She peered through the nighttime shadows at her sleeping daughter in the crib and eased the empty bottle from the toddler’s fingers. The glass was still warm from where the child clutched it for comfort. She inhaled deeply to fill her emptiness with the infant’s sweet odor and begrudgingly backed out of the room, closing the door. Though she was drowning in love for Sylvie, her creation, there was something missing, something she couldn’t quite grasp. Something that hurt too much to think about.

Christine tucked the rebellious wisps of her auburn hair behind her ear as she sat down at her desk to concentrate. Her freckled, oval face strained with intensity in front of the blank page and now that the heat of the August day had passed, she felt a chill invade her spine in the dim silence of her study, away from the din of her husband watching TV.

She had often thought about drafting a letter to her Great Aunt Jeannette, first out of guilt, then out of a desire to know more about her family before it was too late. Aunt Jeannette was the last living of twenty-two children who spent her days, waiting and depressed in a nursing home that was not home, spitting out her Prozac as soon as the nurse left the room. Christine’s childhood memories of her aunt flashed in front of her glazed eyes, as if she were watching a slide show, images of a spirited older woman serving savory pork pies at their Franco-Canadian family reunions every summer. Christine didn’t know if they were her memories or ones she stole from watching shaky, homemade films.Christine had studied French in school, like most of the college-bound kids in her high school. She even went on to major in French literature at the university. When people asked her about her choice of major, she always joked that it was her way of justifying a semester of carefree tourism in Europe, but she knew that it was more than that. She wanted to get back to her roots, to know what it meant to be of French descent. What she didn’t realize at the time was that she was going too far back. Her ancestors had come from France during the seventeenth century. Since then, there had been generations living an entirely different existence in Canada. She had simply overlooked that in favor of the European experience, which had led her to her translating job in Washington DC rather than back home, back to Aunt Jeannette.
Aunt Jeannette’s hair was already white and her fingers knobby, but she bubbled with energy singing “Alouette” and telling stories about the old folk, although time had skewed her recollections. Now, her body was giving way to age, and she lived in fear and anticipation of the day she would be reunited with her own brothers and sisters. Christine didn’t make a habit of writing to her great aunt. In fact, the last time they had spoken was five years ago on her wedding day. But something pushed the pen to write of its own accord.

Dear Aunt Jeannette,

I hope you are in good health and having a pleasant summer. The weather has been hot and humid here, as is usual for Alexandria this time of year. We are all doing well, keeping busy. Sylvie is growing so quickly and has an incredible amount of curiosity (and stubornness!) packed into that little body of hers. I guess I don’t have to wonder where she gets it from.

You’re probably wondering why I’m writing you. I’ve been thinking a lot about our family lately. I suppose having a child makes you question exactly where you come from and what sort of heritage you have to pass on. When I brought Sylvie home to the family last May, everyone told me she had a “Duclos” chin and blue eyes like her great-grandmother. Then I thought, what else did she inherit from this woman I never met? Who was she? What was she like? I want to be able to tell Sylvie about her, but the only image I have of her is the picture hanging on the wall in my parents’ study. Could you please tell me something about her? I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks for your help and let me know if there’s anything you need. Take care of yourself.

Love,
Christine

She cut her tongue on the sharp edge of the envelope in her haste to seal it and went to bed with the taste of blood and pain in her mouth.

*********

Fluorescent lights and an antiseptic stench greeted Christine upon her arrival at Beech Medical Center. She placed her toweled hand on the counter, like a fragile gift waiting to be opened. “You’ll have to fill out this form,” the receptionist at the emergency room declared, peering over the half moons of her reading glasses and handing Christine a clipboard and a pen. Christine reluctantly took them with her one good hand, and sat down nearby to scrawl in the necessary information: name, address, date of birth, social security number, insurance, the usual.
Under “Medical Conditions”, she came across the question “Might you be pregnant?” Here, she hesitated and slowly checked “yes”, as if admitting it to herself for the first time. She wasn’t sure she really wanted this baby, but she had felt pressured by her husband, Mike, who said it would be good for Sylvie, to have a sibling without too much difference in age. He had a good point, but Christine wasn’t sure that having a baby for her daughter’s sake was reason enough. She tried to fool herself into thinking that maybe it would take a few months before she got pregnant, but her deprived womb became a magnet to the newly-joined cells, not leaving her with any time to become accustomed to the idea. She saw her career stagnating, and she was especially disheartened at the thought of all the fatigue she would again have to face, now that Sylvie was just getting over the stage where she needed constant attention.
To clear her mind, she refocused her eyes on the next question: “Description of Injury.” Christine had felt the weight of the cool glass sphere slip between her thin soapy fingers and cringed as the fragile orb plunged to collide with the terra cotta tiles. She was alone in the house and had been on her way to the sink to change the water in the fish bowl, to give the goldfish something clear to breathe, but now it wriggled helplessly among the glass debris, colored pebbles and foul-smelling puddles. Christine’s first reflex was to try to recover the animal, but she stopped short and sighed, wondering if she really wanted to save the pitiful existence of this life confined to 125 square inches of freedom.
She stepped over the wreckage and the fish, which was now jumping like exploding popcorn. She grabbed an empty saucepan off the counter and filled it with water, then tried scooping the fish off the floor. It was like handling a wriggling bar of soap. At the same time she succeeded in trapping it, she planted a shard of glass in the heel of her palm. She threw it in the saucepan with disgust and the fish gulped down mouthful after mouthful of water, tasting his sweet salvation.
By that time, a rivulet of garnets had made its way down from the wound in the palm of her hand to her wrist. She held her hand over the white enamel of the sink and watched the blood swirl with the water to stain a Florentine design down the drain. It paralleled the way a wayward strand of her auburn bob curled against the creamy whiteness of her cheek. The sliver came out easily, but the water seared into the open wound until her palm throbbed, and the act of taking out the glass made it bleed even more. Trembling and sweating, she wrapped it in paper towels and pressed it hard against the memory of the destroyed aquarium. The wound was wide and gaping like the mouth of a hungry baby, and she could no longer deny that she would need stitches.
*********

