“Roy, would you please take out the placemats that are in the bottom drawer of the dining room dresser? The red ones underneath the candlesticks.”
“Sure, Mom.”
Roy’s mother was preparing the house for a dinner party that evening in honor of her Aunt Lorna, who was visiting from New York. Roy was fifteen and had not encountered his great-aunt since he was about two years old, an occasion of which he had no recollection. Lorna had helped Roy’s mother establish herself as a model in New York twenty-five years before and she had always been grateful to Lorna for her kindness and generosity; having a dinner party for Lorna during one of her rare visits to Chicago was the very least his mother could do.
“Ma, who’s Frank Jameson?”
“What, Roy? Did you find the placemats?”
“Yes, but there was a marriage certificate and a bundle of unopened letters with a string tied around it underneath the placemats. The marriage certificate is between Nanny and a man named Frank Jameson. Who is he?”
Roy’s mother came into the dining room and Roy handed her the certificate.
“And these letters all have a return address in Kansas City. They were sent to Nanny here in Chicago.”
“The letters are from your grandfather to Nanny. She never opened them because she was married at the time to Frank Jameson.”
“You mean that she and Pops got divorced? You never told me.”
“No, Roy, I didn’t think it was necessary for you to know. Maybe I was wrong not to tell you, but you and Pops were so close I didn’t want anything to interfere with that.”
“How long was Nanny married to Frank Jameson? You must have been a little girl then.”
“Ten years, from when I was six to sixteen. He had a heart attack and died on Christmas day, just after my sixteenth birthday. Pops wanted to re-marry my mother but she didn’t want to. He used to stand in a doorway across the street from our house and when she came out he’d try to talk to her. He’d gone to live in Kansas City after they divorced, then he moved back to Chicago after Frank died. Pops still loved Nanny and wrote her letters but she wouldn’t open them. Half of those letters he sent while Frank was still alive.”
“But she lived for twelve years after Frank Jameson died, until you were twenty-eight. Why didn’t she open them for all those years?”
“I don’t know. I only discovered them after Nanny died. I didn’t want to just throw them away.”
“Did you tell Pops you had them?”
“No. I meant to but I never did. I don’t know why exactly except that because of things my mother said I blamed Pops for breaking up their marriage. And after he died, I hid them away.”
“Along with Nanny’s marriage certificate to Frank Jameson. You grew up with him, Ma. Did you like him? What was his profession? And why did Pops and Nanny get divorced?”
“Frank was all right to me but not to my brother. I was sent away to boarding school, so I didn’t spend much time with him. He didn’t want anything to do with your Uncle Buck, and since Buck was fourteen years older than me he was already pretty much on his own. The Jameson family were fairly well-to-do. They were Irish, the father and mother were born in County Kerry, and there were four brothers, including Frank. They owned warehouses in and around Chicago. Frank was a devout Catholic, so Nanny began going to church regularly. She became close friends with the Mother Superior at St. Theresa’s, near where we lived.”
“She was in our house a lot when Nanny was dying. I remember her. I’d never seen a woman with a mustache before. What about Pops and Nanny? Why did they split up?”
“Pops had a girlfriend, Sally Carmel, who lived in Kansas City. I guess he met her on one of his business trips. He still loved Nanny, though, and wanted her to go back with him. I think that’s what’s in those letters.”
“Love letters.”
“I suppose.”
“Are you ever going to open them?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps it’s better to leave them unopened. They’re addressed to my mother, not to me. I’ve often wondered why she kept them. I should probably burn them.”
Roy’s mother replaced the letters and the marriage certificate in the bottom drawer of the dresser and closed it.
“Let’s not talk about this any more now, Roy. I’ve got to have everything ready for the dinner. Aunt Lorna will be here at five.”
She went into the kitchen. Roy sat down on a chair in the dining room and looked out the window. The sky was gray with black specks in it, a snow sky. He wondered what else his mother thought was unnecessary for him to know.
Walking to St. Tim’s the next morning, Roy asked his friend Johnny McLaughlin if he thought either or both of his parents kept secrets about their family from him and his brothers.
“The Catholic church is all about secrets,” said Johnny. “It’s the mysteries keep people comin’ back for more, hopin’ they’ll some day get filled in on the real goods. My Uncle Sean is always goin’ on about the Rosetta stone, you know, that hunk of rock found in Egypt over a hundred years ago has pictures of birds and half-moons on it symbolize something important. My parents ain’t no different. They just tell me and Billy and Jimmy what’s necessary to keep us in line. Only the dead know the meaning of existence, and they don’t answer letters.”
“They don’t even open them,” said Roy.