Chapter 18 - – The photograph album
"Buffy honey? What is this photo album?"
"Mom? What album? Oh - that album."
Buffy's tone struck Joyce, and she looked at her. There was nothing of her daughter's usual ditzy demeanour. She looked a bit sad; and yet not so much sad as thoughtful, and even vaguely bewildered. She had met with something she had never experienced before.
"It's a book of pictures of Cassie. Cassie Houston. You know... my classmate who died."
"Yes, you told me about her."
"I felt kind of unhappy about everything, so I thought I'd go visit her family... make them feel she hadn't just been dumped in the memory hole. And I went today, 'cause I knew I wasn't going to have another opportunity – what with the trip East and then moving home out of LA."
"That was nice of you."
"It was a... well, a beautiful experience, in a sad kinda way. And maybe I got back more than I gave. And I don't just mean the album."
"Nice people?"
"Mom, I've never met anyone like them..."
"Hello, Buffy, Aunt Joyce – what are you reading?"
"Not reading. It's a photo album of Cassie and her family."
"I don't think we told you about her, Sam. She was a classmate of Buffy's and she was murdered a month or so ago."
"Yeah. I went to see her family today and they gave me this."
"A whole album of photos? Why, were you two BFFs?"
"No... actually, the cheerleaders used to treat her pretty badly. That's why I... kind of... thought I wanted to go and talk with her folks. Just so they'd know someone remembered her."
Samantha looked at her sister thoughtfully She had not been far from considering her an airhead, but this was not the act of an airhead. "That was well done, Buffy,"she said, and caressed her hair.
"Actually, I'm glad I did. Like I was telling Mom, I've never met people like them."
"How do you mean?"
"Well... how do I explain? For a start,they weren't Cassie's parents, they were her grandparents..."
"They're very old, and they're both blind, but their home – you'd never believe they were blind, Sammy. It's all clean and neat as a new pin. They worked all their lives, and they never stopped, I guess. They were grieving for Cassie, and yet I got this sense of calm... like they were at peace with life. It sounds crazy, I think, but I felt they were waiting for death and still doing all their chores as they had done all their lives – they're not afraid, and not tired. Just... peaceful and kind."
Buffy was beginning to realize that she could not really explain or express how that afternoon's visit had affected her. She picked up the album and opened it; and almost immediately, both her sister and her mother sort of gasped.
"He's black!"
"You didn't tell us that."
"It must have taken some courage, in those days..."
"Yes," said Buffy, "they married as soon as they came back from the war. And the stories they tell about finding a house to live in! They make it all sound as funny as an Animaniacs short, but I think I'd have jumped off a bridge."
"He was a handsome guy, though," said Joyce appreciatively, looking at the tall dark-skinned man in the World War Two uniform, holding a much smaller young woman with a sweet round face and her hair curled in the fashion of 1945.
"And a hard worker. He got a job at a car maker in Segundo, and from some things he said it must have been the lowest and nastiest job they had. He was the only one who'd take it. And Sue, his wife, also got a job with a kindergarten run by some nuns, and they paid peanuts. And they just worked, and after a while people forgot about color, and he got promoted a bit, and things got better, and they bought a lot and built their own home. And when they told me that, I kinda knew why they kept it so neat."
The pages turned to show two little girls in nineteen-fifties dress. One of them was rather taller than the other, but the other was strikingly pretty, with huge smiling eyes and an endearing expression.
"You see, Cassie was brought up by her grandparents because her mother was dead."
"Are these -?"
"Cassie's mother Joanie, and her aunt Mary."
The pages turned again, and there was the smaller girl again, now grown up and beautiful – but in a really odd manner, with features that might have been mismatched – but weren't – and a smile so sparkling it made your heart go out to her. She wore distinctly hippy clothes, with bangles and a skirt that barely stopped at her long and beautiful legs.
"This was Joanie, Cassie's mother."
"Very sixties!" said Joyce with a reminiscent smile. She had been a teen in the year of the Summer of Love, and hippy threads only brought back happy memories.
Buffy's view was different. She had never thought about the great decade until that morning in the Houstons' neat little parlour. They had been talking about Cassandra, and then the conversation had moved to her mother, because in the Houstons' mind you could not separate Cassie from Joanie, grand-daughter and daughter. And there was so much to say about Joanie, good and bad. And so they had got the photo album out. And just as they were starting to go through it, Joanie's sister, their surviving daughter, had come to call.
"I met Mary, her sister," said Buffy. "She still looks like this photo, only older, and still wears hippy dress."
