The Album

By Susan Knapp

Something happened and nothing was ever the same. Little nine-year-old Eva kept a photo album/diary of her summer with Uncle Jim in 1927. Found in a box after her death in 2003, the album provoked ten years of research and interviews to piece together what happened and its later effects. Part biography, part memoir, and part conjecture, this is the chronicle of a survivor’s life and of her family

• Language: English
• Publisher: Susan Knapp
• Release date: Dec 7, 2013
• ISBN: 9781311520326

Book preview

The Album

Susan Knapp

© Susan Knapp 2013

Smashwords Edition

ISBN-13: 978-0615913407

ISBN-10: 0615913407

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013920007

Silverlining Press

P.O. Box 1346

Talent, OR 97540

www.silverlining-press.com

Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgements

Part 1

The Album

Chapter 1: The Question

Chapter 2: Telling the Story

Chapter 3: Setting the Stage

Chapter 4: Mothers and Daughters

Chapter 5: The Roaring Twenties

Chapter 6: How it Begins

Chapter 7: Whispers

Chapter 8: Happily Ever After

Part 2

Afterwards

Chapter 9: What Now?

Chapter 10: A Fresh Start

Chapter 11: A Young Mother

Chapter 12: The Fifties

Chapter 13: Coming of Age

Chapter 14: Broken

Chapter 15: Drinking

Chapter 16: A New Man

Chapter 17: Aging

Chapter 18: Memorial Services

Part 3

Finishing Up

Chapter 19: Writing, Wondering

Chapter 20: Amends

Chapter 21: The End

Epilogue

Appendix:

Family photos and sample pages from The Album

Preface and Acknowledgements

This book is a biography, a memoir, and fiction. The memoir is as true as my memory and journals can make it. In the biography of my mother, I have used what I remember, what others have told me, a few things that she wrote, and my imagination to fill in blanks and to present thoughts, feelings, and possible events.

Letters, journal entries, and other material that are indented and italicized are from real documents. Photographs are from the private collection of the author.

Many thanks to Mary Carpenter, whose writing class got me started, and to the Wrandom Writers and the Southern Oregon Writers groups for their support. Thank you also to all my friends, especially Joan Oppel, Sue Stendebach, and Natalie Johnson for their patience and support during this process.

Genealogy

Part One:

The Album

Hartford, Connecticut, May, 1927

Little Eva, such a sweet, pretty little girl.

Look at her, walking down the aisle at the 5 & 10 cent store, heading toward the back, the tall man in the well-fitting suit and nice white shirt holding her hand. Her bobbed brown hair is shiny, her floral cotton dress, a little faded, but crisply ironed.

They’re going to look at the photograph albums – back there, near the picture frames of cheap tin and painted wood.

Her face lights up at the big black album with the glossy braided cord and creamy white pages. So rich looking, so expensive. Reluctantly, she moves on to the various cardboard albums held together with what look like shoelaces. He’s seen her desire for the first album, the way she touched the dark fabric of the cover and fingered the cord. He picks it up and hands it to her. Her smile is almost painful to see; she’s so used to doing with less or doing without.

Oh, Uncle Jim! Thank you, thank you, thank you! She jumps up and down, and he smiles at her, pleased.

They walk to the front of the store, holding hands again. As he pulls a dollar bill from his wallet and counts out the coins for the girl at the register, Little Eva tells the clerk, This is my very own album, and I’m going to put all my pictures in here. Uncle Jim, you said you were going to take lots and lots this summer, didn’t you?

Oh, yes, honey. Lots and lots.

The clerk smiles as she watches them go out the door.

It’s so nice to see a loving family and such a happy little girl.

Chapter 1: The Question

Arlington, Virginia, January, 2002

I used to call my mother once a week, a duty call, a bit of chit-chat, most often on a Sunday evening around 7:00, before prime-time on TV.

This night, I spent a while sitting in my chair, staring at my reflection in the dark window. What’ll I say? Tell her the latest about my kitchen renovations? Say work is going fine? And then ask her the question? Or not?

I stared at the window a few moments more and, seeing nothing there, placed the call to Houston.

Hello?

Hi, mother. It’s me.

Oh, hello, doll.

How have you been doing? How’d this week go?

Oh, you know, the same old thing, mostly, but I’m so worried about Dick. Tom – you remember him, he was so good with Dick – Well, now he’s quit and they’ll have to hire another new orderly and. . .

I listened to Eve’s litany of complaints about the nursing wing of the retirement residence and thought about Dick. Such a nice guy, my stepfather, but he’d been going downhill fast since the stroke two years ago. She went over every morning to get him up and into his wheel chair for breakfast, and then she’d reverse the process at night. Poor Eve. . . he couldn’t speak more than a word or two and didn’t really know her anymore.

I know how worried you are about Dick, but are you doing anything with Helen? Last week, you said you’d start getting out more.

Well, no. You know how I hate to leave Dick alone. But, I did promise her we’d go the new play at the Alley Theater next month.

Next month? You need more breaks than that.

Oh, I get around. Don’t you worry about me. She was a tough old bird at eighty-five. Not as tough as she used to be, but still stubborn, so I gave up trying to convince her that she needed to see more of her friends.

The conversation lagged, and I thought it was as good a time as any.

Can I ask you a personal question?

Oh, that sounds serious! She laughed, a little nervously. Oh, sure. Why not? At my age, I don’t have many secrets left.

Were you sexually abused as a child?

Oh, yes. Repeatedly. I’ll tell you all about it the next time you’re down.

