I let a few days pass. Clara came and went with hardly a word between us. She was gone from the house most of the time and when she came home she'd make a sandwich or a bowl of soup and bring it to her room. Then I'd hear her music start up. If I tried to talk to her she'd ask me to leave. If I asked her to join us for dinner she'd roll her eyes and say "I've already eaten. Leave me alone."

Then, I remembered the box. Margaret's things. I had to go through them. I had to gather information about the situation so I could help Clara. I called Joan and told her what was happening and that I wouldn't be able to go to the meeting that afternoon.

"Should I tell them you won't be canvassing this weekend either?" I could hear her exhaling a drag from her cigarette.

"No. I won't be able to. I have to get this straightened out."

Of course she understood. "Just eat something," she advised. "Just eat something and get some sleep tonight." She asked if there was anything else she could do. There wasn't. As I was heading upstairs I passed myself in the hall mirror. I caught my reflection. I turned back and looked at myself. I looked old. I looked crazy. I had fixed myself up, but it was like Jeff had described about pimento, the real me was seeping through. I felt myself start to cry. I was going crazy. I could feel that it was building momentum. I didn't remember any other time in my life that I was so obsessed with something. Maybe it was my tether to Clara. It was as far as it could be stretched. I couldn't hold on to her anymore and I was afraid. Jeff should have been too. Her mother had killed herself and I thought Clara had told me that she was thinking of doing the same. Of course, it may have been the drugs she was taking. Even so, she was doing drugs so often that I knew if the idea of harming herself occurred to her, she'd wouldn't have the inhibition to stop herself and get help. I don't know why I thought Margaret's pictures, letters and diaries would help me. I just knew I had to go back to them.

Up in my room, I sat on my bed with the cardboard box in front of me. I didn't know why our former housekeeper had wrapped stacks of things in white paper. I wondered if there was some order to it, but there was none I could discern. I removed as many stacks as would fit on the bed. I decided to keep them as they were; each bundle a story on its own. I looked in the box and there stacked on the bottom were about 10-15 journals. Each one a small daybook bound in leather. I felt my heart stop. I knew that somewhere in those books diaries was the story of my affair with Jeff. It wouldn't be the romantic; it wouldn't be the renaissance in my life brought on by the affection of this handsome artist. It would be something ugly and dark. I felt myself start crying again. It seemed to me in that moment, I'd always wept, as though I'd never stopped. I wiped under my eyes and realized that I only had a few real loves in my life. Certain ones. I loved my children desperately. I'd loved my beautiful, bold mother. And I'd loved Mary. I wasn't sure if I really had loved Jeff. I knew that despite our incompatibility and how I viewed his behavior –violent and shameless—my loyalty to him never waned. I recognized my feelings for him when we were alone together, but I somehow knew that maybe my perception of those intimate moments was nothing more than a sorted knot of confusion, attraction, maybe even lust. I didn't know if what I felt for Jeff constituted love.

I removed one of the journals. It written was before Jeff and I met. August 1943.

August 10th 1943

The heat wave persists. Clara is difficult. She doesn't seem to like the heat. I can't care for her, and I am relieved that we have Mrs. Tillman. I'm glad for a nanny to bring her to me when she's settled. I find I'm able to rock her for an hour or so before I become exhausted and need to retire to my room. Often it isn't even dinnertime. I don't know what has happened to me. Sometimes I look out the front window and I can see the other mother's in this God forsaken town, I see them with their baby carriages, stopping on the sidewalk. Why are they so happy? It feels as if they're mocking me. I think of the life I could have had, if not for 'him.' What kind of man seduces a girl? What kind of 29 year old man seeks out a 19 year old girl and takes her future from her? I don't have anything. No family, no life. I can't stand the feel of his touch.

I sat for a moment. At the time of that entry, I hadn't been one of the women pushing a baby carriage. I hadn't had any children yet. In fact, at that time I was waiting for my young husband to returned from overseas. I was more than ready to be a mother, to join the others pushing carriages. Until the news of Nick's death, I had kept up myself busy playing the part of his wife. I was so good at it.

