Family Matters

Family Matters Read Free Page A

Book: Family Matters Read Free
Author: Kitty Burns Florey
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exuberant. “I’m using it, don’t worry about it. Just tell me what you know about my grandmother.”
    Violent returned the embrace with surprising strength, but then she lay back, looking drained. She stared at Betsy. “Your grandmother!”
    Betsy nodded, pleased with the notion. “My grandmother! Maybe she’ll leave me all her money, maybe she’s really wealthy, maybe I’m the granddaughter she’s been longing for.”
    Violet giggled weakly. “Oh, Betsy. Do you know, I never thought about her being your grandmother. Isn’t that odd? Oh, we do get self-centered when we get old.” She smiled happily and settled into the pillows with a contented wiggle. Her bouts of contentment always amazed Betsy. She’s dying , she thought.
    â€œWell. Anyway.” Violet frowned, addressing herself to the paper in Betsy’s lap. “My parents and I lived at six sixty-six Spring Street. I’m not sure I’d remember the address if it weren’t for those three sixes—we moved from there when I was little. And my real mother—we can call her Emily, by the way—”
    â€œWhy Emily?”
    â€œThat was her name.”
    â€œHow do you know?”
    â€œMarion told me.”
    â€œYou know her name ?”
    â€œWell, I’m not at all sure of her last name—wait, Betsy, we’ll get to that part. I’m ahead of myself. Wait.” Violet touched her brow with her long forefinger and closed her eyes. “She must have lived at six sixty-eight, on the right of our house as you went up the hill because—wait, the numbers went down—yes, the Rebhahns lived on the left, and that must have been six sixty-four, in fact I know it was.” She opened her eyes, triumphant. “Yes. She lived at six sixty-eight Spring Street— if it’s true that she lived next door, and I think it was. That has the ring of truth. When you tell a lie, you keep to the truth as much as you can.” You should know, Betsy thought. “I suspect Marion only lied about the marriage. Let’s accept the rest as true.”
    â€œWhat else can we do? We’ve got to have something to go on,” Betsy said, thinking: hopeless, hopeless.
    â€œRight. So she was a young, unmarried girl living at six sixty-eight Spring Street, and her name was Emily something, like Lofting or Loftig.”
    â€œAunt Marion told you this?”
    â€œShe told me the name, but I didn’t catch it right. To tell you the truth, I didn’t pay that much attention. I was in shock, Betsy. Imagine if you were to find out that I wasn’t your mother? Or that Daddy was never your father?”
    Betsy couldn’t imagine it. She brushed the attempt away. Besides, anytime she wished she could look in the mirror and see her mother’s bird face—eyes and beak, sharpened.
    â€œAnd, of course, this was thirty-five, thirty-six years ago that she told me. But it was something like that. Lofting. Or Loftig. There were a lot of German families in the neighborhood. Say Loftig. But check Lofting.”
    â€œI will.” Violet watched anxiously as Betsy wrote them both down. “Anything else?”
    â€œNot really.” Violet’s eyes became faraway. “Except I saw her once—did I tell you that?”
    â€œReally saw her?” How she dramatizes, Betsy thought. “Really? Or imagined—wished—”
    â€œNo, really. I was working at Chappell’s, in hats. I made fourteen dollars a week, Betsy. Can you imagine that?” She chuckled, but it was a faraway chuckle. Betsy had heard many times, especially lately, about her mother’s brief fourteen-dollar-a-week job, and the lunch she treated herself to every payday: a chicken salad sandwich, iced tea, and a hot-fudge sundae at Schrafft’s, all for fifty cents. “So one day your grandpa came in, and there was a woman with him. I was kind of surprised to see

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