The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [132]
Vivian will go to live with Mrs. Elliot in The Lake of Dreams. She promises to watch out for you and write to me of you, too. Poor Vivian has never completely recovered her strength—she who used to be so active—and this house is too big and too empty and simply too much. It has been sold; our days here are numbered, dwindling one by one.
Frank, too, has gone—to Rochester. He finds the city cold, but peaceful. He writes that he is happy. We still miss Beatrice, his beloved wife and my dear friend, and it is a comfort to speak of her. In the wake of her death Frank was disconsolate for so long that I feared he might never regain himself. He seemed disengaged from life, and did not even care about his art. So I stayed sometimes and made him tea. This is how it began. Quietly, with a mutual respect and friendship and the memory of Beatrice, whom we both loved.
And now we love each other. I have agreed to go to Rochester when this house is all packed away. But I will not marry him, or anyone. Nor will I live with him. He has bought a house near the center of the city, and I have taken a room in the house of a woman I knew slightly in the days of our splendid parties. Her name is Lydia Langhammer. She is a nurse. I have already begun to write in search of work.
So I will see Frank every day and have that pleasure, and I will always be able to go to my own room and shut the door and delight in my solitude, too.
Dear girl, may you grow in wisdom and in kindness, always.
Love, your mother Rose
1 October 1925
Dearest Iris,
Oh, my dear, I saw you today. I spoke to you. You do not know who I am, you think only that I am a friend of Mrs. Elliot, and her niece Mrs. Stokley. I gave you a false name, Rose Westrum. True enough in heart. Perhaps you found me too intense, perhaps you noticed that our eyes have such a similar look—the same blue, as changeable as water. I found you utterly beautiful, perfect in every way. When another guest remarked on our resemblance, you were not exactly pleased. You are 14, and I am 30, so to you I am old. There is no one save Mrs. Elliot who knows of our connection, even Mrs. Stokley who took you in does not know.
You were glad to leave The Lake of Dreams. I do not blame you, though I wish you had not run away and put yourself in so much danger. I wish also that you did not have to work, but I am glad that the work is good. I am glad you can take classes at the college. I always send money to Mrs. Elliot for little things you might like, and I was so happy to see you wearing the blue cardigan with tiny buttons that she had given you. And I feel glad somehow to know that the famous author who once lived down the street was born and died in the same light beneath which I once stood, dreaming that the world would shift and change, or even end.
Love from Rose, your mother
I walked the few blocks to the car, following the wide purple path that had been painted on the sidewalk, mulling over the letters, the complex arc of Rose’s life, glad she’d found happiness, gladder still that she’d seen Iris again, even if her presence had remained forever secret. Iris had been born in 1911, which meant she could still be alive, though she’d be in her midnineties by now, and of course I had no way to begin to look for her. I slid inside the sun-hot car. When I put my bag with its stolen letters on the floor, I hit the glove compartment door with my elbow, and it swung open. I hadn’t thought to look inside before, and it was empty except for three pencils, never sharpened, their orangeypink erasers intact and hardened with age, the marina logo my father had designed printed on them in blue. He must have left them here one day long ago, when he’d taken the car out for a Sunday drive. I wondered if anyone did that anymore, drove just for pleasure. How odd, for that matter, that this storage space was still called a glove compartment, left from a time when women wore gloves whenever they went