Chapter 7
The next morning, I sleep in, only waking up when I hear Mom locking up as she leaves. There is a note on the table:
Dear Samantha,
You were still asleep, and you’ve definitely earned many mornings of sleeping in. There is some frittata for you in the warming drawer. I should be home around 8 tonight, feel free to share the leftover buffet with Henry.
Love,
Mom
P.S. Please practice your oboe before you leave the house for the day and stay out of the tower! XOXOXO
I find the frittata where she described and eat it at the counter as I steam the milk for my London Fog. Once I finish making my drink, I sit at the table to drink it slowly while I wake up more fully. The mug is heavy ceramic, solid in my hand, and it roots me in my morning. Before taking my first sip, I hover over the mug, smelling the perfectly steeped Earl grey with milk and hints of vanilla and lavender. As excited as I am about what the day may hold, I could stay like this all morning.
I decide against reading and focus on the tea exclusively, feeling myself gradually awaking like a daylily in the sun.
After finishing my drink, I practice my oboe on the sun porch, with an emphasis on the exercises Ms. Joon gave me yesterday and some of the solo pieces she assigned. Despite Mom and I agreeing to a half an hour of practice, I found myself really getting into it, and was surprised to find that 45 minutes passed rather quickly.
After oboe practice, it was still early, but as I attempted to read, I kept getting distracted by the thought of the letters. I was able to pace around the house, doing small chores wherever I found them--some laundry to fold, putting away clean dishes from the dishwasher, sorting the recycling--until it was almost 10, at which time, it seemed fair to grab a slice of pizza for lunch and leave for the school. Upon my arrival, I find Henry sitting on the front steps, drawing an impressively realistic chocolate labrador puppy catching a frisbee in his notebook with colored pencils.
“I was too excited to wait,” he confesses.
“Same. I couldn’t stop thinking about this all night.”
“I had to turn off my phone and stay away from the computer to keep from googling it.”
“I would say I got a lot of reading done to distract myself from it, but I couldn’t concentrate.”
“Yep, me as well.”
“Well, I did finish A Midsummer Night’s Dream. But usually I’d be able to finish a second book.”
“There is no way I’m going to beat you at summer reading.” Henry says with half a smile.
“Are you trying?”
“I’m not sure yet. Anyway, shall we?” He motions to the front door. As we enter, Henry flips to an earlier page in his notebook with the list we made yesterday. We pause in the front hallway, its floor slippery from a recent waxing, to look at the list.
“How do we want to divide this?” Henry asks.
“It makes the most sense for one of us to look up Mary in the phone book and on the internet and also use the internet to search for clothes while the other looks for letters in any sort of archive Dr. Plume might have and look for books on 1940s clothes.” .
“Your library skills make you a great detective already! Which one do you want? It is your mystery.”
“I’ll look for letters and books on 1940s fashion. I’m more familiar with the stacks, plus, Dr. Plume knows me better--that might make her more willing to share her archive.”
“I am better with internet research. I like this plan. So let’s work together for the next half hour or so...”
“Then I’ll continue while you’re at your lesson…”
“And when I’m done with my lesson, I’ll resume where I left off while you’re working on your lesson, and then when you’re done, we’ll share what we each found.”
Having established our marching orders, we rush up the back staircase to the library.
“Helen! Don’t try to carry those all by yourself, they’re much too heavy for one person!” Mr. Zaffre is chasing after Dr. Plume as she carries something large and unwieldy across the library. When Henry and I enter, he has caught up with her and is helping her maneuver what turns out to be stacks of old class photos.
“Hello young scholars,” he says to us with a smile, “would you be willing to give us a hand with these?”
We take one of two remaining piles between us and move them to the far edge of the library table, and then return for the final pile.
“These are high school pictures,” Henry says, “I thought this was an elementary school.” We regard the class of 1955 and the class of 1907 as they sit on top of the piles, moments captured in time.
“It was a college first and then a school for grades 1 through 12. They didn’t have kindergarten back in those days.” Dr. Plume explains. “In fact, when I was a girl, I went here until I graduated. You can find me in the class of 1950.” Henry moves a few of the pictures and finds the class of 1950. We examine the picture and find a young woman named Helen Anderson who looks like a much younger version of Dr. Plume.
“You look younger than your classmates,” I notice.
“Good eye,” Dr. Plume tells me with a smile, “I graduated from high school when I was fifteen. They were a little more willing to let students skip grades in those days, and I practically lived in this library.” She looks wistful and then says, almost to herself, “some things never change, I guess.”
