The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [89]
“Really? Are they still here?”
“No, I’m afraid not. We went through those boxes four months ago. We did find three items relevant to the convention, apparently, but those are being processed. The rest—let’s see. Yes, here it is. The rest we sent to the Lafayette Historical Society. We often pass things on to them. Sometimes they find illuminating items that are of no use to us. You might try there.”
“You can’t tell me what the relevant items were?”
“Not at this moment. I’m sorry. I can check for you, if you like.”
“That would be really helpful, thanks. What about these?” I asked, opening the folder and showing her the pamphlets and flyers. “Are these of any interest?”
She looked through them slowly, giving careful attention to each document.
“To me they are,” she said. “We wouldn’t keep them here—they’re from the wrong era—but you should hold on to them. Maybe check with the people who have Margaret Sanger’s papers—these articles about family planning were written by her, probably around 1912 or 1913. This is an early copy, and they’re relatively hard to find. Later they were censored by the post office. They violated the Comstock obscenity laws, which made it illegal, even for physicians, to explain the basic facts of reproductive health. Sanger went to jail. Her sister, Ethyl Byrne, did, too, and almost died from the hunger strike she undertook in protest of those laws.”
I thanked her and gave her my address and phone number in case anything turned up. Then I drove through the expansive streets with their grand houses and wide lawns to the Lafayette Historical Society. It was located in an ornate Queen Anne house with intricate trim along the roofline, well kept but in need of paint; the second step sagged as I walked to the door. I was lucky, as it turned out. Though the building was usually closed on Sundays, it was open for a genealogy class. I stepped into a foyer that had been perfectly restored, with deep mahogany wainscoting and wallpaper with a tiny green floral print on cream. A young woman with a pierced nose and lip sat behind a vast desk, reading, and she finished her paragraph before she finally put her bookmark in the page and looked up, the little diamond below her lip catching the light.
“I think I know those boxes,” she said once I’d explained what I wanted. “I was here when they dropped them off. I don’t think anyone’s gotten around to looking at them yet. Come on upstairs to the reading room, and I’ll check.”
I followed her up the staircase, wide and curved, to the second-floor reading room, which was lined with bookcases. A grandfather clock stood against one wall, ticking softly, and a wide cherry table with heavy matching chairs took up the center of the room. The windows were bare, the glass mildly warped. She disappeared up another set of stairs and came back a few minutes later with a large box. There were two more, she said. I couldn’t wait, and started going through the first one while she went up to get the others. A jumble of papers, file folders, articles: I took them out one by one.
“There you go,” she said, heaving the last box onto the end of the table and brushing off her hands. She gestured to the papers I’d placed on the table. “Nothing’s been sorted, like I said. It’s probably a lot of receipts and ledgers and cryptic notes to self. But you’re welcome to look. We close at four o’clock.”
I glanced at the clock; it was already past two o’clock. “I’ll have a quick look,” I said, and so I began.
Lydia Langhammer had been a hoarder: everything from receipts for purchases to recipes and loose clips resided in the box. I went through it all carefully without finding anything of interest.
The second box was similar, as if