Perhaps, Margaret had seen Carmen and me walking past, carrying a plate of cookie's for the garden club meeting. I always knew that there were two parts of my relationship with Carmen. One was our genuine love for one another. We couldn't be in the same room without immediately jumping into an animated conversation, finishing each other's words. Just thinking of her made me miss her terribly even though we'd grown so far apart that we hadn't talked in over five years. There was the other side of our relationship; it made my heart sink to think about it. The side that was for show, to make other girls envy us. We were pretty ad popular and it was an unspoken act we put on. I wonder if Margaret had ever seen us, Sellwood was so small.

My mind turned to Jeff. She really did seem to hate him. Although I understood how she could ask, what kind of 29 year old man seeks out a 19 year old girl. I tried to imagine the circumstances and if she had been so nondescript, so bland why would he have even been interested in her in the first place? And, if she loathed the sight of him why would she have gotten involved with him? I picked up another journal. This one was from 1945. By then Jeff and I were romantically involved. I was afraid. I dreaded her words from that time.

June 1945

I know who she is.

A bolt of electric shock struck me. I felt like I couldn't breath. Like I'd been caught, but this entry was 20 years old. There was no getting caught any more. It had all happened. Those days of adultery had long since passed; it was over.

It wasn't difficult to recognize her. One night while Jeff was sleeping I went into his portfolio. He didn't even have the decency to put the pictures and drawings away. The photographs were of the beach. She was next to him, posing in front of a little food shack. I recognized the place from a trip we'd taken to Cannon Beach. It was on the side of the road, on a bluff. I compared the photograph to my memory of being there with Jeff. I had been holding little Clara. I remember her feeling like a a heavy stone in my arms. But, in the photographs with his lover, she appears beautiful and happy. Of course, I recognized her from the neighborhood. She is very attractive. She seems to be in the center of the women who live here. I hate him for picking someone like her. He's never home and I don't understand why, on the nights that he is, he comes into my room. He knows how much I hate being intimate with him. He enters the room as if it's his right. He wakes me and I hold my body still, I clench my teeth until its over with. I would have thought if anything were to send me into another episode it would be his evil touch. After every time, I fall into the most despicable fantasies but they evaporate and in their place is a blinding darkness. I am already dead.

I went back a little further to the time right after Clara was born in July, 1944. I wanted to see if she felt about Clara as I had about Charlie. If she couldn't take her eyes off of her, if she was mesmerized for months content to have every moment filled with him and a growing love, unlike any other.

July 29th, 1944

I can't stop crying. Mother returns all of my letters, unopened. I don't know how to take care of a baby. I feel as if I will drop her and over and over I have the same thought, what if I smother her? It's a fear that has taken such deep root that I have the nanny keep her most of the time. I don't want to be responsible for the child's death. When I hold her the thought won't leave me alone. It's driving me mad. She is only a month old, perhaps when she's sturdier I will change my mind.

I can't leave my room. I don't want to. I just want my mother. Jeff will come sit with me after work. Sometimes he sits for hours on the chair next to the bed. He brings the decanter of scotch and cigarettes. He smokes and drinks in the blackness of the room, even though its summer. Even though outside of the heavy drapes, I know it is a beautiful dusk. All I can do is stare up at the ceiling light. The irony of it, the darkness and the opportunity for light. How have I died like this?

"I'm dead." I tell him.

"Tomorrow I expect you to get out of bed and act like a mother." He says to me every night before he leaves me.

I put the journal down. I didn't understand any of it. I couldn't imagine their life together. At that time, mine was just beginning to change. The path was revealing itself. First the news of Nick's death, my own morbid darkness and then Jeff. I'd always felt he had resurrected me from sinking completely into melancholy. What a strange experience it must have all been for him. Going home to a wife who was completely swallowed by death and darkness, then seducing a woman who was almost lost in the same agony. Why did I come out of mine; why did she end her life? I couldn't shake the image of Jeff sitting in the dark room with her, drinking and smoking. He must have cared. Had he cared about Margaret? Or just Clara?

I made my way downstairs to make dinner for the kids. I walked into the front room and saw that Charlie was there with his girlfriend Emily. Emily was a pretty girl, very smart. Emily had blonde shoulder length hair and usually wore a headband. She almost always wore a skirt with a button up shirt and nylon stockings with loafers. She wore make up but it only accentuated her natural beauty.

She was going to follow Charlie to Colombia after she graduated high school the following year. I liked her but she was more of a girl like Anna than someone like me. Charlie was like his father in more ways than he recognized.

"Hello Mrs. Lambert," she stood up from the couch and walked over to me. They had been watching television.

"Hello darling. How are you?"

