Strange Fits of Passion (33 page)

"Do you think my mother told the truth?" she asked.

I stopped in mid-gesture, my coat half on and half off. Caroline had turned her back to me and was looking out the window. But there was dense blackness outside the window, and the only thing to be seen was the wavy reflection of both the young woman and myself.

"What do you mean?" I asked. I was confused. "Do you mean, did your mother tell the truth in her notes?"

"Yes," she said, turning to face me. "Mightn't she have edited her own story a bit, changed a quote here and there, exaggerated or altered something in order to help herself?"

The question lay between us like an abyss. An abyss in which the story and the storyteller were endlessly repeated and diminished like images in two reflecting mirrors.

Who could ever know where a story had begun? I wanted to say. Where the truth was in a story like Mary Amesbury's?

And then I wondered if she was thinking of her father. If she wanted to see him in a better light.

"I don't know," I said to the daughter.

Outside, a bell rang. From a campus church tower, I imagined. I counted eleven tolls.

She seemed to shrug, unsatisfied with my answer. I continued getting into my coat.

"I'll be at the Holiday Inn if you have any more questions," I said. "I won't be leaving until around nine tomorrow morning. And you can always reach me at home. My address and phone number are on the check."

"I won't have any more questions," she said.

"Well, take care, then," I said.

I turned to leave.

I had my hand on the door.

"Don't forget this," she said behind me.

When I pivoted, I saw that she was holding the stack of pages.

"No," I said, shaking my head. "It's for you. I brought it for you."

I was aware that I had backed away from her. To my embarrassment, I had actually put my hands out in front of me, as if warding her off.

She took a step forward. "It doesn't belong to me," she said. "It belongs to you."

I shook my head again, but she put the neat stack of typewritten pages into my hands, a final gesture.

"Julia died," she said, "a year ago. And Everett still has the store."

I walked down the long corridor to the stairs. Behind some of the doors I heard voices and music. Outside, on the stone steps in front of the dormitory, I saw that it had begun to snow again, and so I tried, with my free hand, to pull my scarf over my head. In doing so, I dislodged the stack of papers in my arm. They cascaded in a fan down the wet steps.

Perhaps I thought then about how my father had once told me that the story was there before you ever heard about it and that the reporter's job was simply to find its shape, but when I put down my briefcase and began to gather up the already soggy pages, I saw that they had spilled in total confusion.

There was no hope, in the darkness, of remaking a neat bundle.