“Who are you again?” the woman asked Wally.
“I’m Wallis,” Wally said, her voice suddenly tremulous. It was clear by the confused, emotionless look on the woman’s face that she had no idea who Wally was. The woman was obviously not her mother, and Wally felt this latest disappointment deeply. How many more of these letdowns would she need to endure?
“My name is Wallis,” she said. “You collected the mail from Box 310 … at the postal shop?”
The woman’s brow furrowed as she reassessed the situation. “Wait …” she said, “so you
followed
me? From the boxes? Who do you think you are? I want you to leave now or I’ll call the—”
“Please,” Wally said as the woman began to close her door, and the genuine distress in her voice gave the woman pause. “I just need to speak with her.”
“Wallis, is it?” the woman began, keeping her voice calm and even. “Wallis, this is really none of your business, but I check the mail at Box 310 for an old friend of mine—”
“Yalena?” Wally offered. “Or … no, she uses a different name now.”
“No, dear, it’s a gentleman,” she said, softening, but then she stopped herself. “It really doesn’t matter. He’s had the box for just a few years. I’ll tell you what, if you want to leave a note, I’ll pass it along, but I really think there’s been some sort of mistake.”
The woman waited for a response, but Wally seemed more at a loss now than ever. Tevin stepped forward and placed a supportive hand on her shoulder.
“You should leave the note, Wally,” he said gently. “Maybe there’s still some sort of connection.”
Wally just nodded. The woman disappeared for a moment, her door swinging open just enough to reveal the artist’s studio inside, with several worktables stacked with various types of white paper—some vellum, some rice paper—plus large rolls of wire and some gleaming steel cutting tools. Hanging everywhere from the ceiling was the woman’s artwork: strange, ethereal shapes constructed of white paper pulled over thin wire frames, like oddly shaped kites.
The woman returned with a sketch pad and a charcoal pencil, which she handed to Wally. Wally kept the charcoal poised over the paper for a moment, unable to decide what to write. Then she scratched several sentences and signed the bottom with her name and telephone number. She tore the page out of the pad and folded it, scrawling
To whoever …
on the outside, then handed the pad and the note back to the woman.
“Thanks,” said Wally in a hollow, desolate voice. “I’m sorry that I bothered you.”
“Oh … no, I’m sorry I couldn’t help you more,” said the woman as she took back the pad and note. She sounded genuinely sympathetic, and her eyes were filled with pity. “I really hope things work out for you.”
Wally nodded blankly and turned away, Tevin joining her as she retreated back down the empty lane.
“I’m really sorry,” Tevin said.
Wally nodded. They had almost reached the end of the lane when they heard the woman’s voice behind them.
“Wait,” she said. Wally and Tevin turned back around to find her still standing in her open doorway, Wally’s note unfolded in front of her, a dawning awareness in her expression. “Are you really her daughter?”
“Yes,” Wally said urgently. She hurried back down the lane to face the woman again, who was now looking troubled and conflicted.
“When was the last time you saw her?” the woman asked.
“Never,” Wally said.
“Oh.” The woman was taken aback, the wheels of her mind spinning as she tried to decide the right thing to do. “The thing is … it actually
is
a woman who I collect the mail for, not a man. I’m sorry. I was being protective, I guess. I really don’t know her very well. We met by chance around the time we were both starting our leases here—”
“Here?” asked Tevin, who stood back over Wally’s shoulder. “She has one of these huts?”
“Yes,” the woman answered hesitantly. “Like I said, we barely knew each other, but she was nice, and since she wasn’t around very much I started picking up her mail for her. There’s no mail service here, so most of us use that same postal shop.”
“Which hut is hers?” Wally asked, her heartbeat quickening again.
The woman hesitated, torn between obligation and instinct. Should she help, and how much? She faced Wally, looking into her eyes in an attempt to reckon the truth of her story.
“You really are her daughter, right?” the woman asked. “You wouldn’t lie to me about that?”
“No,” Wally answered. “I mean, yes. I’m just trying to connect with her.”
Wally stammered a little in her excitement, struggling for words, but the woman seemed satisfied.
“One row over,” she said. “The number on the door is 27, about halfway down the driveway. I already dropped off her mail, through the slot. I haven’t seen her in person in a few weeks, but I know she still comes around.”
