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Authors: Heidi Julavits
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Now, she realized, she just wanted to find the book, regardless of whether or not her mother meant her to find it. Then again (her un-caffeinated brain spun fuzzily), maybe her mother meant her to find it without consciously meaning her to find it. Meaning: Mary, when she’d packed up her belongings to move to Oregon for college, had neglected to take the book as an unconscious way to communicate to her mother—though she’d be hard-pressed to designate what, exactly, she’d been trying to say. One could argue that she had abandoned the book as a signal to her mother that she did not cherish nor self-centeredly fetishize her disappearance and its aftermath; she was, in fact, deeply ashamed of it, and wished to separate herself from it by inserting the span of a continent. But in that case, why not destroy the book? One could thus argue that her leaving it behind was an unconsciously aggressive maneuver and not an innocent, if misguided, mea culpa; that she could move across the country and symbolically leave behind her past for her mother to caretake was irresponsible and immature and even a little cruel. As was the possibility that she’d left the book behind as bait. Had she? Had she left it behind to test if her mother would take it?
Mary took the keys upstairs and unlocked the desk drawers, quickly surmising there were no books to be found, only sheets and sheets of disorganized paper. She diverted her disappointment through work, subdividing the drawer contents into five piles on the guest bed: PHOTOS , HISTORICAL SOCIETY , ABIGAIL LAKE , MISC . CORRESPONDENCE , MISC . JUNK . HISTORICAL SOCIETY became a jumble of press releases, meeting minutes, fund-raising pitches, unused letterhead. ABIGAIL LAKE included the sheaves of template responses Mum had received from governors and senators and local historians. We are sorry but at this juncture , they commenced, never ones to beat around the bush, those governors and senators and local historians. We sympathize with your situation, however . Many times Mary had found herself fascinated, but also perplexed, by Mum’s obsession with clearing the name of poor long-dead Abigail Lake. For whose sake is this energy being expended, she had often wondered. For whose sake is this forgiveness being so single-mindedly sought.
MISC . CORRESPONDENCE was limited to European cathedral postcards from Maxie or Susan. MISC . JUNK included grocery receipts, a few dry cleaning tickets, fabric swatches and paint chips left over from the redecorating project Mum embarked upon after her daughters had left for college. PHOTOS became a repetitive pile of women in straw hats (summer) or loden coats (fall) stacked in neat unsmiling rows. Mum’s left-leaning cursive identified the back of each photo. “Annual Beekman Plaza Luncheon,” “West Salem Cemetery Restoration Committee,” “Dibble Library Fund-raiser.” After Abigail Lake, the Dibble Library was Mum’s second-most-consuming pet project. Mrs. Dibble, a polio victim and fanatical collector of witch trial memorabilia, agreed to donate her collection to the historical society so long as it remained in her actual library, a miniature version of her larger stone house right down to the octagonal turret. The library had been moved from the Dibble Estate in Hulls Cove to the grounds of the West Salem Historical Society in 1981. A giant portrait of a younger Mrs. Dibble hung in the Dibble Library foyer, her thin form flanked by a pair of coal-black Scotties, her leg braces hidden beneath a skirt. In the reading nook hung a second portrait, of a red-haired girl leaning on a decorative musket. Mum liked to tell potential donors that the Dibble daughter, at twenty, had hung herself from the library’s chandelier while her parents were vacationing in Acapulco. Whether this was true or not, Mary never learned. But her mother claimed that the average donation to the library tripled after the donor had been told, in whispered tones, about the
Mary took the keys upstairs and unlocked the desk drawers, quickly surmising there were no books to be found, only sheets and sheets of disorganized paper. She diverted her disappointment through work, subdividing the drawer contents into five piles on the guest bed: PHOTOS , HISTORICAL SOCIETY , ABIGAIL LAKE , MISC . CORRESPONDENCE , MISC . JUNK . HISTORICAL SOCIETY became a jumble of press releases, meeting minutes, fund-raising pitches, unused letterhead. ABIGAIL LAKE included the sheaves of template responses Mum had received from governors and senators and local historians. We are sorry but at this juncture , they commenced, never ones to beat around the bush, those governors and senators and local historians. We sympathize with your situation, however . Many times Mary had found herself fascinated, but also perplexed, by Mum’s obsession with clearing the name of poor long-dead Abigail Lake. For whose sake is this energy being expended, she had often wondered. For whose sake is this forgiveness being so single-mindedly sought.
MISC . CORRESPONDENCE was limited to European cathedral postcards from Maxie or Susan. MISC . JUNK included grocery receipts, a few dry cleaning tickets, fabric swatches and paint chips left over from the redecorating project Mum embarked upon after her daughters had left for college. PHOTOS became a repetitive pile of women in straw hats (summer) or loden coats (fall) stacked in neat unsmiling rows. Mum’s left-leaning cursive identified the back of each photo. “Annual Beekman Plaza Luncheon,” “West Salem Cemetery Restoration Committee,” “Dibble Library Fund-raiser.” After Abigail Lake, the Dibble Library was Mum’s second-most-consuming pet project. Mrs. Dibble, a polio victim and fanatical collector of witch trial memorabilia, agreed to donate her collection to the historical society so long as it remained in her actual library, a miniature version of her larger stone house right down to the octagonal turret. The library had been moved from the Dibble Estate in Hulls Cove to the grounds of the West Salem Historical Society in 1981. A giant portrait of a younger Mrs. Dibble hung in the Dibble Library foyer, her thin form flanked by a pair of coal-black Scotties, her leg braces hidden beneath a skirt. In the reading nook hung a second portrait, of a red-haired girl leaning on a decorative musket. Mum liked to tell potential donors that the Dibble daughter, at twenty, had hung herself from the library’s chandelier while her parents were vacationing in Acapulco. Whether this was true or not, Mary never learned. But her mother claimed that the average donation to the library tripled after the donor had been told, in whispered tones, about the
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