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219 11 An­ ces­ tors At the end of the 1990s, I spent an hour every week in a brown- ­ stone par­ lor floor in the West Thir­ ties, not far from Port Au­ thor­ ity bus ter­ mi­ nal. The apart­ ment be­ longed to Ca­ role, a trans­ plant from Iowa a few years older than my ­ mother. She was a ther­ a­ pist who spe­ cial­ ized in al­ co­ hol­ ics and crea­ tive ­ blocks. I be­ longed to the sec­ ond cat­ e­ gory. After only a few ­ months, it was clear we had ­ broken all the rules, ­ crossed the boun­ dar­ ies of the­ therapist-client re­ la­ tion­ ship. One day I told her about a week­ end spent with my ­ father roam­ ing Con­ nec­ ti­ cut ce­ me­ ter­ ies. When she heard the name of the grave­ stone we were look­ ing for, she leapt from her chair—“Ste­ phen Noble!”—re­ turn­ ing sec­ onds later with the ­ scroll of a fam­ ily tree in her hand. She’d rec­ og­ nized the an­ ces­ tor, and ­ within a few min­ utes had fig­ ured out that we were ­ seventh cou­ sins twice re­ moved. After that we ­ dropped the pre­ tense of ther­ apy. Hav­ ing found in my ­ father not just a re­ la­ tion but one who­ shared her ge­ ne­ a­ log­ ical ap­ pe­ tites, she grew pro­ tec­ tive of him and lost all inter­ est in the ex­ hu­ ma­ tion of pa­ ren­ tal dys­ func­ tion. If it came up, she ­ changed the sub­ ject. Most of the time we drank cof­ fee and ­ talked about nov­ els, Civil War his­ tory, old photo­ graphs, and the ­ proper way to hang a cur­ tain. I kept pay­ ing her, ­ though—I re­ fused to stop be­ cause I liked the guar­ an­ tee she’d be there every week, a pot of cof­ fee on the trunk in front of the couch. Al­ though she was no good at re­ la­ tion­ ship prob­ lems or money trou­ ble or fam­ ily drama, she had a knack The Return 220 for get­ ting me back to work: “Clear the deck,” she’d say. “Paint your cup­ boards, clean your stove. Start fresh.” All fa­ mil­ iar ad­ vice, very mid­ west­ ern, the kind of ad­ vice my ­ mother would have of­ fered if I had let her. On other sub­ jects she was ­ equally wise. Once, when I went on too long about my fail­ ures—the slug­ gish days at the desk, the lack of money—she gave me a hard look and said: “But ­ you’ve lived in this city for more than ten years on lit­ tle money; ­ you’ve found­ places to live and made ­ friends. ­ You’ve sur­ vived here. Isn’t that suc­ cess?” Ca­ role was un­ apol­ o­ get­ i­ cally do­ mes­ tic, un­ apol­ o­ get­ i­ cally nos­ tal­ gic. Along with her coun­ sel­ ing busi­ ness, she kept a base­ ment shop where she sold da­ guerreo­ types and old post­ cards from the nine­ teenth cen­ tury. We both liked to talk about the Mid­ west: her sum­ mers liv­ ing on her ­ grandparents’ farm out­ side of Des ­ Moines, and my own child­ hood on Lake Win­ ne­ bago. “The prob­ lem with most peo­ ple,” Ca­ role said, “is they don’t grow roots.” Once she even dem­ on­ strated her phi­ lo­ so­ phy. Slid­ ing from her chair, she got down on her knees and ­ pressed her hands into the car­ pet. “Like this. You need to dig in.” At the same time, she had the ­ American pas­ sion for the road, and in the years be­ fore she moved to New York with her part­ ner— a mys­ ter­ i­ ous man who some­ times ­ peeked his head ­ through the slid­ ing ­ french doors—­ they’d moved all over the coun­ try in an old RV ­ trailer, driv­ ing from town to town, from road­ side ­ antique shops to ­ county fairs, buy­ ing photo­ graphs and cook­ ing their meals out under the stars. Ca­ role be­ lieved in signs and por­ tents. She be­ lieved you could­ change your life. It was Ca­ role who en­ cour­ aged me to go to Lake City in the first place, and...

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