Family Values

You check the time. Perfect. As intended, you've arrived fashionably late.

The aging banquet hall smells of stale cigarette smoke and great grandmothers’ perfume as you walk through the doors. People are mingling in small groups, having consumed one or two after dinner cocktails. Owning your dislike for the dramatic greetings and cheek kissing that each must endure when arriving in a timely manner, you opted to have dinner at home and read quietly before driving yourself to the gathering. The warm wood panelling and maroon velvet curtains speak of a different era, when men sipped brandy and smoking cigars was permissible within the walls.

Every year, on June 25^th, your family gathers here in the same hall to honour your great grandfather. He would have been 113 years old today, wouldn’t he? You smile to yourself, as a few of the younger ones (teens, from the look of them) are ducking out a set of French doors onto a large terrace. Are you smiling because you remember doing the same thing at around their age, to hide in an unused service alcove with your cousins to smoke? Was it cigarettes, or marijuana? Parents are too busy trying to impress one another inside to really pay attention to their offspring, and besides, they all remember the feeling of being bored to death at these dinners, and the relief of being able to escape with each other to do something rebellious. The kids aren’t fooling anyone, in reality. And neither were you back then. You’re almost tempted to slip out the doors yourself and stand in the shadows to listen quietly to their conversations. You can learn so much about the true home lives of your family members, by eavesdropping on their darling brood who are outside sharing their own versions of the daily goings-on in their homes. Your smile widens and you chuckle softly. Better yet, you could tell them about the summer when the story on everyone’s lips was about the disappearance of that local girl and how your father’s younger brother was the police’s only suspect. It was the summer when everything changed for you. The girl was never found, and Uncle Maverick moved to a small town down south. He never attended these things anymore.

“Petra, darling! I didn’t see you arrive!”, the high-pitched voice of Clara (your father’s older sister) startles you from behind. The volume with which she greets you gives away both, her need for attention and the fact that she’s already consumed at least three gin and tonics. With this knowledge, you do a quick scan of the room to find your mother. When she and Clara get together with gin, they can be like evil twins, stirring up peoples’ emotions with their petty opinions.

“Your mother has gone to the ladies’ to powder her nose,” Clara steps in front of you to continue talking. “What are you doing with yourself lately…? You don’t tell your mother anything, and you never call me…” Her voice goes up an octave, almost to a shriek as she goes in for some serious drama, “You were always my favorite niece!”

“Clara, I see Harvey and that new girlfriend of his, over there talking to Kitty. Let’s go and see what the new girlfriend is like, she looks so young!”, your mother winks at you as she grabs Aunt Clara by the arm and leads her across the room.

The fresh air must feel so good against your reddened cheeks, as you quietly make your way to the far end of the terrace. The smell of marijuana gives the location of the teenagers away, and you lean back against the cool bricks to catch your breath and listen to the younger generations chatter about their elders inside. A rocket cedar in a planter is all that stands between you and about six of your younger cousins, all gathered in a well known ‘secret’ alcove. Years ago, there was a beautiful climbing rose on a trellis in that planter. In your opinion, the sweet pink roses smelled so much better than the cedar does. The relief and calm washing over you in the cool night air turns to a sudden chill and your head whips to face the cedar directly, as you hear one of the boys speaking about something that he found in his parents’ attic.

“Her name was Raine, and she was never found.”, one of the boys is talking in hushed tones as if he believed that spies lurked around every corner, “It’s weird that I never saw it before, but maybe just because it’s a beat up little cardboard box. Not, like, fancy or something that would make me look for it.”

Rainie’s face pops into your mind as if you had just seen her at the corner store fifteen minutes ago with some cigarettes that she sweet-talked someone into buying for her. Suspended on a thin silver chain around her neck was the tiny silver spider that you gave her to remind her to have patience. The memory of her wide smile and jet-black hair fades as you strain to hear what the boy (Jacob?) is saying.

