you ever known me to, like, faint at the sight of blood?”

In the sludge of rush hour, on the misnamed
free
way, they lurched forward foot by foot. Valerie stared numbly at the scratched bumper on the car in front of her. “What about that genetic Ashkenobi thing?” she asked her daughter. “You know, the reason this whole trip was important?”

“Ashken
azi.
I think Ashkenobi was a character in the original
Star Wars
.”

They both laughed. Val felt a surge of tenderness. She hadn't seen her daughter this animated in months. Not since before her father ripped off her future like a hot wax strip. Lee bent
her neck over the iPhone screen in her hand, her thumbs in motion. On the other side of the freeway's cement partition, headlights blinked on like fireflies. Inside the car, a faint glow of green haloed Lee's mass of dark curls.

“Interesting,” she said after a minute or two.

“Tell me.”

“Ashkenazi comes from the Hebrew word
ashkenaz,
meaning ‘Germany.' My peeps are German.”

A pinch stung Valerie's chest. She wanted to shout,
Hey!
I'm
your peep.
Her grip tightened around the warm vinyl steering wheel. She felt a sudden urge to snatch Lee's phone and hurl it out the window. “Hmm,” she said, instead.

“Ninety percent of American Jews are Ashkenazim,” Lee went on. “Seems we may have migrated from Palestine to Europe.”

We.
Valerie pressed her lips together.

“There's some controversy, though.” Lee expanded the word size on her iPhone. “The debate is, did Jewish men and women migrate together? Or mostly just men? Like, did the guys arrive with their Jewish wives? Or did they marry European women later and convert them?”

“Why does it matter?”

Lee looked up and grinned. “I'm not sure. I've only been Jewish for twenty minutes.”

Her mom exhaled a laugh. She said, “Why don't I treat my Jewish daughter to a Shake Shack burger for an early dinner.”

“Aren't we broke?”

“Completely. But I have an emergency twenty for moments like this. Two hungry girls out on the town.”

Normally, Lee's eyes would light up. With money so tight,
they rarely went out. Valerie had become a wizard at the microwave meal. “Steamed broccoli à la Cajun turkey breast. With crushed cornflakes for crunch.”

From behind her curtain of hair, Lee smiled an acknowledgment of her mother's effort and parried back, “Okay, but no bacon.” Grinning, she continued her Internet search. Again, Val felt a twinge in her chest, the spot directly above her heart. The nook where a mother holds love. Front and center. As she inched north on the San Diego Freeway, she pressed her fingers on her chest as if she could pluck out her heartache and crush it in her fist. She cursed her body for threatening tears. She also cursed her husband, Gil, for leaving her to handle this alone. They both knew this day would come . . . somehow. If not by letter, then via an ancestry search or a blood test or a call on a weekend evening while they were watching TV.

Um, sorry to bother you, but I've been doing some digging . . .

Of course Valerie was happy for her daughter. Of course. They had joked about Lee's biological roots a hundred times over the years.

“Maybe you're a long-lost relative of Czar Nicolas and Alexandra?”

“Great-great-grandchild of Crazy Horse!”

After the CDSS letter had been pushed through the mail slot in their old front door, their musings became more current.

“Perhaps I am Chaz Bono's secret love child from before she became a he.”

Speculation had been fun. Especially in the past months when they both needed to imagine a life different from the one
they were living. Fantasizing alternative families was a bright spot in their dismal year.

Still.

In the harsh glare of genuine DNA, Valerie felt something she hadn't expected to feel:
excluded
. Gil was gone. Scott had slipped off the grid. Now Lee was on a journey away from her. How had life become a series of losses?

“C'mon, c'mon,” Valerie muttered as she flipped on her blinker in an attempt to cross four lanes before the next exit. “Let me in,
pleeeeease
.”

