Oh William!, page 13
“That’s wonderful,” I said.
“Have you any grandchildren, Lucy?”
I said, “Not yet.”
Lois seemed to consider this. “No? Well, then you can’t know how amazing they are. There is nothing like a grandchild. Nothing in the world.”
A little bit, I didn’t care for that.
Lois said, “I have one grandchild who is autistic, and that is a challenge, I will say.”
“Oh, I’m sorry—” And I was.
“Yup. Not easy, but his parents are on top of it. I mean as much as one can be.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said again.
“Don’t be sorry. He’s very dear. And then I have seven other grandchildren, and they’re all just great. Pretty great kids, they are.” She leaned and pointed to the photo of the young man graduating. “That’s the oldest one. Graduated from Orono a year ago.”
“Oh nice,” I said, and heard my phone ping again in my bag.
“Do you know,” Lois said, “there are very few regrets I have in my life. And I think that’s remarkable, because I look at the lives of the people around me and they are filled with regrets, or they ought to be, but I really feel that I have lived—as I told you—I have lived a very good life.” There was, I saw then, a stack of women’s magazines next to her chair, closer to the wall. The room, as I said, had a cluttered look, but it was not uncomfortable, and except for the water stain on the wallpaper behind her everything seemed clean.
Lois paused and stared off into the far corner of the room. “But one of my—maybe it’s even my biggest regret—” She looked back at me then. “—is that when that woman—Catherine—came to find me I just wasn’t as nice to her as I later thought I should have been.”
“Wait,” I said. “Hold on.” I leaned forward. “Did you say when she came to find you? She came to find you?”
Lois’s face showed surprise. “Yes. I thought you would have known that.”
“No.” And then I sat back and said, more quietly, “No, we had no idea that she came to find you.”
“Oh yes. It was the summer of—” And she named the year, and I recognized immediately that it had been the summer I was in the hospital for nine weeks and had not heard from Catherine almost at all.
“Well, what she did,” Lois said, and she crossed her ankles, settling herself into the chair, “what she did was she hired a private detective. Back then there was no internet, so she hired a private detective who found me—I was easy enough to find—and she knew this address, she came to this very house and sat exactly where you’re sitting right now.”
“I can’t believe it,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I can’t believe this.”
“Oh yes, and she did it on a weekday when she knew my husband would be at work, and the kids were all working at their uncle’s farm—that’s what the kids did back then, they all worked on the farm—and I had the summer off from teaching, and the doorbell rings—that doorbell never rings—” Lois pointed behind me to the front door, and I turned and looked at it. “And I went to that door, and she was standing there, and—”
“Did you know who she was?” I asked.
“You know …” Lois looked contemplatively at me. “I sort of did. Right away. But I also thought, No, it can’t be.” Lois shook her head slightly. “Anyway, she said to me, Do you know who I am? And I said, I have no idea who you are, and she said—she said this to me, that woman—she said, I am your mother, Catherine Cole.”
Lois put her hand up and drew it slightly back. “And I wanted to say, You are not my mother, but I didn’t. I just finally said, rather coldly, to her, Why don’t you come in, Catherine Cole.” Lois looked at me and nodded. “I was cold to her, I was really quite cold to her. My parents were both dead by then, they had died recently, six months apart—which she knew, of course, through the private detective—and I thought it was wrong of her to have found me after so many years, and also the way she just waltzed in and sat down as though she and I knew each other, and then she wept a little—”
“She wept?” I said, and Lois nodded and sighed with her cheeks slightly billowing out.
“But mostly she talked. And you know what else? She was very citified. I mean the dress she showed up in—well, I figured this out later, that she was sixty-two years old, because I was forty-one—and she showed up, in the summertime, in an almost sleeveless dress. Just little caps over the shoulders.” Lois touched her shoulder with her hand. “It was navy blue with white—oh, what is it called, you know the word, what’s the word, that stuff that goes around—”
“Piping,” I said. I knew the dress that Lois spoke of. It was Catherine’s favorite everyday dress. It had white piping around the sleeves and on the seams down the sides.
“Piping.” Lois nodded. “And she wore no stockings either; the dress went to her knees, and it was just oh I don’t know— It wasn’t something you’d find anyone wearing up here. But do you know what bothered me the most about her visit? It was the fact that she only talked about herself. Oh, she asked a few questions about me—of course, she had found out most of the facts from the private detective—but she went on and on about—” Here Lois shook her head slightly. “Herself. Herself is what she talked about and how hard this had been on her.”
Lois leaned forward and then sat back. “So I know about her not sleeping, and how she would get depressed—‘get the blues’ is how she put it, I think—and I know about her husband’s death and her son; I knew that part from your book. Do you know she had the gall to talk to me about that man, her son? She raved about him, and, Lucy—I’m telling you—you would have thought he was the most brilliant scientist who ever lived. This was not what I needed to hear!”
Oh God, I thought. I said, “No, of course not.” Then I said, “Oh, it’s all she had at that point. Her son.”
