The Woman in the Photo (2 page)

THE PITTSBURG DISPATCH

1889

The previous day . . .

Memorial Day

May 30, 1889

E
lizabeth,
please
.” Mother looks away from the train window long enough to eye me sharply. “Why do you test me?”

I frown as she grips the gloves in her lap and returns her gaze to the branches flickering past. It's Memorial Day. Yet the weather matches my mood: stormy. It rained all morning. More is on its way. Even now, in a dry patch, the gathering clouds are the shade of dried lobelia. It's destined to be the dreariest week of my life. I can barely breathe. The air in the Pullman is as dense as Connaught pudding.

“All I'm saying is that the newest styles from France don't choke the very life out of yo—”

“No daughter of mine will dress like a Parisian trollop.”

The crease between Mother's eyebrows mars the creamy skin that was once a smooth canvas over her legendary aqua-colored eyes. I've come to begrudge that scolding expression as
much as the two words that often accompany it: “Elizabeth” and “please.” As if I were a naughty child.

“It's eighteen eighty-nine,” I mutter. “Not eighteen-fifty.” Then I cross my arms over my chest, knowing Mother dislikes such a common gesture.

Tears threaten. Not only was I awakened this morning too early to be agreeable, I am now stuck on the Pennsy with my mother and six-year-old brother on our way to Lake Conemaugh. No one will be at the lake this early in the season. The clubhouse will be deserted. The sculls will be locked in the boathouse. Not a single stable hand will be there to saddle a horse. Plus, the timing couldn't be worse.

“You can plan your debut at the cottage as well as here,” Father had said, leaving me speechless. My quadrille lessons in Pittsburgh require
daily
practice to reach perfection. Would Father have me embarrass the family by stepping on a gentleman's toes? Did he think it was easy finding a gown that would be the envy of everyone? One that Mother would allow? With matching shoes that didn't pucker? There isn't a moment to waste. Especially after the unfortunate events of last summer—and my current predicament—so much is at stake. Certainly Mother has reminded Father—as she has
me
endlessly—that my entire future depends upon a flawless performance.

I sigh. It's more than any eighteen-year-old girl should have to bear.

“How much longer, 'Lizbeth?” Henry asks.

“
E
lizabeth,” Mother corrects him.

“Two more stops,” I say, curtly.

On the seat next to me, my little brother makes figure eights with the toy train he brought along for the ride. “Whoo, whoo!” Ruddy-cheeked, he gazes at me with adventure dancing in his eyes. “Mother says you might take me exploring around the lake.”

I glance at Mother and she glances at me.

“It's too muddy today,” I say.

“Tomorrow, then?”

“We'll see.” I think,
What else is there to do?

“Last summer, Albert Vanderhoff told me he saw a baby deer behind the clubhouse. But no one else saw it, so I think he made it up.”

“Albert lied to you?”

“It's not lying if it's your imagination. That's what Albert Vanderhoff says.”

In spite of my frustration, I laugh. To have such innocence. Such certainty! Twelve years separate my brother and me. Most of the time, it feels as if we were born into two different families. I am Elizabeth Haberlin, daughter of Dr. and Mrs. Stafford Haberlin, of the Pittsburgh Haberlins, of Upper St. Clair, Pennsylvania.

“You are a reflection of me,” Father often tells me. Too often. When I look into a pier glass, I prefer to see my
own
face.

Henry is merely Little Henry. He is a boy who will grow into a man who will never feel the obligations that suffocate women like a spoon busk corset. Even as Father's patients are maligned in the newspaper—Mr. Frick's tug-of-war with his
workers at the steel mill, Mr. Carnegie's battles with Mr. Frick, Mr. Mellon's public arguments over the value of his properties, and Mr. Vanderhoff's vulgar disputes with his working-class tenants—his daughter must be above reproach.

“Discretion and propriety are as important to your father's practice as a proper diagnosis,” Mother reminds me constantly. As if I could forget that Father's position as personal physician to Pittsburgh's elite puts our family so close to the center of society.