On a Los Angeles freeway in rush hour—the birthplace of road rage—relinquishing your spot in the herd is considered a weakness. A limping zebra on the African savannah. Allow one commuter to squeeze in ahead of you and the whole freeway will smell your vulnerability. You'll never get home. Valerie's green-light traffic karma was lost in the lanes of bumper-to-bumper.

“Thank you!” Valerie waved to a young colt in a convertible who accidentally allowed a gap while he answered a text.

“Wow,” Lee piped up. “My people are a genetically tight group.” She read: “Every Ashkenazi Jew is a thirtieth cousin.”

Lifting her head, facing her mother, Lee beamed. “I must have family everywhere.”

Courtesy of the Johnstown Flood Museum Archives, Johnstown Area Heritage Association

SOUTH FORK FISHING AND HUNTING CLUB

Summer 1888

T
he screened door at the side of our cottage slams on my way out. In the storage space beneath the side stairs are four bicycles. Two for ladies, one for a man, and one for a boy. Grabbing mine, I set off quickly down the dusty access road behind the cottages. Hatless, corsetless, ducking branches, feeling the
filtered sun on my face, I roar with delight, as if I'm a lioness let loose from the Philadelphia Zoo. Mother would be horrified. My untethered waistline feels exquisite. Much too free to be proper. Not to mention sun on my face and unruly hair. But it doesn't matter. Not this once. No one will see me. All of Pittsburgh society is already in the clubhouse dining room by now. Lunch, no doubt, is being served. Through the trees, as I cycle past, I spot no one on the boardwalk. Still, I take no chances. The back road is deserted. I will be safely back at the cottage, in my room, before dessert is set out on the buffet. I only need a moment to satisfy my curiosity. One tiny
glimpse
. For some inexplicable reason, I must know: Does James Tottinger's face match his conceit?

The clubhouse draws near.

I hear him before I see him. His accent is unmistakable.

“Do you gents play football?”

Apparently, the boys have yet to enter the clubhouse dining room. I stow my bicycle against a tree several yards back and silently creep up to the rear of the building, hiding myself in a birch thicket. They are gathered on the grass beside the side stairs. What good fortune to be wearing my brown skirt. Though Nettie will have to work her magic on the hem. The dirt behind the clubhouse is wet and muddy.

“
Proper
football,” James says. “It's a bit like rugby. And rugby is a bit like your soccer.”

His tone of condescension is unmistakable, too. It takes all my strength not to throw a rock at him.

From my shroud of foliage, I raise my head ever so slightly to examine the lofty Mr. James Tottinger of the London Tot
tingers, relative of Countess Augusta Reuss of Ebersdorf, grandmother of Queen Victoria herself.

That's when I see him.

He is tall and trim. Hatless. His mahogany tweed breeches are tailored to perfection. Not a trace of facial hair softens his angular visage. His maple-colored hair sports the slightest wave—ripples bouncing above the upper folds of his delicate ears. Both brows are as expressive as a dancing bear, though one arches more dramatically than the other, creating a fearless expression. His narrow lips seem locked in a playful snicker. Though his complexion is pale, it only magnifies the startling blue of his eyes. Quite simply, James Tottinger is the most exquisite creature I've ever seen.

Only when my chest burns do I realize I've been holding my breath.

Along with everyone else, I am
mesmerized
. Even as I realize the strutting Mr. Tottinger is performing for the crowd's benefit, I can no more pull my gaze away from him than I can move my boots out of the damp muck beneath my feet. Julian, Edmond, Oscar, Roderick—boys I've known all my life—stand on the grassy shore in a semicircle. They, too, are smitten. Dressed in their loose-fitting breeches, they look thoughtful with their straw boater's hats tilted to the backs of their heads.

“I know rugby.” Stout Julian steps out from the crowd, his chest thrust forward. “My father is a Harvard man.”

Roderick scoffs. “Yale is the better team.”

Suddenly feminine sounds flicker through the air. My friends—and others—giggle behind their hands. Descending the side clubhouse steps like a flock of geese, they venture into
the clearing, feigning a need to stroll off the curried eggs they'd just eaten. Creeping closer to a prickly hedge at the base of the birch coppice, I burrow ever lower. A thorn nicks my cheek.