“There were some newspaper pages folded up, they're from, like, twenty years ago or something. And a notebook, like the ones they make us use in school. I couldn’t read much of the notebook because the writing is horrible, like my mom’s boob doctor.” The kids laugh at the latter part of his statement. “But there’s some stuff about watching her and Aunt Petra hanging out by the bridge in town. It’s kinda creepy,” Jacob sounds like he’s telling a story at a campfire.

“There’s no name on the notebook, so I don’t know whose it was, but probably a dude because I don’t think that girls would, like, do that creepy stuff. You know?”, the boy sounds excited to be sharing his find, and to be the only one who knows this much, “I wonder why my parents kept that stuff... and, if Aunt Petra even knew that they were being followed around. Probably not because if she did, she would have told somebody, wouldn’t she?”

You slow your breathing, almost to a stop so that you can hear what Jacob is telling the rest of the cousins. Were you even aware that they knew about Rainie and the family stories from that summer? Had they been paying attention when, the odd time, one of the adults would ask about how Uncle Maverick was doing which would lead into some conjecture about that summer? Had it ever occurred to the adults that the kids had their own questions and speculation about this old family scandal? Almost as if he is describing your recollections to the others, Jacob begins talking about some of the things that he read in the notebook, and your own memories flood your mind. You are hearing his voice, but you can no longer see the rocket cedar, nor any of the benches out on the terrace. Your mind is a million miles and several years away. You’re remembering hanging out with Rainie, being teenage girls, and living with the naïve charm of a sheltered life.

“He, if it’s a he, talks about what they were wearing, and it’s like he gets mad a few times because they were sneaking off to smoke,” Jacob tries to remember more of what he read on the lined pages.

A girl’s voice interrupts, “Aunt Petra smoked? I can’t picture that!! She’s so proper!!”

“I guess that she did, back then. Or maybe like us, just sometimes. Anyhow, don’t you think that it’s so weird that someone was keeping, like, a diary of what someone else was doing?” Jacob sounded annoyed to be bumped from the spotlight for a moment. You’re mildly annoyed by it yourself, wanting to hear more of what was written in the notebook. Hoping for a clue of some kind.

“Anyways, there is nothing written about the day that Raine went missing, and nothing about what happened to her. I checked the dates on the newspaper stories, and then looked at the dates in the notebook. Unless someone removed some of the pages, which really sucks because then we won’t know what happened,” the kids light another joint, and let Jacob have first pull on it. “There are, like, twenty-five pages of random stuff. Mostly it’s about Raine, with some stuff about Aunt Petra. Like, there was one day when Raine was walking by herself down by the edge of the river. He said that she looked as if she was crying and he wanted to go and see if she was okay, but then he said that it would seem weird and he just followed her for a bit to make sure that she didn’t fall in or something.”

You wince inside as you remember a day that Rainie called you and said that she needed to talk, but you wanted to head to the city with your mom for some new shoes. Does your heart ache as you wonder if it was that same day? It feels strange, doesn’t it, to hear a different perspective of something you only knew from your own point of view, up until now. Knowing that it was only days before Raine disappeared makes you wonder if you could have done something. Was it all connected? And, the question burning in your mind, whose journal was this? Your brain is jumping between your memories and trying to remember who Jacob’s parents are. How could you ask them about the box? What if they denied it all, and got rid of the box? Could you bring everything back into the spotlight again; risk dividing the family further, and alienating so many?

Raine was the best friend that you have ever had in your life, wasn’t she? This new knowledge must feel like a double edged sword, finding truth for Raine would reopen a pandora’s box for your family, yet, letting things rest as they were would be such a betrayal to the one person who actually saw the real you, behind all of that money.

Judging by the shift in your posture and the narrowing of your eyes, Jacob’s next reveal appears to make that decision for you, “There was a weird envelope in the box too. It was full of long black hair, and a thin chain with a creepy little spider on it.”