 |  |
Wednesday, September 18th
Helene was on her cell phone with Simon, striding like a woman half her age. Indeed, she looked like one in chinos, running shoes, and a man’s untucked tailored white shirt with a subtle “PLD” monogram on the point of one collar, which after a moment or two Charlotte realized stood for Paul Lucien Dalmier. Charlotte’s lingering concerns for her friend’s well-being dissipated as she found herself trying to keep up on the walk to Olivia’s house. The muscles in her legs were stiff and aching from the hours of moving and sorting through the boxes in her basement. She was also out of sorts from too many emotions and too little sleep; the three coffees at breakfast didn’t really help.
Helene was bringing Simon up to date about the conference with the attorney earlier that morning, which clarified the terms of the will. “I can’t believe this, either. Charlotte and I are going there now to size up the job, and if at all possible I’d like your input, too. Olivia clearly had this project on her mind at least a month before she said anything to me, as that’s when her will was updated.” She paused as she listened to him. “Oh, that would be great! Thank you so much Simon, and see you soon.” She clicked off, took a deep breath, and turned to Charlotte. “Simon will come by in a few minutes. He’s wrapping up office hours.”
By this time they’d gone up the porch. Helene unlocked the door and once again the heavy scent of roses made Charlotte feel sad and a little dizzy.
Helene, however, was undaunted, and carefully made her way to the window surrounded by the bookshelves, raising the roller shade and opening the sash, bringing in sunlight and the crisp fresh air. The improvement was immediate. Charlotte wondered if Olivia would have been a nicer person, a happier person, if she’d only opened the windows. But perhaps she didn’t because she was not a nice, happy person in the first place.
Helene saw that she was standing close to the blood streak and took a quick step back. “We need to get rid of this rug. Horrible.”
“I’m glad one of us is on good form this morning,” murmured Charlotte.
“Oh, I’m loaded for bear,” Helene said, in a growly tone that was as uncharacteristic as her attire, and Charlotte smiled to herself, enjoying this new side to her elderly friend. Or perhaps it wasn’t a new side at all, but something essential to Helene’s nature that wasn’t necessary in the years Charlotte had known her. Helene was clearly not going to let Olivia’s will defeat her the way that Olivia was defeated by Ronson or other elements of life. She couldn’t picture her friend giving up her music to go into a self-imposed exile.
They looked over the rug, and at the books and papers still scattered around it. As Charlotte began collecting and handing them to Helene to place on the coffee table, she realized they were all part of a copy of Allen Ginsburg’s Howl. “This is a well-worn copy, but not a first edition.”
Helene had turned to look over the shelves. “Most of these are not valuable, at least at first glance. Old, yes, but that doesn’t mean valuable.” She turned back to Charlotte. “Of course if there really was something valuable, I’m sure whoever was here has taken it.”
Charlotte found some old newspapers, which she placed over the blood stain. “I don’t want us to accidentally step in this for the time being.” From there she went to put the fallen table and lamp aright, and then the cup and crossword book.
Helene wandered from room to room, shaking her head at the clutter, and at the way her sister had lived. “One thing we can do right now is get rid of the potpourri and open more windows—if we can even get at the windows.”
They opened the back door and the kitchen and dining room windows, and tossed the potpourri in the trash, then Charlotte took the trash to the wheeled bins outside. Helene went out to the porch to sit in the swing, taking deep breaths of fresh air. Charlotte joined her.
“I’m trying to think of how to make short work of this,” said Helene. “I do want to do the right thing and find those notebooks. Of course I still want you to do everything we’d talked about with Olivia, if you’re still interested, but please don’t feel obligated while your own situation is so unsettled.”
Charlotte nodded her reassurance, while trying not to show too much relief. “I really do want to do this. It’s a wonderful opportunity and I have a feeling something good will come of it.” She silently thanked her lucky stars that the job was still there, unsettled situation or not.
“Do you have any ideas about how to proceed?”