It was Christine’s day off, and Sylvie was napping. The crisp autumn air raised the thick hairs on Christine’s arms as she walked to the mailbox, her heavy skeleton and pear-shaped torso carving a silhouette through a light fog that would be melted by the afternoon’s rays. The childbearing hips so typical in her family made the women waddle more than slink, and her morphology and metabolism seemed even less under her control now that she was pregnant.
Being careful for her wrapped hand, she liberated the day’s mail from it’s metal cage and, after sifting through the bills and junk mail, she felt her heart push back the walls of her chest upon seeing a large manila envelope with an address in bold, curly script. She carefully tore open the package and read the enclosed letter on the stairs of the front porch.

Dear Christine,

I was so happy to hear from you. Things here are going fine in my new residence, and I look forward to celebrating my 86th birthday this fall. My hip gives me some trouble, so I am limited to what I can do and sometimes have to use a walker. But my attitude is good and I have met some lovely people here. It’s a lovely place and I have a private room. Of course, I’d be more than happy to tell you about your grandmother.

Your grandmother, Claire, was quite a character and a wonderful person, I don’t even know where to begin. She and our brother Joseph were twins. He was born at 12 noon and weighed 9 ½ pounds while Claire was born at 5:30 PM at 4 pounds. She was blue around the mouth when she came out, and they didn’t think she would survive, but my mother knew she could make it and did everything she could to save her. Whenever Claire was sick or tired, she would get cold and that blue spot would reappear around her mouth. Because of that, all of us children had to help with chores, but not Claire.

When we were growing up, Claire and I were very close. We both loved dancing and had a lot in common. We worked together, along with Marguerite, Regine and Stella at the family-run beauty salon, managed by Joe. One time, Claire told our cousin Catherine, who had worked in the salon longer than we had, that she was doing her curls all wrong. She said “Your ends are never curly enough, so they stick out all the time. If you curl your ends first, it would be better.” Catherine didn’t like that and said “ Well, smarty, show me.” And Claire did. She became the best Marcel waver in Waterville, and she taught me too. We had a great following.

Claire never felt very comfortable around people outside the family and didn’t make friends easily, but she had us. You know, they say people with red hair have hot tempers, but Claire wasn’t like that at all and hated when people assumed she was. She was embarrassed to tears when the boys would tease her about being “hot stuff.” Luckily, she met Maurice, who was good to her. I met George about a year later at the skating rink, but, of course, you never knew him either. One night, Claire said Maurice was coming over to sit with her in the parlor and George asked if he could come, too. I was so nervous, but we all sat together and talked, and it was great.

Your grandfather smoked when they were courting, but women who smoked were tramps. She got used to the smell of it, so they would smoke cigarettes together, and if someone came around the corner, she would quickly hand it back to him, and he would pretend it was his. He didn’t mind. In fact, I think he thought it was exciting in a rebellious sort of way. They kept going out together for a long time, but he never managed to propose to her. The closest he could come was to say “Well, if I were going to get married, it would be to someone like you.” But that was enough for her, and he never backed out. He gave her a silver filigreed neckpiece with a diamond chip that she kept her whole life. When she died, no one knew where it went, though I have my suspicions.

