By the Rivers of Brooklyn (47 page)

T
HE
B
ARNES AND
N
OBLE
bookstore in Park Slope is like every Barnes and Noble everywhere: tastefully cream and dark green, two levels of books with comfy chairs which Anne has never seen unoccupied, a cafe serving Starbucks coffee, scones and cheesecake.

It's just a few blocks from the house Anne and Brian bought three years ago when their daughter Hannah was born. Before that, their home base was an apartment in Manhattan, where Brian worked and Anne came home between overseas assignments. Anne used to joke to friends that her parents were shocked that her brother Stephen and his girlfriend were living together and not married, and equally shocked that Anne and Brian were married and not living together.

The year she turned thirty-five, the turn of the millennium, the year Aunt Annie died, Anne decided it was time to stay in one place, live with her husband, make a baby. She's always wanted to live in Brooklyn, and Park Slope is now a very trendy neighbourhood. Pricey, too, but they rent out the downstairs apartments of their solid old brownstone on Carroll Street. Anne took a year off after Hannah was born and now has a job with the network in New York. No more travelling for a while.

They do travel to Newfoundland almost every summer; last year she and Brian bought a house in Elliston, as a summer place. Since the collapse of the cod fishery the little Newfoundland outports are gutted, and well-to-do Americans can buy beautiful old saltbox houses for twenty thousand cheap Canadian dollars. Anne's still not used to thinking of herself as a well-to-do American.

This is Claire's first visit to the brownstone in Brooklyn; she and Doug have been to visit Anne and Brian in Manhattan, but for this trip Claire has come by herself. Claire still finds it hard to believe her daughter has chosen to live in Brooklyn. Yesterday Anne and Claire drove through boarded-up, burned-out streets in Bedford-Stuyvesant, walls painted with lurid gangland graffiti, garbage on the streets. Claire said nothing at the time, staring out the window like she was touring the streets of Baghdad. She kept quiet last night and this morning, in front of Brian, but now, sitting in the Barnes and Noble cafe waiting for Diane and Valerie to arrive, she says, “I don't see how you can raise a child in this city, Anne.”

Anne sighs, looks at her mother over her mocha frappucino. “I don't live in Bed-Stuy or Crown Heights, Mom. I live in Park Slope.” She waves a hand at the street outside the bookstore's window: the stone Baptist church, the small trendy shops. The beautiful, well-dressed, multicoloured people all talking on cellphones. The line of SUVs, minivans, BMWs parked at the curb. The mothers walking past with children in strollers, Snuglis, slings. Then she sees a woman entering the store. “Oh good,” she says. “Here comes Aunt Valerie.”

Valerie drifts into the store like a feather blown on the breeze. Bangles at her wrist jingle as she holds out both arms towards Claire and Anne in a theatrical gesture. “Darlings!” she says.

She is barely settled, catching them up on the story of her reading today in Manhattan, when Aunt Diane finds them. “Well hel-LO!” she bellows, and there are hugs all around. Diane gets coffee for herself and Valerie.

Sitting around the table as they talk, Anne studies the three older women. Her mother, slim and elegant with the high proud tilt of her head on her long neck. Valerie, more comfortable in her own skin than anyone Anne has ever seen, long white hair flowing down her back. She looks like a Victorian virgin gone to seed. And Diane, the only one who still dyes her hair, looking glossy and lacquered, her bright red lipstick standing out oddly on her creased face, her laugh as loud and unrestrained as ever.

Seventy, Anne thinks, sounded so old until just a few years ago, when her parents reached that milestone. She herself is dealing with Nearly Forty, and is happy with her choices: a child, a home, a career change. But she still feels half-hatched, feeling fourteen some days, twenty-two others. Once in awhile, after a hard day at work and a sleepless night with Hannah, she feels fifty-six. She still doesn't feel she's arrived. What can happen in the next thirty years to give her the confidence she sees in her mother and her mother's cousins, these women barrelling so brazenly into old age?

“It must be a long time since the three of you have all been together like this, is it?” Anne says.

