The Girl with the Phony Name

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Authors: Charles Mathes

BOOK: The Girl with the Phony Name
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For Arlene and our Grandfathers
I
t was one of those autumns thirty years ago when cars still had tail fins and kids wanted to be policemen when they grew up and America had never lost a war. The exact date was October 23. It was a Thursday.
Al Stogner and his wife, Janet, were driving through Massachusetts on their way back to Dayton, Ohio. They had been away for two weeks now, staying at hundred-year-old inns, picking up antiques, but mostly just watching the season unfold across New England. Al and Janet were what the locals called “leaf peepers.”
Thousands of peepers descended upon Massachusetts, Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine each fall, often doubling the populations of the tiny villages and towns. They came in tour buses, private cars, even limousines.
Rich and poor stood equal in awe as a hundred billion leaves exploded into achingly beautiful reds, quiet russets, eccentric oranges, wildly blazing yellows. Maple and birch, oak and gum and beech, white ash and poplar raised a canopy of color above the crazy-quilt forest floor.
It was nearly seven. The Stogners were heading south on Route 7 and had just passed the historic town of Lenox. They were minutes from Stockbridge, where they had reservations for the night at the Red Lion Inn. It was raining, which had put them behind schedule; they had hoped to make the inn before dark.
An hour ago the show of sunset and changing leaves had been upstaged by a sudden, ferocious thunderstorm. Lightning still illuminated the autumn landscape every few minutes. Rain fell in sheets. Al, who had been driving for six hours, hummed “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” Al considered “How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?” to be one of the great tunes of all time.
Janet was resting her eyes, but was not asleep. It had been a long week, a wonderful week, despite her husband's humming. She was almost sorry that in a few days they would be home.
The narrow, wet road, shining in their headlights, snaked through the storm. Al ran a hand through his sandy hair and pushed his wire-rimmed glasses back up to the bridge of his nose. He was tired, ready for a big dinner and a comfortable bed at the Red Lion. It was getting cold; the car was unheated. Perhaps he was going too fast, but there was little traffic.
Suddenly the road veered right and Al saw another car's lights directly in front of him. His foot touched the brake pedal. The car slid over the road as if the water had turned the pavement to glass.
One moment Al and Janet were in the serene safety of a three-year-old Buick and the Massachusetts autumn, the next they were in a nightmare, upside-down in a ditch. Al never remembered the actual crash. He did remember dragging Janet to a tree, where he frantically patted her hand and yelled her name through the gruff roar of the storm until she declared she was all right. Only then did Al smell the smoke. It was coming from the other side of the road.
He stumbled up the banks of the ditch and ran through the puddles to the car they had hit. It had smashed into a thick elm on the other side of the road. Black smoke billowed from beneath the long hood.
In the front seat were a man and a woman. The windshield was shattered; their faces were gone, indecipherable in the blood. Someone else might have been unable to function further, but Al had gone through Europe with the Eighth Army. He had seen carnage before. His senses were clear, his reflexes were conditioned against panic. Each detail in the bloody car was crisp, brilliant. He heard a faint whimpering from the backseat.
The back door would not open. The smoke was getting
thicker. Al knew there was a great risk of explosion if flames reached the gas tank. Afraid that he might have only moments to act, Al jammed the rear side-window with his elbow as hard as he could. It shattered.
Time slowed down. It was almost as if another man pounded on the inside handle, brushed aside the shards of broken glass, wrenched the door open.
Behind the driver's seat was an infant. It was strapped into a kind of basket, a sturdy cradlelike carrier secured to the floor. Al took a handkerchief from his pocket and put it over his mouth. He was coughing violently now from the thick smoke. His eyes watered. Calm in his dreamlike state, he fought to unbuckle the straps holding the cradle. At last he got them far enough apart to remove the infant, swaddled in a white blanket, wailing loudly now.
Al could barely see his way through the black smoke, but he ran, the baby under his arm like a football. He had crossed the road and was heading down the muddy side of the drainage ditch toward Janet when the smoking car exploded. For an instant Al was back in the middle of World War II. He curled into a ball around the baby as the force of the explosion knocked them to the ground.
