I don’t know why we all gravitate toward that box—maybe morbid curiosity, maybe the hope of discovering some overlooked treasure. But gravitate we do, and Ginger begins to poke at items as if she’s afraid a rat or a roach is fixin’ to scurry out and attack her. I’m not as squeamish, so I plunge both hands into the box and lift out an armful of stuff—a faded housecoat, a pair of pink slippers, a stationery box, a pair of glasses, a worn Bible, and a journal. Ginger opens the stationery box and discovers dozens of photos, mostly shots of Lillian’s husbands and us girls, while Rose sits and pulls the journal onto her lap.
“What is all this?” Ginger gives me a handful of the photos. “See if you recognize anyone. If not, I don’t see why we need to keep these.”
I scan several of the square photographs, many of them in faded color or black-and-white. I’m looking at beach photos of women in one-piece bathing suits, most of their faces too small and distant to be recognized. I also find several snapshots of a black cocker spaniel. I don’t remember Grandma ever having a cocker when we came to visit. So either this is someone else’s dog, or my memory has developed some serious gaps.
I hold up one of the dog pictures. “Anybody remember Grandma having a cocker spaniel?”
“Cinder,” Ginger replies without even looking. “She had him for years.”
“Okay … so maybe aspartame does cause memory loss. I don’t remember a dog at all.”
Ginger lowers the pictures in her hand and looks at me. “You were just a baby when Grandmother married Walter. That’s how she got the dog—it was Walter’s before they married.” Her eyes soften. “I was a flower girl in their wedding; that’s why I remember it. They had me walk the dog down the aisle during the ceremony.”
“Are you serious?” Rosemary’s eyes widen. “I never knew that.”
Ginger’s gaze shifts to the photo in my hand. “Yeah—I remember Momma had a fit. She kept saying animals didn’t belong in a wedding, but Grandma just laughed and said this would be her last trip down the aisle so she was going to do what she wanted. By then I guess she’d figured out how to make a marriage work.”
When Ginger’s voice breaks I look at Rose, not sure if we should comfort Ginger or pretend we don’t notice her pain.
Rose provides a welcome distraction when she pulls a battered tape recorder from the bottom of the container. “Oh, good!” she says, untangling the electrical cord. “I knew she had this at the home, but I assumed we’d never see it again.”
Surprise blossoms on Ginger’s face. “Why on earth did Grandmother need a tape recorder?”
“Why, to listen to audiobooks. She loved books on tape, and I tried to bring her a new one every weekend. She especially loved mysteries.”
“She did a lot more than listen,” I add, bringing up a handful of plastic from the depths of the box. I turn a clear bag, displaying its contents: a handful of cassette tapes, each labeled in Grandma’s slanted handwriting.
“She made tapes?” Ginger cuts a look from the recorder to the plastic bag. “Who taught her how to make tapes?”
“It’s not rocket science.” Rose takes the bag from me. “I’d like to listen to these sometime.”
Ginger peers over a cardboard flap, but there are no stock certificates at the bottom of the box, only one other item: a photo album. She crinkles her nose as if she expects it to be dusty, so I lift it out and settle on the corner of the bed to look through it. I’m gonna flip through it quickly, and if I don’t recognize any faces I’ll toss it into a garbage bag. Seems a shame to throw out perfectly good memories, but if these pictures are anything like those in the stationery box, they aren’t my memories.
Unlike with the jumble of disorganized photos we found earlier, Grandma took an artistic approach with the volume in my lap. The opening page features only one photo, a formal, posed shot of an older couple holding a baby in a lace dress. The image is sepia-toned, and someone has handwritten a caption: Lillian Irene Harper, born January 6, 1915.
“Wow.” I whistle softly. “Have y’all ever seen Grandma as a baby?”
Rosemary drops the journal she’s been leafing through and peers over my shoulder. “That’s a nice picture. You ought to keep it.”
“We should probably keep the whole album. Looks like Grandma spent some time on this one.” The second photo is as formal as the first, but years have passed between events. This photo displays a bride and a groom—the man wears a tux, the woman is dressed in a lace sheath and a tightly fitted cap. The bride’s features are smooth and unlined, and in them I see traces of the grandmother I knew and loved.
“Grandma was a beautiful bride.” I run my finger over the writing at the bottom of the picture. “‘Mr. and Mrs. Charles Winslow, June 1931.’ She was sixteen years old.”
