John Irving - Until I Find You

Jack suggested to Caroline that, when Heather was five, her memory of anything was unreliable. Miss Wurtz countered this argument; although she was only five at the time, his sister’s most enduring memory of her mother had prevailed. Barbara Steiner had hated how the Scots drove on the wrong side of the road. She cited the numerous deaths of foreign tourists in Edinburgh every summer. (They stepped off the curb, looking left instead of right.)

“If the cancer doesn’t come back and kill me,” Barbara used to say to William, and to their five-year-old daughter, “I swear I shall be struck down by a car going the wrong way on the street.” She was.

She stepped off the curb, where it was written—as plain as day—LOOK RIGHT. She looked left instead, although she’d lived in Edinburgh for almost six years, and a taxi killed her.

“I believe Heather said it was in the vicinity of Charlotte Square,” Miss Wurtz informed Jack. “A children’s book author was reading at some sort of writers’ festival. Her mother had taken Heather to the reading, which was in a tent. When they were leaving, and about to cross the street, Heather reached for her mother’s hand. Heather looked the right way and saw the taxi coming; her mother looked the wrong way and stepped off the curb. The taxi killed Barbara instantly. Heather remembers that her fingers only slightly grazed her mother’s hand.”

Whether Jack’s sister had freely divulged these painful details to Miss Wurtz, or whether Caroline had coaxed the details out of her, Jack didn’t know. He knew only that The Wurtz was a tireless believer in dramatizing important information—hence the detail that Barbara Steiner’s wig flew off on impact was conveyed to Jack, and the fact that Heather and her mom (at her mother’s insistence) spoke only German when they were alone together.

That Jack’s five-year-old sister was crying for her dead mother in German confused the witnesses to the accident. (There were many parents with children among the witnesses; they’d also attended the reading by the children’s book author at the writers’ festival.) The police reconstructed the accident incorrectly: a German tourist had been struck down by a car in the unexpected lane; the astonishingly bald woman was carrying no identification, and her five-year-old daughter, who was hysterical, spoke only German.

Actually, Barbara had been carrying a purse. It must have been flung far away from her when the taxi hit her—lost forever, like the wig. Heather, when she calmed down, told a policeman, in English, that she wanted to go “home”; she took the cop by the hand and showed him the way. Heather had walked everywhere in Edinburgh with her mother and father; no one in the family (including Heather, when she grew up) drove a car.

Thus William Burns became a single parent to a five-year-old girl. “Knowing William,” Miss Wurtz said, “he would have held himself accountable for the death of the poor child’s mother, too.”

“Did Heather say that?” Jack asked.

“Of course she didn’t say it, Jack! But I know William. He forgave your mother for everything, but he never forgave himself.”

“And now he’s crazy?” Jack asked.

“You should talk to your sister, Jack. You should meet Heather before it’s too late.”

But did Heather want to meet him? he inquired of The Wurtz. (Jack wondered if he should send his sister a check first.)

“You have to call her and talk to her yourself,” Miss Wurtz said. “I’m sure you have some things in common.”

“Name one, Caroline.”

“Your mothers weren’t your favorite people,” Miss Wurtz said.

“I loved my mom when I was a little boy,” Jack pointed out.

“Goodness, Jack, I’m sure your sister loved her mom when she was a little girl. But, with hindsight, Heather has at least considered what a difficult woman her mother could be. Doesn’t that sound familiar?”

It was The Wurtz’s view that Jack’s father had not abandoned him; on the contrary, William had provided for Jack. William’s deal with Alice at least made her responsible for doing all the outwardly correct things. Jack had gone to good schools, he’d worn clean clothes, he wasn’t beaten or abused—that is, not to Alice’s knowledge.

It was also Miss Wurtz’s view—and Caroline was no fan of Jack’s mother—that Alice had, to some degree, shielded Jack from what The Wurtz called the “adult choices” in Alice’s own dark life. (Notwithstanding Leslie Oastler and some of Alice’s friends in the tattoo world.)

“You must tell me how William is when you find him,” Miss Wurtz said. “Meanwhile, be thankful you have a sister.”

“I have a sister,” Jack repeated.

That was the message he would leave on the answering machine in Dr. García’s office, because it was too early in the morning to make an appointment to see her. Merely discovering that he had a sister was in the category of what Dr. García called “incomplete information”—by which she meant that Jack’s news didn’t merit calling her at home.

Jack called his sister, Heather Burns, instead. It was only 7:00 A.M. in Santa Monica—10:00 A.M. in Toronto, where Miss Wurtz had been calling from. But it was already midafternoon in Edinburgh. There was music playing when Heather answered the phone—voices and an organ, maybe trumpets.

“Give me a moment,” his sister said, turning down the volume on the CD player.

“It’s Jack Burns, your brother,” he told her.

“It’s Heather—your half sister, actually,” she said. “But I feel I know you. It was almost as if I grew up with you. ‘If your brother knew you, he would love you,’ Daddy said every night, when he put me to bed. And there was always this refrain: ‘I have a son!’ he would shout. ‘I have a son and a daughter!’ Daddy would say. It could be tiresome, but I got the point.”

“I wish I’d grown up with you,” Jack told her.

“You don’t know that yet,” she said. Her voice was crisp and even, with less of a Scottish accent than he’d expected. (There was some Irish in her accent, Jack thought—the effect of those years in Belfast, perhaps, or the Irish boyfriend.) Above all, she sounded very practical.

“I want to meet you,” he told her.

“You don’t know that, either, Jack Burns,” Heather said. “I’m not comfortable asking you for money, but I need it. Our father needs it, I should say—not that he knows he needs it.”

“He took care of me; I’ll take care of him,” Jack told her.

“Don’t act with me, Mr. Movie Star,” Heather said. “Say only what you mean.”

“I mean it,” he told her.

“Then you better come meet me. Let’s see how that goes,” she said.

“I should have been there, when you had your first date,” Jack told his sister. “I could have warned you about the guy.”

“Don’t go there, as Billy Rainbow would say,” Heather said. “I could have warned you about some of your dates, too.”

“No doubt about it,” he told her. It was another Billy Rainbow line. (That character never said anything that hadn’t been said a million times before, but Billy said the most mundane things sincerely.)

“You sound just like him,” Heather said. “Like Billy Rainbow, I mean.”

“But I’m not like him—I’m really someone else,” Jack said, hoping it was true. His sister made no response. Jack could hear the music playing; it sounded like a hymn. “I have a sister,” he said. (It seemed to go with the hymn.)

“Yes, you do, Jack Burns. You have a father, too. But I’ll tell you how it is,” his sister said. “You have to go through me to get to him. Not for all your money, Mr. Movie Star, do you see him without seeing me first—not for all the money in the world!”