"We're doing well. Charlie and I were planning out how we were going to survive next year."

I smiled at her. She was sweet and she adored my son. I suppose she wasn't completely like Anna. In addition to a future with Charlie, she had other ambitions too. She was going to study English Literature at Colombia. I questioned whether their relationship would last that long, if she really would end up at the same college.

"Have you figured anything out?"

She frowned a little, but even that had a sweetness to it. "No. we'll mostly stay in touch through letters and telephone conversations. Except during holiday breaks."

"It won't be easy," I said, "but it sounds very romantic. Are you staying for dinner sweetheart?"

"Yes. If that's all right. We're going out to a movie later."

"Wonderful," I said. Then I turned to Charlie, "Sweet heart, will you let Jeffery and Clara know that dinner will be ready in half an hour."

"I'll let Jeffery know but Clara's not here."

I felt my stomach drop. "Where is she?"

"Don't know," he said, "I just know she's not home. Her door is open upstairs and she's not there."

"Oh brother," I said under my breath, "well let Jeffery know."

After dinner the kids went out and I was again alone in the house. It seemed it was the same ritual every night. I couldn't focus on anything but those interminable moments waiting for Clara to come home. Waiting to make sure she was safe. Only once I was reassured could I finally go to sleep. But, that night reassurance never came. Charlie returned home at 11:00. He was surprised to see me sitting in the front room when he walked in the door.

"Jesus mom, what are you doing sitting down here in the dark?"

"I'm waiting for Clara."

"She never came home?"

I shook my head. "Not yet. I'm worried."

"Do you want me to sit with you and wait? I could go out and see if anyone's around."

"No. Go to sleep. She'll be back."

Not ten minutes after Charlie went up, Jeffery came home. He opened the door and had a similar reaction when he saw me sitting there. I had turned on the light after Charlie came home so it wasn't such a shock for him. He was after his curfew so he likely thought that I had been waiting for him.

"I'm sorry mom," was the first thing he said to me.

"Where were you?"

"I lost track of time after the game." As much of an intellectual as he was, he loved paying baseball. I used to go to all of his games but as he grew older I went less and less. By the time he was 16 he didn't really want his mother hanging around too much. I don't remember Jeff ever attending any of the boys' practices or games.

"Come here for a minute," I said.

He walked over and sat down next to me. "Are you ok?"

I shrugged my shoulders. "I'm worried about your sister." He looked at me with his chestnut brown eyes. His dark hair was almost shoulder length. Despite having no blood relation to me, one would think he got his looks from my side of the family. He didn't resemble Jeff in any way. By then the image of Margaret was burned into my mind and I didn't see any of her in him either.

He looked at me with compassion. He was one of the only people I knew who could just sit with me when I was hurting. He put his hand on mine and waited for me to say more.

"I don't want to upset you," I said softly, not looking at him.

"You won't." his tone matched mine.

I looked up at him and met his gaze. He was such a kind and empathetic person. I smiled at him. "I have to talk to you, but I don't want to hurt you."

"Is something wrong with Clara?"

"Well, yes but that's only part of it."

He nodded. "What's wrong with her?"

I started to cry but regained my composure. I bit my lip.

"It's ok mom. I won't be upset. You can tell me."

I didn't know how to tell him the story. I didn't know how much he knew about his family history. He was too young to remember for himself. "Clara's upset because she remembered something about your mother."

He raised his eyebrows and watched me.

"It was something that I didn't know about until she told me. I don't know how I never knew. I guess I didn't put the pieces together or maybe I just kept myself from the truth."

"What's the truth? What did she remember?"

"You know how much I love you. I wanted to adopt you and Clara from the moment I met you. I've always loved you as if you were my own. I feel like you are my own children."

"I know that."

"But..." I looked away. I didn't know where to start my story. I wondered if I should just tell him that Margaret had committed suicide. I wondered if I should start with my own role in it. In the end, I knew that was I should start with what I'd done, but I feared he would see me the way Clara did. "You knew that I'd had an affair with your father while he was still married to your mother?"

"I guess I did. I guess so."

"Of course you knew. There would have been no way for Charlie to be daddy's son otherwise."

"We never talked about any of it. I didn't even know my mother."

"No."

"When I was having an affair with dad, I didn't think about anything but that. To me it was a romantic love affair. I was young and my husband had just been killed in the war. I didn't have any family. My parents were dead and then when I lost my first husband, Nick." I knew I was just talking in circles but my sweet Jeffery just listened intently as though it was all perfectly logical.

