houses along Wallamee’s Main Street, big immaculate Victorians with tower rooms and cupolas and porches as big as my mother’s entire house. In the daylight you could see how intricately painted they were, with different colors for every part of the window frames. One was pale blue with indigo and gray and violet trim. That was my favorite. They all had big front windows with lots of panes and lace curtains. You couldn’t see much of the insides, and I had never been in one. I imagined bright light and glass bowls full of flowers. When I was younger I had wanted to live in one of these houses more than anything. I’d forgotten that feeling until now. It seemed like you could live a certain kind of life in one of these lovely, solid houses—a respectable life. I used to wish my mother would marry a man who owned one. Or, if that didn’t work, perhaps I would. I didn’t expect that neither of us would marry and that I’d end up living a couple of blocks from where my mother did, in the very first house in Train Line we found.
“It’s beautiful,” I said. She nodded, staring out the window as we passed it. I used to wonder if she, too, wanted the kind of life that would allow her a Victorian house, a yard, beautiful curtains. Now I wondered again, missing those lost lives.
I stopped at a red light. A large crowd of well-dressed people crossed the street in front of us, having just left the restaurant on the corner. They were laughing, obviously having a barrel of fun. “You know what?” my mother asked me, watching the people going by. “I have this astonishing feeling. I don’t know if it’s Wilson or not, but there’s something special about this spirit, Naomi. It’s going to change our lives.”
My mother liked to say she’d been born a medium. That might be the only way to explain it. Certainly, there was nothing about her particular upbringing that encouraged spiritualism. Her name was Patsy then, and I can’t help but think of her as a different person from Galina, Mother Galina, who came later. Her father owned an office supply shop and her mother, who was to die, lost and confused, so many years later, was always a school librarian. She had two older brothers, Geoffrey and Wilson, and a pet pack rat named Walt Junior, after her father. They weren’t poor but nobody had much money then. In pictures, she is long-limbed and glowering, her wrists poking from sleeves, her socks down around her ankles. She looks a bit like I did, but more boyish, more fierce.
When she was twelve, Wilson ran away. This was, until the death of her mother, the big tragedy of her life. Wilson was her favorite brother, her favorite person in the world. He worked as a delivery boy around town and would sometimes bring my mother along with him, and they’d turn on the radio in his old Ford and they’d sing along with it. Wilson knew every word to every song. He taught my mother the most shocking dirty words he knew. He had a million girlfriends.
But one day after supper he announced that he was leaving. It was 1946 and Wilson was seventeen; he’d missed being in the war by just a few months, and it wrecked him. He’d decided to Go North and Experience Life. He was going to hop a freight, he said. Their father stood up to try and stop him, to grab and shake him or bar the door, but it was too late. Wilson vanished into the night. And that was the very last anyone had ever seen of him.
People vanish. My mother knew this; she knew that people died and moved away, but never really understood it before then. She’d never really thought of it as a permanent state, as something irreversible. She walked around thinking that any minute there’d be Wilson, grinning and singing and bearing presents. But it never was. For three years she walked around thinking he was there, just around the corner, or watching from a balcony, or trundling by on a streetcar. It made her feel better to imagine him that way, lurking just out of
“It’s beautiful,” I said. She nodded, staring out the window as we passed it. I used to wonder if she, too, wanted the kind of life that would allow her a Victorian house, a yard, beautiful curtains. Now I wondered again, missing those lost lives.
I stopped at a red light. A large crowd of well-dressed people crossed the street in front of us, having just left the restaurant on the corner. They were laughing, obviously having a barrel of fun. “You know what?” my mother asked me, watching the people going by. “I have this astonishing feeling. I don’t know if it’s Wilson or not, but there’s something special about this spirit, Naomi. It’s going to change our lives.”
My mother liked to say she’d been born a medium. That might be the only way to explain it. Certainly, there was nothing about her particular upbringing that encouraged spiritualism. Her name was Patsy then, and I can’t help but think of her as a different person from Galina, Mother Galina, who came later. Her father owned an office supply shop and her mother, who was to die, lost and confused, so many years later, was always a school librarian. She had two older brothers, Geoffrey and Wilson, and a pet pack rat named Walt Junior, after her father. They weren’t poor but nobody had much money then. In pictures, she is long-limbed and glowering, her wrists poking from sleeves, her socks down around her ankles. She looks a bit like I did, but more boyish, more fierce.
When she was twelve, Wilson ran away. This was, until the death of her mother, the big tragedy of her life. Wilson was her favorite brother, her favorite person in the world. He worked as a delivery boy around town and would sometimes bring my mother along with him, and they’d turn on the radio in his old Ford and they’d sing along with it. Wilson knew every word to every song. He taught my mother the most shocking dirty words he knew. He had a million girlfriends.
But one day after supper he announced that he was leaving. It was 1946 and Wilson was seventeen; he’d missed being in the war by just a few months, and it wrecked him. He’d decided to Go North and Experience Life. He was going to hop a freight, he said. Their father stood up to try and stop him, to grab and shake him or bar the door, but it was too late. Wilson vanished into the night. And that was the very last anyone had ever seen of him.
People vanish. My mother knew this; she knew that people died and moved away, but never really understood it before then. She’d never really thought of it as a permanent state, as something irreversible. She walked around thinking that any minute there’d be Wilson, grinning and singing and bearing presents. But it never was. For three years she walked around thinking he was there, just around the corner, or watching from a balcony, or trundling by on a streetcar. It made her feel better to imagine him that way, lurking just out of
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