THREE

It feels like a long time, maybe a month after my mom disappears, that Dad picks me up at Grandma’s house. He says we are going to build our own life together. I hug Dad, excited to be going with him. Grandma bends down and squeezes me, her smell of lipstick and Kleenex and clean hair all around us. “I love you,” she says. “Be a good girl.”

In the living room, I say good-bye to Grandpa. Spot perches on his lap and the two of them watch TV.

“Say bye to Spot,” says Grandpa.

It feels okay to be leaving with Dad, but I’ll miss Grandma and Grandpa. I don’t want Dad to know, because I don’t want him to feel bad, but he tells me, “You’ll visit every Sunday. I promised your grandma.”

I ask Dad, “Will Brandy and Ali come to Aunty Rita’s with us?”

We are staying with Aunty Rita, Dad’s sister, until we find an apartment of our own. Dad had to give Brandy and Ali to a special farm for dogs who don’t have homes, and when he tells me this he looks so sad I make a promise to myself I will never ask about them again.

Things are different at Aunty Rita’s from the way they were at Grandma’s house. Aunty Rita smokes like my mom did. Grandma, Grandpa, Aunty Sandy, and Dad all think smoking is disgusting, but Aunty Rita smokes long cigarettes that say VIRGINIA SLIMS in elegant green lettering up the side. In the mornings, Aunty Rita taps the end of her cigarette against the kitchen sink waiting for her coffee to brew. At night, she stirs dumplings into a pot of beef stew as she blows cigarette smoke into the air and drinks a glass of white wine.

Aunty Rita is so skinny that when she hugs me I feel her bones. I try not to squeeze too hard. She’s short, like my mom, but Mom was round and full, and Aunty Rita is sharp and pointed. When she gets dressed in the morning she pulls her camisole against her chest, looking into the mirror of her vanity, and says, “Let’s just hope you get boobies like your mom instead of nothing like me.” I blush at the word boobies and look away but I like the way she lets me sit with her all the time and doesn’t treat me like a little kid.

DAD ISN’T AROUND the house much because he works double shifts driving trucks for the Providence Journal, saving money for our apartment. He delivers both editions of the paper: the Journal in the morning and the Evening Bulletin at night. I think his job is glamorous, because the newspaper is famous. Once Dad shows me how he fills the honor box with newspapers and explains what it means: Only take one paper. On your honor.

He has a ring of keys with a key chain that is stamped EAST BAY DISTRIBUTION. The keys open all the honor boxes. We don’t need a quarter to open them like everyone else, and Dad says we can have free newspapers whenever we want them.

When Dad leaves for work I’m afraid he will never come back. Sometimes when he leaves, I cry so hard I throw up, and Aunty Rita has to make a bed for me on the couch and put a wet washcloth on my forehead. We stay up late and watch movies in the dark living room, which feels special because I’m five years old and don’t have a bedtime. All night I watch the glowing tip of my aunt’s cigarette move up and down from the coffee table to her mouth. I fall asleep waiting for Dad to come home.

Sometimes, late at night, she offers me a sip of her Michelob Light, and tells me stories about her parents, my grandparents, who died before I was born. She tells me how much my dad loved my grandma, who died when he and Aunty Rita were still kids.

“Your dad and I are called Irish twins,” she says. “Do you know what that means?”

I shake my head no.

“Irish twins is what they called us in school because we were born so close together we might as well be twins. We grew up together. That’s why you two are here right now. Because I’ll always take care of you.”

Sometimes, when Dad doesn’t have to work a day shift at the Journal, he lets me stay home from school. On the days when Dad and I stay home he says we are Being Bums. Being Bums involves eating oatmeal covered in sugar, so much sugar that it crunches with every spoonful. We take our oatmeal into Aunty Rita’s living room and watch cartoons. My favorite cartoon is Inspector Gadget, and sometimes I talk to Dad pretending that my fingers are a phone, just like Gadget’s. I pull out an imaginary antenna from my index finger and say, “Ring, Ring.”

Dad pulls out his finger antenna and answers the phone.

“This is Inspector Gadget,” I say.

“Can I talk to Leah?” asks Dad.

I say, “Hello, Dad, this is Leah.”

Dad, still holding the imaginary phone to his ear, asks, “Did you tell Miss Razza that Mom was dead?” Miss Razza is my kindergarten teacher.

