The Lake of Dreams - Kim Edwards [93]
“Nine o’clock.”
“I’ll be here.”
I crossed the room and started down the stairs before her, holding my bag close to me, my left hand running down the carved and polished railing. She followed me to the door with its panes of etched glass; the lock, I noticed, was electronic, well beyond my expertise. I really would have to wait.
The car was stifling hot and smelled of dust, having been sitting in the sun all afternoon; I opened the window to the lake breeze. My stomach growled—I hadn’t stopped to eat all day, I realized. Still, I slipped the second letter from its envelope.
Across the street, the door of the museum opened. The curator came out, slipping on sunglasses. She paused to make sure the door was locked behind her and hurried down the steps toward her adventure, car keys dangling from her left hand. She walked swiftly, passing one Victorian home after another, slipped into a lemon-colored VW convertible, and drove away.
I imagined Elizabeth Cady Stanton walking these very same streets with her children in tow, words like an undercurrent in her mind, rising up, pressing, as she bought flowers or stopped for sugar and eggs, hurrying home and leaving her packages scattered on a table as she made some swift notes, catching the idea that was pressing itself, necessary, essential, jotting down the words I’d read earlier that day: “We come into the world alone, unlike all who have gone before us. . . . Nature never repeats herself, and the possibilities of one human soul will never be found in another.” Children, calling in the background until she sighed, put her pen down, and went to them. I imagined her standing on the street corner with Susan Anthony and the scandalous Amelia Bloomer in the daring split skirt that allowed her the ability to move unconstricted—scandalous, all of them, Elizabeth, Susan, and Amelia, three young women with their fierce intelligence and their dreams, talking together on an ordinary summer day.
I turned the letter over in my hands. Rose Jarrett stood behind that veil of time as well, traveling in her brown suit and yellow blouse—where, exactly? Why had she left her brother and gone off without her child? In the midst of what scandal had she fled? It worried me, not knowing what had happened to them both. And I wondered, also, with a growing sense of anger, why I’d spent my life not knowing Rose Jarrett had existed, when I might have learned from her life something about how to live my own, something beyond the bright fleeting streak of a comet and the parameters of life fixed in place. I had so many questions. How had she come to influence Frank Westrum’s beautiful windows, those mosaics of glass filled with light, and to write these passionate letters? The historical society was quiet behind its wrought-iron fence, holding its secrets fast.
A breeze flowed into the car, smelling of water. I thought of my little charges in Japan, our walks beside the sea, the words I had taught them—wave, water, stone—and the words they had not understood: someday, little ones, your grandchildren may even drink your tears. I unfolded the second letter, written on a ledger page with faint blue stripes and columns, and began to read.
15 September 1914
Dearest Iris,
What a gloomy letter I wrote last night. But I woke feeling better.
My accountant’s head drifted to my shoulder as he slept. He was so embarrassed. He has given me a blank page torn from his book of numbers to apologize. He lives in Poughkeepsie and he does accounts for a paper company. That sounds like a dull life, but he seems happy. He told me all about the city. He has a house there and has never married. He looked at my hand and saw no ring and began to ask more questions. Briefly, I imagined setting up housekeeping in his tidy house. Then I told him about your father, fighting in France. Missing there.
He nodded, as if I’d moved a set of numbers from one column to another. He went back to work. I ate two apples from my bag.
Mrs. Elliot can