All for a Sister (41 page)

That night was the first night in memory for me to be in my home entirely alone. The ghosts were everywhere. My husband’s in my bed, my Mary’s in her crib with that horrible lace pillow, my Calvin’s in his room amid his soldiers, and even my prisoner’s from behind the linen closet at the end of the hall. I roamed the night, putting them all to rest, assuring myself that all would soon be set right, this house brought back to life with the cooing of lullabies and the laughter of children. It became my ritual each night, making promises to the house before drifting off to endless, peaceful sleep.

It was just before dawn, one week later, when the telephone in the hallway rang, and I fell upon it, too sleep-addled and
dream-ridden to realize, at first, who could possibly be on the other end of the line. It wasn’t until I heard the words “Healthy baby girl.”

I held the phone as I fell to my knees, so thankful to God for answering my prayers with such perfect precision. But the voice on the other end of the line still spoke.

“Profuse hemorrhaging. Eclampsia. Seizures, shock, and nothing to be done.”

I was still giving thanks even as she spoke, until her words overcame my prayers.

In the next few hours, Mrs. Gibbons arrived, and I met her with train fare and a letter to the headmaster of the academy to which I’d sent Calvin, stating that my son was to be released into the custody of Mrs. Gibbons and returned home at the week’s end. I also sent funds to allow her to find a place to board during that time, telling her to be sure to enjoy herself and relax, knowing the baby would be here soon after her return, and there’d be no rest for the weary then.

During that day, I went over every inch of Mary’s room with a dust rag and pulled the smaller cradle into my bedroom and lined it with fresh, clean linen. The grocer’s was an easy walk, and so I went to buy the ingredients needed to mix the baby’s formula, which I learned having been unable to nurse either of my children. I also picked up some bread and cheese for the sort of simple meals I would prepare in Mrs. Gibbons’s absence.

Then I waited. First for darkness. Then for ten o’clock. Then for just half past for a cab to come and drive me to the hospital, where I saw the same helpful nurse on duty as had been there when I first arrived with Mrs. Lundgren. When she asked if I cared to see the body, I declined, though I assured her that I was to be contacted for all details of the burial. She then produced
the satchel, and I urged her to donate the contents to charity but added surreptitiously that she should keep the bag for herself. A woman always needs a good bag.

Having dispatched those details, I was led into a hallway, where I looked through a window and saw rows upon rows of babies. Even if they hadn’t pinned a card with your name—DuFrane—to the overhang, I would have known you. You looked like my dream. And miracle of miracles, somebody put you in my arms, and I walked out into the night.

When I got into that cab, I felt as if I rode a white horse. It occurred to me, the divine nature of my plan. You were meant to be mine all along. To be raised by your father openly, and without shame. To be abandoned by the mother who would so willingly give you up. Who would hand over this precious, innocent babe in exchange for freedom of one who had no regard for life?

You didn’t make a sound, only looked at me with eyes that seemed to understand it all.

DANA FINDS A FAMILY

1925

“‘. . . ONLY LOOKED AT ME
with eyes that seemed to understand it all.’”

Werner finished the final line and looked up at Celeste, as did they all. Dana hadn’t been able to keep her eyes off the young girl, sharing with her the final days of their own mother. Somehow, she had to admit to herself, she had always known her mother’s fate. When faced with an alternative truth, that Mama had simply abandoned her daughter to whatever fate awaited, the confirmation of her death came as a comforting relief. For Dana, these missing pages from Marguerite DuFrane’s final missive served to answer a single, looming question. For Celeste, it was more likely a rapid-fire sequence of unwanted revelation. Her mother was not her mother. The source of her life was dead. Her father, perhaps, nowhere near the man she’d thought him to be.

“Did you know?” Celeste asked, her eyes showing no hint of the understanding Marguerite had ascribed. “Did you know that your mother was pregnant?”

Dana’s mind went back to those final days with her mother,
when she had no idea that they would be final at all. “No. I remember her being tired, but she was always tired. She worked very hard, you know. And I didn’t know anything at all about . . . your father.”

Celeste looked to Graciela, who in turn studied the pink flagstones in the firelight. “My father,” she said, carrying an indefinable fusion of admiration and contempt. “Apparently there was a lot about my father that nobody knew.”

“Celita,” Graciela cautioned, “your father was a good—”

Celeste burst from her chair. “Don’t tell me he was a good man! If anyone should know just how horrible a man he was, it’s you! You might be the only person he truly knew and truly loved.”

“He loved you,
mija.
”

“But he didn’t know me. He didn’t know who I . . . who my—” She stopped, bit her bottom lip, and dropped her hands limply to her sides. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

Dana stood and embraced the girl’s lifeless body. “You’re my sister.”

Celeste stepped away. “I’m sorry. But that doesn’t help me at all.”

She turned and ran into the house, leaving Dana to feel emptier than she had before the revelation.

“Forgive her,” Graciela said, “and go to her. You are both feeling the same loss.”

Dana turned to Werner, who had remained quiet all this time. He still sat, the sheaf of papers rolled loosely in his hands. Now he stood, dropped them on the glass-topped table, and wrapped Dana in an embrace strong enough to fill in all that she lost while his voice read Marguerite’s words.

“Go to her.” He kissed the words to her temple.

She leaned back to look at him, his face a warm glow in the torchlight. “Will you stay here?”

“As long as you want me to.”

Fortified, Dana went inside, looking first in the kitchen, then the front and back parlors, and even poked her head into the room that had been Arthur DuFrane’s office, though Celeste had been turning it into her own, feminine and white and pure. In here, she’d said, not long after Dana’s arrival, they would watch every movie containing even a single frame of Celeste DuFrane, one after the other, drinking cold bottles of Coca-Cola and eating box after box of Cracker Jack.

