Chapter Four
I am still sorting through the scattered photos when my mom stops to make lunch. Since it is summer break, even my mom is taking her time settling into the new house. Mom and Dad have gotten all the major pieces of furniture set out in their new places, but every room is still covered in half put away boxes.
Most of our sleek and modern furniture looks glaringly out of place in the antique cottage we now live in, but my mom seems to find it charming. I think it looks ridiculous. I am certainly in no hurry to settle in myself, but learning about my aunt Katie has momentarily shifted my attention from pouting in my room to finding out more.
With the picture in my hand I am less concerned with being back in busy Manhattan and more interested in discovering even more about the strange aunt that easily could have been my own twin. I tuck the picture under the cover of the novel I have been reading and take the lid off another box. Anxious to find more evidence of my aunt, I nevertheless feel a strange need to keep my interest from my mom.
She told me easily enough about who Katie was, but I got the distinct impression that she either knows more and is not about to discuss it, or has tried to find out more herself and doesn’t want to repeat that experience again. The lingering feeling keeps me from tearing into the mess of photos. I carefully slip photos back into the plastic sleeves, searching for another glimpse of Katie. She may have disappeared from my family’s memories, but I know there will be more than one lonely photo. At least, I hope there will be.
The jingling of keys in the already unlocked door barely even reaches my hearing. My dad pushes his way into the mess, laughing at himself for trying to unlock the door, and I look up with a smirk. We never left the door unlocked in Manhattan, even when we were home. I guess my mom is already feeling much safer being away from the city. She greets my dad with a quick kiss and excuses herself to finish making lunch. With a quick wave and a mumbled “hi” to my dad, I wait until they leave the room before digging into the boxes and getting back to my search. All the photos of Katie I can find go straight into my book.
I only asked to keep the one picture, but each new snapshot I find adds to Katie’s life and I find that I can’t let go of any of them. The pictures are filled with life and activity. Katie’s smile and obvious energy are contagious. I find myself grinning every time I stop to look at a photo for too long. I wonder if we would have been close friends had she lived long enough to know me. The happy photos are bittersweet, knowing that Katie didn’t lived past sixteen. Sixteen. That thought sends pins and needles up and down my spine. I am almost sixteen myself.
The small amount of pictures I find echo Katie’s short life, but having to dig them out of the piles no one has looked at for years affects me even worse. Katie died, and then was nearly forgotten by those who loved her in life. Knowing the pain of loss had, in a way, overridden love, sends a quiet panic through my mind. It makes me shudder to think about it, and I hope this is not a normal reaction to death. Would everyone put away my things if I were gone? Would David’s children know my name?
Sounds of my mom making lunch filters out of the kitchen as I search the rest of the box I’m working on for more photos of Katie. The connection I felt to my aunt grows with each new picture. I feel a need to understand why Katie died. While wondering what it had been like for Katie to confront death, I stumble across another picture that looks like it might be my aunt.
Studying the photo intently, I’m not sure what I’ve found. It looks just like Katie except for the clothes and hair style. Katie was a child of the seventies, wearing bell-bottom jeans and flowers in her wild black hair more often than not. This lookalike is wearing a full skirt and button down blouse with a perfectly styled, bobbed haircut.
I turn the picture over and see Maera 1959 printed in scrawling handwriting on the back. Who is this new ghost? I wonder. Their faces are almost identical, especially the eyes. This new photo is also black and white, but her startling silvery eyes can’t be hidden by the colorless world.
Suddenly brought out of my wonder when my mom calls me to the table for lunch, I stick the photo I just found into my book with the pictures of Katie. Stopping by my bedroom on the way to the kitchen, I pull the drawer out of my nightstand and hold the pictures over it. I want to hide the pictures away because of my mom’s warning about how my dad might react, but change my mind at the last minute and head back toward the kitchen. I want to know more about the photos, especially the newest one I found, the one that is not Katie. I barely make it to the table before my question about the second picture bursts out.
“Mom, who is Maera?”
“Maera? Um, I’m not sure. Let me see,” she says as she takes the picture I’m holding out to her. She looks at the back. “1959, hmm. I can’t remember. I’m sorry. I just haven’t looked at any of this stuff in so long because of the move.” She turns the picture toward her husband. “Honey, who’s Maera?” she asks him.
