Janet McCann

 

BEFORE THE REUNION

 

we are looking for the missing alumna, daughter of Crazy Maisie and the Bottle Collector, whom I remember very well with her perky pink straw hat and her Marshall Field bag full of bottles.

Susan Smith, says the yearbook, was "Kind, always there to help you." A clear American face, light brown hair. Someone on the e-list said she had become a nurse. She had vanished into the world of Smith, neither technology's nor memory's fingers can find her.

She was just another blue-eyed Susan in the lunch line, I remember she told me she was afraid of her grandfather's horses.

I never knew her mother was Crazy Maisie. There are things you tell everyone and those you tell no one, and in between, the whole wavering shoreline of trust.