Charlotte adopted the manner that worked when making suggestions and proposals at editorial meetings. “I think the most important thing right now is to just find the notebooks. Once I have those, you could have an estate liquidator come in like I’m doing. That way you don’t have to worry about all the hands-on work, the sorting and the details, and you can turn the house over to Donovan fairly quickly.”
Helene seemed to like the idea. “Oh, the sooner the better, in my opinion. I wasn’t impressed by that display of his.” Her lips were pressed in a thin line of disapproval. “But I need to have a rough estimate of the personal property value for the estate and for the taxes, like an appraisal. The books might not be worth much, but there are some antiques and collector’s items in the cabinets and on the other shelves. Maybe I should call Martin Stanton, but I think we need to see what we’re dealing with first.”
The weather was sunny, but cool, the first touches of autumn on the breeze. Charlotte was glad she’d worn socks and a sweater. Helene shivered, and they rose to go back into the house. Then a motorcycle quietly pulled into the driveway, surprising Charlotte, as she hadn’t heard it coming. It was Simon, who smoothed back his hair after taking off his helmet. She had already recognized him, however, by the jeans and the jacket. It had to be long-legged black jeans, she thought. She looked away before he caught her staring.
Simon joined them in the living room, and noted the open windows. “Smells better already.”
Helene pointed down to the newspapers covering the blood stain. “I only hope that we won’t smell the blood now. This rug has got to go. But I’m supposed to have everything valuated before getting rid of anything. The attorney said to take pictures.” She smiled and looked up at Simon. “Would you like the job?”
Simon chuckled in a way that said he knew her all too well. “Yes, Helene, I will be happy to do it. But you know that.”
“No, no,” she protested. “I mean as a real job. The estate will cover your time and expenses. My sister has created a huge inconvenience for me, but I don’t want it to be an inconvenience for my friends, as well. You both might as well get something out of it. At least that’s my feelings about the matter.”
Simon looked like he was going to object, but Charlotte interrupted. “Oh, Simon, take the bloody job and make good work of it. I could use the help, too.”
He looked at her with amusement. “Alright, I’ll take the bloody job,” he said, stressing the difference in their accents. The creases in his high-boned cheeks deepened as he smiled, and for a moment Charlotte thought that he looked a bit like an aging but well-preserved rock star. “We’ll make good work of it, then.” He turned to Helene. “When do we start?”
“Immediately.” Helene had to look up at him, but seemed taller as she gave the command. Every so often, thought Charlotte, one could get a glimpse of Helene the concert pianist, and the teacher used to dealing with young prima donnas.
“Right, then,” said Simon, moving his hands to point out and encompass different areas of emphasis. “I propose we do it as a video, first just a quick scan and set of notes, and then as Charlotte goes through the search for the notebooks, we’ll do a detailed inventory of everything in each room. That’s also when I can do still shots of groups of items that might be of particular value, such as each shelf in the cabinets, or the things on the sideboard and dining room table. If there is anything of outstanding value, I can set it up as a single-item shot, with perfect lighting and detail.”
Helene nodded her understanding. “That sounds like a good plan, and hopefully not too much fuss. The attorney did say something about videos—evidently that’s the way insurance agents do it nowadays.” She went on to say that she would provide both Simon and Charlotte with checks to cover a week’s worth of work in advance, with another if the project required it. Charlotte expressed her gratitude, and hoped she was hiding her relief, wanting to keep things as professional as possible. She would stretch the money as far as she could, but it would help her make ends meet until after the sale.
“The videos might help me spot the notebooks, too,” said Charlotte. “I have no idea what they look like or where they’ve been stashed.” She shrugged. “Or maybe not. I’ve no idea, really.” She looked around the room, feeling a bit helpless and hopeless. Where does one begin in a mess like this? Especially when there is a need to find something specific. “These notebooks could turn out to be ten needles in a hundred haystacks.”
“I can help you with that, too,” said Simon. “I can help you move things, maybe make it go a little faster.” He, too, looked around the room. “Moving things might be unavoidable.”