“When we get to South Fork, will it rain cats and dogs?” Henry asks. His new favorite expression.

“If it does,” Mother says, “we'll run outside and turn our umbrellas upside down to catch them.”

“So they don't get hurt when they hit the ground?”

“Exactly.”

“What if they fall into the lake? Will they drown?”

She shakes her head. “They'll swim ashore and we'll warm them up with Maggie's lima-bean soup.”

Henry grins blissfully. Feeling a surge of affection, I reach my hand across the seat to stroke my brother's silky cheek.

“Don't slouch, Elizabeth, dear heart.”

My smile disappears. My hand returns to my lap. I sit upright. Mimicking my exasperation, the train's whistle blares.

On the other side of the compartment, Mother reaches one slim hand up to tuck an errant strand of dark hair beneath the rim of her hat. Before we left Pittsburgh this morning, she chose an olive-green frock with a matching bonnet. She had her maid, Ella, style her hair in a low coiffure. Ostentation would never do when a woman was traveling alone with her
children. Even the first-class compartments got dirty once the train wheels agitated all that soil on the tracks. Grit had a way of creeping between the seams of the railcar, the edge of the closed window. Best to dress for camouflage.

Personally, I don't care for camouflage. I had my maid dress me in my favorite apricot silk with the creamy satin embellishments from elbow to cuff. The ruffled edge dusting the floor is a shock of peacock blue, matching the trim on my hat. Nettie spent half an hour taming the humidity in my black curls and frazzling my bangs just so. Impractical in such soggy weather. But, if my parents are going to make me endure days of seclusion, I might as well look stylish on the way.

In a burst of energy, I leap up. Jostled by the train, I nonetheless manage to open the window latch. A glorious breeze rushes in, cooling my face and releasing the dank odor in the airless compartment. In spite of the dirt and dampness, I lean into the fresh air and
breathe
.

Predictably, Mother moans. I know what she is thinking:
Henry was unwell last week. He mustn't get a chill.
Pretending not to register her distress, I fill my lungs to their bursting point. I stretch to my full height. Mother will worry about Henry no matter what I do. Ever since his sixth birthday—the same age my uncle was when he was so tragically taken—her anxieties have flowered like butterfly weed along the rail tracks.

“Fresh air is good for the body and soul.” I quote Father. His progressive views include the healing power of nature and tranquility. Why, the very reason we are banished to the lake cottage before the season has begun is so that Father can secretly treat Lily Vanderhoff's “moral insanity” with peace and quiet.
In his medical office behind our home in Upper St. Clair, I overheard his conversation with Mrs. Vanderhoff's husband.

“It's as if two women reside inside her,” he said. “At times, she is blank in the face and unable to rouse herself from bed. Other days, she takes over the maid's cleaning duties, scrubbing floors so furiously her fingers bleed.”

Bernard Vanderhoff—a wealthy Pittsburgh landlord—would no more consider the public humiliation of committing his wife to an asylum than he would arrive at dinner in the striped trousers of a dandy. Instead, he asked Father to treat her secretly. Naturally, Father did not have the option to refuse. If one patient left his practice, others would follow. It was their way.

“The only treatment poor Lily Vanderhoff needs,” he told Mother later, “is a peaceful week away from those indulged children and her overbearing husband.”

“Then why can't
she
go to the lake?” Mother had asked.

“At the moment, I'm afraid, a train trip is beyond her.”

So that was that. To preserve Bernard Vanderhoff's reputation, Father arranged for us to depart for our family's lake cottage without him. Several days before anyone else would dream of arriving.

“Your hair will be a mess of curls, Elizabeth.”

Thunder rumbles in the distance. The train slows as it climbs the mountain to Horseshoe Curve. I cannot bear to leave the breeze. With my head tilted back, I let my eyelids flutter shut. I breathe in the mountain air.

