San Francisco, 1999
“My sister called me last week. She’s mad.” Geoff looked up at Dr. O’Donnell, who was supervising the administration of some intravenous medication for him.
“Hmmm, mad, was she?” asked the doctor absently, making notes on Geoff’s voluminous medical chart. “Now you know that you may have had most of the benefit from the non-nucleoside reverse inhibitors … so we’re going to begin with the protease inhibitors …”
“I know, I know … Jason brings me all of the latest information.” He grimaced. “My body keeps finding ways to trick your new medicines, Doc. Anyway, back to Katie. She is mad at me—mostly mad at herself. I sent her a suitor, and she feels as if she acted like a dunce,” said Geoff. “She told me about dragging you to the Café to direct some spit at her ex-husband’s eye.”
O’Donnell smiled. “I didn’t mind a bit. We had a very good time.”
“How good?” asked Geoffrey, wanting to keep up the conversation to distract himself from the burning in his arm.
Dr. O’Donnell smiled. “She gave me a handshake at the restaurant and drove home in her own car. There—satisfied?”
“Are you going to see her again?” asked Geoff. “God, but this one burns as it goes in, Doc …”
“Just bear with it—we’re almost finished,” he said, placing one hand on his patient’s arm and squeezing gently. “I think that you’re going to feel a lot better in a few days.”
“What about my sister?”
The doctor merely smiled.
Santa Barbara, 1999
The UPS truck had delivered the parcel to Kate’s office at the Nature Defense Center on a day of wind and rain. The post-holiday load of deferred work had hit the little law firm, and gloom was in the air. When the parcel arrived, it sat on the receptionist’s desk for several hours while Kate met with her fellow staff members to sort out what they could take on—and what must be left to providence. Clean air, clean water … which law cases, which legislation? Who has the energy and time? More importantly, who has the money?
Finally she picked up the parcel from the tiny reception office and opened it. It was from Aunt Blanche’s attorney and contained a letter notifying her that her aunt had left the Nature Defense Center the sum of one hundred thousand dollars. The other item in the box was the small metal container that Kate had seen before. It held the crumbling old family letters, a small piece of fragile yellow lace, and a note from her aunt.
Dearest Katie:
Even though these things are totally illegible, they seem to have value to you. You have always been a good girl. I love you.
Aunt Blanche
Kate sat down on the receptionist’s desk and began to cry. Concerned colleagues gathered about her quickly. They had never seen her so emotionally distraught. Their worry for her quickly turned into joy at the large donation to their cause. Bottles of champagne and cider were definitely in order, and one of the volunteers was quickly dispatched to the nearest liquor store.
Kate shared her colleagues’ pleasure but held the little metal box close to her breast during the celebratory toasts. “Bless you,” she whispered. “If you still are somewhere, bless you, Aunt Blanche.”
When she finally arrived home, her apartment seemed darker and lonelier than ever before. She put on her bathrobe and slippers, and activated her gas-burning fireplace. Then she sat unsteadily on the rug before the fireplace and opened the metal box once more. The folded, fragmented papers were probably letters, written two hundred and twenty-three years ago by unknown hands. But they must have been written by one of the Cobhams since they had come down through that line. She couldn’t read them. Suddenly it occurred to her that she might take them to Karpeles Manuscript Library in town. They were experts with old documents. Perhaps there was a chemical process to enhance old ink. The idea was exciting. I’ll do it tomorrow, she promised herself, suddenly hopeful.
She closed the box carefully and moved it away from the fire. The rain had stopped, and she could see a glimmer of moon on the turbulent ocean beyond. She walked out to her small balcony, feeling the cold wind and enjoying the sight of the waves breaking on the beach below. It was January, and the year was new. It was the last year of the millennium, the year 1999. Could any of her ancestors have visualized the world as it was? Did they ever even try?
Kate closed her eyes, and the cold wind stung her cheeks. I am alive now, she thought. I can’t ever really see my ancestors. Time is the greatest prison of them all.
Geoff, full of chemicals and gifted with a vivid imagination, had met with Philip Cobham and defied time. Maddie simply re-created things as she wished, either in the past or the present. Even James had ancestors in his nightmares. Am I merely using them to help escape from an uncertain present?
She walked back inside and closed the doors. The room seemed unbearably warm after the chill of the storm winds. She went to her computer to try and write something about a meeting with one of the Cobhams, trying to imitate Geoff.
Kate sat down, and her eyes fell on Maddie’s latest installment of Rebecca White Cobham’s diary. The Revolution was over, the Cobhams were living peacefully on their lands in Virginia, and Ben was going to meet a prospective bride. She suddenly smiled as she imagined meeting with Rebecca, and her fingers began to fly over the keyboard.
The woman wore a yellow dress—at least it might have been bright yellow at one time. It was now faded, but very clean and carefully ironed. It had long tight sleeves, a high neck, fitted bodice, and gathered skirt. Her shoes were brown leather, laced up to her ankles and much worn. She had brown hair pulled severely back from her face into a bun at the nape of her neck, and wore no trace of jewelry or ribbon to soften the effect.
“You aren’t Rebecca,” said Kate.
“No. She ain’t herself. Father Cobham died,” the woman replied softly.
“Samuel?” asked Kate with surprise. “Samuel’s dead?”