After a moment, Al stood, shaken and bruised. He had survived. Again. He hobbled up the side of the ditch, still holding the child. It had stopped crying now and was very still. Al feared it was dead.
He ran across the road toward the flaming car, but could not get within twenty feet. The heat was too intense. He watched the fireball, shaken by the acrid smells, the smells of a war he had almost forgotten.
After a moment, he turned and walked back across the road. Janet was still under the tree where he had left her. She was holding her arm and he could hear her sobs, though whatever tears she cried were lost in the rain. Her blonde hair was plastered down flat. She had rolled up her sleeve, and Al could see a bone protruding from her skin.
Al sat down next to her, the baby in his lap. He was suddenly aware of pain in his own arm. He had cut it breaking the window, even through his thick corduroy sport jacket. His sleeve was torn and bloody. He hurt all over.
The rain began to let up.
Janet reached over him with her good arm and moved the blanket. It was fastened with a heavy silver brooch covered with fantastic designs like nothing she had ever seen before. The baby opened enormous blue eyes, smiled broadly, and gurgled.
The flames from the death car rose into the Massachusetts sky. Al began to weep. Janet stared at the child, her face a blend of awe and terror, pity and fear. What had they done?
“W
elcome in to Welcome Inn, Miss Trelaine!”
“Thank you,” replied Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine politely, making a mental note to give the pretty blonde desk clerk a ten for Employee Attitude. The girl was so perky you could probably fry an egg on her face.
“Joey will take you to your room! My name is Jill! Thank you for choosing the Kankakee Welcome Inn! Have a great stay!”
“Thank you so much,” said Lucy. A tall, pimply teenager had already grabbed her bags.
“Hi! I'm Joey! Follow me! Welcome in to Welcome Inn!”
Lucy followed the boy through the standard Early American lobby into the standard oak-paneled elevator. There was even the standard Welcome Inn smell, a mixture of fried chicken and rug shampoo. Did someone buy industrial-sized drums of it in concentrated form? “Eau de Motel”?
“Have you ever stayed at Welcome Inn before?” asked
Joey, eyes wide, Adam's apple bobbling up and down like a lottery ping-pong ball.
“No,” she lied. She had stayed in hundreds. It was her job.
“Well, you're in for a treat!” the boy exclaimed with frightening enthusiasm.
The elevator opened onto the third floor. Lucy's room was only a few steps down the standard beige hallway. Joey unlocked the door, hung her Valpak in the closet, and placed her suitcase on the luggage rack at the foot of the bed.
“This is your TV! This is your phone! This is the key to your honor bar! Plenty of beverages and snacks in there! It's refilled every morning and your room is automatically billed for what you've used … .”
Lucy glanced around, listening to Joey's spiel out of one ear. The room was identical to the one last night in Terre Haute and the room in Roanoke the night before that. Everything looked satisfactory on the surface, but she'd make a more thorough inspection later.
“ … Check-out time is one o'clock! Thank you for choosing the Kankakee Welcome Inn! Have a great stay!”
Joey stood grinning ear to ear at the door, towering over her five-foot-one-inch frame.
“Thank you very much,” said Lucy. “I know the sign said ‘no tipping,' but I'm sure you wouldn't mind if I gave you a little something for being so helpful?”
Lucy pressed two dollars into his hand.
“Thanks,” said Joey, his eyes narrowing almost imperceptibly. He handed her the key and left smiling.
“Joey sleeps with da fishes tonight,” said Lucy sadly to a lamp. The lamp didn't answer.
Part of what made Welcome Inns such hospitable places was the absence of outstretched palms every time you turned around. Welcome Inn, Inc., considered “No tipping” on a par with “Thou shalt not make any graven images” in the great scheme of things. Joey would probably lose his job when she filed her report.
He had only himself to blame, Lucy told herself, nibbling her lower lip. She had to zap a few employees every month or they wouldn't take her seriously at corporate headquarters. She had let two screw-ups off the hook this week already, for crissakes.
Lucy dug out a petty cash slip from her jacket pocket.
“Should I put in for four dollars instead of two?” Lucy asked the lamp. “One hundred percent on my money. Who would know?”
The lamp still didn't answer. Lucy had been talking to furniture a lot recently.