“Yes,” Lois answered. “You’re right.” Her voice became quieter as she repeated “You’re right.” She glanced at her feet and then she said, looking up, “And I’ve thought about it since, and I think I might have shown her a little more compassion.” Lois’s face moved—I had to look away. Then she said, “But I will tell you—I got pretty sick and tired of hearing about her son. I really did.”
After a few moments, Lois spoke again. She said, “She had told her husband about the fact that she had had this baby—me—and had left me, she told the German man. Gerhardt. And she said it had caused trouble in their marriage.”
“So she told him?” I asked. “Did she say when she told him?”
“I’m not sure,” Lois said, “I really can’t remember, but it was somewhat early on, though not immediately. And all she said was that it had caused problems. I don’t know what she meant by that.”
Then Lois added, looking at me with her hand loosely held to the side of her face, “I’m surprised she never told you any of this.”
“Lois,” I said, “my husband didn’t know about you at all until just a few weeks ago.”
This evidently really surprised her. She took her hand off her face. “Is that true?” she said.
“It is,” I said. “His wife, right before she left him, gave him one of those subscription things to find your ancestors online and that’s how he found out about you. His mother never mentioned you at all—neither did his father. William never knew.”
Lois appeared to be taking this in. Then she said, “My word.” She shook her head. “Just a few weeks ago?”
“Yes,” I said.
Then she said, “Did you say right before his wife left him?”
“Yes,” I said.
“And you left him. According to your book.” She glanced at the book on the table near her.
“Yes,” I said.
“So he’s had two wives leave him?”
I nodded. I wished I had not mentioned the part about his other wife leaving him.
After a few moments she said, giving me a quizzical look, “Is there anything—you know—anything wrong with him?”
I said, “I think he just marries the wrong women.”
But Lois said nothing.
I felt bad for William, sitting alone in the car while I talked to Lois. I said, “Would you like to meet him?”
And she looked at me with a sad, almost closed-down expression and I realized she did not want to. She said, “I’m sorry. I don’t feel up to that. I’m not young anymore, it’s been pleasant enough speaking with you, but I don’t wish to see him. No. I do not wish to meet him.”
“Okay,” I said. I made a move as though to get going and she stood up, so I knew we were through.
She walked me to the front door and pulled it open; it opened with some difficulty, as though it was not often used. And I thought of Catherine coming through it now so many years ago, and sitting where I had sat.
I turned to Lois, and she raised her hand and just very lightly touched my arm. She said, “When I read your book—your memoir—I was so surprised to see that it had to do with the potato farmer, my father! And I kept thinking, She’ll mention me in it, she will mention the fact that the woman left behind her baby daughter. But you never did.”
“Because I didn’t know that she had left behind anyone except her first husband,” I said.
“Well, I know that now. But I didn’t know it then. And do you know what? It’s silly, but it hurt my feelings. It made me mad at Catherine all over again—and mad at you—because I wasn’t mentioned in that book.”
“Oh Lois.” I felt a strange sense of unreality, and I thought my head was not quite working right, as though I needed food. Only more than that.
“Well.” She laughed a small laugh. “If you write a book about this, I’d like to be in it.”
“Oh my God of course,” I said.
And she said, again with a little laugh, “As long as you make me look good.”
As I looked back at her, the way the light fell against her face, I saw then a fatigue on her face, and I understood that our talk had not been easy for her; it had taken a lot out of her, and I felt sorry.
I was almost not able to walk straight as I hurried down the street. And there was William sitting in the car. His head was thrown back on the top of the car seat and at first I thought he was sleeping; the window was all the way down. But he sat up the moment I stood near him. “Does she want to see me?” he said.
And I walked to my side of the car and got in and said “Let’s go,” and William started the car and we drove. The only thing I left out was that I had told Lois about his other wife leaving him, and her reaction to that.
Otherwise I splashed the whole story out to him.
William listened, interrupting several times, asking for clarification or for me to repeat something, and I did. Over and over we went like this as we drove, and William chewed on his mustache and squinted through the windshield, he no longer had his sunglasses on, and he seemed very intent as he listened. At one point he said, “I’m not sure Lois Bubar is telling the truth.” And I said, “About what?” And he said, “About my mother coming up here. Why would my mother come up here at that point in her life?”
I started to say that I recognized the dress that Lois said Catherine had been wearing, but I didn’t say anything, and William continued: “And Catherine’s brother never died in prison. I have the death certificate for him online, and it does not say he was in prison.”
I said, looking around, “Where are we going?”
“I don’t know,” William said. “Let’s go find the Trask farm, and Catherine’s house. You said you had the address.”
“I have the address for Catherine’s childhood home,” I said. “The Trask farm is on Drews Lake Road in Linneus. No street number. But right over the line from New Limerick.”
William pulled the car over and said, “Let’s figure this out,” and as he brought out his iPad I checked my phone and found two texts from Becka. The first said: Are you and Dad getting back together? The second one said: MOM, tell me what’s happening up there??? I answered the first: No angel, we’re not but we are doing very well together. And then I answered the second and said: So much to tell! I was surprised that she had asked that about her father and me getting back together. I put the phone back in my bag.
