Breaking Josephine (20 page)

“Excuse me,” I
said to the gray-haired woman behind the counter, “do you know if the library carries
archives of any local papers?”

“Yes, we do,” she
answered warmly. “Is there something in particular I can help you find?”

I exhaled in
relief. “Yes, I’m looking for copies of any local papers or magazines from the
late eighties. Maybe 1986-1990?” I figured if my mom waitressed here in town,
she couldn’t have been younger than sixteen when she started, and I was born in
Portland in December 1990.

“Okay,” she said,
“we’ve only ever had one paper here in Cannon Beach, The Daily Astorian, but we
don’t have access to those years in our computer system at this branch. Any back
issues we have would be on microfiche.”

“Micro-what?” I
said.

“Microfiche. Here,
come with me and I’ll show you.” The librarian walked out from around the desk
and led me past the computers into a small room equipped with a giant machine
that looked like a cross between an old computer and a school projector. She
went to a wall of small drawers, pulled out an entire drawer and set it down
next to the machine.

“Here, sit down,”
she said, pointing at the chair in front of the machine. I did as she instructed
as she pulled what looked like an oversized film negative out of the drawer,
set it in the machine and turned it on. In front of me on the screen, a copy of
the first page of The Daily Astorian lit up, dated January 1, 1986. After
showing me how the machine worked, and how I printed any pages I needed, she
left me to my research and four giant drawers of microfiche, one for each year
of the Astorian.

I took a deep
breath and dug in. I looked at page after page of the Astorian for half of
1986, finding no picture of a young woman looking anything like me or my
mother, and no mention of a waitress named Becca. My eyes glazed over and a
headache distracted me from the images displayed on the machine when I heard
the library’s closing announcement over the loud speaker. I turned off the
machine and placed the drawers back in their places. It would take days of
searching these records to go through all four years of the paper, and after
all that I might find nothing at all.

As I left the library and started walking down the sidewalk to my
apartment, I overheard someone speaking angrily nearby. I turned around and saw
Colin on his cell phone, bracing himself with his hand on the roof of his Jeep,
head down, a look of extreme frustration on his face.

“This is unacceptable.
What am I paying you for? It’s your job to find a loophole and find a way to
give me my money … . No, I don’t care what William has to say on the matter. He
has his trust fund, he has the studio, he has everything. And here I am,
begging my mother for money when the money that is rightfully mine sits in a
bank account untouched…. I’m aware of what the will says and I’m telling you I
don’t care…. It’s been over two years…. Find me a way to get around it, or I’ll
sue you and your firm and I’ll figure out a way to take care of this problem
myself. Got it?”

Colin hung up, let
out a yell and slammed his fist into the door of his Jeep. I jumped, shocked at
his violent outburst. He cursed, shaking his hand and looking at the dent in
his car door. As he turned around, he saw me staring. He scowled at me and
asked harshly, “What the hell do you want?”

I held my hands up
in font of me and shrugged. “Um, nothing, I’m sorry Colin, I didn’t mean to
eavesdrop. Are you okay? You seem really upset. Is there anything I can do?” I
said, genuinely concerned about him.

“Anything you can
do? Are you serious?” he practically yelled back at me. “Yeah, here’s something
you can do. You can disappear. You can go back to whatever rock you climbed out
from under in Portland and stay there. No one wants you here. Macy just takes
pity on you, William can’t stand you, and neither can I. Whatever you think you
have with Dex, it’s all a lie. He’ll drop you just like he’s dropped every
other girl in his life, and then what will you be? A washed up waitress with no
future and no friends. Go back to Portland, Josephine, go back and stay there.”

I stood there
looking at him, clutching my sides as if he’d just punched me in the stomach. Colin
shoved his phone in his pocket and jerked open the now-dented door of his Jeep.
He climbed inside, slammed the door shut and revved the engine, ripping out of
the parking spot and tearing down the main street of town. I stood there,
dumbfounded, not understanding any of what just happened.

