The Scrapbook

Vivian scooped the bread crumbs from the kitchen table into her palm and tossed them into the sink. Vivian's grandmother Ruby looked at Vivian and tsked, "Don't be scooping up while I'm still havin' my tea, will ya girl?" Ruby settled her bottom in the chair. "Makes me feel like I need to hurry or something."

"Oh, Grandmother, please don't be like that." Vivian ignored her grandmother's protestations as she wrung the old plaid dishrag over the sink, and proceeded to wipe the kitchen table down in big wide arcs. Vivian had washed the dishes and left them to dry in the rack, and wanted to be done with the breakfast chores, so that she could go out and work in the perennial beds before the sun got too high.

Ruby held the porcelain tea cup in both hands, delicately, like she was offering up a chalice. She peered into the warm brown liquid and inhaled its jasmine scent. "You truly need to learn to relax, girl," Ruby said with a sigh. "I thought that our project making the family scrapbook might help you to settle down, but the whole thing has just riled me to the core."

Vivian's thoughts floated away from the sunny kitchen. She glanced up at the oval framed picture of her mother, Tessa Sullivan. In the sepia toned photograph, Tessa wore a frilly high collared white blouse, with its pearl buttons fastened to the top. Her hair was pulled back off of her face and arranged in a soft bun, fastened with a tortoise shell comb. Vivian often wondered where that comb was now. Vivian lifted the hem of her apron and gently stroked the glass to remove any trace of dust from her dear mother's image. She reached up and with a tender stroke, traced the curve of Tessa's nose and then traced her own. Vivian wished that she had known her mother. She had died when Vivian was only two. She had nary a whiff of a memory of her. And sadly, neither of her sisters had any memories either. Iris had been one and Gina had been four when mother died. The only memories that they had were locked in the those sepia tones, in Tessa's tentative smile.

"I can't bear it another minute!"

Ruby's croaking voice crackled through the air. It startled Vivian so, that she let out a small shriek, like she had just seen a mouse darting across the clean swept floor.

"Glory, Grandmother! You startled me!" Vivian fanned herself with a nervous flapping of her hand. "What ever could have you scream out so?"

Ruby sat at the kitchen table. She seemed to be crying, her face cradled in her praying hands.

"Oh, dear Vivian! I cannot continue this charade!" Ruby said as she wrung her hands.

"What are you saying, Grandmother?  What charade? I ...I ...I don't understand."

Ruby heaved a sigh, the kind of sigh that a person takes in before they deliver some really bad news. She had that look in her eye, too. Like she knew that Vivian's heart was about to be broken.

"Grandmother, please! Please! What is the matter?"

Ruby leaned down and pulled a large round hatbox out from under the table. The box was festooned with huge faded white and pink roses, with a pink satin cord. Vivian had never seen the box, nor had she seen anything quite so garish in all her live long days.

"These are the family pictures...our real family pictures." Ruby slowly lifted the cover from the hatbox, as though she were about to release a swarm of angry bees. "I can't bear to see you fawn over that picture on the wall, there. Not for another second."

"But Grandmother. You are really frightening me! Whatever can you mean?"

"God save me from myself, dear Vivian. But I have lied to you and your sisters for nigh on twenty years."

Vivian felt the room swirling. She moved to the table and sank into the chair with a suddenness that surprised her. She couldn't muster a word; she could only feel her mouth trying to say, "What?" Her lips rounded and she tried to push out the air to ask the question, to still the pounding of her heart. But all she could do was focus on that box and the stack of photos that threatened to turn out of the box at any second.

"I cannot let you believe that the woman in that photo was ever any kin to you."

Vivian felt a cold sweat forming on her forehead.

"Forgive me, child. I only meant to save my precious girls from knowing the truth," Ruby continued in a voice low and halting. "That picture. That's not my Tessa. I found that picture at a barn sale, over in Watson Corners. On Route 9. Along with all the other pictures that we put in that old scrapbook."

Vivian shook her head, tears filled her eyes but she couldn't form a thought.

"And your mother wasn't a school teacher, neither. And she sure didn't die on a missionary trip to Borneo, like I been tellin' you all these years." Ruby tipped the box and let the pictures fall in a black and white wave. Through her tears, Vivian saw a sea of faces so strange and awful. There was a picture of an obscenely fat woman dressed in a pink tutu riding a miniature pony. And a man with a face like a werewolf, in chains and shackles. He seemed to growl at the camera, his face frozen in a terrible wild dog grin.

"That there's your Papa..." Ruby said, as she put her finger out to touch the wolf man.

"And this here is Gina and Iris's Daddy," Ruby said, sliding a picture from the pile toward Vivien. A dwarf dressed as an elf leered at Vivien. " They were circus folks. Came into town one summer on a Friday. Came to our brothel."

Vivian shook her head and began to laugh. It was a high, tinny laugh. Hysterical. "Grandmother! I see! You are trying to cheer me. Yes. That's it!" Vivian plunged her hands into the pile. "What a delicious trick you have played on me, Grandmother!"

Ruby just shook her head, the tears streaming down her cheeks. "No, my dear. Your Momma was a prostitute . And so was I. She worked for me, of course. We had ourselves a brothel down at the corner of Claremont and Main. Called it Ruby's Pearls. Your Momma died of the syphilis after she slept with your father."

Vivian stared at the pile of pictures. The pile swirled in a mass of gray images. Vivien put her hand to her chest and fell face down into the pile of leering faces. Dead.