The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [40]
While flipping through May 1911, I glimpsed a familiar name and went back to check, a pulse of excitement rising as I read. The baptismal certificate was on thick paper, stained at the upper right corner but otherwise intact:
We Do Certify
That According to the Ordinance of
Our Lord Jesus Christ, We Did Administer to
IRIS JARRETT WYNDHAM
On 31st day of March A.D. 1911
The Sacrament of
HOLY BAPTISM
With Water
In the Name of the Father, and of the Son,
and of the Holy Spirit
“Find something juicy?” Joanna asked, pausing to look over my shoulder on her way to the copy machine.
“Yes, actually—I think I did. I found her name. Rose Jarrett.” I thought of the papers from the cupola, the letter about Iris going away, signed with the single letter R. This must be her—Rose. I felt such a sense of frisson then, as if this woman who had lived and dreamed and suffered a hundred years ago had just stepped into the office. “She must have been my great-grandfather’s sister. We never heard a thing about her, yet here she is in 1911, a widow with a daughter.”
Joanna sighed. “It gives you chills, doesn’t it, really? When you see these forms, black and white and just filed away in boxes, and then you think how all these people were here once, maybe standing right where we are now, having conversations, living out their lives.”
I nodded, thinking of the cloth, wrapped in layers of paper, hidden behind the lining of my great-grandfather’s trunk. Maybe it had been for Iris. A baby blanket, perhaps—that made sense, given its size, its delicacy, and the care put into its weaving. But why had it been hidden away? “I wonder what happened to her—to them both?”
“I hate to say it,” Joanna said, handing me the copy of the receipt, “but I can check the burial records if you want. Lots of children didn’t make it in those days. She’d have just been little when the flu epidemic hit.”
“That could be,” I said, feeling oddly relieved; as sad as that story would be, at least I’d have an answer. “That would explain why no one in the family ever talked about them.” Then I remembered the other note, the one about sending Iris away, but I asked Joanna to check the records anyway.
“Could I have a copy of this birth certificate, too?”
“No problem.” She slid it onto the glass and closed the lid. “I won’t get back to the archives today. Maybe not tomorrow, either. But if you leave me your number, I’ll call when I can and let you know. You could check the cemetery records, too. Marriage records, that sort of thing. Newspaper archives.”
“Thanks very much.”
“Glad to help. It’s kind of a fascinating mystery, isn’t it?”
It was, I thought, but it was more than that, too. I felt such a quickening to think there was a family story I hadn’t yet heard, a way of thinking about the past that might break open everything I’d understood. It was exhilarating and a little frightening, too; alluring.
“Yes,” I said, taking the papers. “Yes, indeed, it is.”
Chapter 6
IN A LABYRINTH, WALKING THE SINUOUS PATH THAT LEADS finally to the center, people once carried clews, round balls made of twine, to help them find their way back out. As I left the church, I felt I’d just discovered such a clue, tangible and full in my hands, unraveling slowly to mark my way through this unexpected landscape of the past. I threaded my way back through the byzantine corridors, questions about Rose Jarrett and the artist Frank Westrum rising one after another. She must have known him, somehow; she must have been responsible for the border in the windows, a kind of signature. She might even have commissioned the windows, or been involved in their design somehow. If the papers from the cupola were any indication,