“What about you, Mr. Zaffre?” Henry asks.
“Canada.” Mr. Zaffre, Dr. Plume, and I all say at the same time.
“What is the story with all of these pictures?” I ask. I know why they exist, but not why they’re in the library.
“Over the years, they’ve been in piles up on a high shelf,” Dr. Plume tells us. “We are trying to decide whether they make the journey to the new school or not. They are the district’s history, so that is a point in favor of taking them, but also, they may belong to the building. I’m waiting to see what it tells me.”
For as long as I have known them, Dr. Plume and Mr. Zaffre have talked about the building like it can think for itself. A pipe will echo overhead and they’ll remark that the building must be angry, and once I heard Dr. Plume whisper “you know what you need to do,” in the midst of a storm when the lights were flickering. I love this about them, because it always felt that way to me. Plus, as an avid reader, I love people who talk in metaphors.
“Anyway, was there something we could do to help you two?” Dr. Plume asks. “I suspect you didn’t come here to help us move old pictures.”
“I’m looking for some letters in your archive and some books on the history of fashion.” I tell her.
Dr. Plume raises an eyebrow and looks skeptical, though she doesn’t ask any questions. “We don’t have an extensive archive, but there are two more of these if you don’t find what you’re looking for in this one. I will pull you some books on the history of fashion momentarily. What about you, Henry?”
“I need the internet, and also local phone books.” When he says this, Dr. Plume looks even more bemused.
“Let’s see what we can do. They stopped printing the phone book because of the internet, so I think the last one we have is from 2010… It might be slightly out of date, but it could be helpful,” she hands him three phone books from behind her desk. One is from Ellis Field, one, slightly bigger, is from Hayden’s Landing, and the final phone book is for the greater Lima area. “See what you can do with this.”
“Thanks, ma’am.”
Henry takes the pile of books and settles in at the computer, by the window. I sit at the library table and watch Dr. Plume gathering items for me. She arrives at the table after a few minutes with a stack of four boxes and a book on fashion through the years.
I open the first box and spread out the contents on the library table. On first glance, it appears to be a mix of student artwork and documents from school events, like programs from school plays and old newsletters from the school board.
“I haven’t had a chance to organize them yet.” Dr. Plume says apologetically when she sees me sifting through the box’s contents.
“If you want, I could organize them into a system that makes sense,” I offer. Dr. Plume nods in agreement and I forge on.
I start to form some early piles: School publications, classroom publications, newspaper articles, student work, and miscellaneous. There is some highlighting on the newsletters, and a few are labeled with post-it notes that are a combination of numbers and letters that Dr. Plume told me to ignore but not to lose. I’m absorbed in my piles, and I jump when Henry puts a hand on my shoulder.
“It’s 10:55, I need to go to my lesson.” He shrugs.“No Mary Wolf in any of these phone books or on the internet in the Ellis Field area. I’ll explore clothing online when I get back.” He gathers up his trumpet and his notebook, and starts to leave, and then turns around and waves goodbye excitedly. I laugh to myself and return the wave before returning to work.
As I continue through the boxes, a filing system starts to emerge. Dr. Plume, noticing the five piles of papers, finds another box, and I start to organize the items in order by the dates when available. I have not yet found anything of note when I move another pile of papers and find a couple of envelopes that look to be letters.
I open them to discover a number of letters, some even written by someone named Mary, but the momentary excitement I felt fell away upon discovering that it was a student’s assignment to write a letter as a famous person from history. A young woman named Nina Smith was apparently very excited about Mary, Queen of Scots. She even went as far as to write the letters in a Scottish dialect. I give Nina her points for creativity, especially for the authentic insults she used for Queen Elizabeth I, and file her letters in the student work file.
The last of the documents are filed with 20 minutes left on Henry’s lesson, so I turn to the book about fashion through the years. While there are some similarities between the dresses pictured in the chapter, I don’t find anything conclusive in them about her dress. I have better luck in the section of hairstyles, where I find a picture of hair like Mary’s almost instantly--Victory Rolls, they are called. I take some notes and bookmark the page for our investigation.
By this time, Henry has returned.
“Find anything?”
“Not much. I have to go, but I’ll fill you in after my lesson.” I slide the book and my notes neatly under the table with my backpack. I leave all of my things there, except for my oboe, and rush next door.