I look at Dad sitting at the other end of the plaid couch. There is a small mountain of pillows and blankets between us. I move my hand away from my face. I know Dad isn’t playing the game anymore and I’m worried I’m in trouble.

“Did you say that?” he asks.

“Yes,” I say.

“Why did you say that? What do you think happened to Mom?”

When I think of Mom I think of bones. She disappeared, and now she is dead.

“Do you want to know what happened to Mom?” he asks. “Mom died in a car accident,” he says. “Do you understand what that means?”

I understand what a car accident means. I’ve seen them on television, and I’ve passed them on the side of the road so I understood the destruction and danger. I know Dad is lying but I’m not quite sure about what and because I love him and because he looks so sad, I decide to believe him.

“It means she’s not coming back,” I say.

Dad says, “It means we’re our own family now.”

YEARS LATER, AFTER my mom and dad were both gone, I thought a lot about the family we never had. After so many secrets and silences I was determined to learn more about them. I wanted to find the truth. In college, in 2001, I searched the Providence Journal archives and came across an article about my mother’s final moments. There was a description of her face turning purple as two men put all their strength into strangling her. At the time I was reading Yeats in one of my classes and I couldn’t stop thinking about the poem “An Irish Airman Foresees His Death.”

I know that I shall meet my fate

Somewhere among the clouds above;

Those that I fight I do not hate

Those that I guard I do not love;

My country is Kiltartan Cross,

My countrymen Kiltartan’s poor,

No likely end could bring them loss

Or leave them happier than before.

Nor law, nor duty bade me fight,

Nor public man, nor cheering crowds,

A lonely impulse of delight

Drove to this tumult in the clouds;

I balanced all, brought all to mind,

The years to come seemed waste of breath,

A waste of breath the years behind

In balance with this life, this death.

It stayed with me because I associated it with my father, an Irishman, but as I read the vivid description of my mother’s murder a feeling rushed through me. It was a kind of sick excitement. I was shaking a little bit in the computer lab at school as I read the article and kept thinking about one line from the poem. “A lonely impulse of delight…” That’s how it felt to read those words for the first time.

And so I kept looking, for years, on and off, when the urge struck me.

I hunted down documents, collecting a larger and larger pile over the years. In one, a police report, a Cranston police officer writes that “On Friday 3-1-85 at approx. 1615 hours, I learned that the Providence PD had received an inquiry from Johnston PD in ref. to missing person, Joan B. Carroll 30 YOA. In checking with Johnston PD I was, in turn informed to contact Det. Donald Alberico of Prov. Intelligence Division. In attempting to do so, I spoke with Det. Francis Altomari who informed me that the body of Joan Carroll had been tentatively identified as being found in Sharon, MA.”

It’s unclear whether the police told my grandparents and aunt about the discovery of her body that evening. My grandmother insists that she heard about the body on the radio and my aunt insists she saw my mother’s skeleton on the evening news, though it doesn’t seem to make sense that the press would have known before them. She’d been missing six months. A young woman yes, but a drug addict also. Women “like that” often go missing. But when I continue to read the report, it states that the next morning, the officer responded to the Goldman home at 65 Midland Drive and spoke to both Mr. and Mrs. Goldman and their daughter in reference to the tentative identification of Joan Carroll. It was explained to them that the positive identification would not be able to be made until dental records had verified the same, but that they had good information to believe that the partially decomposed body of their daughter had been recovered in Sharon, Massachusetts.

Upon returning to hdqts, after notifying the Goldmans it was requested by Sgt Cooke that I call Det. Thomas Oates and learn the further details of the recovery of the missing person. I learned that she had apparently been strangled in a motel in either North Attleboro or Attleboro prior to having her body dumped on the embankment of Rt. 95 in Sharon, Mass.

The next morning, 3-3-85, Hacket received confirmation of the dental records. And on 3-4-85 he cancelled the missing person report of Joan B. Carroll.

A photo of the girl was left with the OIC to be picked up by the Bristol County District Atty’s office or by a representative of Mass. State Police in ref to their homicide. Cause of INC: Recovered body of missing person Joan B. Carroll. <<REPORT COMPLETED>>

When I read the report, I had that sick rush again. That “lonely impulse of delight.” Here it was: the truth.