The woman shrugged. “A month since. You got the letters? Mother Cobham wrote ’em herself. You’re one of the family back in Crab Apple Orchard, ain’t you?” She looked up at Kate with pale eyes, oddly prominent in her tanned and freckled face.
“I’m … one of the family,” replied Kate. “Would you like a cup of tea—or coffee?” she asked.
The woman shook her head. “No. And don’t be offering me any of the liquor neither. I don’t touch it, not like most of my family.”
“So, do you mind telling me your name?” asked Kate gently, sensing that this woman was very uncomfortable.
“I’m Priscilla, girl. I’m your grandma, remember? Y’all been lookin’ for me.”
“Ah,” said Kate slowly. “I surely have, Grandmother Priscilla. Thank you for coming.”
“No trouble. Not many folks take an interest in a woman like me.” Priscilla’s backwoods accent dropped away. Kate thought with amused detachment that her own imagination was not quite up to filling in Priscilla’s dialogue with archaic backwoods English.
“Most women are left out of history, Grandmother,” said Kate. “Your time is not much different from my own. But we’re fighting it.”
“Good. Men don’t do so well at running things. Oh, they think they do, but they don’t. They drink too much, waste their money, and make plans that don’t come true.” Priscilla sat up a bit straighter. “You folks have so much stuff. I don’t understand this world.”
“Nor would I understand yours, I think. Grandmother—you are the one who married Benjamin, Samuel’s son. What was he like?”
“Ben?” Priscilla paused. “I knew Ben most of my life. Families had been friends since they lived in Maryland. Before the war, Ben was the best of ’em. Tall and strong and not a heavy drinker like some. Now, remember that there weren’t so many folks about in our part of Virginia. You sparked and married where you could. But I was never pretty, and then there was this—” Priscilla suddenly gave a grimace, and pointed to her mouth. One of her two front teeth was missing. “An old sow charged me when I was ten years old. Knocked me into a tree stump and lost my tooth. My ma cried because she knew that I was marked for life. I got shy after that—tired of being called ‘gap girl’ and other such. Never went with boys. Thought that I’d be an old maid.”
“But—you did marry Ben,” said Kate consolingly.
“Guess that I was lucky there. Ben was real frisky before the war. Good-looking and had a lot of girls thinking about him. But then he got that shot in his leg, and he was real sick afterward. Limped around and seemed daft for a while. I guess my Pa figured that we two would make a good match. He offered Ben our land. A’course Pa didn’t really want the land, and it wasn’t all that good for growing things. But Ben and I managed for a few years.”
“Did you—like each other?” asked Kate carefully.
“Well enough. I remember when we met after church that day. Ben was all washed and looking uncomfortable. Everybody thought that I didn’t know that Pa had made Ben a proposition—but I knew. My stepmother reminded me of it often enough. This was my chance, she said. My one chance to catch a husband using the bait of Pa’s land.” For a moment, Priscilla looked so sorrowful that Kate thought she might cry. But she sniffed and sat up a bit straighter. “I got pride. I swore that I wouldn’t marry a man if I didn’t like him.”
“But you liked Benjamin Cobham?”
“Yes. He was really pretty smart, and not happy with the life he was living. I wore this dress to church that Sunday. I was only seventeen, and if I didn’t smile, folks said that I was passable looking. Just passable, of course. Folks was honest in those days—I knew that I was plain. It hurt, but I knew it.”
Kate said nothing, remembering how it felt to be an ugly duckling in the swan family.
“But Ben was real shy at first—said that he liked my freckles. We talked about horses and raising corn. Neither of us could read real well, and I never learned to write at all. So we talked about things we had seen and our folks, of course. Ben thought lots of his Ma and Pa.” Priscilla sighed. “I’m getting tired.”
“Can you tell me what happened to Samuel?” asked Kate quickly.
“Father Cobham? Why he took bad during that winter of ’86 or so. Caught some chill while coming back from a trading trip—he was looking at that new route down to the Mississippi. Anyway, he came home and Mother Cobham nursed him for two weeks before he took pneumonia and died. They was all very grieved.” Priscilla shrugged. “Sam Cobham was an old man when he died. A’ course, Mother Cobham lived to be the oldest person anybody knew. But she died a lot when Old Sam went, never was the same. Ben and I lived on our farm, raised our kids an’ visited when we could. Ben’s brothers, Tom and John, took over the Cobham lands—good acreage there. Better than ours. Finally we sold our place to Tom Cobham and moved over into Kentucky. Some of my brothers were there—and found some better soils. I liked Kentucky much better—it was pretty country and folks didn’t look down on each other. Some people in Virginia were getting ideas about being better than other folk ’cause they had more money and lots of black people working for them. I never held with that and neither did Ben. We never owned nobody.”
“But what about you, Grandmother Priscilla? How was your life after you went to Kentucky?” asked Kate. “I haven’t been able to find out anything in the old records.”
Priscilla grimaced. “Child, this is your imaginary interview! Maybe you’re tired, honey. Time for you to go to bed.”
“But I want to ask you—”
Priscilla shook her head. “No. You’ve got other things to do than try to dredge me up, Katie. There’s that nice young doctor, for one thing!”
Kate laughed as the image of Priscilla faded away. Just what I need, she thought, another relative to tell me what to do!