I stared at the phone.

She’d said, Yes. Just like that. Yes, and she’d tell me all about it.

I shook my head, as if I’d tasted something foul. Of all the things I’d thought she might say, that wasn’t one of them. I’d suspected, sure, but she was so. . . so cavalier about it. Positively cheery.

What’ll I say now? What can I say?

Ahh, well, okay, I guess. I’ll be down there for a meeting in May.

That’ll be great. We can have a long talk. She paused briefly and then continued with a hurried, I’ve got to run now. You take care. Love you.

Yes. You, too.

I think we both wanted to get off the phone. I promptly went into the kitchen and made myself a cup of very strong coffee. I needed it, even if I would be awake all night.

Wow.

That was amazing. Surprised me. Probably surprised her, too, but she spoke like it was nothing.

Nothing? I doubted that.

Repeatedly. Not a one shot thing then. Who was it? A neighbor? One of Grandmother’s boarders? Someone else? How did it happen?

I paced up and down the room, going through the conversation, thinking about possibilities. Finally, I told myself that I’d simply have to wait until May.

***

Two months later, Ronnie, my stepbrother, called me at work. All he could do at first was sob. Ah, I thought, Dick’s finally died. He’s calling to tell me about arrangements. I didn’t push him; he’d get to it in his own time. Between sobs, he started talking about Eve, which puzzled me at first, but then, I thought, well, sure, she’s got to be really upset. Then, he said something about her not feeling well and her doctor sending her to the emergency room – she was having a heart attack.

He started crying again and finally got it out, She died.

Eve? Not Dick?

My mother? She’s dead? But, she was fine when I talked to her on Sunday.

It took me a while to wrap my brain around it. Then, I went into emergency mode: I called my brothers, John and Rich, to tell them the news, talked to my boss, made lists, delegated assignments at work, and talked to people in Houston about what needed to be done.

I couldn’t get a flight out from any of the DC airports until later the next day. When I called my brothers back that evening with my plans, Rich was pretty plastered and John had just arrived home from the emergency room after an accident that partially amputated his thumb. I’d have to handle things in Houston alone.

A few of my friends came over to be supportive, but I was too busy to talk. I thanked them, asked if they’d take care of my cats while I was away, and went back to my packing and the thoughts that surfaced against my will.

My father died in 1983 and now my mother was dead. I realized, of course, that most of us become orphans eventually, but I was 61 and now my brothers and I were the older generation. It was like the roof had blown off. I felt so exposed and. . . maybe afraid?

Houston, University Place

I opened the door to her apartment, stepped inside, and took a long look around. My first impression was that things hadn’t changed much since I was last there. A blizzard of paper – mail, magazines, flyers, and announcements – overflowed the tops of tables and fell to the floor. In the bedroom, more of the same spilled off the shelf under the TV and lay strewn across the unslept-in half of her big bed.

Where to begin?

A faint, fetid smell from the kitchen called, and I broke open the first of many boxes of large, black garbage bags. I cleaned out the refrigerator, all the food in the pantry, the collection of plastic tubs without lids, and all the trash cans. I filled half of the janitor’s large gray bin parked in the hallway outside the door, and then went on to the bedroom and bathroom. I collected dirty laundry and old clothes that Good Will wouldn’t want, topped off the bin with those bags, and called the janitor for another.

The executor wanted me to bring in all of Eve’s tax and financial information. That meant dealing with those piles of paper and her files. I’d hoped her paperwork would be organized so I could sail through it. I wanted to work hard and get it done quickly, so I wouldn’t have to stop and think – about what I was doing, who she was, and where things stood now between us.

That wasn’t going to happen. There was all that mail strewn about, opened and unopened, and I couldn’t even count on it being in chronological layers. I found things from 1998 in with others from the last month. I had to look at every damn piece and sort it out. At least I didn’t have to do anything about the file boxes in the guest shower. That was all Dick’s stuff; Ronnie would have to figure out what to do with them.

In her working years, Eve had been a secretary and bookkeeper. The old files showed her organizational skills, but after Dick’s stroke her system broke down. I’d had no idea that she was in trouble until the previous year when she was hospitalized for depression. I thought she’d pulled herself together after she got on meds. Wishful thinking, probably.

A couple of times she tried to tell me that she was losing it, that she was afraid, mostly of what might happen to Dick without her. I always pooh-poohed it. Every once in a while she’d terrify me by talking about some of the residents and their daughters who had moved down to Houston to take care of them. I was never going to do that. Not that I told her so. Instead, I’d laugh nervously, tell her she was fine, and change the subject.

I felt sad and guilty that I hadn’t done more, that I hadn’t wanted to do more. And Dick – what about him? I couldn’t do for him what she had; no one could. He was Ronnie’s responsibility now, and that would have upset her no end. Better to focus on the next stack of papers. I had to meet with the executor; I needed to get it done.

The personal items were the worst – not only the dirty clothes, but also items that were really personal, like the nude photo of her that was in an envelope labeled for my husband. I felt like an intruder; I shouldn’t be seeing some things. What would she have wanted me to do? No, forget trying to figure that out; put it all in another garbage bag.

I went along like that, talking to myself, sometimes catching myself up short with a stray thought, like, I don’t have to guard myself against her anymore. Where did that come from? It was true enough, but I’d never thought about it quite like that before. I guess I’d been defending myself when I was distant and avoided her touch, when I kept telling myself that I didn’t love her.

At night I grabbed a bite to eat at