Helene sat down on the wingback chair. “If it wasn’t for the fact that my sister was once an author of some promise and regard, I’d be tempted to say to hell with this and go directly with an estate liquidator, like Charlotte is doing,” she said. “But as it is, my conscience won’t let me, and I am also just plain curious about what’s in those notebooks. So much of Olivia’s life was a mystery.”
Charlotte once again felt torn about telling Helene what was in the last notebook. Now that the project was definitely back on, she would have to set aside the time to read it carefully, and make a typed copy. Perhaps it would be best not to say what was in it until she had read the whole thing. “She certainly seemed to be well-connected, from what you’ve told me.”
Helene nodded. “Her world back then was like a salon of literary stars.”
Simon had been looking over the bookshelves. “Here’s a first edition of On the Road.” He thumbed through it. “And it’s full of marginalia. Looks like Olivia didn’t like it much.” He replaced it. “Marked up like that, it won’t bring a lot, I wouldn’t think.”
“Was she part of the Beat movement, or the French New Wave?” asked Charlotte.
“I honestly don’t know,” said Helene, with a shrug. “She was French at heart, or at least wanted to be.”
Simon pointed at a row of books on another shelf. “Seamus O’Dair, but mostly paperbacks. With Joyce and Beckett, no first editions.”
“I think Olivia knew him, too,” said Helene.
“Does anyone actually understand Seamus O’Dair?” asked Simon. “I mean, I found Least Objects a hard go.”
Charlotte remembered reading it in grad school. “It’s a very harsh novel, and it is difficult, but it is brilliant. Some people think O’Dair’s take on post-war consumerism is a prophecy that has come true in recent years, especially with more awareness of the influence corporations have on the decision to go to war. People have trouble with Least Objects because there are endless levels of compromised values, and it is hard to read without having a real hero to root for. Even feminists were divided on his treatment of the main woman character, Margot—some said it was only fair that she was cast out for lying about being part of the French Resistance, and others thought that she was unfairly punished for being young and hero-worshiping. Everyone in it is seriously flawed in one way or another.”
“That’s what I remember of it, that darkness, an almost pointless darkness,” said Simon.
“It’s one of the darkest books I’ve ever read, too,” said Helene. “I read it in the original French and came away with a different experience than I did when I read the English translation. It seemed less mean-spirited. Something might have gotten lost.”
“There’s a quest story in it, too,” continued Charlotte, as she recalled more and more of the novel. “The character Jacques, who’s probably the closest to a hero in the book, thinks that Margot has stolen his son, and the search takes him into one situation after another. Of course it all ends badly, but that’s part of the point—there cannot be a good ending in a world dominated by banks, corporations, and armies.”
“That’s probably the simplest summary of that book that I’ve ever heard,” said Simon. “Not that I’m ready to give it another go,” he put up his hands to stop her reply, and grinned. “Seriously, though, I might have been too young and impatient for it back then, not up for reading much of anything so serious.” He imitated a lofty, self-important person. “All about my art, y’know.”
“Oh, Simon,” tutted Helene, “I’m sure you were never that full of yourself.”
“Oh but I was, and probably still am!” he insisted, and left to pick up his video equipment.
Charlotte had remembered to bring the one notebook she did have, and once again wondered at the words inside the front cover: Put the pieces together and bloom. She showed it to Helene.
“I thought at first that it’s the title of this volume, this notebook, but so far I’m not making the connection,” said Charlotte. “I admit that the handwriting is difficult to read in the first half, so I might be missing a lot.”
Helene nodded thoughtfully. “It feels familiar, but I’m not sure why. Maybe it will come to me.” She handed the notebook back to Charlotte.
“Perhaps it’s episodic, like a lot of modern fiction, in pieces that are put together to make a whole novel. Or maybe it’s because it’s literally in pieces, in different notebooks, and it means what Olivia wanted, to put all the notebooks together?”
“That’s one way of looking at it. But knowing my sister, it probably isn’t that simple.”
