Seidel, Kathleen Gilles (26 page)

"Lord, no. This place gives me the willies."

"So why live here?"

"Because I don't mind having the willies."

He held open the front door, whistling for the fat collies. The two dogs rolled off the couch and ambled outside, uninterestedly sniffing the bushes.

Doug dropped down on the front steps, leaning back on his elbows, his legs stretched out. Jill sat next to him, looking down at his legs. His jeans were worn; the knees were soft and slightly saggy. The inner seam was wearing; the denim's white warp strands were pulling away from the seam.

She stretched out her legs alongside his. The concrete steps still held the warmth of the afternoon sun. Even though Doug was easily six inches taller than she, their legs were nearly the same length. His height was in his torso and hers in her legs.

"So have you had any great thoughts since Monday night?" he asked.

"Great thoughts?... Oh, about the movie."

"That's what I had in mind, but if you've had great thoughts on some other matter, I'd be happy to listen."

Jill doubted that her analysis of their respective leg length counted as a great thought. "Actually all that junk of Aunt Carrie's did make me think of something. I know it sounds ghoulish, but what do you think happened to Bix and Alicia's things? The stuff from their homes out in California— did Charles bring it all back here?"

"I haven't a clue. Charles wouldn't have brought it; he never went back. To this day I don't think he's left Virginia. But I suppose he would have had to have someone send back his clothes and such. And Bix's place would have to have been closed up too. I never thought about that." His blue eyes glittered bright with interest. "Do you think there might be something about the script among Bix's effects?"

"There shouldn't be. Scripts and all the drafts and notes are technically the property of the studio, but obviously Bix wasn't treading the straight and narrow. He would have to have kept the material somewhere."

"Let me call Gran." Doug drained his beer, hitched his feet onto a step, and rose effortlessly.

In a few minutes he was back with a report. "She's really not sure, but she does seem to recall somebody sending out a box of Bix's things. She doesn't know what was in it, where it is now, or even if any of them ever went through it. But we're welcome to come look in her attic... which is a little like saying we're welcome to line up behind General Pickett."

"Behind who?"

"General Pickett. You know, Gettysburg, Pickett's Charge? Good God, woman, where were you brought up?"

"Southern California."

"Well, that would explain it. If you're going to stay around here, you need to brush up on your Civil War history. Anyway, Gran didn't know what happened to Alicia's things but she says she'll ask Charles. I told her we'd come right away. I hope that's okay."

"I don't have any plans." How lovely it was to feel so free, so flexible. She didn't suppose she would want her normal life to be so empty of arrangements, but now it seemed exactly right, to be sitting on a farmhouse step drinking a beer one minute, then in an open car sweeping down a country road the next. Perhaps she should reread Bruce Catton or Shelby Foote.

"This may be a wild goose chase," she reminded Doug as they buckled their seat belts. "Even if the stuff is there—"

"No one would have thrown it away. I know this family, we don't throw stuff away."

She went on. "Even if it's there, the chances of there being anything about the movie are so remote."

"But it's bound to be interesting. It belonged to Bix."

Jill glanced across the car at him. The wind had divided his hair, flattening it against his head. What were they looking for here? Bix's movie or Bix himself?

Charles was not home when they arrived at Doug's grandmother's. "He went for a walk," Mrs. Ringling said. "I don't think he much likes having this all stirred up again... but get that guilty look off your face, Douglas. Charles isn't trying to stop you; he wouldn't dream of that. It was just such an unhappy time, none of us likes to think about it. But I can't see that this is any worse than dressing up and pretending to be cannon fodder."

"Did you ask him about Alicia's things?" Jill asked.

Mrs. Ringling nodded. "Her girlfriends closed up their place for him. They shipped his clothes back here, but he had told the girls to keep as many of Alicia's things as they wanted and get rid of the rest."

"He didn't want anything?" Doug asked. "Nothing?" He was surprised. "If somebody I loved died, I think I'd want to hold on to something of hers."