They had talked about her parents, and her sister, and her niece, and her own children, and the hippie world she doesn't really want to give up. Buffy tried to report some of the things Cassie's aunt had told her, and while her sister the airwoman did not seem impressed, her mother's eyes went a bit misty. And Buffy thought of what Gramps and Grandma Houston had told her.
"We weren't scared. Many of us really believed in it, you know. We thought the kids were really creating a new society, a new world. And it was something that had been at the back of people's minds, you know, for a long time... the next evolutionary step... the 'broad, sunlit uplands' that we could look forward to.
"Everyone believed a new world was coming."
She tried to repeat what she could remember, and Joyce nodded. "Yes," she said, "I remember that. And I remember, about 1974, looking around and suddenly thinking, whatever happened to the new world? It was as though everyone just woke up one day and noticed that all those mad hopes were no longer there."
"And, yet, you know, Buffy, Sam... it's not as though they achieved nothing. Think of the music and the other arts – there would be no end of listing all the great acts that came up in a few years. It looked like a golden age, and in many ways it was. They went about as far as human beings really can... You can't live without restraints... Some people died, and the rest went home and turned into their parents."
"Joanie," said Buffy, "was one of those who died, I guess. Her sister says so." In the photograph they were looking at, Joannie, in spite of her usual shining smile, was looking pale and wasted.
"Dope, I suppose..." said Joyce sadly.
"No, her sister says it was some sort of gross illness she picked up having sex."
"One thing that struck me when I looked at all those pictures is that Cassie is kind of... like the sixties with the juice left out. She used to wear all those long caftan type things, but in drab colours... look at her haircuts. It's like... I wonder how she felt about her mother. I wonder if she ever looked at her photos."
Mary's voice had been soft and sad. "Cassie was the last flower in Joannie's life. When she became pregnant, she was already wasting away. We are not sure whether the pregnancy killed her or kept her alive, but she only lasted long enough to give her birth. When the baby came, they showed her to Joannie, and she kissed her on the head, and she was taken back to the hospital ward. Eight days later, she was dead.
"I was six years younger than Joannie, and that means I missed the whole summer of love thing. I knew that what I saw with Joannie scared me half to death. I just did not like all those shaggy beards and that unwashed hair and bare feet. It was only a couple of years later that I really got into the scene.
"Poor little Cassie felt the lack of her mother very keenly. I don't know why... I'm sure it was nothing my parents said or did. They could not have been kinder to her, and they would have spoiled her rotten if she had allowed them to. Maybe having no parents..."
Buffy did not think that made sense. She had grown up around people with bizarre family arrangements – irregular numbers of parents, half brothers and sisters – and Cassandra must have been the same. Buffy just thought Cassie was the kind who draws bullies - her dress, her bookishness – and she was an easy mark. Insult her, and she would just fold in on herself and perhaps cry a little. That was honey for bullies... That's what they wanted. She was such a shy little mouse.
But now that she was gone, Buffy missed her. She told them so. She told them she missed her and felt sad that she would never have the opportunity to apologize for her behaviour.
And so the old couple had made a gift of the album to her. She had not even wanted it – she felt it was theirs, their link with their grandchild. But they said that they would never forget Cassie, but she had wanted to remember her, so this would help. "Just don't forget our Cassie, Buffy dear. Remember her, and we shall be glad that you have the album."
"But Mary...?" And Mary answered: "I have all those photos and more at home. Keep the album, Buffy. It's a gift from my sister and my niece."
And something else had crossed Buffy's mind. She had felt from the beginning that this dear old couple were calmly waiting for death. Their gift of the album was something like a last will, passing the precious memory to someone who seemed to value it.
"So, please, Mum, keep it for me, OK? Take it to Sunnydale when we move. I don't want to forget Cassie."
There was a lot that Buffy could not tell anyone. She felt that Cassandra had died because she, Buffy, had not done enough of her duty. She felt that if she had killed Lotos himself, or enough of his minions, earlier, she would not have seen that dying body thrown mockingly in her path; and that she owed the dead girl, at least, a duty not to forget her. But there was another thing. Buffy could not put words to it, but she felt as if she had come over an edge and looked on a large open landscape. And that landscape was her possible future – motherhood, a family, children. She had contemplated Cassie's family: the line that passed through the grandparents, through Mary and her children, one of whom was now pregnant in her turn; and that other, unhappier line, that passed through Joannie and Cassie and had come to an end at her own feet, that dreadful night in the cemetery, with that last dying glance at her. She would not forget Cassie. There was nothing else that she could do for her. She had avenged her, and she would not forget her.
"And that was why I was there after all. I had dreamed of Cassie dying" (here Buffy had to tell an inevitable fib) "and the last thing she had said to me was, Please remember me. I lived. I existed. I counted for something."."
