The Memory Box (4 page)

The Information Desk puts me in touch with the Alumni Office.

A moment later a voice says, “Alumni Office, can I help you?”

CHAPTER THREE

Saturday, September 23, 2006 1:28 p.m.

“
O
h, hi, great,” I say to the Alumni Office lady. “This is, uh, Mary Jean uh, Crowe, class of ’94.” I clear my throat. “I’m, I have an unusual request, or question, really. Well, maybe it’s not unusual, come to think of it, I bet a lot of people call with this kind of question. Anyway, um, I just happened to bump into a Barton alum on vacation in Bermuda, and well, I hadn’t seen this person in, oh God, too long—you know how
that
is—we got to talking about the old days and what’s happened to everyone, and, well, she heard that a roommate of ours died several years ago. Well, I just couldn’t believe it—I mean, that would have made her twenty-eight. Anyway, I was hoping you could tell me if it’s true or not.”

There’s a period of uncomfortable silence. I actually think maybe she’s put the phone down and gone to the bathroom. Did I go on for too long? “Hello?”

Then her voice cuts back in, “You could go online and find out on Barton’s website. Did you try that? Go online and type in your student ID number on the home page and look it up that way. Of course, it would only list a death if we received the information from someone. So if the name is not there, it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s not, well, dead. Not to be a downer, but I guess you’re only going to know for sure if her name is there. Do you know any of her family members? Could you call one of them?”

“Uh, no. I wish I did.” I pace my bedroom. Smarty watches me from the top of the bed.

“Well, you could try the website.”

“Yes, but I don’t have a Barton ID number because I went to the pharmacy school. I don’t think those IDs work, even though it’s technically part of the same school. We were roommates off-campus. I was really hoping you could help me. I mean if it’s in the alumni directory online, it’s in the public domain, right? It’s not restricted information, certainly, right? Is it possible for you to look it up for me? Please?”

I hear her breathing this time so I know she’s still there. Someone else asks her something, and she covers the phone. There’s distorted mumbling in the background.

“It’s just that it’s very busy around here with the semester just starting and everything,” she exhales dramatically. “What’s your friend’s name and year? I’ll see what I can do.” Another reluctant huff. “You’re going to have to wait a bit. I’ve got two other people on hold.”

“Oh, no problem! I can wait all day!” I sit on the edge of my bed, then swing my legs up and crisscross them, tucking my toes under my bottom. Waiting for her to return, my knees bob quietly against my comforter. I start to whistle, then quickly stop. Off-key whistling has driven people who love me to hang up. Three lifetimes later, her “You still there?” makes my heart flip.

“Yes, yes, I’m still here …” I sit up on my knees like a begging dog.

“Unfortunately, your friend Jane Dory Spencer has passed away. I’m really sorry to confirm that. It happened in 2000. Too young.” I could sense her shaking her head.

As the words leave her mouth and travel across the phone line, they grab me by the shoulders, dig deep into my skin, and thrust me back and forth, shaking me violently. They shake me to my core. My nerves vibrate en masse. I become light-headed. I sink back down, tuck my knees up to my chin, and wrap both arms tightly around them to keep myself together. The phone still rests on my shoulder, but is no longer pressed to my ear. I can’t discern anything she’s saying. “Wah wah-wah wah-wah”; she becomes Charlie Brown’s schoolteacher. I’m gonna get sick. My head spins. The phone slips from my shoulder and drops to the bed with a soft thud. Muffled sounds levitate from it. Acids in my stomach slosh against themselves. The swells grow wild until my stomach’s contents retch themselves out of me. When I slowly lift my limp head, all is still. A foul puddle remains on the fluffy white comforter. Smarty is about to stick his nose in it. I grab him away, and he drops to the floor.

I return the phone to its cradle while sounds of the alumni lady still seep from the tiny holes on the receiver. When you discover you’re losing your mind, you’re excused of such rudeness. JD’s dead. I don’t know how. I don’t know why.

I’m not sure
how long I’ve been upstairs or how long Tessa and Lilly’s chorus of “
Swim meet! Swim meet! Swim meet
!” has gone on. Their shrieky, preadolescent voices pierce my state of shock. My gait down the stairs is catatonic, and I seem unconnected to my own legs. Once I reach the kitchen, Tessa and Lilly leap on me, still chanting “Swim meet!” The weight of them collapses all three of us to the floor.