Mrs. Ringling tried to explain. "You have to understand. This was 1948. We were just starting to believe that the war was really over. So many boys had died, and there was so much going through belongings and trying to decide what to save and what to give away. Things were finally starting to seem normal again, and then this happened. Bix and Alicia were the only Valley people on the plane, but every last one of the other men were veterans—every one of them. They'd survived the war, only to have this happen. Some of their families came out, and it was like everything bad was starting up again. I can remember the day they found Alicia's purse—"

"Alicia's purse?" Jill interrupted. "From the plane crash?"

Mrs. Ringling blinked, suddenly aware of what she said. "You know, I hadn't thought about that in years. It was, I don't know, maybe two weeks after the crash—we'd had the funerals and the memorial services, and all the families had gone—a couple of kids found Alicia's purse, caught in a tree. It was one of those things. There her purse was, completely intact."

"What ever happened to it?"

"That I can't tell you. I remember seeing it. It was this  pretty green thing, but I don't know what happened to it, or what was in it. I'm not the sort to have a great hankering to look at the lipstick and compact of some poor girl who had just died." She cleared her throat and spoke more briskly. "Now, do you want to go up in the attic or not? All I can say about it is that Carrie Casler's is more of a mess."

"It is?" Jill's heart sank. During the drive over she had thought about clearing out Aunt Carrie's house, getting rid of the clutter, taking down the aging Venetian blinds, brightening everything with fresh paint. Whatever she did with the house, whether keep it or give it to her brothers, she would like it to be in good shape. And it would give her a project. As delicious as today's unshaped leisure was, Jill knew that day after day of it wouldn't be healthy. She had given into this temptation before. Observing without participating, as much as she loved it, had a cost, a thousand tiny, almost imperceptible, hammerblows landing on your self-esteem as people with schedules, purposes, livings to earn, came to seem more important than you.

"Oh, lord, yes." Mrs. Ringling started up the stairs. "Carrie was gone forty-five before she finally accepted that she wasn't going to have children. She was always collecting hand-me-downs and old toys. There must be boxes and boxes of the most worthless junk in that attic."

Mrs. Ringling led the way to one of the back bedrooms and opened the closet door. A ladder of one-by-fours had been nailed into the wall, leading up to square framed opening. Doug went up the ladder first, stopping to slide the hatch out of the way. Jill stood in the closet beneath him, looking at an egg spot at the fraying hem of his jeans. There were still bits of shell trapped in the dried crust.

Finally he angled the hatch out of the opening, and, crooking one elbow under a step of the ladder, handed the hatch back down to Jill. She leaned it up against the closet wall. It was a simple plank of plywood with handles on one side and a batt of insulation stapled to other. Jill had to pluck some of the yellowing fibers off her shirt, balling them up and tucking them in her pocket. Then she climbed up the ladder herself. Doug put out his hand to help her through the opening. It was one of those maneuvers that would have been easier to do on her own, but she took his hand anyway.

The attic was long and narrow; the steep-pitched roof sloped sharply from either side of the high center beam. Two paned windows under the gables let in the fading sunlight, which fell in narrow slants on the dusty floor. Doug groped toward the center of the attic, his footsteps stirring up the dust. Reaching overhead, he found the chain for a naked light bulb. In its glare Jill could see suitcases, steamer trunks, packing barrels, a rocking horse, a dress form, an artificial Christmas tree, and boxes, dozens and dozens of boxes. They ringed the attic, from under the eaves all the way around to the edges of the trap door.

"Thank God it's not August," Doug said. "We'd die from the heat. Look at all this crap."

"Do we have to open every box?" Jill asked. Why did people hold on to so much stuff? It was nice of Doug to talk about keeping a few mementos of a dead love, but all this? Why?

Because it might be family silver saved from looting Yankees; because it might be a dead son's last manuscript; because some people did find meaning in objects.

She looked over at Doug. He was rocking back on his heels, scratching his head, trying to figure out where to start. What must it be like to have such a history? To be part of a family whose silver was looted by the Yankees?

Wait a minute. She was from such a family. The Caslers had been here since before the Revolution. She might not know any of the family stories, but she had as much right to them as Brad or Dave.

