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A desiccated violet flattened in waxed paper made him first frown in perplexity and then smile, but without saying why, and he spent some time studying a typewritten list of what must have been New Year’s resolutions. “ ‘I will make myself count to ten before I speak to the children in anger,’ ” he read out. “ ‘I will remind myself daily that my mother is getting old and will not be with us forever.’ ” The folder of Abby’s poems, though, he laid aside without a glance, as if fearing he would find them too painful, and he didn’t so much as crack open any of her little black-and-red bound journals.
Some of the items were mystifying. A wrinkled, flattened Hershey’s-bar wrapper; a piece of tree bark in a tiny brown paper bag; a yellowing two-page newsletter from a nursing home in Catonsville. “ ‘Five Tasks for Dying,’ ” Stem read aloud from the newsletter.
“For dieting?”
“Dying.”
“Oh, what’s it say?”
“Nothing to do with a funeral service,” Stem said, passing it over. “Telling people you love them, telling them goodbye …”
“Just — please, God — don’t let her ask for a ‘celebration,’ ” Red said. “I don’t much feel like celebrating just now.” He let the newsletter drop unread onto the couch beside him. Stem didn’t seem to have heard him, though. He was studying a sheet of onionskin covered with blurred typewriting — a carbon copy, obviously; the one and only item in an unmarked manila envelope.
“Found it?” Red asked.
“No, just …”
Stem went on reading. Then he raised his head. His lips had gone white; he had a drawn, almost dehydrated look. “Here,” he said, and he handed the paper to Red.
“ ‘I, Abigail Whitshank,’ ” Red read out, “ ‘hereby agree that—’ ” He stopped. His eyes went to the bottom of the page. He cleared his throat and continued, “ ‘—hereby agree that Douglas Alan O’Brian will be raised like my own child, with all attendant rights and privileges. I promise that his mother will be granted full access to him whenever she desires, and that she may reclaim him entirely for her own as soon as her life circumstances permit. This agreement is contingent upon his mother’s promise that she will never, ever, for any reason, reveal her identity to her son unless and until she assumes permanent responsibility for him; nor will I reveal it myself.’ ” He cleared his throat again. He said, “ ‘Signed, Abigail Dalton Whitshank. Signed, Barbara Jane Autry.’ ”
“I don’t understand,” Stem said.
Red didn’t answer. He was staring down at the contract.
“Is that B.J. Autry?” Stem asked.
Red still didn’t speak.
“It is,” Stem said. “It’s got to be. Barbara Jane Eames, she started out, and then at some point she must have married someone named Autry. She was right there in front of us all along.”
“I guess she found your listing in the phone book,” Red said, looking up from the contract.
“Why didn’t you tell me?” Stem demanded. “You had an obligation to tell me! I don’t care what you promised!”
“I didn’t promise,” Red said. “I knew nothing about this.”
“You had to know.”
“I swear it: your mom never said word one.”
“You’re claiming she knew the truth all these years and kept it from her own husband?”
“Evidently,” Red said. He rubbed his forehead.
“That’s not possible,” Stem told him. “Why on earth would she do that?”
“Well, she … maybe she was worried I would make her give you up,” Red said. “I’d tell her she would have to hand you over to B. J. And she was right: I would have.”
Stem’s jaw dropped. He said, “You’d have handed me over.”
“Well, face it, Stem: this was a crazy arrangement.”
“But still,” Stem said.
“Still what? You were B. J.’s legal offspring.”
“I guess it’s a good thing she’s not around anymore, then,” Stem said bitterly. “She died, right?”
“Yes, I seem to remember she did,” Red said.
“You ‘seem to remember,’ ” Stem said, as if it were an accusation.
“Stem, I swear to God I had no knowledge of any of this. I barely knew the woman! I can’t even figure how your mom could get a lawyer to go along with it.”
“She didn’t get a lawyer. Look at the language. Oh, she tried to sound legal—‘attendant rights and privileges,’ ‘unless and until’—but what lawyer writes ‘never, ever’? What official document is a single paragraph long? She cooked it up herself, she and B. J. between them. They didn’t even have it notarized!”
“I have to say,” Red said, looking down at the contract again, “I’m a little bit … a
Stem gave a humorless snort.
“Sometimes your mother could be … I mean, Abby could be …” Red trailed off.
“Look,” Stem said. “Just promise me this. Promise you won’t tell people.”
“What, not tell anyone? Not even De
“No one. Promise you’ll keep it quiet.”
“How come?” Red asked him.
“I just want you to.”
“But you’re grown now. It couldn’t change anything.”
“I mean this: I need you to forget you ever saw it.”
“Well,” Red said. And he leaned forward and handed it over.
Stem folded the contract and put it in his shirt pocket.
It emerged that not even Red’s bottom desk drawer had provided quite enough space for Abby’s papers. Where her funeral directive showed up, finally, was the cupboard beneath the window seat, interleaved with programs from other people’s funerals — her parents’ and her brother’s and a “ceremony of remembrance” for someone named Shawanda Simms whom none of the rest of the family had heard of. And no, she did not request “Good Vibrations,” or “Amazing Grace,” either, for that matter. She wanted “Sheep May Safely Graze” and “Brother James’s Air,” both to be sung by only the choir, thank goodness; and then the congregation should join in on “Shall We Gather at the River?” Friends and/or family could give testimonials, supposing they cared to (this wording struck her daughters as pathetically tentative), and Reverend Stock could say something brief and — if it wasn’t asking too much—“not too heavy on the religion.”
The mention of Reverend Stock threw everyone into a tizzy. First, they couldn’t even think who he was. Then Jea
By now, everybody in the family was unraveling around the edges. The three little boys kept waking at night and crossing the hall to climb into bed with Stem and Nora. Stem forgot to cancel an appointment with a Guilford woman who was thinking of adding a major extension to her house. Jea