Lilly says, “Mom, it’s almost two—I don’t wanna be late. Are you driving us, or are we walking?”

“Mom, are you gonna
drive
us? Are you listening to me?” She springs up off the floor and reaches her hand out to help me. “Mom, did you forget about the meet?”

While I process what Lilly’s saying, I survey the kitchen. It looks like a war zone. Pom-pom and pipe-cleaner soldiers have been left for dead on the stove top, under chairs, and in the sink.

I look back at the girls. “Wow, you guys have all your swim stuff together?” My voice sounds strange, like it’s coming from another source. It’s like I’m on cruise control, because I don’t know how, exactly, I formed that thought and then sent it through my mouth. Even more surprising is that the girls are completely outfitted for their swim meet—bags packed and zipped.

“
Mom—
what’s up? You look like you just saw a zombie. Are you ready? We’re gonna be late!” Lilly is jumping straight up and down, pogo-stick style. She’s been waiting for this meet for over a month. The Farhaven Sea Lions are meeting their archrivals, the Locust Hill Barracudas.

“Are you okay, Mom? What’s in your hair?” Tessa approaches to take a closer look and I shrink backward without thinking, pressing myself up against the sink to get the most distance between us. I turn to put the water on and look out the window. One of the girls from the swim team, who lives up the street, is already walking to the Y with her older sister, Rachel, our babysitter.

“Oh, there’s Rachel. Honey, why don’t you and Lilly go ahead of me? Rachel is walking with Olivia. They’re right in front of the house.” I knock on the window hoping she’ll hear. “Go walk with them.” I open the kitchen window that faces the side of the house and yell, “Rachel! Lilly and Tessa are going to walk with you guys! One sec!” I turn back around, “I don’t want you guys to be late. Just stick together. And look both ways, left-right-left …” I pick up their gym bags and thrust them into their arms while walking toward the back of the kitchen as I try to coax the baby salmon upstream toward the door. “It’ll give me time to freshen up. Hurry, girls, go now. Rachel just stopped on the sidewalk.”

“Yeah, Mom. Fine.” Lilly gets caught in the current and moves out the door. “But don’t be late,” she insists. The screen door snaps shut before she finishes her stipulation.

Lilly calls to Tessa, who’s still in the kitchen. “I’m leaving, Tessie! I’m not going to be late.
I’m
not giving those Barracudas the psychological advantage!” Lilly thrusts her arm in the air as she says this, pointing onward as if leading a crusade.

Tessa walks over to me. “I’ll see ya at the pool, Mom. Right?” She squints. “You’re coming, aren’t you?” Tessa is fine-tuning her social antenna.

“Of course I’m coming. I just need five minutes. I won’t miss anything. Just the warm-ups. I’ll be there in five minutes.” I pull away from her and blow her a kiss that feels ridiculous even as I do it, but I don’t want her to smell the vomit on my hair.

She walks backward tentatively, giving me a strange look.

“Please don’t bite your cuticles, Tessa. I’ll be right there. Okay?”

She hesitates briefly to say, “Love you, Mom,” before closing the door behind her.

At the front of our house, I look out the dining room window to watch them walk down the driveway toward the sidewalk where Rachel is waiting. While I silently pray the girls will be alert at the intersections, a non sequitur interrupts my thoughts, causing me to run to the den—my feet taking over for my brain.

I sit back down at the computer, and with
Caroline Spencer
typed into the Google search box, I press enter, and the hits ripple before my eyes. I scan them to find my sister’s obituary again. I click on it.

She is survived by her mother and father, Elaine and Wally Spencer, sister, Caroline Grace Spencer, and by 2-year-old daughter, Lilliana.

A funeral mass will be offered on Tuesday, April 25, at Our Lady of Lourdes Church. Burial will take place at St. Gertrude Cemetery in New Peak. The Dooley Funeral Home at 332 North Avenue in New Peak is in charge of the arrangements. Memorial donations may be made to the Lilliana Spencer Scholarship Fund, PO Box 721, Lanstonville, Pennsylvania.

“
Daughter?!
” bursts out of me in a delayed reaction. My voice bounces off the walls.

