The Great Alone

Leni took a deep breath and opened the lid. Inside, she saw a tangle of things. A cheap silver charm bracelet, a set of keys on a ring that read Keep On Truckin’, a pink scallop shell, a beaded suede coin purse, a set of playing cards, a Native tusk carving of an Eskimo holding a spear.

She picked up the items one by one, trying to put them in the context of what she knew of her mother’s life. The charm bracelet looked like the gift one girl would give another in high school and reminded Leni of all the missing pieces in her mother’s life. Questions Leni had failed to ask; stories Mama hadn’t had time to share. All of it lost now. The keys Leni recognized—they were to the house they’d rented on the cul-de-sac outside Seattle all those years ago. The scallop shell showed her mother’s love for beachcombing, and the suede purse probably came from one of the reservation gift shops.

There was a SALTY DAWG shot glass. A piece of driftwood, into which had been carved Cora and Ernt, 1973. Three white agates. A photograph of her parents’ wedding day, taken at the courthouse. In it, Mama was smiling brightly, wearing a tea-length white dress with a bell-shaped skirt and holding a single white rose in white-gloved hands; Dad was holding her close, his smile a little stiff, dressed in a black suit and narrow tie. They looked like a couple of kids playing dress-up.

The next photograph was of the VW bus with their boxes and suitcases lashed on top. The door was open and you could see all of their junk piled inside. It had been taken only a few days before they headed north.

The three of them stood beside the bus. Mama was wearing elephant-bell jeans and a midriff-baring top. Her blond hair had been twined into pigtails and a beaded headband encircled her head. Dad wore pale blue polyester pants and a matching shirt with oversized collar points. Leni was in front of her parents, wearing a red dress with a white Peter Pan collar and Keds. Each of her parents had a hand on one of her shoulders.

She was smiling broadly. Happily.

The photograph turned blurry, danced in Leni’s unsteady hand.

Something red and blue and gold captured Leni’s attention. She put down the picture, wiped her eyes.

A military medal; a red-white-and-blue ribbon with a bronze star affixed to its pointed end. She turned the star over, saw the inscription on the back: Heroic or meritorious achievement. Ernt A. Allbright. Beneath it lay a folded-up newspaper article with the headline “Seattle POW Released” and a picture of her dad. He looked like a cadaver, his eyes staring dully ahead. There was almost no similarity to the man in the wedding photo.

I wish you remembered him from before … How often had her mother said that over the years?

She pressed the picture and the medal to her chest, as if she could imprint them onto her soul. These were the memories Leni wanted to keep: their love, his heroism, the image of them laughing, the idea of her mother beachcombing.

There were two things left in the box. An envelope and a folded piece of notebook paper.

Leni set the medal and photograph aside and picked up the piece of paper, unfolding it slowly. She saw Mama’s fine, private-schoolgirl script.

To my beautiful baby girl,

It’s time to undo what I did. You live under a false name because I killed a man. Me.

You may not see it yet, but you have a home and home means something. You have a chance for a different life. You can give your son all that I couldn’t give you, but it takes courage. And courage is something you have. All you have to do is go back to Alaska and give the police my confession letter. Tell them I’m a murderer and let the crime finally end as it should have, with you excused from its taint. They’ll close the case and you’ll be free. Take your name and your life back.

Go home. Scatter my ashes on our beach.

I’ll be watching out for you. Always.

You have a child, so you know. You are my heart, baby girl. You are everything I did right. And I want you to know I would do it all again, every wonderful terrible second of it. I would do years and years of it again for one minute with you.

Inside the envelope, she found two one-way tickets to Alaska.

* * *

ALL UP AND DOWN the well-manicured street of Queen Anne Hill, life clattered along on this last Saturday in July. Her grandparents’ neighbors were gathered around Weber barbecues grilling store-bought meat, and making designer margaritas in blenders, their kids playing on swing sets that cost as much as a used car. Had any of them noticed the drawn shades in the Golliher house? Could they somehow sense grief emanating through stone and glass? This sorrow couldn’t be talked about in public. How could they express grief for the loss of a woman—Evelyn Grant—who had never really existed?

Leni climbed out her bedroom window and sat on the roof, the wooden shakes worn smooth by years of people sitting in this spot. Here more than anywhere else, she felt Mama beside her. Sometimes the feeling was so strong Leni thought she heard her Mama breathing, but it was just the breeze, whispering through the maple leaves on the tree out front.

“I used to catch your mother out here smoking cigarettes when she was thirteen years old,” Grandma said quietly. “She thought a closed window and a breath mint could fool me.”

Leni couldn’t help smiling. Those few words were like an incantation that brought Mama back for a beautiful, exquisite second. A flame of blond hair, a laugh in the wind. Leni glanced behind her, saw her grandmother standing at the upstairs bedroom’s open window. A cool evening breeze plucked at her black blouse, ruffled the trim at her throat. Leni had a fleeting, surprising thought that her grandmother would wear black for the rest of her life; maybe she would put on a green dress and regret and loss would eke from her pores and change the fabric to black.

“May I join you?”

“I’ll come in.” Leni started to back up.

Grandma angled through the open window, her hair crunching on the frame, getting dented. “I know you think that I’m Jurassic, but I can climb out onto a ledge. Jack LaLanne was sixty when he swam from Alcatraz to San Francisco.”

Leni scooted sideways.

Grandmother climbed through the opening and sat down, keeping her straight back flush against the house.