Eliza opened her mouth then shut it again. She stuck her thumb between her teeth and took it out. And Dodge’s will.
In the file. There were no copies. He pushed his glasses back up the bridge of his nose and raised his eyebrows. You could get confused even with these on.
Eliza frowned. What do we do now then.
He tipped his head to one side. An automobile made a slish in the street. Well in essence since Dodge had so few relatives it ought to be quite straightforward. First you apply for letters of administration. You need them to handle an estate without a will. Then the property goes down the line. Only we don’t know. We don’t have any papers for Maxine. Not a birth certificate, nothing.
Eliza looked at me. Is that true.
I almost shrugged. I’ve looked. I can’t find one.
Bernard placed one hand over the other on the desk. You say Dodge was not your mother.
I don’t think I said. I said I think she would have told me. It’s a problem for the inheritance isn’t it. If I was adopted there would be a record somewhere wouldn’t there.
You might begin he said by asking at the Department of Community Services. Otherwise there may be a record at the Supreme Court or at the Registry of Births Deaths and Marriages. But it’s not guaranteed. If it was a private outfit, say if you were adopted from out of a religious institution, they might have the only record left but you’d have to know where to look. You could. Well. You could try the state archives. This kind of information has a tendency to disappear sometimes. It can take years. He coughed. Of course with the whole family file missing we can’t check up on it but I don’t believe I was ever given anything relating to adoption. I’m sure I would have remembered Dodge Rose adopting! Like a little girl when she was old enough to. I used to take her out on the weekends sometimes. She tied knots in her handkerchief to remind her of her errands but it never worked and she’d never undo the knots as long as she couldn’t think what they were for. Afraid of losing. Some childish superstition. Fine young woman to be going around with her handkerchief tied up like a lobster net.
What if we can’t find a record.
Then you may not even be entitled to the place you’re living in. You see as administrator Eliza is bound to distribute the property according to the rules of intestacy.
Eliza had begun to slouch and press one foot mechanically against the other.
What are they.
If you couldn’t prove that you were adopted Dodge’s sister would be in line to receive everything. The definition of child in a case like this is restricted. If you wanted to seek maintenance you would have to do it under the provisions of State maintenance legislation rather than the Family Law Act. It would be a difficult situation. Perhaps, capitulation. But you know. Well. Hang on. Bernard half rose and began to turn over some manila folders on the desk when his elbow knocked an alphabetical filing box causing it to tip and spew its contents across the floor. The suspicion of a faintly acrid perfume hit the remaining sense. He glanced aside, his hands hovering a moment over the spill, then as if the information he was looking for had been knocked out with them he waved the scattered index cards into the undependable future and made a fist that fell in the space just cleared on the pinewood desk.
Family provision. There was an act passed this year that might help you. It makes it possible to get a provision from the estate even if you’re not a blood relative and so I guess also in a case such as yours where you don’t have adoption papers yet but might have. He sighed. It might be your best way forward. Of course the rest of the family has a bearing on all this. You seem sympathetic to the situation you had better talk to your mother. I’m sure she is. I’ll confirm the details of the act and we can meet again at the end of the week. As for your immediate business with the court, determining next of kin under the rules of intestacy requires you to document the family tree, just the relephant part, so collect the birth certificates that link Dodge and her sister and yourself, start valuing the estate and find out if the poor woman had any outstanding debts. He swung back on his chair and tipped up his hands as good as in benediction. Judgement and sentence according to law and equity you know. Fair’s fair.
On the street as I opened Bernard’s umbrella above us Eliza looped her arm in mine and said I used to wish I had been adopted.
3
When I got back from the local Department of Community Services office the phone was ringing out the cankered traces of its own preterite neglect, its fast ablating corrugations as it were wavering over the derelict living room like the fading echo of an apocalypse that had not come to everybody after all.
I ran for it but when I answered the voice on the other side rushed through in a thin stream of vowels and consonants, so I jammed the receiver against my ear and froze. I tried to talk back to stop it but before I knew what I was doing I’d dropped the phone and retreated into the living room. Above me the water in the pipes jumped and a moment later Eliza was at the end of the corridor wiping her hands on her jeans. What’s the matter she asked.
It’s Dodge I stammered. On the phone.
Eliza raised her eyebrows but held her tongue and went into the dining room. We aren’t puppets, what did she say. What was she trying to say. After a minute she was standing between the sliding doors with her hands on her hips. It was my mother. I called her when you were out to tell her about the will. You know what she said. She said we two should divide everything between us.
I had taken a seat by the window and drifted off a bit but now I glanced back at Eliza and in her eyes. Something in one. How could you understand what she was saying. I could barely make out her voice.
Eliza shrugged. I’ve had to make out what Mum’s been saying for years now. What does it matter.
Make up do you mean. Not out.
She waited for me to say something more. She put her hands on her hips again, over two sets of damp fingerprints.
I’ve just been to docs.
What did they say.
They couldn’t get a hold of anything on the spot. They have files up from the mid fifties and some from adoption agencies that have closed. If there’s nothing there they could help me look. I think it would cost some money and in any case they said it could take years. It’s not very practical, for the circumstances. Eliza crossed her arms and looked me up and down. In my reply to her letter I told her I had been living with her aunt at least since I was six years old, before which I don’t have any memories. I remember. The first thing I remember is that I was bringing Dodge lunch on a round pewter tray and she was defecating all over our shoes. She had been saying thank you but now she was wailing and her nails were in my shoulder and I was staring into the whites of her eyes and trying to hold the tray steady so she wouldn’t topple it into the shit.
I don’t know how long I had been in the flat when that happened but later I took a clean pair of socks from my suitcase so it can’t have been long at all. Dodge ran a bath. She trod shit through the house but what could we do, so did I. I put our shoes on the balcony outside her bedroom and I scrubbed the carpet with half a bar of Sunlight soap then put some in a bucket of water and on the balcony I dunked our shoes and hung them from the balustrade by the laces. In the evening when I went in to wash I found the rest of her clothes in a bundle under the sink. Dodge had shut herself in her room so I rinsed them in the tub and threw them over the curtain rail.