Geneva’s patron, her wealthy father, once again came through with enough money to get the podcast off the ground against my strenuous but fruitless objections. She proudly announced this on a formal visit to my apartment. Green-lit! She’d found a recording studio on Eighth Avenue willing to do one episode at a time with a real sound guy. She’d direct, and I’d be the first interview—a piece of news she delivered as if I’d be honored.
“Count me out,” I said.
I could see she’d come prepared for my lack of cooperation because her follow-up was “Fine. I’ll ask your father to kick it off.”
“Nice try. Do you even know his name, let alone how to contact him?”
“Tom.”
“Tom what?”
“Maritch, like you.”
“Well, you’re not going to reach him through me.”
“I can’t?” She raised her eyebrows.
As I was reviewing the possible ways she had of contacting him—Was his number listed? Would she stalk him on Facebook? Would the internet yield his address?—she said, “Your polite father sent me a thank-you note after he came for Thanksgiving. On paper. With a return address.”
Of course he would have. “Please don’t involve my father. This whole thing could be very painful.”
That might not have been the smartest approach. Painful? In a way that made good copy?
“I’m not ruling anyone out. You have to go first. Or do you want it to open with that valedictorian, the one who started the scholarship in honor of your mother? Didn’t she write him college recommendations?”
What did she know? Had her offensive questionnaire yielded some link to Armstrong? I had to say okay, I’d let her interview me about the yearbook, the literal, physical one. Don’t ask me questions about the people in it or about my mother’s comments next to the pictures. Okay? I’d do it as long as she promised not to involve my father or Peter—I caught myself—“what’s-his-name, the valedictorian.”
So I went to the Eighth Avenue studio, where Geneva was waiting, looking officious, trying to impress me with producerdom. Episode one, she instructed, would supply background; she wanted me to start with a physical description of my mother at her peak. She’d have her photo on the website—
“What picture? What website?”
“Every podcast has a website so listeners can donate. The picture from the yearbook—don’t tell me you didn’t know they gave her portrait a whole page?”
I reminded her that it had been ages since I’d laid eyes on the damn thing. And what did she mean by donate?
“Money.”
“To the scholarship in her name?”
She checked her watch, tapped a pencil on the table between us, and reminded me that she was paying for one hour and didn’t want to run over.
A disembodied voice asked if we were ready. He wanted to do a sound check. Would I say my name and something else? I said flatly, “Daphne Maritch. I’m here against my will.”
“Ready,” he said. “And don’t forget, if you stumble, don’t sweat it. Just repeat it. I’ll edit it.”
Geneva told me that she’d recorded an introduction to the whole thing.
“Which I’d like to hear.”
“You will when it’s aired.” She scribbled on a notepad and slipped it toward me. The chip on your shoulder—good.
“Happy to oblige.”
Now in interview mode, she asked, “Your mother, June Winter. Can you tell us why this yearbook, this class, these graduates, meant so much to her that she devoted her life to them?”
“That’s not true. She devoted her life to her children and then, secondarily, to teaching.”
“Is that so?” Geneva asked. “Pardon me for questioning your truthfulness, but what was this thing she had for this particular group of students?”
“That’s easy. She taught there. And was the yearbook advisor. This one was dedicated to her.”
“And how old was she in relation to the graduates?”
I knew this figure by heart but pretended it was nothing I’d had any reason to calculate before this moment. I said, “About five years’ difference.”
“Older?”
“Yes, of course, older. She was their teacher.”
“What else was she to them?”
“Excuse me?”
“I think you know what I’m driving at.”
“I don’t have a clue.”
“What else was she to them in a personal sense. Outside school?”
I said, “I wasn’t born yet when she was their advisor. I only know that the dedication was a great honor for her.”
I wrote on the same scratch pad, Stop it.
Of course she had to report that I’d scribbled a note. “What do you want me to stop, Daphne?”
She wanted to play dirty? I said, “You stole this yearbook! I’ve been trying to get it back for months!”
“I stole it? Or did I find it in the trash?”
“That was my mistake. I recycled it, but as soon as I found out you’d absconded with it, I wanted it back, and don’t say ‘Finders keepers,’ because I don’t think that would hold up in court.”
Next, Geneva was talking to her audience. “Why would the family be so afraid of it falling into the hands of a producer—”
That provoked me to yell out, “Who calls herself a producer on the basis of one documentary!”
“We’ll edit that,” she said. “Aaron?”
“Got it,” said the voice in my earphones.
I had to sound calm. I had to stay on message, my own.
“Shall we go back to your mother’s appearance? Would you be willing to say she was stunning?”
I said, without any affect or feeling, “Okay, she was stunning.”
“And young when she started teaching.”
“We already covered that.”
“What are you afraid of?” Geneva asked psychiatrically.
“Nothing. I’m pissed off. I’m only here so you wouldn’t drag my widowed father into this.”
Whoops. I shouldn’t have brought up my father. Geneva pounced. “Why do you suppose she left the yearbook to you instead of her husband? Were there notes she didn’t want him to see? Or some symbols—those checkmarks and dots I haven’t yet translated—that were in code?” And then to her imagined future audience: “Totally fascinating.”
“Maybe to you it was. To my father, it was just a hobby of my mother’s. Like her gardening. And his following the UNH Wildcats.”
“Were they happy?” she asked.
A not-utterly-truthful “blissfully” flew out of my mouth. Still, I had to expose Geneva as a woman who couldn’t keep her word. “I agreed to be interviewed only if there were no personal questions. And that’s a very personal question.”
“Bliss-full-y,” she echoed. “I see. Do you need water?”
By now, I was feeling such a rush of hatred for Geneva that my voice went squeaky. “You’ll live to regret this thing, this stupid soap opera!” And then to anyone listening: “I come from a long line of educators. Before I moved to New York, I was a Montessori teacher! This isn’t right. You never met my mother. You can’t judge a person by the dots and adjectives she writes in a yearbook!”
To Geneva’s credit, she didn’t cut my final diatribe. She also left in the sound of my chair hitting the floor as I charged out of the booth. “Are you wondering, like I am, why June Winter Maritch’s daughter is so angry?” she mused. Then she repeated her own theory that my mother had a dying wish, unconscious or not, to share the yearbook with the world.