Daughters (6 page)
Authors: Florence Osmund
“Sounds like quite the pioneer.”
“She was the first interior designer to incorporate matching her designs with the personalities of her customers. That’s something we designers take for granted today, but we owe it to her.”
“It’s nice to have someone in your life who inspires you to do what you really want to do.” Claire looked away for a moment, as if in a distant thought. “I don’t think you’ve said just how you ended up in Atchison. Why Kansas of all places?”
“Five days after I left Richard, I went to Union Station in Chicago trying to figure out where to go, thinking it should be as far away as possible. I was leaning toward Denver when I saw this man lurking around the station. I was pretty sure he was one of Richard’s cohorts, and I panicked. I looked at the train schedule posted on the wall and asked the agent for a one-way ticket to Kansas City. It was the town at the top of the list, the next train leaving the station.”
“So what you’re saying is that had Denver been the next train leaving, you would have settled there? Or Philadelphia, or anywhere else?”
“Probably.”
“Funny how fate works, isn’t it?”
Marie wished more than anything she could read her. “Yes, it is.”
Family members started arriving late morning, each with their contribution to the holiday meal. Claire cooked an eighteen-pound turkey, a ham, apple-walnut stuffing, mashed potatoes, corn, beans, candied crabapples, and cornbread. For dessert, apple pie, chocolate cake, and the cookies Tré’s daughters had baked.
Jonathan asked to say the blessing before the meal. “Please join hands,” he began. “Our Father in heaven, we give thanks for the pleasure of our gathering together for this occasion. We give thanks for life, the freedom to enjoy it, and all other blessings. As we partake of this food, we pray for health and strength to carry on and try to live as you would have us live. This we ask, heavenly Father, in the name of Christ.
“On this particular Thanksgiving, we thank you for giving Marie the wisdom and courage to find me, as I didn’t have the wisdom and courage to bring her home on my own. We thank you for the mixture of our cultures, blending us into one people under God.
“Please guide us to help those who are less fortunate. We lift up in prayer the victims of poverty and racism, and all others who suffer.
“And finally, we pray that you will bless all those who gather here, and keep us safe. In Jesus’ name, amen.”
Once the effect of Jonathan’s heartfelt prayer dissipated, energetic dinner conversation commenced. In between bites, Marie sat back, taking it all in.
After dinner, the men migrated to the living room for what started out as sports talk but quickly turned into naps. The women spent the next two hours washing dishes and wrapping up leftovers.
Too young to fully understand, Tré’s daughters apparently hadn’t been told the whole story about Marie, and they were curious, especially after Jonathan’s prayer. Denise, the older of the two, wasn’t shy about asking questions. Her arms were folded across her chest when she asked the first one. “So, Marie, how can you be our aunt?” Yolanda opened her mouth to say something to her daughter, but then let her continue.
“Because your grandfather is my father,” Marie explained.
Denise crinkled her brow. “But you’re white.”
“Denise!” Yolanda scolded.
“It’s okay, Yolanda. I don’t mind,” Marie said. “Negroes come in all shades, Denise. I’m just very light-skinned.” She couldn’t believe those words had come out of her mouth. Except for Karen and now the Brookses, she hadn’t had a conversation with anyone about her ethnicity or her skin color.
Denise’s hands were on her hips. “So we’re to call you Aunt Marie?”
“If you want.”
“How come you’ve never been here before?”
“Well, I’ve been separated from your family for a long time…and now we’ve found each other.”
She shifted her weight. “Is your husband white?”
“Denise!”
“It’s okay,” Marie said to Yolanda. “I’m married, but I’m not with my husband anymore.”
“Why not?” With that, Yolanda took her daughter’s arm and guided her out of the kitchen.
Marie’s gaze met Claire’s, and both women laughed. Claire said, “She’ll find out someday. I would have let her continue.” She threw up her hands in surrender. “But she’s not my child, so I stay out of it.” Claire appeared to be letting her guard down a bit, allowing what Marie suspected was her true personality to emerge. It felt good.
The last thing planned for the day was to pick names out of a hat for Christmas presents. Claire explained once the boys were grown and out of the house, they had established the one-gift rule. Marie smiled at the sight of Jonathan’s name on her slip of paper.
After everyone had gone, Marie, Claire, and Jonathan sat in the living room relaxing over a glass of wine. “Well, what do you think?” he asked Marie.
“About?”
“About today. How does it feel to be part of this family?” He laughed and looked nervously at Claire before asking Marie, “Have we scared you enough yet?”
Marie smiled while she thought about how to respond. “Quite the opposite. I have dreamt my whole life for a holiday get-together like this…with a family. A family I never had until now. You can’t know how good it makes me feel.”
“Marie, dear,” Claire chimed in, her voice slightly stilted. “I’m not sure just how to put this, but I watched you interact with everyone here today, and I saw someone who felt very relaxed…even when little Denise was asking you all those indelicate questions. I’m not sure most people who were raised in a white family would feel that comfortable around colored people.”
