Joseph had no idea how to go about tracking down Bill Burgess. If he couldn’t find Burgess’s address in Florence’s correspondence, he thought it likely that he’d find it in the notebook she had carried back and forth to Wellesley the last two years. For as long as Florence had been talking about swimming the English Channel, she’d been recording her training regimen, diet, and even her sleep in a small notebook with a pale blue cover. On it she’d written in bold lettering, FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS THE ENGLISH CHANNEL. As if it were already fact.
Joseph was impressed by her careful notes, neatly labeled diagrams, tables drawn with a ruler to keep the lines straight. On some pages, she’d glued newspaper articles about other swimmers, other long-distance attempts. He remembered feeling a little awestruck as he flipped through the notebook’s pages, wondering if—hoping—his daughter applied the same exactitude to her schoolwork.
Yes, the notebook would surely deliver a clue as to Burgess’s whereabouts. And, for Dirkin, perhaps a letter was the best course of action. Something she could pass along to the administration, to be filed away alongside Florence’s partially completed transcript. Joseph heaved himself out of his beach chair and went to stand on the other side of his desk. He drummed the blotter as he considered his options. Finally, he called for his secretary, “Mrs. Simons, will you come in here for a moment?”
That evening, when Esther went to lie down, Joseph took the opportunity to tap lightly on the door of Fannie and Florence’s old bedroom, which Florence had briefly shared with Anna.
“Come in,” he heard Anna say from inside the room.
“Do you mind if I bother you for a minute? I’m looking for something.”
Anna had been lying on her bed—Fannie’s old bed—reading a book. But when he entered she sat up, kicked her feet over the edge of the mattress, and found her shoes. Joseph didn’t mean to make her uncomfortable, wanted her to feel as if the space were hers, too.
“Don’t get up,” he said, but she was already standing. “Please, sit.”
She did so tentatively. Her book remained closed, a finger sandwiched between the pages to hold her place. She watched him look around the room, as if he were inspecting it for the first time. Had he really never noticed how dark the room was at night?
“Is there a bulb out in that lamp?” he asked.
Anna peered under the shade and shook her head. “No, it’s fine.”
“It’s dark in here. Hardly enough light to read by.”
Anna looked at the lamp again, and then at the book in her hand. “It’s all right.”
Joseph made a mental note to look for a bigger lamp, with a stronger bulb.
The room was generously proportioned. Against one wall sat two brass beds, and between them was a Stickley bedside table that had belonged to Esther’s mother. There were also two dressers, neither of which were particularly fine pieces of furniture. On the dressers were a few knickknacks—a kaleidoscope that Joseph had given Fannie when she was too old to get much enjoyment out of it and the Pageant Cup, which Florence hadn’t bothered to remove when they’d moved out of the apartment last summer.
He began to open the drawers of Florence’s dresser, then wondered if he owed Anna some kind of explanation. “I’m looking for Bill Burgess’s address,” he said.
She placed her book on the bedside table and walked over to the dresser, turned on another lamp, which cast even less light than the one beside her bed. “Bill Burgess is her coach?” she asked.
“In France, yes. Or maybe England.”
“I haven’t seen an address book.”
“I wondered if it might be in her correspondence. Or maybe in that swimming notebook she kept. The one with the pale blue cover.”
“That’s here,” she said, leading him over to the bedside table. She pulled open the drawer, letting the delicate brass handle clink against the drawer plate, then stepped aside, sat back down on her bed. “I haven’t seen many letters. Is it possible she left them at school?”
Joseph nearly wept at the sight of the notebook. All of that energy, all of his daughter’s hopes for herself, never to be realized. He picked the book up and sat down on Florence’s bed, facing Anna. The inked words on the cover had run together since the last time he’d laid eyes on it. He ran his fingers along the words that were still legible: FLORENCE ADLER SWIMS.
He turned the first few pages slowly, reading every word. An entry from last July read, Replaced my morning meal of toast with a banana. Felt like I could have swum forever, and he had to stop. He wasn’t going to be able to get through it, not in front of Anna. “Here,” he said, handing the notebook to Anna. “Will you take a look? It’s just an address I’m looking for. So I can write to him. Tell him she’s—”
Anna nodded, opened the notebook, and began to turn its pages.
Joseph admired the girl’s seriousness, her ability to focus on the task at hand. “You remind me a great deal of your mother,” he said as he watched Anna study his daughter’s neat handwriting. “Inez was the type of girl who couldn’t be easily distracted.”
Anna beamed. “She doesn’t talk much about—her childhood.”
“By that, do you mean, she doesn’t talk much about me?”
The girl flushed.
“Why should she?” he said. “I am the past.”
“Our pasts are important, no?”
Joseph shrugged an acknowledgment. He wondered how
