relatives, but in a different way. The club women each wanted something. My grandmother’s letters mostly contained Wisconsin weather. Sometimes she would mention the name of a bird she’d seen.
The club women traced and traced, through the mail. They all hoped for some tie to the Revolution or at least to some great family, with a coat of arms or its own tartan plaid. So far, none of them had found much. When I flew home last time, my second Christmas in medical school, I saw posters stapled on the nicked old telephone poles announcing a public library exhibit of the Family-Trees-In-Progress.
I’d never liked Marion Werth that much—she didn’t like me—but I’d always respected her. She was famous in Racine for her organization and her cheerfulness. Her plump hands and long freckled fingers and always elegantly filed and polished nails. Her fingers, in particular, expressed an exquisite febrile sensibility. They were creamy-colored and very nimble. She was our career woman. In a town that size, people were famous for preposterous things. Everyone knew about Katie Maguire’s jelly donuts. Or Dolly Henahan’s handmade silk felt on Styrofoam Christmas tree balls. If you were fat and neat you would be known for that, but not if you were just neat or just fat.
I stopped halfway through my letter. I never thought much of the mail. It seemed to take too long and I didn’t have the patience. I was like that then. I couldn’t wait the normal time and then I ended up waiting forever.
There had to be a better way, I figured. Faster. And so I called an old boyfriend. I was still young enough that, when in doubt, I’d call an old boyfriend. My mother used to tell me how someday we’d own a house. We’d buy it for almost nothing, she said, because it would be a fixer-upper, and all her admirers would come around, and when I was a little older, my boyfriends too, and instead of taking us out to fattening meals, they’d drop over and do something useful, like paint a wall or fix wiring.
This was the guy I’d been with in college. I used to call him The Prosecution. He worked for the Justice Department now. I always thought if I were a lawyer I’d be defense. I feel too guilty myself to be that sure.
“I don’t have much access,” Paul said. “He wouldn’t show up on my file unless he had a federal felony conviction.” That seemed above even my father’s abilities. But he typed the name in anyway, while I waited. I was kind of surprised he remembered it without my saying.
“Nope,” he said.
“Good.”
“You’re right, good.”
“I guess good.”
“You’re still nuts.” Then he suggested the FBI.
I didn’t want to call then. Not right away. I am not exactly an unarrested person. I have a record somewhere, they pressed my thumbs in ink, marked them on a paper form, took my unhappy picture. And this was not for anything hip, like drugs or a protest march either. It’s something old I’m not proud of. That’s when you’re glad how big and sloppy a country this is. When you are part of the mess. When it is you wrong, you want history to lose its beads and forget. And you can calm some knowing it will. My record is in some colorless file cabinet somewhere. It might be as hard to find as my father.
And from what little I knew about him, I didn’t guess my father would be pleased to see FBI men at his door either. He could’ve been a petty criminal, something of a gigolo. My mother once said he’d run off with a department head’s wife. Or was it the daughter? He might have been almost anything then. Not good, I thought. But not unforgivable either.
I didn’t want to call, but it came down to boredom and studying one day and there I was still safe at my desk, the book glaring, picking off a dry geranium opening the whole astringent garden of smell. Iwas supposed to go to a party later and I didn’t really want to and I shouldn’t have, I was so behind, but I thought I really had to, I said I
The club women traced and traced, through the mail. They all hoped for some tie to the Revolution or at least to some great family, with a coat of arms or its own tartan plaid. So far, none of them had found much. When I flew home last time, my second Christmas in medical school, I saw posters stapled on the nicked old telephone poles announcing a public library exhibit of the Family-Trees-In-Progress.
I’d never liked Marion Werth that much—she didn’t like me—but I’d always respected her. She was famous in Racine for her organization and her cheerfulness. Her plump hands and long freckled fingers and always elegantly filed and polished nails. Her fingers, in particular, expressed an exquisite febrile sensibility. They were creamy-colored and very nimble. She was our career woman. In a town that size, people were famous for preposterous things. Everyone knew about Katie Maguire’s jelly donuts. Or Dolly Henahan’s handmade silk felt on Styrofoam Christmas tree balls. If you were fat and neat you would be known for that, but not if you were just neat or just fat.
I stopped halfway through my letter. I never thought much of the mail. It seemed to take too long and I didn’t have the patience. I was like that then. I couldn’t wait the normal time and then I ended up waiting forever.
There had to be a better way, I figured. Faster. And so I called an old boyfriend. I was still young enough that, when in doubt, I’d call an old boyfriend. My mother used to tell me how someday we’d own a house. We’d buy it for almost nothing, she said, because it would be a fixer-upper, and all her admirers would come around, and when I was a little older, my boyfriends too, and instead of taking us out to fattening meals, they’d drop over and do something useful, like paint a wall or fix wiring.
This was the guy I’d been with in college. I used to call him The Prosecution. He worked for the Justice Department now. I always thought if I were a lawyer I’d be defense. I feel too guilty myself to be that sure.
“I don’t have much access,” Paul said. “He wouldn’t show up on my file unless he had a federal felony conviction.” That seemed above even my father’s abilities. But he typed the name in anyway, while I waited. I was kind of surprised he remembered it without my saying.
“Nope,” he said.
“Good.”
“You’re right, good.”
“I guess good.”
“You’re still nuts.” Then he suggested the FBI.
I didn’t want to call then. Not right away. I am not exactly an unarrested person. I have a record somewhere, they pressed my thumbs in ink, marked them on a paper form, took my unhappy picture. And this was not for anything hip, like drugs or a protest march either. It’s something old I’m not proud of. That’s when you’re glad how big and sloppy a country this is. When you are part of the mess. When it is you wrong, you want history to lose its beads and forget. And you can calm some knowing it will. My record is in some colorless file cabinet somewhere. It might be as hard to find as my father.
And from what little I knew about him, I didn’t guess my father would be pleased to see FBI men at his door either. He could’ve been a petty criminal, something of a gigolo. My mother once said he’d run off with a department head’s wife. Or was it the daughter? He might have been almost anything then. Not good, I thought. But not unforgivable either.
I didn’t want to call, but it came down to boredom and studying one day and there I was still safe at my desk, the book glaring, picking off a dry geranium opening the whole astringent garden of smell. Iwas supposed to go to a party later and I didn’t really want to and I shouldn’t have, I was so behind, but I thought I really had to, I said I
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