A few months after Claire and Maurice got engaged, George asked me to marry him. I was on Cloud Nine, so the four of us made plans for a double wedding. We were married Dec. 2, 1934. Claire wore an orangy-gold crepe dress, which was less harsh with her coloring, and I wore white. Joe came in late and sat in the back. Your grandfather, who loved to play rough sports, had just broken his toe playing hockey. He had to limp down the aisle, but he was a brave man and tried not to show the pain. Afterwards, we all took the train to Portland and stayed over in a big hotel for our honeymoon. Claire got homesick after two days away, so we had to cut our honeymoon short and go back home. We always spent our anniversaries together after that, at my house, or sometimes we went to the movies.

I was pregnant first. Suzanne was born Feb. 17, 1936. And when Claire got pregnant, she said, “I’m not going to have my baby unless you come help. Now promise me.” So I assisted the birth of her first two, but by the time your father was born, there were no more home deliveries. It was a good thing because she almost died during the third one. The afterbirth wouldn’t come.

During the Depression, she worked all week at the beauty salon and, like our mother, didn’t have a lot of time left over for affection. However, Claire was a wonderful cook, and she would show her love for her family through her pies, mothering through the tastebuds. Cinnamon rolls were another treat and her kids would sing songs in four-part harmony about how much they loved her cinnamon rolls. Most people would make cinnamon rolls with the leftover pieces of the piecrust. She said, why not make cinnamon rolls in a big cookie sheet with the whole piecrust? Everyone loved her recipes, but they never came from a cookbook.

Claire and Maurice didn’t have much in their house, but they didn’t have less than anyone else. The aunts and uncles who didn’t have children of their own helped out a lot, buying treats that they couldn’t otherwise afford, an ice cream, a new pair of shoes. Aunt Louise especially was always there for them, practically a second mother, and the one who gave your grandmother the courage to go on, reminding her what she had to do. Joe, her twin and soulmate, was like Louise in pants.

I’m sending you a package of newspaper clippings retracing the historical background of the family beauty salon. I would love to be able to tell you about it in person some day. I’ve also sent all the family records I have. My father was great about keeping the history of his family, and I kept it up after him. He was proud of what he accomplished. I hope you don’t find it boring. After you have read these, I do not have copies. Maybe you could have some made.

Love,
Aunt Jeannette

Christine quickly leafed through pages of newspaper clippings and birth records until she came upon a handwritten page with “Duclos” inscribed at the top. The three headings of “Name”, “Born” and “Died” divided the page into three columns. Under “Philippe Duclos and Marguerite Drevet, married August 3, 1886” poured a list of twenty-two names, birthdates and deathdates with only one entry left blank. Christine’s hand throbbed, and she felt a hundred-pound weight on her chest when she saw a lifetime of her great-grandmother’s joy and sufferance summed up in one page.
The pain of each birth and each loss passed through her heart all at once like an electric shock, zeroing in on what she secretly feared the most: the loss, the separation. Her anxiety at the thought of losing Sylvie, and now a second, was desperately paralyzing. When she woke during the night, she found her arms cramped, clutching the air, where she dreamt she held her little one, keeping her from harm’s way. Just the passing thought of what tragedies could befall her angel would send her hyperventilating. To keep functioning from day to day, she denied this pain she felt just under the surface, until it came flooding back through this undeniable manifestation of loss she held between her fingers.
Her eyes were morbidly hypnotized by the curly black script, which summoned a flood of family legends with each name. She identified each of the six sets of twins. A rapid inventory showed that only half of these children ever lived to adulthood. There was Marie, the first born, but 1890 proved to be a hard year with her two younger brothers leaving her as an only child once again. Three other names would pass before she finally found a childhood companion. Every year or two, births were recorded and with just as much indifference, a malformation, an epidemic, a fever, an accident would supply the date for the final entry. There were the twins, Felix and Eugene, who were born with no esophagus and were condemned to slowly die of starvation three and five days later. How much more helpless could a mother be? Christine felt her head spin and her legs tremble as the tears rolled down her face, and the fear rose from the pit of her stomach. This was the mortality she had to face. She went inside, covered her hand, and hid her tears in the shower.