“I'm not cut out for this,” said Lucy, recording the tip as two dollars on the slip. “I'm too honest.”
Welcome Inn paid Lucy $35,500 a year plus expenses. Big money to Joey, she thought cynically, but what were her ex-classmates from Harvard pulling down now? $50,000? $100,000? To say nothing of exploding bonuses and stock options.
Even now that she had finally paid off her student loans and built up some savings, Lucy still felt poor. She had been working since she was fifteen, trying to give herself a little security, but it was never enough. She never felt safe.
Lucy glanced at the mirror over the dresser. A caricature looked back: a mop of tangled black hair over a pair of enormous blue eyes. She looked tired down to the tip of her long, straight nose.
“Lucy,” she said earnestly to her reflection. “What is your problem?”
Mirror Lucy looked frightened and angry but said nothing, just stretched her hands over her head, then popped her trick shoulders. Her arms fell unnaturally behind her back.
Lucy had nearly blown her interview for Harvard with a demonstration of her double–jointedness. She hadn't thought she had a chance and hadn't taken the procedure very seriously. Why would Harvard accept a kid who hadn't completed more than six months in any one high school?
“We are only interested in people who are in some way special,” the interviewer, a small Pakistani with an expensive toupee and a complexion like dried fruit had said. “What makes you special?”
Instead of concocting some suitably pretentious answer, Lucy had clasped her hands behind her back at waist level, then moved them over her head into her lap without letting go. When the little man didn't laugh, she'd bent her wrists backwards, made her fingers into little sevens, and rotated her elbows 240 degrees.
“Shall I call paramedics?” the interviewer had asked, blinking three times in rapid succession and nervously adjusting his hair.
“No,” Lucy had muttered. “I'm all right now. Being able to cope with my condition and still lead a relatively normal life makes me feel very special indeed.”
Inspecting motel units for Welcome Inn was Lucy's sixth job since Harvard. She had been fired from two sales jobs, quit on a financial planner, and been laid off by a computer service bureau. She had lasted a few years as an assistant to an accountant, but then he had retired, leaving her to comb the want ads in the
Boston Globe
until she found her present position.
At least this job was out of the line of fire. Lucy was useless at office politics and didn't mind traveling, although lately it had been getting a little lonely.
“The next thing you know I'll be talking to myself,” she confided to the clock radio, which hummed sympathetically.
It took Lucy six and a half minutes to unpack and check the television reception, the extra pillows and blankets in the closet, and all the light bulbs. After three years of being on the road five days a week, Lucy had her routine down to a science.
She orbited the room counterclockwise, inspecting the wastebaskets, ashtrays, and drawers for litter. Using the toilet
gave her a perfect opportunity to see that there was a proper supply of towels, soap, Kleenex tissues, and toilet paper.
“What?” Lucy gasped, seated on the throne. “TP end not folded into a reassuring triangle? Someone will pay for this flagrant challenge to propriety and Western civilization!”
She recorded the offense on one of the preprinted evaluation forms and moved back to the bedroom.
Unlocking the honor bar revealed another problem. The ice trays were frozen together. How many times had she seen that! It would cost them one quality point.
Leaving the honor bar unlocked—every once in a while she could nab a maid for stealing something—Lucy took the ice bucket down the hall and filled it from the ice machine.
She returned and poured herself a Coke, then picked up the phone and dialed 8 for valet service. It was Thursday, which meant the blue dress. She might be poor but at least she would remain unwrinkled. How many Harvard grads got free dry cleaning as a job perk?
“This is Miss Trelaine in Room three-o-nine,” Lucy said, filling out the laundry ticket as she spoke. “I have some cleaning that I need tomorrow morning. Could you please send someone? Yes, three-o-nine. Thanks.”
It would be a few minutes until the boy arrived and Lucy didn't believe in wasting time. She tossed yesterday's bra and panties into the sink with a capful of Woolite, then dug into the night-table drawer for the local phone book.
Checking phone books was Lucy's only hobby. It cost nothing and gave her a little hope. Everybody needs a little hope, Lucy had often confided to furniture. Everywhere she went Lucy ritually checked the phone books.