“One more minute,” I tell Mother. For the first time in weeks, I feel free. The fear that I may soon be disgraced by the
so-called gentleman from Great Britain slips to a far corner of my mind.

“The loop!” Henry jumps up and joins me at the open window. His little fingers curl around the edge of the open sill.

“Henry, dear. Please sit down.”

“One more minute,” he says.

I needn't turn around to feel Mother's annoyance. “He's fine,” I tell her. Then I press my palm against my brother's back as the train leans around the curve.

Standing on tiptoe, Little Henry pokes his face out the window to see the locomotive spew a blast of white steam. The railroad arc that loops around the tip of Altoona's new reservoir is his favorite part of the journey. One can feel the compartment list into the sharp circle cut into the mountain as the train curves in on itself. This high in the Allegheny Mountains, the view is spectacular, even on a day darkened by black clouds. The Pennsy snakes through swollen forests of white pine and black cherry, along foothills blanketed in yellow oxeye and lavender musk mallow. A deliciously woodsy aroma twirls around the floral scents in the air.

I feel my bleak mood lifting. Father is right. Fresh air is a tonic.

A porter taps on our compartment door.

“Twenty minutes to South Fork.”

Once more, I fill my lungs with sweet air.

“Watch fingers,” Mother says behind me. Henry obediently removes his chubby hands from the sill. Reluctantly, I shut the window and return to my seat as Henry hops over to join Mother on her side of the compartment. Nestling beneath her
arm, he gazes adoringly into her eyes. His feathery blond hair dances about his forehead.

“Two stops, right, Mama?”

“Yes, darling.” She kisses the top of her son's head.

“Will we see squirrels on the way up the mountain?”

Mother nods and grins. Then she glances across at me with a contented curve to her lips. In the tilt of her chin, she conveys the notion I know she's had many times before:
Oh, to have
two
children who wouldn't trouble her with minds of their own.

SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA

Memorial Day

Present

T
he sun boiled Lee awake. Only a few hours into Memorial Day and North Beverly Park was already mired in the heat of deep summer. Like a cranky toddler after a drawn-out nap, Lee pressed her fists against her flushed cheeks and felt disagreeable. The towel she'd duct-taped to the wall of French windows had fallen in the night. Curtains were not allowed. A fan blowing on her face made more noise than breeze. Moldy smells rose up from the couch upholstery. Wet bathing suits and chlorine-soaked hair. The top sheet was kicked into an accordion at her feet. She flipped her clammy pillow to the cool side only to discover there was no cool side. Might as well sleep on a stack of pancakes.

“Good morning, adult daughter.” Beaming, Valerie Parker emerged from the back room and kissed the top of Lee's head.
The humidity of sleep frizzed a halo of fine hairs down the length of Lee's long black curls.

“Pop-Tart?” Valerie asked. Dressed in beige Bermuda shorts and a striped tee, she seemed younger than her forty years, perpetually on the verge of bursting into a song from
Annie
.

“Mmph.” It was the only sound Lee could muster. Trapped as she was in a nether land between wake and sleep, words were as yet unavailable. Her best friend, Shelby, once made her a choker out of letter beads that read
NOT A MORNING PERSON
. Frustration gusted from Shelby's lips like seawater from a whale's blowhole whenever she waited, yet again, at their corner. Once Lee arrived, she always attempted apologies, but it was
morning
. Sentences were still a jumble in her head.

Fluffing her coupon haircut, Valerie bounded into the kitchenette.

“Iced Raspberry Zinger?”

Lee bobbed her head and sucked in a deep breath to extract the last square inch of oxygen from the stuffy room. The air was as thick as Jell-O. Could a person die from carbon-dioxide toxicity so close to a wall of windows?

One glance outside revealed a palette of saturated blue. The turquoise water of the infinity pool met the sapphire sky. From this elevation in the hills above Mulholland Drive, the view was spectacular. If you stood at the edge of the ridge, the Valley looked picturesque. It was impossible to see the brown lawns.