**********

Christine, Sylvie and Mike filled one row of seats in the airplane on their flight to Maine for Thanksgiving. Sylvie was sleeping a tense sleep with her head propped on Christine’s lap and her feet pushing against Mike’s leg. She was still clutching her favorite bunny. Christine’s parents were waiting at the gate when they finally got off the plane. Her mother was beaming and her father was waving his arms emphatically from the excitement of seeing their youngest grandchild again. Christine noticed that their hair was thinning and slowly graying, and their middles were growing thicker. She could see herself in the deep crevasses that carved age through their faces. After the initial greetings, she listened to her parents chit-chat endlessly about all the latest family news. She needed to speak up louder than usual for her dad to hear her. Her mother gushed, “Ginny’s expecting again, and Aunt Shirley is recuperating well from her operation. I haven’t heard from Linda yet, so who knows when she and the kids are bound to show up for Thanksgiving dinner…”
Amidst the words ricocheting inside the car, Christine watched the tall pines wave in the peace of the wind and wished that Thanksgiving were earlier in the fall so that she could have seen the flaming, passionate colors that adorned the hillsides. Now, there was a thin layer of ice and snow that blanketed the lawn in front of her parents’ house, but spots of brown still showed through in places. When they got out of the car, Christine showed Sylvie the crunchy sound that the ice-covered leaves made underfoot. Hand in hand, they traipsed along, Sylvie laughing at the unexpected noise, Christine laughing at Sylvie, looking at the world through her eyes for an instant. As Christine’s parents got out of the car. She noticed how it took more energy for her father to go up the front steps to the house and how her mother’s back was curving under the force of time and gravity.

**********

Christine studied the family resemblance as she peered at the old photo of her grandmother on the wall in her parent’s study, hanging just as it had during her childhood. The eyes, the chin, the hair, she had seen them all before but now scrutinized them with renewed interest. Her familiar face was smooth and creamy against the brown tones of the portrait. There was just a hint of a smile on her lips and her dark eyes looked timidly back at Christine. Christine estimated that the photo dated from the early thirties since her hair was already in a curly auburn bob and she wore a cotton dress with a big collar.
Mike came up behind her and kissed her on the neck. “Hey, beautiful.” They looked at the photo together in silence, his arms laced around her waist and his chin resting on her shoulder. “Are you sure you don’t want me to come?”
“No, that’s okay. We’d have to take two cars, so it’s not really worth it. You’ll find something to do, I’m sure. Just digesting that turkey is a chore.”
“No kidding.”
Christine picked up her purse off the guest bed and went back downstairs where her parents were waiting for her. She picked up Sylvie in one arm and the diaper bag in the other as they headed out the door to visit Aunt Jeannette.

*********

Sylvie had fallen asleep in the car not far from the cemetery.
“We’ll stay here with her. It’s too cold to go out in that wind,” Christine’s mom whispered from the front seat.
“And you, Aunt Jeannette, do you still want to go?” Christine asked.
“Oh, I’ll be fine. I like to get out and get some fresh air whenever I can. It’s not that often, you know.”
Christine helped Aunt Jeannette get out of the car, and as they slowly made their way up the path, Christine became Aunt Jeannette’s crutch on the side where her hip was weak. Arm in arm, Aunt Jeannette labored to advance against the bitter November wind that cut their breath short and froze the tips of their ears.
“You know, Christine, I was with her when she passed away,” Aunt Jeannette started between breaths.
“Were you?” asked Christine, inviting the story.
“When Claire was very sick and in the hospital, it was a Wednesday afternoon, and something told me to go see her. George was working nights, so I woke him up to tell him I had to go visit her. He said he would come later.” Aunt Jeannette paused, resting for a moment on her good leg. “When I went into her room, I thought she was sleeping, but it didn’t seem right to me. The woman in the next bed said ‘She’s OK, she just came up from X-rays.’ Then, I went to the nurses’ desk, and they said she was fine.”
Shivering, they continued on. Christine spotted a number of names she recognized from the family list, scattered throughout the rows of the cemetery, as if someone had sown them like seeds to sprout.
“I knew Maurice was at work, so I called their daughter first, but she had no one to babysit the twins. So, finally, I told the nurse to call Maurice. I watched and prayed. But, no one got there in time. I was alone with her when she died. Then, her daughter and Maurice both arrived. The nurses kept saying that they didn’t expect that. But I knew.” Aunt Jeannette straightened up as she said this and had a satisfied look on her face, as if she shared a secret with God. To Christine, it didn’t really matter if some things went unspoken. She had found what she was looking for.
“There she is,” Aunt Jeannette pointed out a small granite stone among many that glinted in the afternoon sun. Claire’s stone stared back at them. Christine wanted to say “Hello” to the inanimate rock but felt foolish in front of her great aunt.
“Bonjour, ma sœur,” Aunt Jeannette breathed, as if reading Christine’s mind. “Your grand-daughter has come to see you. Isn’t she beautiful? So young. She reminds me of someone I used to know.” Aunt Jeannette cast her foggy eyes in Christine’s direction with a half-smile.
Christine’s hand was finally free from the bandage that had so long encumbered it, and the scar hurt a little against the chill of the wind, but she forgot all about it when she felt her womb flutter with the first sensations of her baby moving inside her. She felt a calm invade her body, like silver lines on a lake. Her search had brought her to this frozen piece of ground and left her with her auburn hair, her daughter’s blue eyes, a dominant chin and a name for her baby-to-be.