he was nineteen. My parents bought a plot next to his for themselves. They bought one for me, too. One big enough for a future husband and for any future children that might, like George Jr., die before their time.
I can’t blame my parents for thinking that I’d stay in LaFargeville, or at least settle down nearby in Depauville or Clayton. Even when I went off to Hemphill College to study library science, I’m sure they figured I wouldn’t end up any farther away than Alexandria Bay, or, since I was proving to be a headstrong girl with gumption, Watertown. Little did they know that my sights were set on Syracuse. When I was ten, my Aunt Dorothy took me to the main library in downtown Syracuse. I was staying with her that summer, helping her with her housework while she was recovering from her “women’s problem” surgery. Anyway, I took one look at that big castle full of books and knew I wanted to spend the rest of my life in there, bathed in all that respectful silence, sniffing in all that slowly decaying ink and paper, far away from the smell and moo of my father’s cows.
Instead, I met and married Lawrence Sprowls, who after a few fairly happy years of marriage metamorphosed into a skirtchasing skunk. But that marriage did keep me far away from LaFargeville. And it did land me the best-possible job in the world: head librarian of The Hannawa Herald-Union. I remember what I wrote my aunt a few months after getting the job: It’s better than a castle, auntie. It’s a newsroom.
I sat on the ground in front of my parent’s stone. I clapped my hands for James. He came running. He plopped next to me. Begged me to scratch his floppy ears. “There’s nothing wrong with spending your life in LaFargeville,” I told him, “being a dairy farmer or a dairy farmer’s wife. But I sure knew it wasn’t for me. I knew from the get-go I’d have to go somewhere else and be somebody else. I would have exploded like an over-baked potato if I’d stayed here. And maybe that’s what Violeta Bell did, James. Maybe she was from some boring little place like this. She knew it was either escape or explode. She gave herself a new name and a new history. More than likely she’s no more Romanian than you are.” I took him by the ears and stared into his eyes. “You’re not, are you?”
James waited for me to struggle to my feet then followed me to the car. “Maybe she had an aunt who took her to an antique store once,” I said. “Maybe she fell in love with all the fancy old stuff and knew that was just the life for her. Not that we want to paint her too sympathetically, of course. She was very likely a crook. Very likely she changed her identity to stay out of jail. We’re not talking about Mother Teresa here, James. But criminality aside, you’ve got to admire someone who knows what it takes to be happy inside their own skin.”
We drove into LaFargeville. It was as humble as it was when I was a girl. A hundred modest houses. A bank. A school and three churches. No real downtown.
LaFargeville is-how should I put it-very white. Everybody is either German or English. Everybody is either a practicing Catholic or a well-practiced Protestant. Everybody is either a Republican who votes Republican all of the time or a Democrat who votes Republican most of the time. Everybody is either married or wishes they were.
I drove past the house on Maple Street where my niece, Joyce, grew up. After my mother died, Joyce was my only living relative in LaFargeville. Now she was gone, too. For thirty odd years she’d militantly extolled the virtues of remaining single. Then five years ago she met a widower at a stamp collector’s show in St. Louis and married him. She now lives in Wahoo, Nebraska. She keeps begging me to visit.
I drove by the house on Mill Street where my girlfriend Edna Schwed used to live. It used to be painted white, like most of the houses in LaFargeville. Now it was painted pink. Which made me suspect that Edna still might live there. Pink was always her favorite color. I thought about stopping. But good gravy, what if Edna did still live there? What on earth would we talk about? Other than what her neighbors thought about her pink house?
I drove down Ford Street to see if the house where Chuck Crouse lived still had that fancy slate roof. It did. All through high school I daydreamed about Chuck Crouse. What it was going to be like being married to him. What the s.e.x. would be like. What the four children we’d have would look like. Would the two girls favor me and the two boys favor him? Or, heaven forbid, would it be visa versa? Don’t get me wrong. Chuck and I never dated. Chuck was too shy to ask any girl out. And I was too below average-looking for him to overcome that shyness. As I drove by, I wondered what had happened to Chuck. I’d Googled his name before leaving Hannawa. There were several Chuck Crouses but none of them were my Chuck Crouse.