My sister didn’t have a daughter. I stop to think hard, but then my entire body involuntarily shudders when I realize my lack of credibility on the subject of my sister’s—hell—my
own
life. My mind gallops through heavy mud. She was married? Who was her husband? It’s like I’m squeezing my pitiful memory through cheesecloth, trying to separate the salient from the crap. How could I not know she had a
daughter
, and why would she name her
Lilliana
, when I have a daughter named Lilly? That’s nuts. Why would she do that?

I know why she’d do that. For the same reason we always copied each other. We wanted to be identical. We prided ourselves on being the same, not different. We knew how lucky we were to have each other. All twins feel that way. Perhaps we should have drawn the line before giving our daughters practically the same name.

Where is this niece of mine now, now that my sister is gone? Why don’t I have any contact with her?

My relationship with JD is—
was—
the most important relationship in my life. Just as I think those thoughts, my conscience twitches. How would Andy feel hearing that? How can a sibling relationship be more important than a spouse’s? I feel suddenly ashamed. Should I be? I don’t know. It’s a twin thing. We had
unspoken
understanding. I don’t think that happens in relationships with men. All women want their men to know what they’re thinking. They think it’s a sign of true connectedness; a phenomenon I’m convinced females invented. It only exists in romantic comedies. In real life, unless you tell your husband exactly what’s on your mind, you’ll be waiting a very long time. I’ve learned the hard way. After which Andy will inevitably say, “Why didn’t you just tell me?”

I need to find JD’s daughter.

Which means I need to find JD’s husband.

My brain throbs when I strain to recall who JD was dating back then. This is obviously a ludicrous task since twenty-four hours ago I didn’t know my sister was dead or that she had a daughter. Now I’m supposed to remember who she was sleeping with back in the ’90s?

JD had a baby in ’98, the same year Tessa and Lilly were born.

It doesn’t make sense. None of this makes sense.

Finding JD’s husband is what I must do. It’s crucial. It’ll answer everything.

I think back to the obituary, which didn’t mention a surviving spouse.

I return to the Google hits and scroll down. But this time I stop halfway down the page:

Hammond Gazette, Hammond, New York, December 10, 1993

Milton Abner indicted for practicing medicine without a license … . One case, that of Caroline Spencer, led to …

www.hammondgazette.com/.../milton-abner-indicted-for-practicing-medicine…

Hammond Gazette—I went to Hammond University, in New York. The Gazette was the town newspaper. My entire body tightens as I try to brace myself for another potential blow.

I click on it:

Hammond Gazette, Hammond, New York, December 10, 1993

Milton Abner Indicted for Practicing Medicine Without a License

Milton Abner has been indicted by the Hammond County Grand Jury for practicing medicine without a license. He was arrested in October at the makeshift medical clinic he set up at the 527 Oak Street apartment he rented after several young women accused him of falsifying his credentials as an obstetrician and of performing illegal abortions. According to police, medical equipment and boxes of syringes, pills and other medical supplies were found at the apartment/clinic.

Abner came under suspicion when Caroline Spencer,22, was brought to St. Barnabas Hospital in East Hammond, New York, in critical condition that necessitated emergency surgery. During a botched, illegal abortion, Ms. Spencer lost excessive blood and became unconscious. Mr. Abner called for an ambulance and then fled the scene, leaving Ms. Spencer for dead.

St. Barnabas Hospital immediately filed a police report, and after regaining consciousness, Ms. Spencer gave investigators the information needed to lead to Mr. Abner’s apprehension.

Mr. Abner illegally posed as an obstetrician, advertising his services for “safe and certified abortions” in local newspapers. An initial investigation found that Mr. Abner has never held a medical license. His last occupation was that of a television commercial actor. One of his most recent roles was that of a doctor.

A second investigation was simultaneously conducted by the State Education Department based on complaints by several Hammond University students, including Hilary Baldwin, regarding Abner’s unorthodox medical techniques and procedures. Ms. Baldwin has transferred to an out-of-state university.

When Ms. Spencer was asked how she found the bogus doctor, she said her boyfriend, Timothy Hayes, a pre-law student at Hammond University, found him for her. Multiple calls placed to Mr. Hayes for comment were not returned. Timothy Hayes is a senior and will graduate at the end of this semester. Ms. Spencer has since withdrawn from Hammond University.

The investigation led …