“The bathroom is all yours,” Val chirped. “I have time to lollygag.”

Lee's shift didn't start until nine. Time for five more minutes. She rolled over and surrendered to the weight of her eyelids,
inhaling the fusty air. Above her were the sounds of her particular morning: the creak of a cabinet door hinge, the rip of a Pop-Tart's freshness pouch, the bang of a microwave door open and shut, the
beep, beep
of its timer as her mother set it for twenty seconds.

“The day awaits, my sweet.” Valerie leaned over her daughter and gently shook her shoulder. As she had since Lee was a baby, Valerie marveled at Lee's minky lashes, so long they curled in on themselves like the barrel of a surfer's perfect wave. Valerie joggled Lee's shoulder again.

Slowly, Lee opened her eyes. The microwave pinged.

In the white sunlight of another camera-ready day, Valerie stroked her daughter's soft cheek with the backs of her squat fingers. She smoothed Lee's tumble of black hair. Though the dread she'd been feeling as this day approached sat in her stomach like yesterday's oatmeal, she shook off all cloudy thoughts and returned to the kitchenette to open the minifridge and excavate the lone ice-cube tray from the frosted metal sleeve that was their freezer. Lee heard a crack and
plop, plop
into a plastic tumbler. The woodsy aroma of cinnamon braided midair with a sugary berry scent.

“Happy birthday, dear Lee-ee.” Valerie's soprano pitch made Lee's heart clutch. Her mom's relentless cheer was her way of coping with the ocean of sadness within her. Val's natural buoyancy would never allow her to be sucked beneath the surf. They were as different as mother and daughter could be. Valerie greeted each day with determined bounce. Especially bleak mornings when she awoke to a refreshed memory of how badly her life had derailed. Lee was wired for catastrophe.
Things didn't always go wrong, but they
could.
Best to be perpetually prepared.

Over the years, Lee had tried to appropriate her mother's ruthless optimism, but it was no use. A black panther could never be a tabby cat. DNA was destiny.

With a grunt, Lee pulled herself up from the couch and into the day. She sleepwalked into the bathroom and shut the door. Eyes half closed, she avoided examining her face. She knew how she looked—irises like espresso beans, a jaw sharply angled in a determined sort of way, dark hair so dense it somersaulted down her back. She didn't even slightly resemble her champagne-haired parents or her brother with the Nordic eyelashes. They needed sunglasses when someone turned on a light. Even a stranger could tell she was adopted. Not that it was ever a secret.

Leaving the toilet unflushed to save water, Lee washed her hands and splashed cool water on her face. Twice. Shelby had nailed it. Lee Parker was not a morning person. Not even
this
morning when the world as she knew it was about to change. Again.

New nonidentifying background information has surfaced regarding the medical history of the above-referenced adoptee.

That sentence had tumbled through Lee's mind ever since the letter arrived from Social Services.

Limited genetic information . . . after eighteenth birthday.

Over and over, like a balled-up sheet in the dryer, phrases from the letter spun through her consciousness.

Background information . . . above-referenced adoptee.

Though the official envelope had been addressed to her par
ents and mailed to the house where they used to live, the letter was meant for her—the adoptee. Handwritten in the space below their zip code was Lee's previous name
.
No last name. No identifying background information. Just the original name her birth mother had given her:
Elizabeth.

Valerie knocked softly on the bathroom door.

“Mrs. Adell needs me for a luncheon up at the house tomorrow,” she said, her forehead pressed up to the jamb. “But I should be free by, say, two thirty or three. Is that too late to join you?”

Lee's shoulders drooped. A sarcastic retort popped into her head:
What's the rush to drive downtown in endless L.A. traffic to a government office that closes at four thirty?
Reaching for the knob, she curled her long fingers around it. Rotating her slim wrist, she opened the door.

“You don't have to come with me, Mom. I'm okay on my own.”

A cloud passed over Valerie's eyes. “You don't want me there?”

“It's not that.”