“Thank you so much,” Wally said. “It will be okay, I promise.” Wally turned to go but the woman held her up for a moment, holding out the note she had written just moments before.
“Give this to her yourself,” she said, and Wally answered with a smile as she took the note.
TWENTY-SIX
Wally and Tevin
made their way through the colony of huts, finally arriving at the one marked 27. By this point, Wally’s heart was truly racing. She dropped down to the floor and peered under the door of the unit. There was only a very faint light in the room, but it was enough illumination to reveal a small stack of mail that had clearly been shoved under the door and collected there, perhaps several weeks’ worth.
“Who knows when she’ll be here,” said Wally. She checked every possible hiding place in the vicinity of the door but found no hidden keys. She and Tevin walked the perimeter of the hut, finding several large windows cut into its corrugated metal skin, but they were covered with steel grates, which made it nearly impossible to break in. They returned to the front door, where they both sat down, needing a breather.
“I can barely even stand this,” Wally said. “I’m so close.”
“All we need to do is wait,” he said. “As long as it takes.” He looked at Wally and saw she was shivering a little. He took off his bomber’s jacket and wrapped it around her shoulders. Wally wanted to object, but she looked in Tevin’s eyes and saw that the gesture was important to him.
As the evening grew later, several other tenants of the colony closed up their units and left for the night. On their way to the main gate, they cast wary glances at Wally and Tevin, who remained loyally at the door of hut number 27. The air was getting much colder, and it seemed like just a question of time before the two of them would have to give up for the night. It was almost eight o’clock when the door of the hut directly across the lane creaked open, and a man in his late forties exited, getting ready to lock his door behind him with a clangy set of keys that hung on his belt. He wore canvas carpenter’s overalls splashed with a rainbow variety of paint colors and a worn chambray shirt under a ratty old fisherman’s sweater. His salt-and-pepper hair was longish and a bit unkempt, but his beard was well trimmed and he had the deep and perceptive eyes of a practiced observer.
Before he locked his door, the man noticed Wally and Tevin sitting against the opposite hut, watching him. He studied Wally’s face for a moment.
“Ah,” he said casually. “So you’re the daughter? Wally, right?”
For a moment Wally and Tevin stared blankly at the man—his words had caught them off guard—but then they clambered to their feet and faced him. As she spoke to him, it took all of Wally’s self-control to match the man’s casualness.
“Yeah, hi,” she said. “Mom mentioned you, but I can’t remember your name. I’m sorry. …”
The man waved off her apology. “Please. Forget it. I’m Phil. How’s your mom? I haven’t seen her this week. I miss hearing her music.”
“Mom is fine,” Wally replied. “Just busy, I guess.”
Phil nodded his understanding. “C’mon in,” he said, motioning for her to follow. “Let me show you something.”
Phil opened the door to his hut and turned on the overhead lights, six large fixtures hanging from the ceiling that provided a soft, even light for the room. Tevin and Wally—still taken aback over this sudden development—followed him inside to find a well-supplied painter’s studio with a full-size easel at the center. Tackboard had been attached to the sloping walls of the hut, and hundreds of charcoal sketches filled every spare space of it, newer sketches pinned right on top of older ones. Phil scanned the walls, racking his brain, then finally moved to one section of the wall and peeled away a few sketches. There, a few layers deep, he found two or three rough pencil sketches of a young girl, perhaps eight or nine years old, staring straight at the viewer with her deep, dark eyes. Wally.
“See?” said Phil. “I knew it was you right off. You have beautiful, mysterious eyes, Wally. An artist’s dream.”
“Uh, thanks. So, wait …” Wally’s mind raced. “Phil. Did we ever—”
“Meet? Oh, no. Your ma brought in some snapshots and I used those.”
“Oh.”
“So you’re meeting your mother here?”
“Yeah,” Wally said casually. “She got held up, so we’re just hanging. Oh, I’m sorry … Phil, this is my friend Tevin.”
“Hey, Tevin,” said Phil, and the two men shook hands. “Well, shit, you shoulda just knocked. No reason to sit out in the cold …” Phil pulled open a drawer in his paint cart and fished through hundreds of random items before finding the key chain he was looking for—a miniature Statue of Liberty with just two keys attached. Phil exited his hut with Wally and Tevin close behind. He stepped across to the door of hut 27 and used the two keys on the chain to unlock both bolts and then pushed the door open in front of him. Phil reached inside the hut to hit a light switch, and a set of hanging ceiling lights similar to those in his studio came on, illuminating the space.
