The Tin Horse A Novel - By Janice Steinberg Page 0,96

gut clenches. Barbara was my twin sister. This is my search. I don’t want to have to listen to anyone else’s opinion about how—or, worse, whether—to proceed. And right now, with the fresh wound of finding out my parents knew about her and said nothing, Barbara occupies a place in me that feels fragile and naked, astonishingly so. I’m not ready to let anyone enter that room. Josh, all right, he was involved from the beginning. And he’s essentially a stranger, whom I’ve insisted on paying for his help. But no one else.

“Can we still have dinner?” Carol says. “The chicken teriyaki?”

She has decided that we, she and I together, will brave the Rancho Mañana dining room for the first time this evening; they’re doing chicken teriyaki, apparently a favorite. I feel a bit as if Carol’s walking me to my first day of school. And I am nervous about my first plunge into this tight little society of some 180 people, about half of whom I’ve crossed paths with at some time in my life

“Absolutely,” I say. “I wouldn’t enter the lions’ den without you.”

That afternoon, Carol focuses on the kitchen while I unpack my office. And I come across the folder of poems I’d planned to “lose.” I suppose Carol might appreciate getting the poems; and sharing them with her is a vulnerability (unlike the search for Barbara) that I’m willing to risk. I flip open the folder, see a poem about night-blooming jasmine “perfuming Breed Street’s dreams.” On the other hand, maybe Carol would look at the poems and feel the way I did when I saw her wall hanging—touched, yes, but also awkward and torn.

THE CHICKEN TERIYAKI AT dinner lives up to its reputation. Not that this keeps one of my tablemates, a tiny woman whose face is dwarfed by eyeglasses with huge red frames, from complaining with every bite and regaling us with blow-by-blow details of the chicken dishes she used to make. I’m going to ask to be assigned to a different table. Yes, we’re assigned, another kindergarten touch. What the hell, maybe I’ll just sit wherever I want, start an insurrection.

After dinner, Carol takes off, and suddenly, as if someone stuck a pin in me and all the air whooshed out, I’m exhausted. I want to go home! On leaden legs, I trudge back to my apartment. Amid the chaos of moving boxes, I can’t summon the energy to open a book or turn on the television but sit on the love seat under the mustard dragonflies.

The leaden feeling finally lifts when the receptionist calls and tells me Josh is here.

“Nice place,” he says when he comes in. And heads straight for Carol’s wall hanging. “Wow, what’s this?”

“My daughter made it.” My eyes are riveted on the envelope he’s carrying—so small, just an ordinary business envelope.

“Dragonflies?” he asks.

“Yes.”

“Wow. It’s cool.”

I’m ready to rip the envelope out of his hand. “What did you find out?”

He takes a piece of letter-size paper from the envelope, spends an eternity unfolding it, and finally hands it to me. It’s a copy of a brief newspaper article with a group photograph of about a dozen young women and, standing behind them, several men. Someone has handwritten on the copy “March 9, 1942” and the headline reads: “Colorado Springs Entertainers Join USO Tour.” The article says that fifteen local singers, dancers, and musicians had signed on for one of the first European tours being organized by the United Service Organizations, a group formed to provide entertainment and recreation for U.S. servicemen.

“I got in touch with a librarian at the Colorado Springs library and invoked the mutual help code that binds librarians all over the world,” Josh says while I squint at the faces. “She tracked this down for me.”

Bad enough that the photo, which looks printed from microfiche, is blurry, but the women had struck a chorus line pose, standing at an angle with one hip jutting and an arm extended in a flourish. Not one of them jumps out at me. I check the caption, match the name Kay Devereaux to a girl with platinum-blond hair and a close-lipped smile. She’s one of the shorter girls; that would be right. But her face is turned sideways and it’s partly obscured by her curtain of hair.

“It’s her, isn’t it?” he says.

“I’m not sure.” I get up to grab the magnifying glass I keep near the telephone, then realize I no longer own the little stand that conveniently held the