Chapter 12: Scranton

The envelope held two sheets and a business card.

The first sheet was a photocopy of a hospital log from St. Anne's, dated the week of my birth.

Two names were circled.

Thaxton, female, born March 4.

Stuyvesant, female, born March 4.

Under it someone had written, in blue pen, one line.

The Stuyvesant mother died when her daughter was nine. The mother's only sister lives in Scranton, Pennsylvania.

The second sheet was a note in my father's handwriting.

I have not contacted her. I did not know what to say. I am sorry for all of it. W.

I read it three times.

Then I tore the note in half, because I could not stand to look at his hand.

I kept the log and the card.

Torsten drove me to Scranton that Sunday in a rented gray car.

It took three hours.

He didn't ask me to talk.

Somewhere past the Delaware Water Gap he reached across the console and took my hand, and he kept it for the rest of the drive.

We stopped in front of a laundromat on a street of low brick buildings.

The sign over the door said Spin Cycle in faded blue.

"Do you want me to come in?" Torsten asked.

"Stay in the car for a minute."

"I'll be right here."

I went in alone.

It was warm and smelled of detergent.

A woman stood at the folding table with a pile of towels.

She was about fifty-five, short, with graying brown hair pulled back and reading glasses pushed up on her head.

She looked up and smiled the way you smile at a stranger.

"Coins are on the wall," she said.

"I'm not here for the machines," I said.

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