“Charles Winslow.” Rose slides into the space by my side and peers at the photograph. “Husband number one. I think he’s the guy who went off to war and died at the invasion of Normandy. Gran always said Charlie was a hero.”
“They might have been happy for a lifetime.” I peer at Charlie’s face. “He looks like a good guy.”
“Who’s that?” Ginger leans over and taps the next page, where we see a young Lillian standing in church, a boy and a girl by her side. Lillian is dressed in black; the children wear somber expressions as they hold her hands.
I peer at the spidery handwriting. “‘Donald and Ruby Winslow, 1944.’ I’ll bet this shot was taken at Charlie’s memorial service. I don’t think he ever made it back to the States.”
I pause, realizing that my grandfather’s body lies somewhere in France, maybe even beneath one of those white crosses that stand like silent sentinels at Normandy. I’ve never lost anyone in war, so I can’t imagine what Grandma must have endured. And her children—Donny couldn’t have been more than twelve in this picture, and Ruby’s face is still round with baby fat.
“Is that our mother?” Rose asks, her voice trembling.
“Yes.” Ginger looks down, her lashes shuttering her eyes. “That’s Momma.”
A wisp of anxiety creeps into my mood. I don’t know how far Grandma went with this photo album, but if this is a complete family history, dark chapters lie ahead. We might see pictures we don’t want to see or discuss.
“Is that journal still around?” I ask, hoping to change the subject. “I’d like to know how a war widow survived in those days.”
Rose offers a ready answer: “She married again.”
I’d like to halt this trip down memory lane, but Rose turns the page. Sure enough, we see yet another picture of Lillian in a bridal outfit, a suit. In this photo she’s holding a bouquet so big it nearly obscures her tiny waistline. The broad man next to her wears a dark suit, and a hat shadows his eyes. His smile, however, is wide and toothy, and his hand rests protectively upon the arm Lillian has linked through his.
“‘Joseph Goldstein,’” Rosemary reads. “‘1945.’”
“So that’s Joe Goldstein.” I study the photograph more closely, realizing that the shot was taken at some sort of depot, probably a train station. The happy couple stands on a platform, with Donny and Ruby positioned on the stairs in front of them. Neither child is smiling, and neither has changed much since the photo taken at their father’s memorial service.
“Lillian didn’t waste much time,” I remark, my tone dry.
Rose rises to Grandma’s defense. “Think about it. Gran didn’t have many choices in life. She once told me that she had to drop out of school in the eighth grade because her parents needed her help on the farm. She was always embarrassed about her lack of schooling.”
Ginger lifts a brow. “They didn’t have compulsory education in those days?”
“They didn’t have a lot of programs we’re used to,” Rose says. “Grandma was pretty and smart, but her family was dirt poor. They ate what they could grow in their garden, and early on she realized that a good marriage would be her ticket out of poverty.”
“Looks like she struck it rich with Mr. Goldstein,” I point out. “Look at the size of those orchids.”
“Gran said he was nice enough,” Rose adds, “but because he was older and Jewish, his family never accepted her. Plus, he must have weighed two hundred and fifty pounds when they married, and he didn’t get any thinner as time went on. He also smoked like a stovepipe—nearly everybody did in those days. He died a few years after they were married.”
I struggle to remember what Grandma told me about Mr. Goldstein, but I can’t recall her ever mentioning him. Either that, or my memory holds as much as a sieve. “Did Joe at least leave her a little money?”
“Some—and he left her this house,” Rose continues, looking at me with an almost imperceptible note of pleading on her face. “I think he died in 1950—and I only remember that because Grandma said he passed around the time the Korean conflict broke out. Donny signed up for the air force in ’51 and went overseas, but he died a few days before the armistice was declared in ’53.”
When Rose looks at me again, I think I know why she’s so interested in these photos. All this talk about people long gone is for Ginger’s sake. Rose is trying to distract Ginger from her own troubles.
But how can Ginger forget everything that’s happened?
I glance at my elder sister, whose expression has darkened with unreadable emotions. She’s been relatively quiet today, behaving as if she’s been drained of her usual energy. I’ve seen Ginger exhausted, but I’ve never seen her like this—beaten down. Defeated. Lost.
But she’s staring at the pictures, so she’s at least pretending to be engaged in the conversation. I glance at Rose, then elbow Ginger. “What do you think, Gingerbread?”