“Well, I feel totally comfortable around you.” She wondered how Claire would interpret what she had just said.
“And why do you think that is?”
Marie shook her head. “I don’t know. Skin color just doesn’t matter to me, and as far as I can see, that’s the only difference between us.”
There I go again. Wrong thing to say.
Jonathan looked at Marie, then his wife. “On that note, let’s go to bed,” he said.
Marie jumped at the chance when Jonathan asked her if she wanted to accompany him to the public library the next day to research back issues of newspapers for Truman’s political platforms, Seeing the outside of the library brought back memories of when she and Karen had combed through phonebooks looking for Marie’s father. Jonathan touched her arm. “Before we go in, Marie, can you tell me just how you found me?”
They sat in Jonathan’s car while she told the story. “After Mrs. Hollingsworth called me…that name, I went to the public library to look at pictures of Negroes. I know that sounds dumb, but I didn’t know very much back then. Anyway, I found this book,
What Really Went on in the Big House
. Are you familiar with it?”
Jonathan shook his head.
“Well, in there I saw pictures of mulatto children who looked just like me. And that’s when it occurred to me that Mrs. Hollingsworth may have been right. Because remember, I knew nothing about you, and the more I thought about it, the more I wondered just why Mom was so secretive. So after that, every chance I got, I looked for clues. I went to the hospital where I was born, to my schools. I contacted people who knew my mother. But I got nowhere. Then, years later, when Karen and I became friends, I confided in her what I suspected.
“Well, Karen has a keen sense of curiosity, and she went to my college in New York and somehow found out that Gregory Feinstein had something to do with whoever was paying my college tuition. We wanted to know where he lived, so we pored over Chicago and suburban phonebooks.”
“Okay. Back up. Why did you do that?”
“Why did we want to know where he lived?”
“Yes.”
“Because there was this notation on one of the bank records Karen found at my school referring to a barbecue at Jon’s and a date and time, and we thought there might be a connection between Jon and, well, you.”
His eyebrows rose. “The note about the barbeque was written on a bank record?”
“Well, not exactly. Karen rubbed a pencil over an imprint that was on the bank document and was able to decipher it.”
Jonathan smiled. “I think I want to meet this Karen.”
“You already did, remember?”
“That’s right. Okay, continue.”
“Anyway, we called all the Gregory Feinsteins we found in the phone books until we found the one associated with the bank. So we drove here, to St. Charles, and found his house. Then we looked at all the mailboxes on his street and came here, to the library, and matched up the addresses with names. The only one that made any sense was Brooks Horses.” Marie gazed at her father apologetically. “I think you know the rest.”
Jonathan shook his head. “All I can say is that you and Karen may have missed your true calling—detectives. By the way, we’ve invited the Feinsteins over for dinner tomorrow.” He gave her a warm smile. “C’mon, let’s go see what Mr. Harry S. Truman is all about.”
Marie and her father spent the next several hours reading everything they could get their hands on regarding the new president—newspaper and magazine articles, transcripts of his campaign speeches, and political flyers. Jonathan took copious notes, and when they returned home, he and Marie discussed the various issues: the Soviet Union, economic and social development, the formation of NATO, nuclear weapons, the Cold War, and civil rights—all the topics Truman had spoken about on his “whistle-stop tour” prior to his election.
Impressed with her father’s knowledge of political issues, Marie knew there was even more to this man than she had already seen.
On Saturday, Marie and Jonathan went for a leisurely ride after breakfast. It was gray and overcast, and the temperature had dropped twenty degrees overnight. Claire lent Marie her sheepskin vest for the ride.
“Dad?” It was hard to avoid calling him that sometimes, like now, when she wanted to get his attention.
“Yes, daughter?” Jonathan shot her a sincere smile.
“There’s something I brought up in the car ride earlier that I’d like to talk about.”
“Sure. What is it?”
“Well, it’s about…it’s about race.” They slowed the horses to a steady gait. “You know when men look at me, they see a white woman.”
“No,” he corrected her. “When men look at you, they see a beautiful white woman.”
Despite the cold, Marie felt the blood rush up her neck. “Thank you. What I’m getting at is that when a man shows an interest in me, it’s because he’s interested in a white woman. So let’s say then he asks me out. I’m at a loss what to do now.”
“What’s the problem?”
“If I say no, that ends it right then and there, and I may have missed out on a good relationship. But then, of course, I’m not sure anymore if that’s the relationship I want to be in anyway.”
“Mm-hmm.”
“But if I say yes, at some point I have to reveal my true identity. And if I do that on the first date, it will probably be the last date. White men don’t want to be seen with a colored woman.”
“Sounds like you have this figured out.”
“But a Negro man isn’t going to want to be with me, either.”
He paused for a few seconds. “Look at Tré.”