But the room was empty, so Dana ascended the stairs, wondering what Mama would say if she knew her daughter—her
daughters
—lived in such a place. She might well have expected such a home for the secret baby she carried, given the snare of promises she wove. But to think that her Dana, who had never known anything other than a one-room flat with a bathroom down the hall, called such a place as this
home
. Not as a servant, not as caretaker, but as a daughter of inheritance.

She paused halfway up and looked at the richness of the display below. Not crowded and dark like the old, grand houses back home. But clean and light, like Mr. Lundi had said that day. A place of new beginnings.

“What would you think, Mama?” Though she spoke softly, her words echoed, and she could hear her mother’s answer deep within her bones.

It’s too much.
Her dreams had always been so small.
A good position. A live-in, where you can work beside me.

Was that why she shared Arthur DuFrane’s bed? Hoping to be brought into the house?

More questions that would have no answers, and it was
fruitless at this point to wonder what her mother would think. “This is mine,” she said aloud, stating the fact for the first time. And it wasn’t too much. It was exactly enough. Half, shared with her sister. Half sister, to be exact, and that was enough too.

She resumed her ascent and went directly to the master bedroom—Celeste’s bedroom—expecting to see her collapsed dramatically on the bed, perhaps draped against the bedpost. But no, the room was empty.

Then she heard her name being called softly from her own room. Celeste was sitting on the window seat, luminescent in moonlight.

“There you are,” Dana said, feeling a strong sense of comfort that she’d chosen to come here for refuge.

“This used to be my room,” Celeste said, as if Dana had asked for an explanation. “You should have seen it. Everything pink and ruffles and silk and lace. That wall was a mural, and I had tea sets and dolls, and everything you could imagine.”

“I’m sure it was beautiful.”

“I made Mother get rid of all of it when I was twelve. Right after Calvin died. I didn’t want to be a little girl anymore. You know she kept Calvin’s room just the same.”

“Yes.” And by tacit agreement, the sisters kept the door closed.

“I had this horrible feeling,” Celeste went on, “that I would die too. My life would come to an end at twelve years old, and she would keep this room forever like it was when I was five, and nobody would know that I ever grew up at all.”

Dana approached, and Celeste moved over to make room on the window seat.

“I know what it’s like to have your life stop at twelve years old,” she said.

Celeste’s hand flew to her mouth, a now-familiar gesture
when she made a gaffe. “You must think me the most insensitive thing ever.”

“It’s all right.” She reached for Celeste’s hand, porcelain in the moonlight, and after a moment’s hesitation, kissed it. “I realize now that it didn’t stop at all. It went on. Not always easy, but forward.”

“Without your mother.”

Tears pricked at Dana’s eyes, and she risked only a whimpering affirmation.

“What was she like?”

“It’s been so long.” She paused, gathering her thoughts and her voice. “She was a simple woman, I suppose. Always just the two of us, and she worked so hard. I spent most of my childhood alone, waiting for her to get back from some job or another.”

“Was she pretty? Because—and this is going to make me sound like such a shallow Sherry, but while Papa was handsome enough, I never thought Mother was particularly beautiful. And I’ve often wondered how . . .”

Her voice trailed off, and Dana picked up the thread. “How you came to be such a lovely?”

“Aren’t I terrible?”

“Not at all,” Dana said. “You’re beautiful.”

“So, was she? Pretty?”

“I don’t know how to answer that.”

“You don’t remember?”

“She looks—rather, she
looked
like me. She was just my age now when she died.”

“Oh,” Celeste said, looking achingly beautiful in every way. The moonlight bathed her in innocence, and the sweetness of her heart lived in the breath of that syllable. Whatever tiny sliver of good there had been in each of Celeste’s parents—Arthur,
Marguerite, and Dana’s own mother—all of it had converged and molded itself into this girl.

“There weren’t a lot of mirrors in—” she caught herself—“where I lived, and I actually went years and years without ever seeing myself.”

Celeste shuddered in not-quite-mock horror at the concept, and they shared a swift, soft giggle.

“Then, one day, I might have been twenty-three or twenty-four, and a woman named Effie gave me a small mirror.” Dana closed her hand around its imaginary handle and gazed back into the reflection of time. “I looked into it and saw my mother looking back at me. Young, like I remembered her from when I was a child.”

“And pretty?” Celeste prompted.

“No,” Dana said, feeling like she was disappointing a child in the admission. “Tired. Pale. Worn. I guess her life had been almost as limited as mine.”

“Do you think she loved my father?”

To that, Dana found herself at a complete loss. “I knew nothing about that part of her life. I barely remember my own father. I always believed what she told me, that they’d been married, and he died in a riverboat explosion. But now—”

“Now you have no reason to believe otherwise. My father was a charming man. I guess I’ve known that my whole life. Women have always looked at him, and he encouraged them, to some extent.”

“I know Mama was lonely. She hardly ever talked about my father, and I never knew her to have a boyfriend. I always thought she was as happy to have just the two of us as I was.”

They sat in silence for a good, long, companionable minute, until Celeste reignited the conversation with a sly little smile.

“What?” Dana asked, intrigued.

“I’m just trying to imagine how different my life would have been if I hadn’t been able to come here. If our mother hadn’t given me away.” The whimsical speculation soon died, however, as they looked at each other, both seeing—Dana knew—the specter of a third sister, taken to God in infancy. She lay there, quiet and still as a lamb, at the place where their knees touched on the window seat.

“All I ever wanted,” Dana said, laying her hands on the invisible child, “was a chance to tell your mother—your
family
—how much I hurt for their loss. I would have happily spent the rest of my life in prison if it would have brought her back. I would have given my
life
in exchange for hers if I could.”