My dad turns away from the picture with a frown and says, “She was your grandfather’s sister, your great aunt.”
Why didn’t he just say that when I first asked the question?
“Was?” I ask.
“She drowned when she was a kid. I don’t know much about her,” he says quietly.
Drowned as a kid? I wonder if my dad is thinking about his own sister. I hope he is. Maybe if he thinks about her more often he will eventually talk about her.
“How old was she?” I ask.
“I don’t know. My dad didn’t talk about her much,” he says, taking a bite of his tuna sandwich and pushing the picture back across the table toward me.
My dad’s words bother me. Maera died young, too? The coincidence is definitely not lost on me. Maybe because my dad sees death and sickness every day at the hospital, a young girl drowning is simply a sad occurrence and not something to dwell on too much, but I can’t put the pictures down. I shake my head and sigh. I hate the thought of people dying, and the strangeness of the two girls dying young makes me sad and somewhat concerned.
Something feels a little off when I think about it. The feeling is wrapped up in the strange compulsion I feel to learn my about my dead aunt. Glancing over at my dad, I can see that he does not want to continue the conversation. I want to push him, but the firm set of his jaw makes me hold back. Setting the pictures back on the table, I sit down for lunch.
As the pungent tuna fills my mouth, I keep wondering why they died and if the same thing could ever happen to me. I shake my head at my runaway imagination and try to think more rationally. Even if the deaths were only a strange coincidence, it does bother me that my dad won’t talk about his sister. Putting aside the uneasiness settling in my mind and the hard look on my dad’s face, I ask him about Katie.
“Dad,” I say, waiting for him to look up before finishing, “why don’t you talk about Katie? I didn’t even know you had a sister.” A quick look from my mom almost makes me regret bringing up the topic.
My dad turned away from the photo of Maera when my mom tried to show it to him. I don’t think he even noticed that there was another photo on the table. He sees the photo now, and despite his wince, picks it up.
“Wow,” he mutters, “I can’t believe how alike they look.” He looks up at me, and stares as if he has never really seen me before. “Even you, you look so much like my sister Katie. I never knew Maera, but look,” he says, pausing, but not turning the pictures for anyone else to see. “Isn’t it amazing how much the three of you look alike? It’s uncanny.”
My mom smiles warmly at him. She pats his arm in support, but I haven’t gotten an answer to my question yet. I doubt I’ll have another chance any time soon to bring it up, so I push a little harder.
“But, why didn’t you ever tell me about her?”
“If I hadn’t taken her out riding that day, you would have been able to get to know her yourself,” he snaps. The photos drop back to the table as he stands up and turns away. His meal is only
half finished, but I stare at his back as he stalks out of the kitchen.
“Arra,” my mom sighs, “I told you he didn’t like to talk about Katie. Why did you have to bring it up?” She quickly clears the dishes and puts them in the sink before moving to follow after her husband.
I feel awful for pushing my dad, but why should I? I was just trying to find out about my own family. My dad shouldn’t pretend Katie never existed. It’s a terrible thing to do to someone.
“But, Mom,” I say. She stops and turns back. “I get that it’s hard for him to talk about her, but how could he just forget she ever existed?”
“Arra, he hasn’t forgotten. That’s the problem. He thinks about her all the time and blames himself for getting her killed. Would you want to talk about something like that all the time?” she asks.
“What if it happened to me, mom? Would everybody just stop talking about me and put away all the pictures of me, just so it wouldn’t hurt as bad? Could you do that?” I ask. I feel like I am on the verge of tears. I don’t understand why I am so upset about this, but when my mom hurries over to my side, I wrap my arms around her and try to hide my tears.
“Honey, please don’t judge your dad so harshly. Maybe one day he’ll be able to talk about Katie more openly, but you have to give him time. And don’t worry about anyone forgetting you. I would never let that happen,” my mom says with an extra tight squeeze of my shoulders. “But why are we even talking about that? Nothing is going to happen to you. Just put it out of your mind for now, okay?”
Put it out of my mind. That is exactly what I don’t want to happen, for me or the girls in the photos. But what else can I say? “Okay, Mom. I’m sorry I brought it up.”
With a satisfied nod, my mom leaves the kitchen and heads toward her room where I know my dad is waiting. I want to believe my mom when she says nothing is going to happen to me, but as I look down at the pictures again, I can’t help but feel that she is very wrong.