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O’BRIEN’S
DESK
A HISTORICAL MYSTERY
ONA RUSSELL
Footfalls echo in the memory
Down the passage which we did not take Towards the door we never opened Into the rose garden. My words echo Thus, in your mind.
—T.S. Eliot
© 2004 by Ona Russell. All rights reserved.
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data:
Russell,Ona,1952-
O’Brien’s desk / by Ona Russell. p. cm.
ISBN 0-86534-416-7 (hardcover) ISBN 978-0-86534-549-2 (softcover)
1. Secrecy—Fiction. I. Title. PS3618.U765 O37 2004
813’.6—dc22 2003024657
Prologue
Maryville, Tennessee, 1997
Like the cut from a jagged blade. Piercing and dull. Margaret sensed the seriousness of this new pain as she waited for her son to ar-rive. At seventy, she’d had her share of headaches, but none that couldn’t be relieved by an aspirin, or better yet, a cigarette and glass of wine. The sensations she awakened to this morning, however, responded to none of these usual remedies. Nor were they abated by her characteristic attempts to talk herself out of it. So intense, they prevented her from feeding the swans and steeping the tea; so unique, they made even a walk down the hall seem ominously unfamiliar.
Thus, in the brief moments before leaving for the hospital, Margaret regarded what was familiar with fondness. The tongue-and-groove walnut living room walls, her collection of porcelain swans and Delft china, the bay window framing the vast patchwork of lush, Tennessee farmland. As she moved arduously from room to room, it was the tangible things, those that had given her life form and purpose, which drew her attention. The dining room table, solid as ever, appeared immune to the burns and spills that punctuated its history. Crafted from the same rich cherry stood the massive twin book cases. Overflowing with words of the past, they similarly bespoke a permanence that stood in opposition to the harsh temporality of her current physical state. And then the desk. The intricately carved pull-top, which had always been so curiously reassuring.
Frequently seated at its writing table, Margaret had marked the passage of time there; paying monthly bills, filing yearly tax returns, signing birthday, wedding and sympathy cards. A circularity existed in these activities, a predictable order that the desk, with its neat, geometrical openings for pens and pencils, its symmetrical drawers for paper, stamps and tape, its miniature lock and key, embodied. This desk, whose darker purpose she never could have imagined, reminded Margaret of the clearly defined life she had made for herself. With affection she ran her hand over its cool surface.
On this steamy July morning, the car sluggishly made its way to the emergency room of Blount Memorial Hospital. Propped up on a pillow in the passenger seat, Margaret offered her son a reassuring smile, but remained silent for the duration of the ride; in part, to conserve the strength the pain was steadily draining from her, but also because of an inexplicable desire to keep the image of the desk before her. If she lost focus for even a moment, it would somehow lose its materiality. With the coolness of the wood still lingering on her fingers, she began to retrace mentally its shape, countering every incomprehensible bodily sensation with a well-known groove, curve or line. The delicate legs, the sturdy frame, the slightly lopsided top, on which only a few days before she had carefully stacked the scrapbooks.
How strange, the timing of her decision to remove those books from the closet in which they’d been stored undisturbed for so many years. Five of them in all, filled with meticulously ordered newspaper clippings chronicling the life of her father, a judge for twenty-two years who died suddenly when she was eight. Although he occupied a legendary position in the family, she herself had only faint recollection of him.
What made her take the books that day and wipe off forty years of dust? Was it the children? Perhaps. Yes, she remembered thinking that now, as adults, they might very well be interested. But why that moment in particular, when just a month ago she’d casually passed them by? Not a premonition, surely. She simply didn’t believe in such things. The mystical was nonsense, an invention of the weak. Life had always been more like the crossword puzzles she daily worked; questions whose clear-cut answers were under her control; empty squares waiting to be filled in by conscientious individuals who believed in the power of human endeavor. Yet, even as the nurse wheeled her into the sterile corridor where she began the process of admission, she thought of those books and their significance.
But not for long. The increasing severity of her pain soon made such vague considerations impossible. Discrete sensations rapidly became indistinguishable, dull and piercing intervals merging into one relentless beat. Despite her distress, however, she remained coherent enough to answer the nurse’s official questions; simple questions really, with the exception of one she had dreaded all her life:
“Name?”
“Margaret Louise Russell.”
“Maiden name?”
“O’Donnell.”
“Date of Birth?”
“March . . . March 4, 19 . . .” She hesitated. No, not this time. It would have to be the right answer now. The response she had practiced for so many years, that she had even convinced herself was the truth, seemed oddly, absurdly inappropriate here. And so Margaret finally spoke what she could never say. The only spaces she had ever left blank would now make themselves known, forcing the past to surface in a present of which she would no longer be a part.
“November 23, 1923.”
1
Toledo, Ohio: November 23, 1923
It was getting late, nearly 8:30 and still no sign of him. Sarah glanced furtively down the hall. At least she had managed to restore a semblance of order. With the exception of a few diehards who would obviously not be satisfied until they could question O’Donnell himself, the reporters had gone—no doubt in search of someone less experienced with their methods.
She closed her door and for the third time this morning reviewed the judge’s schedule. Yes, he certainly should have been here by now. With vague apprehension, she reached for the phone and started to dial the familiar number. On the fourth digit she stopped. There, next to her prized, miniature portrait of Susan B. Anthony was her magazine, still opened seductively to where she had left off before attending to the press. No, she told herself. I shouldn’t. I can’t. There isn’t enough time. She reinserted her finger in the circular opening and turned it halfway around. Then again, the trial wasn’t until ten. And she had been interrupted at such a critical moment. She deserved just one more column. She hung up the phone, repositioned the wire-framed reading glasses dangling around her neck and, with god-like power, temporarily restored the beckoning characters to life.
“All right. Have your way.” He sat down at the table and scribbled a check, which he tore from the book, but he refrained from handing it to his companion. “After all, since we are to be on such terms, Mr. Altamont,” said he, “I don’t see why I should trust you any more than you trust me. Do you understand?” he added, looking back over his shoulder at the American. “There’s the check upon the table. I claim