“I mean, if you'd rather not have your mother by your side . . .”

Lee frowned. Why did she test her?

“You know you'll always be my mom no matter what, right?”

“Right.”

“And I love you. No matter what.”

“Right.”

In her mother's expression, Lee read her mind:
I can't bear another loss.
She understood the feeling. If you didn't cling to
people, she now knew, they could slither away in the night. You could end up living in a moldy pool house with your sunny mother.

Lee reached out to encircle her mother's upper body. She felt the doughy softness of Valerie's upper arm, the padded ridge of her scapula. Curling into her, she rested her cheek on her mother's cushioned shoulder. The maternal pillow on which she'd leaned and cried and slept from the first day Valerie claimed her as her own. She inhaled the clean, uncomplicated scent of the only mother she'd ever known. Valerie Parker was the woman who applied Neosporin with a Q-tip so gently Lee barely felt it on her bloody scrapes; she jostled her tenderly when the alarm clock was beeping and young Lee was still floating atop a vast, warm ocean, buoyant, tucked into a blanket of stars. Not the slightest bit afraid of the gilled beings swimming beneath her. When she was sick, Valerie would press her forehead against her daughter's sweaty forehead to gauge her fever. She froze grapes to feed her when her throat was her sore. Every night she carefully folded back the top edge of her blanket and smoothed it over Lee's chest, whispering, “What fantastical journey will you take tonight?” She was
there
day in and day out, not just once on the day Lee was born.

“Tomorrow. Two thirty. I'll wait for you in the car,” Lee said.

Tears rose in Valerie's light green eyes. She said, “We'll have an adventure.”

Lee kissed her mother's cheek. She stretched to her full height. On her way back to the living room—such as it was—
she noticed that her mother's bed was already neatly made even though Mrs. Adell rarely checked before noon. Valerie's “bedroom” was really a dressing room in the back of the pool house; her bed was so skinny it was more like a padded cot. Their bathroom consisted of a toilet and completely impractical pedestal sink. There was nowhere to put anything. They stored their toothbrushes in a mug on top of the toilet tank, which, Lee was pretty sure, was completely unsanitary. Don't toothbrushes need to be kept at least six feet away from free-floating germs? Didn't she read that in a dental pamphlet?

The shower was
outside,
surrounded by a brown picket fence. If they were anywhere but North Beverly Park, it would be woefully backwoods. While they didn't have to cart empty moonshine jugs down to the creek, last week a baby skunk waddled out of the mountain brush while Lee was outside showering. When she screamed, it sprayed a lawn chair by the pool. How many skunk
families
lived in that hill?

It's fun to shower outside when you don't have to do it every day, even in the rain. Or worse, beneath the blaring Southern Californian sun. No lie, that shower sunburned Lee's shoulders. Plus, she felt more naked outdoors, forever worried that the mailman would pop his head over the shower's fencing with a certified letter flapping in his hand.

Seriously, Lee still couldn't believe they lived this way. Who could even imagine such a setup? Lately, it felt as if life itself was a sandbag on her shoulders. The events of the past year—and her current situation—were more than any eighteen-year-old should have be to bear.

As the clock ticked past eight fifteen, Lee walked over to the
glass wall overlooking the pool, opened the door, and stepped outside.

“Aren't you too late for a shower?” Val asked, behind her.

Feeling the prickle of sweat beneath her cotton cami, Lee briefly pretended not to hear her. Then she nodded and replied, “I need two minutes of fresh air.”

Tilting her head back, she let her eyelids fall shut. She faced the deliciously forbidden fire of the sun. Unscreened rays, she knew, could burn in less than fifteen minutes. Still, she expanded her chest and filled her lungs. For a fleeting moment, she felt free. Her heartbreaks slipped to a far corner of her mind. In twenty-four hours, Lee Parker would be reborn. When government offices reopened after the holiday, she would finally be allowed to meet the girl who had been living inside her for eighteen years: her biological self.