The other three women look at each other, then at her, then back at each other and burst out laughing.

“You know what, honey?” Diane says. “We have
never
all been together. Not once in our lives, till tonight.”

“You're kidding me. How is that possible?”

“Well,” Diane says, “we never all lived in the same place at the same time. We've kept in touch, visited each other on trips, but honestly, this is the first time all three of us have been together.” She sips her coffee and smiles. “The Evans girls, together at last.”

“I did not think about that at all,” Valerie said. “It really is an historic moment.”

Valerie's reading is downstairs in a corner of the bookstore cleared for the occasion, tucked between self-help and sexuality. As they follow her downstairs, Valerie gushes to the nervous young store employee about how wonderful it all is, how special it is to come to Brooklyn, where she was born but has never lived as an adult. Anne suggested the reading here and made the arrangements. Valerie's publisher, in planning to promote the book in New York, had only thought of her reading in Manhattan, despite the fact that a significant chunk of the book takes place on Flatbush Avenue.

“Yes, it's quite lovely here,” Valerie tells the bookstore girl in her mid-Atlantic voice. “I feel quite at home, even if it has been nearly seventy years since I left here.” A polite murmur from Bookstore Girl. “Oh, don't be surprised, my dear. I have no problem admitting I'm over seventy. I don't know why women feel so embarrassed about their ages. I
revel
in old lady-hood. Now that I'm in my seventies, I've told myself, Valerie dear, it's time to cease being conventional, kick over the traces, let yourself be flamboyant.” She gestures broadly, her fingertips knocking over a copy of
The Bad Girl's Guide to Good Sex
. “I'm planning to be a truly
eccentric
old lady.”

Claire leans close to Anne's ear. “The mind boggles,” she whispers. Anne chokes back her giggle.

After being a late bloomer, publishing her first book at fifty-five and then being published for fifteen years by small presses with minuscule print runs, Valerie surprised everyone three years ago with a book that made the Canadian bestseller list and was nominated for the Giller Prize. Her latest book, just released, was another surprise in that it was just as good. The new buzz on Valerie is that she's going to be the oldest woman ever to win the Governor General's award.

Only fifteen people show up for Valerie's reading: a big success in Canada does not necessarily mean you've been heard of in Brooklyn. But the small group settles under the spell of her voice, her words, as she opens the book and begins to read.

Despite all the mockery of Aunt Val that she and her mother have shared over the years, Anne has always been drawn by Valerie's writing. Now she sits in the straight-back chair and the green and cream room full of books falls away as Valerie reads, leaving Anne alone on a Brooklyn street eighty years ago.

“
They came like other immigrants
,” Valerie finishes, “
but they were not like other
immigrants: they spoke English; they were not believed to carry disease. They crossed
not the entire ocean but one corner of it, and because of that, they believed they were
going to a place much like home. And they were just like other immigrants, because they
barred their doors and shut out the world that was so different, and made for themselves
a world like home. They ate with and slept with and married one another, and in the
evening they took the subway to the Loew's Kings to laugh and cry at the lives of people
they believed were quite unlike themselves. But before they went in they paused outside
to hang their harps on the willows, for they were immigrants, could not sing their own
songs in this strange land.
”

Valerie's voice ends; the strangeness drops away; the room comes into focus again. The small audience applauds as she finishes. Valerie doesn't care about the size of the crowd. “It's just such a pleasure to be here,” she gushes during the signing afterwards. She sells three books and signs four: one hard-core Valerie Evans fan shows up with a well-thumbed copy of her last book and gets it autographed.

A young African-American man, well-dressed, wearing small wire-rimmed glasses, waits among the small group of fans. When he reaches Valerie he says, “I enjoyed your reading.” He has a new copy of the book for her to sign. “I hadn't read your work before today, but I'm looking forward to getting home and reading this.”

“Thank you, thank you so much,” Valerie says. “And your name is?” Her pen hand hovers over the title page.