"Let's assume the stuff's in the original box," Doug's voice broke into her thoughts. "I can't imagine anyone repackaging it. Look for something that might have come from California."

So Jill started on one side and Doug on the other, shifting the boxes about, looking for one with stamps and a California return address. Jill did stop to open a box labeled "Old Purses," but the only green one was a 1960's acid lime.

It was dirty work, and some of the boxes were heavy. As good a shape as she was in, Jill could feel the back of her shoulders tightening and the dust settling in her hair and on her face. She was in a corner where there was little light, and she had to squint at each box: "Susan's College Books," "Scout Uniforms," "Unpack Immediately."

She was
tempted
to explore the "Unpack Immediately," when she heard Doug let out a whistle.

"Jill, come look at this."

She threaded her way around the stacks of boxes. He was kneeling, almost directly under the light bulb. The light shone on the rivulet that a drop of sweat had traced through the dust on the back of his neck. Leaning over his shoulder, Jill looked down at the box.

It was addressed to "Mr. and Mrs. Samuel Ringling" with a return from Miles Smithson and the studio's Hollywood Blvd. address. The original packing tape had been slit and then the box resealed with masking tape.

"This is bad news," she said, "it being from Miles Smith-son." Smithson had been the producer of
Weary Hearts.
"He wouldn't have sent any studio property."

"I still want to look at it."

"That goes without saying. Is it heavy?" she asked. "Can we take it downstairs?"

"Somebody brought it up here," Doug answered. "But I don't know how Gran's going to feel about having forty years of dust tracked through the house."

Jill glanced around for a cloth or a rag, but didn't see one. So she pulled her shirttail out of her skirt and began dusting off the box. Doug followed suit, and the two of them kept bumping into each other as they worked. Then Doug climbed half way down the ladder and Jill handed the box to him. Mrs. Ringling must have heard them climbing down. When they came out of the closet, she was standing in the bedroom, her hands on her hips, looking at the box suspiciously. "You aren't going to set that thing down in here, are you?"

"Why don't we spread out some newspapers?" Jill suggested, even though she knew that it was emotion, not dust, making Mrs. Ringling's voice tight. "If you tell me where they are, I'll run get them."

So Doug held on to the box until Jill had spread out a carpet of
The Winchester Star.
He then set the box down and took a folding pocketknife out of his jeans. Jill liked men who carried pocketknives; she liked what it said about the challenges they thought they might have to face, problems that they would have to solve with their hands. Payne always played characters who carried good pocketknives, but on his own time he relied on his smile and his brain. Doug's smile was almost as good as Payne's, his brain was perhaps better, but he also trusted his hands to get him out of trouble.

In this case smiles, brains, hands, even the knife weren't necessary. The masking tape was brittle and peeled off the box almost by itself. Doug folded back the cardboard flaps and lifted off a layer of yellowing newspaper, a
Los Angeles Times
dated October of 1948. Beneath the newspaper were file folders, a camera, and packets of envelopes. Doug began to lift the things out, arranging them systematically on the newspaper.

Mrs. Ringling was watching, still from a distance. As Doug took out a packet of envelopes, she stepped forward, then stopped, stiffening. Jill looked at her inquiringly.

"Oh, it's nothing. Just those envelopes there"—Mrs. Ringling pointed—"are the letters I wrote him. Funny, him saving them all neat like that."

Doug handed the bundle of envelopes to her. "Do you want to read them?"

"No." Her voice was brisk. "That boy got his writing ability from his father. I probably wrote about setting out the tomato plants and putting up the beans. They were boring forty years ago; think what they'd be like now." She watched Doug lay out the remaining contents, then left the bedroom, taking with her, Jill noticed, the letters she had written her long-dead son.

Jill looked back at the things arrayed on the newspaper. The camera was initially the most interesting. It was a Leica.

"I don't know for sure," Jill said, "but I think this is a very good camera. Surprisingly good."

"Is there any film in it?" Doug asked.

Jill turned the camera upside down, examining its winding mechanism before trying to open it. "If there is, forty years in a hot attic won't have done it any good."