Despite Colin’s
outburst, I knew Macy was my friend, so I decided to go home and call her, tell
her about what happened, and see if she could help me figure it out. If I had
inadvertently done something to upset Colin, I wanted to apologize and fix it. Although
he clearly didn’t like me, I didn’t want to cause any problems for Macy and
William. I called Macy, but she didn’t answer, so I left a message, hoping she
would call back soon with an easy explanation for Colin’s behavior. I spent the
rest of the night thinking about my recent conversations, first with Diane,
then Eileen, and then Colin, trying to make sense of all the confusion and
hidden meanings.

Unable to sleep at all that night, I called in sick to work again,
and went straight to the library Thursday morning to start going through The
Daily Astorian. I knew Sam would be mad, but I couldn’t concentrate on anything
except my past and I didn’t feel up to being nice to customers for an entire
shift when all I wanted to do was go to the library and keep digging. While
tossing and turning in bed the night before, I’d concluded that if my mother
attended a Daugherty party one summer, then her picture might have ended up in
the society pages. Instead of scouring every page of every paper, I decided to
start by looking only at the event pages for the summers, to see if I could
find her picture. By mid-day I’d looked at every photo of every event page for
the 1986, 1987, 1988, and 1989 papers, all with no luck. I turned to 1990, not
hopeful that I’d find anything.

I started with May
and found a two-page spread dedicated to the inaugural Daugherty Memorial Day
social. The paper explained that Diane Daugherty, a summer resident of Cannon
Beach for the last few years, had decided a Memorial Day weekend party would
not only be an unofficial kick-off to the summer season in Cannon Beach, but
would be a great way for summer friends to get together and say hello after
nine months apart. The article described the house, the food, the music, the
dresses, and gave a list of many of the high-profile summer residents who
attended. I saw no mention of a Becca anywhere, not that I’d expected to, since
Eileen said she waitressed at a local restaurant and I assumed she wasn’t
wealthy. Apart from Macy, I’d never even heard of a wealthy young lady stooping
to such employment.

I turned my
attention then to the photos, first seeing Macy’s mom Diane smiling with Macy’s
dad. She looked young and happy and vibrant, her blonde hair falling to her
mid-back like Macy’s does now, rather than the short bob she wore these days. I
had never noticed how much Macy looked like her mom until I saw this picture of
Diane, taken over twenty years ago, before Macy was even born. Next to the
picture of Diane sat a picture of a small boy who looked to be about 5, holding
a big piece of watermelon that had dripped down, staining his white tuxedo
shirt. An older woman stood next to him with a cloth napkin in her hand, about
to swoop in and clean up the mess. I realized the woman was Eileen, and the
little boy must have been Dex as a child. I smiled. They looked happy, Dex and
Eileen, there at the party. I definitely wanted to bring the two of them back
together, so Eileen could see the man Dex had become and be proud of all the
effort and love she had directed at him as a child.

I turned the knobs
and focused the machine on the opposite page of the paper, scrutinizing each
photo and each face for any signs of familiarity. My eyes moved down the page
to the final photograph and I froze. The photograph showed the front of the
Daugherty’s house from the inside looking out, and a woman stood in the arch of
the front doorway, her dark hair pulled halfway up, the rest falling in soft
curls around her shoulders. She wore a simple, pale dress, and a string of
pearls around her neck. Her gaze was directed past the photographer into the
room, a mix of anxiety and timid happiness on her face, one hand holding the
frame of the doorway, the other resting ever so lightly on her flat stomach. Tears
welled in my eyes as I looked at the black and white photograph, a photograph
of my mother, standing in the doorway to the Daugherty’s house, six and a half
months before I was born.

I sat there, at
the microfiche machine, staring at her face in the photograph, until the announcement
came over the loud speaker that the library closed in 10 minutes. I printed a
copy of the two-page spread in the Astorian chronicling the first Memorial Day
social, wiped my face, collected my things, and walked out the door. I stood
outside, the gray clouds separating me from the warmth of the sun, and felt
lost.