“Bennett. Gareth Bennett,” the young man says. As Valerie signs, he says, “Actually, it's an interesting story, how I came to be here tonight. I teach English at Brooklyn College. A lot of ads for readings come across my desk. I was about to pin yours on the bulletin board and forget about it when I noticed you were originally from Newfoundland and the book is partly set there.”

“Oh, have you been to Newfoundland?”

Gareth Bennett shakes his head. “No, never been farther north than Boston,” he confesses. “But it was the Newfoundland connection, combined with the fact that your name is Evans. You see, I came across that name recently. Do you know, would you by any chance be related to, a Claire Evans from St. John's, Newfoundland?”

Claire's head lifts like she's scented something on the breeze, and she moves forward with her hand outstretched. “How interesting…I'm Claire Evans. Well, Claire Parsons now. Evans was my maiden name. I'm from St. John's.”

Gareth shakes her hand. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Parsons. Can you think of any reason why a suitcase with your name on it would be in the back of my mother's bedroom closet?”

“Nothing comes to mind,” Claire says carefully, “but who is your mother?”

“Her name is Sheilah Bennett. But she thinks the suitcase belonged to my father. We can't be sure, because my father passed away two years ago. I was helping my mother clean out her house, to move into an apartment, you know? And among all these odds and ends we found this.” He paused. “I have it with me. I brought it, just on the off chance Newfoundland might really be that small a place.”

He goes back to where he was sitting and pulls from beneath his chair a very small, battered cardboard suitcase, perhaps twice the size of a shoebox. On the outside is written:
Claire Evans, St. John's, Newfoundland
. Claire stares at her name but makes no move to take the suitcase.

“I…I suppose it might be mine,” she says. “My family…some of my family lived in Brooklyn. A long time ago. I don't recognize the handwriting,” she adds, looking up again at Gareth Bennett.

“It's my father's handwriting. My father was a minister, Mrs. Parsons. He was a very generous man, always doing favours for people. My mother and I wondered if this was something given to him to hold onto, perhaps for someone who was going to pick it up and bring it to you, but never came. It's hard to tell now, so many years later. There were a number of things in the closet just as mysterious as this. It just so happens that the names Evans and Newfoundland crossed my desk only a few weeks after finding this, so they caught my attention.”

“Well, this is really one of those stories, isn't it?” Diane says, having muscled her way to where the action is. “You know, like you hear about love letters that go astray in the mail and finally get delivered fifty years later?”

“Serendipity,” says Valerie, listening with rapt attention. “There are forces at work, forces at work.”

When the four women leave the bookstore to walk to Anne's place, Claire carries the unopened suitcase. It's a warm May night, one of those lush spring evenings that still seem like a gift to Anne. A Newfoundland upbringing is hard to erase even after twenty years, and she's still amazed by spring as a distinct season. The streetlamps of Park Slope cast a gentle glow on the tree-lined streets. People are out walking their dogs and children, or sitting on their stoops. At Anne's house, the babysitter is watching TV; Hannah is asleep and Brian is on call at the hospital tonight. Anne pays the babysitter and puts the kettle on. Her mother and the two cousins settle themselves in the living room.

“It must be from your mother. It must,” Diane insists. Claire sits on the couch, looking down at the suitcase on her lap.

“How did a black preacher get hold of a box belonging to my mother?” Claire wonders.

On Claire's previous visits to New York she and Anne have done some family-history research, but have found nothing conclusive. They found numerous death certificates for women named Rose Evans, most of whom had to be disqualified because the birthdate or birthplace was wrong. Only one was vague enough to possibly qualify: this Rose died in 1977, but neither birthplace nor birthdate was listed. Her occupation was “Minister,” which seemed unlikely, to say the least.

They found another death certificate on one of their searches, a couple of years ago, for an Antony Martelli. The address was the same one Claire remembers from her visit to the fruit store. He died in 1981. But again, there's nothing to prove Tony Martelli was even her father. Still, Claire has kept copies of both death certificates, carrying them around in her purse for the last few years: they seem as close as she's likely to get to having parents.