"Maybe it was a romantic love affair, mom. Maybe you were in love with dad."

"OK." I took a deep breath and let it out.

"But even if that were the case, you can imagine that it caused your mother deep pain."

"Mom that was dad's fault not yours." His words echoed Charlie's, a different affect maybe even a different motivation but he felt the same way Charlie had. "He was married to my mother. He shouldn't have—"

"There's no excuse for my doing that to someone's family."

"I don't blame you."

"Well the last thing I want is to cause distance between you and your father."

"You won't."

"Clara has been having a very hard time. You're mother was very, very sad. It seemed she'd been like that for a long time. I didn't know. Honestly I didn't although I should have known better than to do that with a married man. Just as I should have known last week when I saw your father. The reason Clara and Charlie were so upset with me last week was because I spent time with him."

"I know. Clara told me."

"Well I shouldn't have done that either. I shouldn't have done that to Anna."

"But she did it to you."

I couldn't help but laugh. It was so ridiculous. I smiled at him and he smiled back. He obviously saw the humor in that aspect of the situation. I realized on the one hand it must seem so completely mundane to imagine these love triangles between people my age. On the other hand, no child wants information about their parents' love lives.

"What happened last week doesn't matter right now. Clara is so upset because she remembers being with your mother when she died."

Jeffery didn't respond. He looked a little stunned.

I continued, "Your mother killed herself. That was how she died."

Jeffery leaned back into the couch and looked down at his hands. I knew I had hurt him and I knew I had to sit in silence, supporting him the way he always supported me. He looked like the quintessential teenager, tan pants with black boots. He wore a white short-sleeved button down shirt with a white t-shirt underneath. He was so handsome. I had the same feeling with him as when I looked at the other two children. My heart grew so warm and full of adoration.

"I'm sorry." I whispered.

"I didn't know she did that."

"No. I didn't either."

"No one ever talks about her." He paused. "it makes me so sad that we all forgot her. That she was so unhappy that she killed herself and we never even kept a picture of her."

I thought of the box of pictures. Of course I would give them to the children.

He looked at me and kept his gaze fixed. His voice was monotone, "We never ever talk about her. Are my grandparents still alive? Did she have any brother's or sisters? Why didn't we ever talk about her mom?"

"I'm sorry."

"Why did she kill herself. Was it because of you?"

I felt like the child. I lifted my shoulders and held them for a moment. I relaxed them again. "I don't know. Maybe it was. It could have been."

He put his hand over his chin and rubbed it for a moment. "I don't know what to say to you."

"It's worse, though. Clara was with her when she did it. She didn't remember until recently. I don't know what caused her to remember. She wanted to talk to daddy about it."

"What does he have to say? He's the one who should have told us." I could hear anger in his voice. It was so out of character for him. "He should have told you before he asked you to marry him. Don't you think that's true?"

"I don't know."

"Did you ask him about it?"

"I did."

"What did he say?"

"He said it was true. But, you know him, he didn't want to talk with me about it. He was very upset."

"What does Charlie think?" Of course Jeffery would ask about Charlie. He took his cues from Charlie. He had even as a child; ever since the two of them met.

"Jeffery, you know what Charlie thinks. He always thinks everything is daddy's fault. But, not this time. This time I have to take responsibility too."

"Were you still having an affair with dad when she did it?"

I shook my head. "No. I'd moved away." I knew if I wanted to preserve any relationship between Jeffery and his father that I couldn't tell him my whole story. How Jeff pursued me while I was pregnant and threatened me. How he eventually saw to it that I was committed to a mental hospital. I would have to carry more of the burden than I deserved. I wasn't with Jeff when she killed herself. But, I had been with him for years. He had spent time sketching pictures of me that he'd kept in their house. And, he had told her about me and Charlie.

"So how can you blame yourself?" He asked.

"Because it had been years that I was having an affair with daddy. Your mother knew I had Charlie. She knew everything. We lived in a small town everyone knew everyone. But your mother wasn't from there. She didn't have any friends. Her parents wouldn't have anything to do with her."

"How do you know all of that?"

I froze.

"Did dad tell you all of that?"

I shook my head. "No. I have a box of her things that I'd never looked at. I saw it the day of Charlie's party. Once Clara told me, I went down and got the box. I've been reading her letters. I was going to give it to you and Clara. All of it, of course."