“Okay,” William said. He had found Linneus, Maine, on his iPad and he found Drews Lake Road, and then he started the car again and we drove, and after a while there it was: the house that his mother had lived in with Clyde Trask and where she had met William’s father. It was a house. That’s the first thing I can say. But I understood that in this area—in many areas—it was almost a stunning house. There was a long porch along the side of it, and it stood three stories high, with black shutters against the bright white paint of it, and there was a barn nearby that was stuck into a hill as these barns often were, and we pulled over and looked at it.
William said, “It’s not doing anything for me, Lucy.” He glanced at me. “I don’t care, is what I’m saying.” And I told him I understood that.
But we continued to look and we found the windows of what we thought was the room where the piano must have been where Catherine heard Wilhelm play, but we both of us, I think, felt a slight—revulsion would be too harsh a word—but we both of us, I think, did not somehow care for it.
And then we drove down the road, it was a road where nothing was on it, just a few trees being sprayed with sunlight right now, and then we saw a small post office; it looked very old. “Oh Lucy, look,” William said, and I understood why this moved him. It was obviously the same post office his mother had come to check every day for letters from Wilhelm.
And as we drove slowly away, we were driving really slowly, we eventually came upon the railroad tracks and William said, “Oh God, Lucy. Wait a second.” There right ahead of us was a very small station. Storage sheds were along the train tracks. As Lois said, nothing had changed. And as we pulled into the station—not a car was in sight, not another person was present—we sat there and looked at the road that Catherine would have half-run, half-walked down on her way that snowy November evening to the railway station. The station was small and clapboard. It was not as much a station as a stop.
Oh I could see young Catherine half-running, half-walking down that windswept November dark road, and getting to the train station without her boots, just her shoes and snow on the ground, and no real coat either, so that she would not be found out, and I saw her half-running and half-walking like this, in dark clothes with a scarf pulled over the top of her head, waiting at that train station, so frightened, so deeply frightened—as she had probably always been from her years of abuse at her father’s hand—and I felt I could picture her thoughts:
If Wilhelm is not there when I get to Boston I will kill myself.
“Fucking Lois Bubar,” William said.
I turned to look at him quickly. We were driving back along to the main road.
“I wish she never existed,” he said. He pulled his hand down over his mustache and stared through the windshield at the road. “She wants you to put her in a book? And she wants you to make her look good? Jesus Christ, Lucy. And she says her only regret in her whole life is not being nicer to my mother? And then I show up and she won’t even see me? What a piece of crap she is.”
And I thought of the nursery school teacher who never picked him up again.
After my freshman year of college I got a job in the Admissions Department giving tours of the campus to prospective students. Oh, I loved it! I was so happy to have a job and not have to go back to my home for the summer, and I loved the college and I was happy to show people how much I loved it. But I mention this for one reason: There was a man who worked as an admissions person, he was not the director but he was at that time to my thinking a big deal, he was perhaps ten years older than I was, and he took a liking to me, and I only remember we went a few places together, but I don’t remember where they were. He had a car, of course, though to me that was so grown-up, that he had a car, and I remember when I was first in the car and seeing that the door handles had cup holders in them, and I thought: Cup holders? It seemed really grown-up to me, and not exactly my style. But I liked him, I probably loved him. I fell in love with everyone I met. And one night when he dropped me off at the apartment I was sharing with a number of other student friends (friends!), he leaned me against his car and kissed me and I remember that he whispered, “Hey, Tiger,” in my ear, and I thought … I don’t know what I thought. But he was done with me after that night of just kissing, and a few months later he married the secretary in the office; she was a pretty woman, and I had always liked her.
I tell you this to explain how we kind of know who we are, without knowing it.
And the fellow in the Admissions Department knew I was not a person who could be with him and call him whatever a person calls someone after being called Tiger, and I could not really accept those cup holders; I was not sad to not hear from him again, it had always seemed a little strange that he would care about me in the first place. But again, my point! My point is: What is it that William knew about me and that I knew about him that caused us to get married?
The Haynesville Road was eerily quiet. We drove on this road for miles without seeing another car. There seemed, to my eye, to be a wretchedness to the road: Many trees were cut down on the sides of the road, and there were dead trees in swamps. In one place there were a few apples that were starting from trees, and William said that meant there must have been farms here at some point, and we kept driving. Everything looked a little burned by the sun.
A sign with a big Santa Claus head said CHRISTMAS TREES 300 FEET AHEAD. But we saw nothing in three hundred feet except for more of the same.
I could not stop the sense of fear I had in these Haynesville woods. There were many bogs with dead trees, and there was almost a pinkish glow to the different small dead trees, and a scrubby-looking weed that seemed almost like clover but not one I had ever seen before. We passed by a Baptist church—there was nothing else near it—and William said, “That could have been where Catherine and Clyde Trask got married, who knows.” He did not sound like he cared, and I sensed that he thought his real mother was the one he had had all his life who lived in Newton, Massachusetts, and any woman who had lived up here was of no interest to him; this is what I thought I sensed.
