A Mother’s Secret

by Silvia E. Hines

conclusion

It was a shock to lose my mother so close in time to Jason’s graduation from high school. When I think of that summer, the summer before Jason left for Oberlin, I think of the bittersweet quality of transition: Bob Dylan warning of times that are a-changin’, John Denver leaving on a jet plane, the songs my mother had listened to in her youth and played over and over when I was a child. Moreover, this was the summer Jason decoded my mother’s diary; the summer I learned I had a sibling; and the summer I came to understand why my mother had never told me about Jane. And then, early in September, I met my sister.

The day after the graduation ceremony, we’d planned to settle back into our usual routines. Ken told Jason to get started making lists for college: what he needed to pack, what we needed to buy for him. Instead, Jason made a beeline for the box in my room, the cardboard carton in which I’d stored the twenty-two notebooks that composed my mother’s diary. He made a strong case for my handing them over to him for a first look, since he’d be leaving for school in about six weeks and wouldn’t have much free time after that. So I gave him the box, reminding him about the passages that seemed to be irrational gibberish. I opened the first of the notebooks to a page I’d bookmarked that contained one such passage. He took a look at it and smiled broadly.

“It’s a code, Mom,” he said. “I’m sure it’s a code and probably a simple one.”

“Codes aren’t exactly simple, are they?” I said. “Look how hard it was to break the German war code.”

“I think I can break this one,” Jason said. “I know about codes from that club I was in back in middle school, remember?”

He grabbed his phone and opened to a search engine. “Here, look,” he said. “Grandma might have used what they call a ‘simple substitution cipher.’” He read aloud from a paragraph that described the uncomplicated nature of this kind of code, in which one letter or symbol is substituted for another letter or symbol, like, say, the Morse code. Then there were the more complicated “transposition ciphers,” in which the letters are not only substituted for others but their order is changed as well.

“I’m going to work on this,” he said. “I don’t think it will take long.”

For the next few days there was no escaping Jason and his progress reports as he got closer to cracking the code. He greeted me the moment I arrived home; knocked on the door to my study when I was absorbed in my work; accosted me while I was cooking, often when hot pots were involved. He was always in my face. He seemed obsessed.

Shortly thereafter came the Eureka moment, what we later called the Big Solve. He read his first deciphered passage aloud from my mother’s diary with some fanfare. “Are you ready for this, Mom?” he questioned.

I tried to hide my impatience as I nodded.

With melodramatic emphasis, he read the date of the entry and then its decoded content: “Found out where Janet lives, saw her in park, on jungle gym. Would know her anywhere.”

We stared at each other. Who was Janet?

Jason had skipped around in the diary and come up with three more passages he guessed were important. Portrayed in one was a child named Janet, leaving with her family to live someplace in the Midwest; then, someone called Cousin Marian comforting my distraught mother; and finally, my mother having a farewell meeting with, of all things, a parole officer. A parole officer! For a moment, I couldn’t breathe. This couldn’t be right. Were these passages part of the notes for her novel? But why would anyone encode notes for a novel?

I knew who Cousin Marian was. My mother had kept in touch with her after she’d moved with her family from the east coast to San Diego as a teenager. I’d found Marian’s number in my mother’s address book and called to invite her to Mom’s funeral, but she’d said she wasn’t well enough to travel. I phoned her again now. After the obligatory greetings, I didn’t have to say much to get her to understand why I’d called. I briefly described Jason’s DNA match and the decoded passages from the diary.

“Esther really didn’t want you to know about his,” she said. “She actually, uh... swore me to secrecy.” Her voice was warm, low-pitched, and steady.

I stopped speaking for a moment. I imagined myself standing in front of this older woman, hands on my hips, a very serious expression on my face, and tried to project that image of gravity through the phone line and across the country.

“Marian,” I finally said, “I really need to know what’s going on, or what went on back then, I mean. First, there’s a woman named Jane who’s a close DNA match with Jason. Then, my mother seems to be spying on some kid named Janet. And later, she’s saying goodbye to a parole officer? Please, Marian.”

A long pause ensued.

“Oh, Sara,” she said. “Okay, my dear. What I’m going to do is, I’m going to refer you to a newspaper article from the New York Times that will tell you certain things... Well, actually, it will tell you all you need to know. That won’t really be breaking my promise to your mother, don’t you think?”

“Not at all,” I said, smiling into the phone and breathing deeply, willing to go along with anything this sweet older woman might say to absolve herself of guilt over betraying my mother.

Jason and I quickly set up an online subscription to the Times and got into their archives. We read the article sitting on the couch together, Jason’s iPad balanced on his lap, our mouths agape.

