It was pitch black until he switched on the overhead light, revealing as in a flash photograph what looked like a crime scene, barring a body. The bed was large, old, unmade, and surrounded by several fold-up tray tables cluttered with half-empty glasses, a stained pizza box, crumpled tissues, bags of candy, and assorted junk. The floor was populated by small tepees of piled clothing. The furniture consisted of a single dresser and a makeup table so covered with belongings that only its spindly legs gave it an identity.
Friel crossed to the dresser, wrestled open one of its top drawers, making about a dozen dusty figurines grouped haphazardly across its surface tremble and rattle, and dug around until he extracted a cheap, pink plastic photo album stamped in gold with the logo, MEMORIES OF YOU.
This he handed to Joe. “Ton of crap in there-me, the old lady, my dad, Aunt Carolyn, bunch of other people. Postcards, too, newspaper clippings. Like I said…”
Joe took it from him and looked around. “Mind if I take this back to the kitchen?”
Friel shrugged. “Knock yourself out. I’ll go keep Mom company.”
“Before you go,” Joe asked him, “what’s the story behind your name being different from your mother’s and Carolyn’s?”
“Friel was my dad’s. After he left, Mom went back to her maiden name.”
Joe nodded. “Thanks. Just wanted to confirm my assumption.”
He and Lester returned to the kitchen and sat at the small table, Joe imagining Friel and his mother sharing meals here in total silence every night, whether they actually did so or not. It was a Norman Rockwell nightmare.
William Friel had been accurate in his description of the album’s contents. There were no labels to help them decipher the assortment, but in most cases, none were needed. The shots of small, stiff groupings facing the camera didn’t call for more elaboration than the body language in evidence. Plus, having met Barb Barber and her son, Les and Joe could easily decipher not just those two, if younger and occasionally more animated, but they could also see elements of the son’s features in the face of the brutal-looking man often posing with them.
“Fun bunch,” Lester nevertheless murmured, leafing slowly through the book.
Joe stopped him with an extended finger. “That must be Carolyn,” he commented, tapping on a smiling young woman standing beside Barb, their arms interlinked. “She’s cute.”
“Like a slimmed-down, brightened-up version of her sister,” Les agreed.
Joe pointed to another shot. “She’s certainly the only one who smiles any.”
Les came to a page with a folded news clipping, which he gingerly opened until it was about twice the size of the page to which it was attached. The glue had darkened a quarter of it, but it was still legible, and the grainy photograph of a beaming young Carolyn spoke for itself. She was waving at the camera next to a straitlaced man in a business suit, under the headline, GOVERNOR-FOR-A-DAY! The date at the top was just under fifty years ago.
“Who’s the guy?” Les asked, squinting at the caption.
“‘Young Caroline Barber,’” Joe read, adding as an aside, “they misspelled her name, ‘had her time in the spotlight as Governor-for-a-Day on Thursday, when Senator Gorden Marshall, R-Chittenden, introduced her to a joint session of the legislature as part of the Administration’s newly launched effort to bring the people closer to state government’s inner workings.’”
“Who in their right mind came up with that one?” Lester asked, peering at the picture. “Sure doesn’t look like Gorden Marshall thought much of it.”
“Is there an article that goes with it?” Joe asked, peeling the page back a bit to study the flip side.
“Doesn’t look like it,” Lester confirmed. “Guess the caption did it all.”
Joe took in the image for another few seconds before refolding the clipping and sitting back so that his colleague could resume turning pages.
“Oh, here you go,” Spinney said. “Maybe.”
He’d uncovered a pale blue envelope, mounted squarely in the middle of the page. It was addressed to Barb, with a return address of Carolyn’s. He eased it open and extracted a single sheet covered with small, childish writing. He handed this over to his boss.
Joe positioned it under the overhead light, the sound of the distant TV still filtering back like a thin fog. Lester sat quietly and watched him work through the letter’s contents.
Finally, Joe placed it flat on the table, next to the album, and rested his fingertips on it as if to monitor its pulse.
“Sounds like a sweet girl,” he said thoughtfully.
“She talk about her big day?” Lester asked.
Joe sat more comfortably and crossed his arms, looking at the letter. “Yeah. You can really feel her happiness with it all-like a kid at a birthday party. Really like a kid.”
Lester kept quiet, knowing when Joe was mulling things over. He took a stab at interpreting what was on the older man’s mind. “You want me to ask William back in here?” he asked, standing.
Joe glanced up at him in surprise. “Huh? Yeah-good idea.”
Smiling, Lester stepped down the short hall and fetched their host. Friel stood in the doorway as Lester resumed his position by the counter.
“Mr. Friel,” Joe asked, “did you know your aunt at all? You said that you last saw her when you were little.”
“Sure-before they put her away.”
“How would you have described her personality?”
Friel frowned at him. “Her personality? I don’t get you.”
“I don’t want to put words in your mouth,” Joe explained. “But what I’m looking for is how you might’ve described her to someone who’d never met her, like us, for example.”
Friel tilted his head slightly. “Nice,” he said. “She was always real friendly. Talked a lot, too. And laughed. I mean, she was simple, so that’s not too surprising. She wasn’t much given to serious thinking.”
Joe nodded, as if hearing a confirmation. “How do you mean, ‘simple’?”
Friel’s voice dropped, as if his mother could hear them from the front room. “Just that. Not too bright. That’s why she was fun company for a kid, I guess. She was still one herself.”
“What did she do for a living, back when she was made Governor-for-a-Day?”
For the first time, Friel smiled. “Was that in there?” He pointed at the closed album on the table. “The governor thing?”
“Yeah. What can you tell us about it?”
“It was the biggest thing that ever happened to her, but I don’t know much about it. I remember her saying to everybody, ‘I was governor once,’ again and again. It drove my mom crazy. She used to yell at Carolyn that it was just a publicity stunt, but Aunt Carolyn didn’t care.”
“How did it happen? Do you know? Or did your mom tell you afterwards, maybe?”
“Nah. Mom didn’t talk about it at all. Like I said, she hated it. Maybe she hated that Carolyn got the attention, when all she got was me and Dad. I don’t know.”
Joe returned to his original question. “So, what was Carolyn doing when she was put in the limelight?”
“Working in Montpelier. That’s all I know. I would hear them talking about it. But it was like when somebody says, ‘He works in Washington,’ you know? It means the government. That’s what I always thought. I can’t swear to it, though. What would they find for her to do, you know what I mean-given how sharp she was?”
“Right,” Joe said without conviction, thinking that there were plenty of things a pretty young woman might be asked to do in government, especially back then.
“Did Barb and Carolyn get along? You make it sound like they didn’t,” Joe asked, almost as an afterthought.
Friel surprised him with his answer. “Mom loved her. Same way I did. There was no getting Carolyn down. With all the bullshit my dad pulled, we needed every laugh we could get, and Carolyn was good for it. She may’ve been a loony, but she was fun. My mom and her were like joined at the hip. Maybe that’s part of what got to Mom about that governor thing-it split them apart a little.”