“I gotta run out,” Phil said, stepping aside from the doorway so that Wally and Tevin could enter, “but it was good to finally meet you, Wally, and you as well, Tevin.”
“Thanks so much,” Wally said, muting her excitement as she shook his hand.
Wally closed the door behind Phil and faced the room. It was very different from Phil’s hut or the one belonging to the sculptor woman: instead of a crowded and unkempt artist’s space, hut 27 was very spartan, dominated by a single major item: a baby grand piano stood at the center of the room, a deeply polished black with
Steinway & Sons
written in gold lettering on its face board. Wally regarded the piano for a moment, then slowly stepped to the instrument and sat on its bench. She carefully, almost shyly raised the fall board to reveal the keys. Wally played a scale. The piano was perfectly in tune.
“She’s a musician,” said Tevin.
“She was, back home,” Wally answered, somewhat sadly. “Dr. Rainer said that.”
“And there
you
are,” said Tevin, nodding toward the far corner of the room. A single bed was placed in the corner, neatly made with a heavy woolen blanket on top and two pillows aligned. On the wall above the bed was an oil portrait of Wally at age eight or nine, obviously painted by next-door neighbor Phil, based on the sketches he had shown them. The painting was a mostly straightforward portrait, not stylized in any way, but with a slight emphasis placed on Wally’s most remarkable features—her well-defined cheekbones and dark, focused eyes. Phil had added a delicate substratum of red to the eyes that brought the portrait to life with a fiery intensity.
“Wow,” said Tevin.
Wally recognized her own face, but was taken aback by the underlying combination of sadness and anger that was so stark in the portrayal. There was accusation in the girl’s eyes.
“Is that really me?” she asked.
Tevin could see that Wally was disturbed by the picture. “It’s beautiful, Wally. Like you are.”
Wally turned away from the portrait and inspected the rest of the room. There were three other objects of note in the room: a two-drawer metal file cabinet, a paper shredder standing beside it, and a plain wooden wardrobe. Wally first opened the file cabinet—it was unlocked—and discovered the basic financial documents of a relatively small life: lease payments and utility bills associated with the studio—the Quonset hut—plus financial records of several bank accounts and credit cards. The accounts were flush, with a total of assets nearing three hundred thousand dollars and credit limits exceeding twenty thousand dollars on all the credit cards. Every document listed two authorized account holders: Ellen and Kristen Whitney.
“Ellen Whitney,”
she said out loud.
“Kristen Whitney.”
Tevin looked over her shoulder as Wally leafed through the documents, which covered many years.
“You don’t know the names?”
“No.”
“One of them’s probably just an alias for her,” Tevin said. “And you, I bet. Your mother has an alias, makes sense she’d have one for you too. So this is all yours too. That’s how she wanted it.”
Wally moved to the wardrobe, which stood about six feet tall and four feet wide, with a mirror in front. Wally swung the doors open and made an inspection of the contents. On the floor of the wardrobe were two small, identical black suitcases, the kind with a handle and rollers and of a size that could be carried on board an airplane and stored in the overhead racks. On top of the suitcases were two pairs of leather walking boots, both new and both black. They were an expensive Scandinavian brand name that Wally had seen for sale in nice Manhattan shoe stores, designed to be the most practical all-situation footwear possible, stylish but with the practicality of a soldier’s combat boot.
Wally checked out the boots and found that one was size seven—the most common woman’s foot size—and the other a size eight: Wally’s size. She took off her own worn boots and slipped on the new ones. Perfect. Next, Wally checked out the clothes hanging in the wardrobe. There were only a few items: two warm, knee-length woolen overcoats in dark blue; two gray cashmere V-neck sweaters; four pairs of new denim jeans; and several basic T-shirts, crew neck, white and dark gray. A pull-out drawer contained half a dozen pairs of women’s underwear—basic black—plus several unopened pairs of panty hose and calf-high woolen socks that would be a perfect match for the boots. Every item was brand new, never worn, and sized medium, just right for Wally.