A Manhattan jury of eight men and four women unanimously voted to find Mrs. Esther Miller of Brooklyn guilty of second-degree attempted murder in the bombing of a Federal Courthouse in Manhattan. She was reported to be a member of a small group of militant Vietnam War protestors. Her husband, Alan Miller, who had previously been tried and found guilty of this crime, was depicted as the ringleader of the group. This verdict carries a maximum sentence of fifteen years, although Mrs. Miller’s sentence is expected to be significantly lighter. Since Mrs. Miller’s husband was in custody, and no family member had come forward to take care of their child, their eight-month old daughter was taken by Child Protective Services for temporary placement.

This time when I called Cousin Marian, she sighed and agreed to talk. I put her on speakerphone and summoned Jason and Ken to my side.

“It seemed everyone was protesting the war,” she told us. “Your mother had always been an intense person, as you probably know, and she joined the antiwar movement with gusto. It wasn’t enough for her to go on a march or two or write a letter to a senator. I think she met your father at a rally or meeting or something, and they fell, I would say, deeply in love.”

“Wow,” I said, “she never talked to me much about my father or their relationship, just told me he’d died of a heart attack when I was two.”

“It was like the air around them was charged,” Marian continued. “Words like devotion and soulmate came to mind when you saw them. And they were such a gorgeous couple; think of Sonny and Cher in the early years or, politically speaking, think of Joan Baez and David Harris. But then you don’t know who I’m talking about, do you?”

“I do,” Ken interjected. “Didn’t Harris go to prison for draft resistance?”

“Right,” said Marian. “How I wish Alan had chosen that route to protest the war. We all knew the war had to end, but really, a bomb?” She paused, then went on.

“And you know, I don’t think Esther understood exactly what she was getting into, that people could actually die, even though that wasn’t the intention. They were lucky no one did die. She wasn’t stupid, as you know. I just think she was in your father’s thrall and, I would say, he was in the thrall of the antiwar movement.”

“I can’t really believe any of this,” I said, my voice sounding higher pitched than usual, and shaky. “She always seemed like such a cautious person.”

“Besides being quirky,” Ken added.

Marian went on. “And Esther came to have such, I would say, profound regret about having taken part in this. She came to feel she should have somehow talked your father out of it.”

Tears stung my eyes. “Oh, Mom,” I whispered.

“And you know,” Marian added, “I think the New Age nuttiness she got involved with later gave her a substitute outlet for her intense nature.”

“Did you get to visit my grandma in jail?” Jason asked.

“I did, just once. I was barely out of my teens at the time, and my parents weren’t going to contribute any money toward a plane ticket to New York for me to see someone they thought was violent, even though she was their niece. But she was my first cousin! So I scrounged, using all my saved babysitting money. When I saw her in the prison, she was so subdued. She talked to me... mournfully, really, about how much she had lost. She had had the idea she and your father would have gone on to have a long and wonderful life together if this hadn’t happened.”

I was quickly going from teary to full-fledged weeping. Ken took my hand. None of us spoke.

“After your mom was released from prison, and then a few years later, when your dad got out, they tried to take up where they’d left off. But as you know, just a couple of years after you were born, your father died. I’ve always thought the stresses of prison contributed to his heart disease.”

“And the baby,” I asked. “Little Jane, or Janet?”

“Yes, Janet became Jane after the adoption. I think your grandparents would eventually have agreed to take the baby, but it all seemed to happen so fast and they were in shock for a long time. My parents wouldn’t even think of it. I of course was too young to take care of a baby. I hoped she might be okay in a foster home until your parents got out of prison.”

“But why an adoption?” I asked.

“Somehow, in the next few years, they got your mother to agree to adoption. She didn’t know she was going to be released after just four years, and she signed the papers. I think she was told the kid would be a teenager by the time she got out, wouldn’t even know her, and could be wrested from the only life she knew. I blamed her lawyer for letting events unfold like that, and for not insisting on an open adoption.”

We were ready to end the call, but Marian went on to answer a question we hadn’t thought to ask. When my mother was released, Marian told us, she visited the agency that had handled the adoption and, apparently, met up with an inexperienced or maybe careless caseworker. She somehow gave Esther a file containing the name and address of the adoptive family.

“Hence the playground snooping,” I said.

We thanked Marian and said good-bye. The three of us sat without speaking, spent, until Jason noted, in that ironic way of his, that we could continue to ignore the swab kits he had so conveniently left on our desks, since our DNA samples were no longer going to be necessary.

In the end, Jason had done it all: the DNA, the code, the enthusiasm. He’d even made the call to Jane, telling her everything, and inviting her to visit us in New York. So it came as no surprise that Jason was the one to break the ice when the three of us completed our solemn walk through the dining area of the tapas bar at LaGuardia. While I mentally rehearsed my greeting to Jane, Jason quickly traversed the remaining distance to the table where Jane sat and approached her, arms outstretched.

“Hey, Auntie,” he boomed. “I’ve been waiting for you. We have so much to talk about!”