Based on Eileen’s
comments and the photograph I held in my hand, my mother most likely lived in
Cannon Beach before I was born. That meant all her stories about living in
Portland her whole life, and never seeing the ocean until our trip to Cannon
Beach before she died, were lies. Who was my mother? What was her real name? And
why did she lie to me, lie about where she came from, about where I came from? If
she lied about that, what else did she lie about and why?

I sat down on the
stone wall outside the library, feeling the world I always took for granted
breaking apart and giving way beneath me. I needed to find out more, find out
the answers to the questions bouncing around inside my head, filling me with
confusion and doubt. Who would know more and who could help me figure this out?
I doubted the librarian would be any further help, since I’d already searched
for my mother’s name and came up empty. And I doubted Eileen knew any more, it
was lucky she even remembered the waitress, if she even was my mom. I closed my
eyes and rubbed my forehead.

“Diane!” I said
out loud, springing up off the stone wall. If anyone could give me more
information about my mother it would be Macy’s mom. I stuffed the copies of the
Astorian into my bag and headed toward the beach and toward the Daugherty
residence.

I arrived as the
sun faded behind the roof of the house, beginning its descent into the ocean’s
waters at the horizon. I rang the door bell and shifted my weight back and
forth on my feet, anxious to confront Diane and find out what she knew. I stood
there, in almost the exact spot my mom stood over twenty-two years ago and
waited for the door to open. As I reached out to ring the doorbell again, it opened,
and Diane stood there, eying me critically.

“Hi Jo, Macy’s not
here. She’s out with William. I’ll let her know you stopped by.” She started to
swing the door shut when I walked into it and held it open.

“I’m not here to
see Macy, I’m here to see you Diane.” I reached into my bag and pulled out the
copy of the photograph, holding it in front of her. “How do you know my
mother?” I said, one hand on the door, one holding the paper inches from
Diane’s face.

Diane looked at
the photograph, looked at my face, and looked at the photograph again. She
sighed and letting go of the door, she turned and walked into her house. Her
floor-length patio dress billowed behind her as I followed her in and shut the
door behind me. Diane walked into her kitchen, opened the built-in wine cooler
and pulled out a bottle of white wine. She uncorked it, pulled two glasses out
of the cabinet, and nearly filled them. She pushed a glass toward me, picked
hers up, and walked to the kitchen table. We sat down across from each other
and she took a large drink, closing her eyes. Her gold bangles jangled on her
tanned arm as she brought her hand up to her head, rubbing her forehead with
her fingers and looking tired.

I waited for her,
hoping she was gathering the strength to tell me the truth. Finally she opened
her eyes and looked at me.

“As soon as I saw
you at the social, I realized you must be Becca’s daughter. I didn’t see the
resemblance until you pulled your hair off your face the way she always wore
it. Something about that hairstyle triggered my memories and as I looked at you
it was like looking back in time over twenty years.”

“Why didn’t you
say anything?” I asked her.

“I thought about
it,” she said, taking a large drink of wine. “But I asked Macy about your past,
and she said you were raised in Portland and your mother died years ago. I
thought maybe I was wrong, maybe it was all a coincidence. That’s why when I
saw you at Mable’s, I couldn’t help but ask you about your mother and your
past. When you said your parents were from Portland, I thought maybe I was
crazy and had been seeing things. I didn’t want to open up a huge can of worms
if nothing would come of it and I was wrong. I didn’t want to disrupt your life
or upset you if it wasn’t true.” Diane took another drink and looked out at the
ocean.

In thinking about
Diane’s words, and seeing it from her perspective, I could see why she would
want to be cautious, but I still felt angry and betrayed. “I should have been
the one to decide whether this information was something I wanted to pursue,
not you. You should have told me and let me make the decision.”