The nuns at St. Anthony's claimed she had no family, but Lucy never believed a word the nuns said about anything. Everyone had somebody. People didn't just pop out of nowhere, regardless of what her records said.
Records! That was a laugh. Lucy kept a photocopy of her
admission file from the orphanage in her wallet. It consisted of four sentences:
Lucy MacAlpin Trelaine, October 23. Parents killed auto crash, Western Mass. Admitted St. Anthony's. No known relatives.
It was the only real information Lucy had ever found about herself, and it had taken the threat of legal action to get it from the nuns.
Where Lucy had spent her first year and a half was still a mystery. Boston child welfare couldn't even come up with the paperwork of her transferal to St. Anthony's. Somebody had obviously bungled. Going through phone books was the only hope Lucy had of finding her family.
Thanks to her job with Welcome Inn, Lucy had been able to check phone books in over five hundred cities. She had never found any Trelaines.
Trelaine sounded like a normal name, but there the resemblance ended. There were Trelauns, Trelevens, Trelegens, Treloars, Trelins, Tralins, and Tralongos. There were plenty of Tremaines. There were no Trelaines. Anywhere.
Lucy had researched the name thoroughly in the best genealogical libraries in the country.
She had pored over Black's
Surnames of Scotland, the Dictionary of English and Welsh Surnames
, Elsdon Smith's
New Dictionary of American Family Names,
The Dictionary of British Surnames, Surnames of the United Kingdom, Irish Names and Surnames
, and both of Edward MacLysaght's books,
The Surnames of Ireland
and
More Irish Families
. She had even tried the
Dictionnaire Étymologique des Noms de Famille et Prénoms de
France,
as well as books on Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Scandinavian names.
Trelaine simply did not exist as a surname.
MacAlpins were another story. Although the exact spelling was rare, the phone books were full of plausible variants like
McAlpin and MacAlpine. Over the years Lucy had talked to hundreds of them.
MacAlpins had become her pen pals, McAlpins had had her over for dinner, Mc Alpines had brought her to their country clubs. Some had talked a blue streak and some had hung up in her ear, but no one had ever thrown any light on her origin.
There were no Trelaines in the Kankakee phone book.
Lucy wondered what she would do if she ever found a Trelaine. Have a heart attack, probably. No doubt it would turn out to be the wrong Trelaine, anyway.
There was one listing for a McAlpin, Roy, and another for McAlpin's Barber Shop. Since Lucy had been in Kankakee before, she powered up her little Toshiba laptop to check if she'd already spoken to the man. Several megabytes of the hard disk were devoted to her family-research database.
In seconds Lucy was in the right subdirectory and had found Roy McAlpin's name, address, telephone number, date of contact, and a memo that she had turned down his offer of a haircut. She had rated him a “three” on her MacAlpin scale—“one” being a possible, “three” being an unlikely.
Over the years Lucy had accumulated information about more than a thousand MacAlpins, first in notebooks, now on the computer. There were maybe two dozen “one”s altogether.
Andrew Macalpin, for instance, was a “one.” He lived in western Massachusetts, Springfield, and had a sister with whom he had lost touch.
“She got herself pregnant,” Andrew Macalpin had told Lucy in the coffee shop of the Springfield Welcome Inn. “Had a child somewhere in the sixties, I heard.” Lucy never found the woman.
Barbara Mc Alpin in Atlanta was a “one,” too. She remembered a distant cousin who'd been killed in a car crash up north. Unfortunately she couldn't remember the cousin's married name. How do you track something like that?
A knocking sound interrupted Lucy's thoughts.
“You called for some cleaning?” said another pimply teenager when Lucy opened the door. His name tag read, Bob Welcomes You in to Welcome Inn!
“Yes,” said Lucy, handing him her blue dress. “I need it tomorrow morning. Can you do that?” Lucy knew very well that Welcome Inns did dry cleaning twenty-four hours a day, but took nothing for granted when she was on duty.
“There's an extra charge since it's after noon, ma'am.”
“That's fine as long as I get it back before ten A.M. tomorrow. Let me give you something extra just …”
“No, thank you, ma'am!”
“Are you sure?” Lucy batted her huge blue eyes innocently. The boy didn't even blink.

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