“Ach,” I gasp, slapping my hand over my mouth. Thankfully, James Tottinger is too busy enjoying the sound of his own voice to notice mine. In his throaty tone, he says to Julian, “You, my good man, are now captain of Team Blue. I shall front Team Red.”

Julian beams. Standing like Big Ben in the center of the clearing, James Tottinger divides the boys into teams while the girls pretend not to watch.

“Can anyone spot me a soccer ball?”

Captain Julian dispatches Edmond to the sports closet in the clubhouse. “Quickly,” Julian says, as if the commanding Mr. Tottinger might tire of the whole business and leave them flat-footed. In an outbreak of activity, the remaining boys scatter to toss errant bits of lake debris back into the water. They scoop up dead leaves with their bare hands. They remove their jackets and hats and tug at the pointed edges of their vests. Huddling ever deeper into the brush, I stare, unblinking, as the magnificent Mr. Tottinger unbuttons the jacket of his linen sack suit.

“Might I impose upon one of you lovely ladies to keep my jacket out of the dirt?” he says, turning to the flock.

Francine Larkin immediately steps forward with her clapper claw hands fluttering in the air.

“With pleasure, sir,” she says in that sparrow voice of hers. Within my leafy cover, I roll my eyes. Had I not been a lady in hiding, I would have groaned audibly. With Francine clutch
ing James's jacket to her breast, the arrival of the soccer ball, the peacocking of the man from England, and his accent making every word sound more exotic and important than it is, I finally come to my senses and decide I've seen enough. I've had my glimpse. Though my heart is pumping warm blood through my entire being, the absurdity of my position suddenly strikes me. Standing in shrubbery to watch grown men scamper through the grass like children? Particularly one man who so clearly believes he's the desire of everyone? Well, if my inquisitiveness had not gotten the better of me, this is not a position into which I would ever lower myself. James Tottinger may be handsome, he may be the most superb specimen of a man I've ever set eyes upon, but he's not for me. I prefer men with
real
confidence. Like Mr. Carnegie, who doesn't need pleasing features to gain respect.

Sweeping the unruly hair out of my eyes, no doubt smearing a bit of blood across my cheek in the process, I quietly gather my skirt and lift my muddy feet out of the soil, one by one. As I pull them from the muck, each boot makes a smacking sound. The noise of a mother's lips on her baby's cheeks.
Kiss. Kiss.
Still crouched low—rotating ever so slowly—I tiptoe in the direction of the tree trunk where my bicycle sits. Already I can feel the heavenly sensation of the hot bath I'll ask Nettie to draw as soon as she returns from her picnic. I do hope she hasn't thought I meant she could take the
entire
day off.

“A forest nymph!”

Midstep, I freeze.

“You there. In the bushes. Real or mythical?”

I don't need to turn around to know that James Tottinger has
spotted me. Besides his melting accent, the raucous laughter of my so-called friends is confirmation.

“Elizabeth
Haberlin
? Is that possibly
you
?”

One brow shoots up. I recognize the voice instantly. It's Francine's. Of course it is. Her chirpy tone is unmistakable. I want to leap over the hedge and fill Francine Larkin's avian mouth with mud. But, of course, a lady mustn't act on every errant thought. Instead, I take a deep breath into the expandable elastic of my bloomers and extend myself to my full height, aligning my spine just so. With the countenance of Queen Victoria herself, I slowly turn around.

“Why, hello, Francine. Hello, everyone. Lovely day.”

I then blow a clump of unruly hair off my bloodied face and turn my back on the laughing group to trudge my muddy shoes to the bicycle waiting in the woods. Only once do I glance over my shoulder to see that James Tottinger is silently mocking me and Francine Larkin is grinning at him with her bird lips.

Summer at South Fork. Let the games begin.