"I want to talk to dad." Jeffery said. He stood and walked towards the phone.

I got up and took his arm. "Wait."

"No mom."

"Wait until tomorrow. You can call him then. It's too late."

"No. he should have told me." His voice was trembling. I saw how much I'd upset him. Jeff was right about me. I didn't have tact or thoughtfulness. I didn't have to deliver the news like I did.

He picked up the receiver and dialed. I watched his expression, shadowed in the dim room. After a moment he said, "This is Jeffery, I'd like to speak with my father." Then there was a short quiet while he listened. "He is?" Jeff's voice was full of disbelief. "When did he go?" Then after another short pause. "Never mind," Jeffery said and hung up the phone.

I stood and put my hand on his arm. "What happened sweetheart?"

"They're on vacation."

"They went to Hawaii again."

"Again?"

"They've gone before. I remember. Not recently I don't think." He looked down at the phone, "Did you tell him about Clara? About how upset she is?" He looked back at me.

"I told him that she told me the truth. And that she was very upset."

"Why would he go then?"

"He probably doesn't know how bad it is." Jeffery let out a breath and shook his head. He took on Charlie's manner. "Stop making excuses for him," he said. He'd never used that tone with me. He walked up the stairs to his bedroom.

I stayed awake all night. Clara didn't return home. The horrible intuition that was hiding behind my anger, fear and shame had transformed into the frightening truth. Clara was in danger. Something bad was happening and I didn't know where she was or how to find out. When the sun came up in the morning, I lay down on the couch and wept. I pictured her face over and over, her blue eyes with large, dilated pupils. It was as though I could hear her crying "mommy." Just as she had the night she told me about all of it. I went up to my room. I was a walking corpse. I passed Clara's room and went inside. I looked around for some clue as to where she went at night, to where she might be. I looked through her drawers. I found a bag of grass and a small bag of pills. I didn't care about that in that moment. I wanted to know where she was. I was looking for a diary or a note from someone. Some evidence. I didn't even know who to call to ask questions. She had a whole new group of friends. The kids she'd always hung out with—the ones whose families I knew—they had been out of the picture since she'd graduated a year before. I knew whoever these new friends were, they were a bad influence. I didn't find anything that would help. I don't know why, but I lay down in her bed and pulled the covers up. I felt better smelling her sweet scent. I felt protected under her blankets. I continued to cry.

August 1948

Tonight Jeff told me he's gotten the woman pregnant. Eve Miller. I've known her name for some time. A few months ago I realized Jeff was having an affair. I'd seen the sketches he'd drawn of a woman. There were so many that I knew it wasn't a model from the museum. One afternoon over a year ago, I took Clara to the little park outside of the community house. I sat there with her all morning, in a shady spot watching the women come and go. That's when I saw her. She was wearing a red gingham dress, it accentuated her figure. She had dark hair and it short with a wave, like a film star might wear. When she walked up the stairs and all the other women seemed to want her attention. They'd stop and talk with her. She was so pretty and happy. All the other housewives hung on to her every word and she'd laugh and touch their arm as she spoke. She'd run her hand through her hair and then keep it on her cheek while she listened to the gossip. After a few minutes of watching her, making sure she was the one from the sketches, I turned to another woman next to me. She was talking with a friend, but I interrupted.

"Excuse me," I asked "Who is that woman? The one in the red dress?"

"That's Eve Miller. She's the chairwoman of the garden club."

When I looked at Eve again, I could see why she was so pretty, why she was so lovely. She was in love with Jeff. He'd made her that way.

Last night he told me he wanted to be with her, that he wanted to marry her. It wasn't two days after he'd had relations with me. How stupid I'd been. When she left Sellwood in the beginning of the summer, I thought it was over between them. It wasn't. She'd just moved away to have his child. I told him I didn't want to be married to him either, but I had no place to go. I was all alone. My parents had disowned me, I was in a town where I knew no one. I didn't have one friend, nor would I ever make any there. I felt ugly and excluded. The women here will never accept me. It was all his fault and I told him so. Where did he expect me to go with his child—a child I don't want.

After a long argument he told me that he was going to spend time with her and with their child--even if we stayed married. He told me that he would keep his obligations to me but that I had to understand he didn't love me and he never would. He said he was in love with her.