Dad, she calls the other parent, less awkwardly.
Trained from an early age, encouraged by the (smiling) (step)parents, Clare has not felt comfortable with such generic terms of endearment.
Nor has she called any lover by a term of endearment. Darling, honey. Dear one.
“You don’t have a copy in your possession? That’s odd.”
The Seidel family’s legal documents are kept in Clare’s father’s filing cabinet in his home office, in scrupulously marked folders. Clare has inherited from the (step)father a certain fanaticism about neatness, clarity, boundaries. When in doubt, file. File away.
Clare feels a pang of shame. She has never fully moved out of her parents’ house and brought her personal documents with her—never having acquired a home of her own, in her unsettled life.
A vagabond life of the mind. An undefined life, like a Polaroid print that has only partially filled in.
“Thank you so much, Mom! I need it for—medical insurance . . .”
Not an obvious lie, Clare thinks. Hannah will never suspect anything like the truth: that Clare will be presenting the birth certificate to a probate court in Cardiff, Maine.
Through a windowpane she has been observing an enormous spider’s web just outside. A masterpiece of intricately connected threads of varying lengths, damp with moisture, quivering and awaiting insect prey. At the center is a fat-bellied black spider, motionless now, as if exhausted by spinning out its guts in such splendor.
At last the conversation ends. Hannah will say goodbye abruptly, with a sighed Well!—love you, and Clare will respond, as if prodded in the chest with a forefinger, Love you.
Never do mother and daughter quite bring themselves to say I love you.
Exhausted, Clare hangs up the phone. Badly needing another drink.
The trouble with being adopted is that you are always provisional. No matter your age, you are at risk of being sent back.
Next, Clare prepares a more challenging task: to telephone the Cardiff “relatives” whose number Fischer has provided.
Elspeth, Morag—surviving sisters of Maude Donegal, the phantasmal grandmother. Fischer described them as “younger sisters,” but surely they must be elderly, in their eighties at least.
For this, another half glass of wine is required.
Never before the other day has Clare known of blood relatives. And now she has great-aunts.
On the first ring, Clare’s call is answered.
As if the vigilant great-aunt has been breathlessly awaiting the call. Clare thinks—My new life!
The (female) speaker’s name is—Elspeth? At first Clare can barely understand her: the woman speaks with a pronounced Maine accent and punctuates her words with curious little syllables—um, eh? She is formal in her manner and (seemingly) hard of hearing but surprisingly friendly, Clare thinks, for a Maine native; very curious about Clare, but not seeming to hear what Clare tells her, for she asks Clare when she is coming to Cardiff more than once and breaks off the conversation abruptly, as if someone has called to her. “Well, then! That’s settled. You will stay with us, Cla-re. As long as you wish.”
“You will see, dear—there is plenty of room in your grandmother Donegal’s beautiful old house.”
5.
Three days later, Clare has arrived in Cardiff, Maine.
Ringing the doorbell of a shabbily dignified old cobblestone house at 59 Acton Avenue, which is very sparely lit inside.
Like a storybook house, it is. An artifact of the Victorian era, on a street of similarly large, stolid, graceless private homes set back from the street amid tall hemlocks and overgrown privet hedges.
The Donegals must be well-to-do, Clare thinks. At least they’d been well-to-do in the past.
Cardiff, Maine, is a decaying nineteenth-century mill town, not yet fully converted to the tourist trade like other towns in this part of Maine. It is still picturesque along the waterfront, as decay often is, with long-shuttered mills and factories, a scattering of discount outlets and “antique” stores, boutiques selling arts and crafts.
Acton Avenue is clearly one of the prestigious streets in Cardiff, or once was, though near the city center houses like the Donegal residence have been appropriated for commercial purposes. Divided into apartments, professional offices. A dignified old-rose brick mansion has been converted to the Ashford County Historical Museum; another sprawling Victorian bears the humbling sign CARDIFF COUNTY FAMILY PLANNING & SERVICES.
Clare rings the doorbell again. Recalling how, on Halloween evening in St. Paul, as a young child, excited, apprehensive, she and other masked and costumed children had dared to ring doorbells at houses like this one while their parents waited in vehicles parked at the curb; how relieved they were when no one answered. Though there are lights inside the house, she wonders if anyone is home. Evergreen boughs crowd against the sides of the house, obscuring the downstairs windows. On the slate roof are patches of moss, and miniature trees have taken root in congested rain gutters. Clare smells leaf mold, moist dark earth, a subtle odor of organic rot beneath the veranda upon which she is standing. Yet, as gentle as an intimate caress comes the sudden thought. Is this home? Am I in the right place now?
To be orphaned is to be never in the right place. Though you would not wish to acknowledge it.
Clare’s heart is beating rapidly in anticipation. She should know better, she tells herself: she is no longer a naïve child, practiced in batting down her hopes as you might bat down an overaffectionate dog.
No! This is certainly not your home.
Four hundred twenty miles from Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, to Cardiff, Maine. Approximately six hours by interstate, too long to drive in a single day yet too short to break into two driving days. If Clare had a companion . . .
Clare doesn’t have a companion. Wisest to break the drive into two days, as she has done, and drive with caution. Blessed with an inheritance, the first in her life, Clare made herself into one of those infuriating drivers who hugs the right lane of the interstate, whose vehicle others pass in an unending succession.
Since the call from Lucius Fischer she has been thinking obsessively—grandmother, will. Bequest. And now she is here.
Inside the cobblestone house, voices. Inset in the stolid oak door is a round oriel window through which Clare can see only a muted flash as a light is switched on inside. With a flourish the heavy oak door is opened, and two elderly, oddly dressed women greet Clare as effusively as excited parrots.
“Here you are! Oh, you look like—”
“—like him. Your daddy—”
“—our Conor—”
“Ohh—she does!”
Tremulous voices. Eyes shimmering with tears. The taller of the women presses her hand against her flat bosom, panting.