Michelle Hoover - Bottomland

“Norma?” I hear.

A hand on my forehead. The hand is cold and smells of salt. “Is it Greta?”

“Are you all right?” Charlotte asks. “Can you hear me? I’m going to call the doctor.”

“The doctor now?”

But Charlotte is on the phone again. “Yes, come at once. She seems very confused. Must you keep asking your questions?”

Greta is in England, I remember. The daughter doesn’t feel the distance, but the mother always does.

“Look,” Charlotte says. I open my eyes. Charlotte holds a yellow square of paper with numbers written in small sharp lines.

“Nan was like a mother to me,” I say. “I never should have left.”

“Norma?” But Charlotte’s voice is distant now. I try to raise my head to hear her better.

“You stay still,” Charlotte says. “They’re coming. Can you wait?”

The bed lifts. A hand sweeps my face. Charlotte and her worries, but it’ll be all right. They’re coming. I’m not so far from home as I thought. So easy to have a number, to drop a line. So easy for them to be here at the door, less than a day’s travel now, or so I’ve heard. Nan and her daughter, Renie. Father with his cane. Lee walking across the hill with his limp, but maybe he doesn’t limp so badly now. Ray and Patricia, arm in arm. Agnes with her trio of children, taller than she ever was. And Esther, she’s running ahead of them. She’s already in the alley. She’s knocking on the door. She knows just where to find me. We’re here for a room , she says. Of course. We just have to make the bed. Never mind your papers. How far have you come?

August 18, 1987

Dear niece,

I have made a discovery. Do you remember the story I once told you about your two great-aunts who disappeared? I believe the youngest may be alive.

Your Uncle Lee has found a letter intended for him in our late Aunt Esther’s belongings, though we don’t know why she would have hidden it. The letter is undated but looks very old. It was written by one Mrs. Mary Keyes of Chicago. Lee would read me only part of the letter, but it was clear that Mrs. Keyes was trying to make amends: “Lord knows how heavily this has sat in my heart and for how long. Now that I’m ill, I’ll never be able to forgive myself if I don’t write. This is the truth: Your sisters were indeed living at this address when you came for your visit some years ago, and Myrle is living here still. She goes by the name Norma Byrne.”

The letter troubled Lee, more than he seemed willing to explain. Still he thought it might prove that Aunt Myrle, your grandmother’s last remaining sister, hadn’t died, as was the family’s belief. I wrote down the name “Norma Byrne” and called the residence. The woman who answered hung up on me twice only to listen the third time. She told me she was Norma’s companion. I identified myself as Myrle’s great-niece, her sister Nan’s only daughter, and said I was interested in how my aunt fared. The woman sounded elderly and quite distracted. She said Norma was very ill, but she would give her the information at a later time. If she found what I told her to be true, Norma would call back. Then the woman hung up.

Lee said he couldn’t understand it. He was speaking of Esther’s hiding the letter, of course. When it came to Myrle, Lee said, Esther was sensitive. He thought it nearly killed her when Myrle had drowned. She only mentioned it once, the way Tom Elliot had “done Myrle such a wrong.” Lee said Esther never spoke of it again. I doubted I needed to tell him that the letter meant Esther had lied. Your uncle nursed Esther to the end in the old family house, though she’d grown irritable. When I last visited, she gripped my hand in the parlor where we sat near the fire and whispered something I never will forget. “I let her do what she wanted.” That’s what she said. When she repeated it, Lee hushed her. Back then, I thought it was Myrle and Tom she meant. Now I’m not so sure. I worry for Lee alone out there without his sister. Since the letter was found, his health has turned, and he won’t speak Esther’s name, even when asked. I don’t know what bothers him more, that Myrle might be living or that Esther hid the truth from him. Strangely enough, I think for him the latter might be worse. Aunt Pat said she’d send over one of Agnes’ girls to look in on him and see to it he has food in his stomach. I’ll check on him myself.

As for me, when I was young, I remember a woman stopping by the farm. I never thought much of it. But after she left, your uncle took to carrying around a white stone. Mother said she’d never seen him so pleased, not since the day his sister Esther had come home. He didn’t give his reasons, Mother said, almost as if he didn’t understand it himself. Still Mother seemed pleased when hearing of the woman’s visit as well, though she never said why.

It has been two weeks now and I’m still waiting for Myrle to call. If she doesn’t soon, I will call her again. I’ll keep you updated.

Much Love,

Aunt Renie

Thanks for the support and encouragement of my readers Steven Beeber, Karen Halil, Laura Harrison, Daphne Kalotay, Linda Schlossberg, Dawn Tripp, and Lara Wilson. Thanks also to my longtime writing friends Patti Horvath, Jane Rosenberg Laforge, Kate Southwood, Elisabeth Fairfield Stokes, and Michelle Valois, as well as my writing cohorts Sari Boren, Steven Brykman, Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich, and Ilan Mochari.

Thanks to the GrubStreet staff and friends for doing what you do and being who you are, especially Lisa Borders, Eve Bridburg, and Chris Castellani, for helping build the Novel Incubator Program, which made me a better teacher and writer. Thanks to all our Incubees for your energy and talent. You inspire me every day.

Thanks to Brandeis University for allowing me to teach and write “in residence.” Thanks especially to Steve McCauley for shepherding me through the process.

Thanks to my editor, Corinna Barsan, for her continued zeal this second time around and her exceedingly smart pencil, as well as to the entire Grove Atlantic staff. Thanks to my agent Esmond Harmsworth and the Zachary, Shuster, Harmsworth agency team, notably Janet Silver and Lane Zachary.

Thanks especially to my family: my mother, Lorene Hoover, for inspiration and editing; my sister, Lisa Carstens, and Mike, Hannah, and Cayla; and my brother, David Hoover.

Thanks always to Randy Bailey for his love, patience, and support, for putting up with this strange kind of life, and for giving me a second family.

Finally, thanks to my late cousin, Hazel Hoover, for her offhand remark that “you look just like one of your great-aunts,” and to my late Aunt Irene (Renie) Israel, who despite being ill, opened a family album in her lap and told me about the two sisters who “disappeared,” showing me the photograph that began the whole thing.