But she had also (and here she acknowledged her debt to Ralph Edwards) invited not only half the town of Rutledge and most of the people Jamie worked with in New York, but also many people Jamie thought he would never in his life see again. There was his closest friend from when he was a kid on Eighty-sixth Street (Jamie’s mother, who had helped Connie with the selection, stood by beaming as Jamie embraced the man), now a bit pudgy and going bald, an accountant in New Jersey. There was his old Army buddy, a rangy kid from Maine who’d trudged through the jungle by his side, and who’d once saved Jamie from an exploding grenade by tackling him and knocking him headlong off the machete-hewn trail; he was now a farmer, still living in Maine, married to a shy woman in her late thirties, who stood by uncertainly as Jamie and her husband reminisced about sudden death. There was Maury Atkins, his roommate from Yale, who had first warned him to stay away from Constance Harding, and who admitted jovially now that he’d almost made the biggest mistake of his life, embracing Connie, and surprising Jamie (Maury was now a banker in Bridgeport) by kissing him on both cheeks. There was Connie’s roommate from Lake Shore Drive, the bored-looking brunette who’d been sitting with her the first time he asked her to dance at that Yale mixer, the one who’d taught Connie to swear like a sailor. There was the couple who’d lived across the hall from them when they were renting their grubby little apartment on West Seventy-eighth; he’d been a dental student at the time, and his wife had worked for an insurance company; each night, as he’d pored over his textbooks and made his drawings of molars and bicuspids, she’d listened to the radio, wearing a headset and shaking her hips in time to the music as she washed and dried the dishes. There was the man who’d been the department head at the school where Jamie had taught photography three nights a week while waiting for his big break. There was the young, soft-spoken blond (now no longer young, his blond hair sifted with gray) assistant editor at Life, who’d murmured over and over again, “These are very good, these are very good,” before picking up the phone and asking someone named Charlie to come in and have a look. There was, under the Japanese lanterns on a surprisingly cool, clear night (it had been raining a lot this July), a steady parade of people from the past and the memories they evoked, and Jamie realized all at once just how long and how hard Connie had worked to reconstruct for him not only his own history, but the history they had shared together for so many years now.
In bed later that night, the partygoers gone, the Japanese lanterns extinguished and swaying in the treetops on a faint breeze that blew in over the river, the water trickling below their bedroom window, always a faint whisper in July, never the rushing torrent it became in March, she snuggled close to him and asked, “Did it make you happy, Jamie?”
“Yes,” he said. “Very happy.”
He did not mention that two people had been missing from his party. Two people missing from his life. His daughter Lissie. And his...
Joanna.
July 25, 1970
Dear Lissie:
Your three letters and the birthday collage you made arrived here today, were in fact waiting in the mailbox when Mom and I got up at noon after the party she gave for me last night. Thank God you’re all right, and thank you for your thoughtfulness. The collage is really beautiful, Liss. I’ve hung it in the barn, over my desk, and I’ll think of you whenever I look at it. I can’t begin to tell you how relieved we are. Before that batch of mail arrived, I had already called Andrews Travel and booked air passage for myself to Athens, fully intending to come there to Samos personally, certain that the goddamn Greeks had thrown you in prison or something. You’d mentioned in one of your earlier letters that the police thought you’d come illegally from Turkey, and I was beginning to think the worst. Thank God you’re all right, Lissie, and are still on Samos. Does this mean you’ve changed your mind about moving on to India? I hope so.
Do you know what I wished for last night, Lissie, when I blew out the candles on my cake? I know I’m not supposed to tell anyone, for fear it won’t come true. But let it be our secret, okay? I wished I would wake up one morning soon, and go down to the kitchen, and find you sitting there at the table shoveling cornflakes into your mouth. I would say, “Good morning, Lissie,” and you would look up and say, “Hi, Dad,” and go back to your cornflakes. And everything would be the same as it was again. I miss you, Lissie. Please come home soon.
Love,
August 3, 1970
Dear Mom and Dad,
We arrived here in Istanbul early Saturday morning and we have been roaming it since, enjoying every moment, though alas we will be leaving tomorrow morning. Dad, I’ve thought of nothing but you since the minute we arrived here. What a city for taking pictures! Everywhere you look, there is something new and different to see! I’m not only talking about the tourist attractions like the Blue Mosque or the Hagia Sofia, but the streets themselves, and the people in them, so alive and vital, and so unlike anything in America. It’s the only city in the world, you know, that actually straddles two continents, Europe and Asia, and the influence of both (continents) is felt everywhere you go. They are building a bridge across the Bosphorus right this minute, which means people will be able to walk across from Europe to Asia! Isn’t that something?
We’ll be leaving here tomorrow morning when we set out across Turkey toward Iran. I can’t begin to tell you how exciting all of this is, and how much I’m looking forward to the next leg of what so far has been the most rewarding time of my life. To be experiencing and learning, to be seeing all these different cultures so different from our own in America is more thrilling than I can possibly express. Please know that I love you both dearly, and will have much to tell you when I get home.
I can’t give you any address for you to answer because we will be on the road for the next several weeks, but I will write to you from time to time to let you know how I’m doing.
All my love,
August 3, 1970
Dear Lissie:
We have not heard from you since receiving those three letters and your birthday collage. Are you still in Greece? Is there some problem? I feel as if I’m trapped in some kind of nightmarish time-warp. In effect, Lissie, your past has become our present. We never know what’s happening or what you plan to do next until we receive a letter relating events that have already gone by. Please write more often, won’t you? Because just now, the distance between us has made a meaningless jumble of past and present.
Love,
Dad
11
This is Asia.
It begins, really and truly begins, not ten miles outside the city. They have taken the ferry from the Galata Bridge to Uskudar, and have hitched a ride in the back of a pickup truck piled high with ears of corn and driven by a Turkish farmer who does not speak a word of English. He drops them off at Izmit, before making a right turn onto a secondary road leading to Eskisehir, waving at them from the cab of the truck as it disappears in a cloud of dust. They walk almost half the distance from Izmit to Adapazari, at least twenty kilometers by their map. As dusk stains the western sky and a setting sun tinges the waters of the Black Sea to the north, they sit on their duffel bags by the side of the road, wearily waving their thumbs at passing automobiles and trucks. The huge trailer truck that finally stops is painted green, the legend LABERRIGUE & CIE, MARSEILLES painted in white on its side. The driver leans over toward the open window on his right. “Où allez-vous?” he asks.