I pulled into at Waggoner’s Grocery, the only real business in town. There was a single Sunoco pump in front. There was a big blinking New York State Lottery sign in the window. It was getting hot already. I left the windows down a crack so James could get whatever breeze there was. I went inside. The store hadn’t changed much since I was a girl. Pop and candy. Milk and bread. Cigarettes and beer. Lunchmeat and cheese. Tubs of ice cream for making cones. “You a Waggoner?” I asked the girl behind the counter.
“I think them’s all dead,” she said. “I’m a Gertz.”
The name didn’t ring a bell. I asked her to make me a double chocolate cone. I bought a Slim Jim for James. We ate our treats in the car and then drove north past Colby’s Dairy. When I was a girl just about everybody who wasn’t a farmer worked at Colby’s. I suspect it’s still that way.
Before leaving Hannawa I envisioned spending a day or two in LaFargeville, visiting all of our family’s old friends. The Siewertsons. The Griffens. The Wildenheims. I envisioned visiting the old Central School and the Methodist Church where I spent so much of my first eighteen years. I envisioned driving out to my parent’s farm on East Line Road. Getting a tour from the alpaca breeder who owns it now. Getting a peek inside my old bedroom maybe. Seeing if that big crack in the ceiling was still there. If the closet door still stuck. But now that I was in LaFargeville, well, I felt silly and lonely and a total stranger.
So I kept on driving, all the way to Philadelphia. Not the one in Pennsylvania. The one ten miles down the road. The one that’s about the same size as LaFargeville. The one that’s the home of Martin’s Pretzel Bakery. Their hand-twisted German-style pretzels are sold in fancy-schmancy stores all over the country. I bought a three-pound bag for Ike. For $14.50. I made James promise that he wouldn’t tell the old penny-pinching fool how much I paid.
I drove back to Watertown and checked out of my room at the Best Western. Then I drove up to Cape Vincent and pulled into line for the noon ferry to Wolfe Island. I was a day early for the cabin I’d reserved over there, but I was prepared to take my chances. James and I could spend a night in the car if we had to.
The attendant motioned me forward onto the little ferry. I stayed with James in the car. James is an American water spaniel. I was afraid if I took him up to the deck, he’d cannon-ball into the river and paddle back to shore. I didn’t need a scene like that.
Wolfe Island is the biggest of the famous Thousand Islands that choke the St. Lawrence River. While its southern shoreline tickles the American border, every inch of the island sits in Canada. It is 24 miles long with lots of pretty bays and points. Our family made two, one-day trips to Wolfe Island every summer. In June we’d go to one of those pick-it-yourself farms for strawberries. In August we’d pick wild blackberries. A couple of times in high school I went there with girlfriends to bicycle and picnic. It’s a lot more touristy now.
The ferry pulled out. I rolled down my window and stretched my neck to see. The water was flat and blue. In just fifteen minutes we were in Port Alexandria, pulling up to the Canadian customs booth.
I was ready for the girl with the Dudley Dooright hat. I handed her my birth certificate and driver’s license. As she looked them over it occurred to me how many times during her life Violeta Bell must have held her breath while her phony-baloney papers were given a perfunctory once-over.
The girl handed my papers back to me. “You aren’t bringing in any perishable vegetables, meats, or dairy products, are you?”
“Nope. No live minnows, firewood, or automatic weapons either.”
“Any dog food?”
“Only what’s already in him.”
She smiled. “You’ve done your homework.”
I handed her James’ records from the veterinarian, proving he’d had a rabies shot. “You wouldn’t know Prince Anton, would you?”
She didn’t. But she did know where I could buy food for James. At the grocery in Marysville. What the Canadians have against American dog food, I do not know.
Using the directions Eric printed out for me from Mapquest, I found my way around Button Bay to Clemens Road. At the end of that bumpy gravel path I found McWiggens’ Cottages. Four tiny white bungalows lined up along the rocky beach like bars of ivory soap.
On the porch of one cottage I found Alana McWiggens. She was a tall, bony woman with a face full of wrinkles. She had a thick thatch of gray, permanently windblown hair. She had a big ball of sheets and pillowcases in her arms. “I’m afraid I’m a day early,” I said after introducing myself. “My plans down in LaFargeville fell through