Charlotte was about to ask Helene why, but Simon returned just then, with lights, tripods, and a camera. She was impressed by how quickly he set everything up to begin the overview video of the contents of each room, along with a commentary. As he worked, Charlotte made written notes, and occasionally asked Helene to identify antique items, such as a pants press and a collection of darning eggs, as well as providing date ranges for certain styles of hats, dresses, and lampshades. It was time-consuming and often awkward, because of the sheer number of things in every room, and because there was so little room to move around in.
The contents of the bedrooms took most of the morning. When she and Simon went back to the living room, they found Helene at the writing desk, absorbed in a ledger book, which she showed to them as they approached.
“Historians say that the most fascinating information about any period of time comes from the small things like household accounts, and I’m beginning to see why.” She pointed to a line that said “coffee,” at the end of which there was a price.
Simon looked as if he was suppressing a laugh. “Yes, well, now we know they had coffee as long ago as, what, 1972?” He peered more closely to see the date in the first column. “Interesting.”
Helene knew she was being teased. “Oh, stop it. What’s interesting is that she’s put down an amount that was more like the 1982 price, after the price of coffee skyrocketed. I was just looking through this to remember what one bought and how much things cost back then, and everything seems right except for the coffee, and maybe the milk and eggs.”
Simon burst out laughing. “Oh that’s an old trick, that one. Clever girl, your sister.”
“Why, how do you mean?” Helene looked genuinely puzzled.
“She was skimming. Probably her husband had her on a tight allowance, and it looks like she also had to account for every penny she spent. The only way to get him to fork over more money was to show how much necessities cost, and then she pocketed what she didn’t actually have to spend. What about cigarettes? Are those in there?”
Helene checked the list. “Yes. The price seems about right.”
“And beer?”
“That seems about right, too.”
“Yep,” nodded Simon. “She put down the right prices on the stuff he was likely to know the prices of, too, like beer and cigarettes. Some women would skim for their own drink and smokes, or to save up for something special or to slip to a relative who needed it.”
Helene sighed. “My poor sister. Her life was so different than mine, so much harder.”
These observations made Charlotte recall a friend at school whose family thought buying books was a foolish luxury. The girl collected cans and bottles to turn in for deposit and scrap metal money, and then bought a copy of Alice in Wonderland, which she kept hidden under the floorboards in her bedroom closet. From there, Charlotte realized that if Olivia kept detailed grocery purchases, she might have kept purchase details for everything else.
“Helene, is that just groceries, or the other things, too, like the collectibles?”
Helene checked. “Oh, it appears to be everything. I see here there’s baseball cards—a rather lot of baseball cards, actually, nylons, a Roseville vase, and even gasoline. I have no idea if the Roseville vase is the right price, or the baseball cards, but the gasoline seems to be about right, ten gallons for $3.50. Of course, Ronson would have known that.” She pointed to the bottom row of the bookshelf next to the desk. “There’s dozens of these ledgers.”
“I find it interesting,” said Simon, “that there are things like baseball cards listed, and extras like the vase, which meant Ronson probably knew about them, and was okay with them. He might have been strict and controlling, but he wasn’t a tightwad. I mean,” he gestured around to the curio cabinets, “clearly he didn’t have a problem with her spending money on this stuff. Would the baseball cards be something their son bought?”
Helene shook her head. “The cards were Ronson’s, I’m remembering now. He was a baseball fan, but Donnie never cared for sports. Ronson was also a Notre Dame football fan, as was Paul. I remember being glad that there was something he and Ronson could talk about when we would see them during the holidays. I think Olivia was collecting the Hummels and pottery and such when she went to sales and antique shops with him.”
Charlotte was sitting in the wingback chair by this time, idly scanning the bookshelves. With the lamp and table upright, she realized this was probably where Olivia sat most of the time to read. From the chair, she could see that a great many of the books had stickers on the spine that showed they were purchased at library sales or second-hand shops.
“Books,” said Charlotte. “Are there book purchases in the ledger?”
Helene was silent as she thumbed through page after page. She looked up, with a conspiratorial smile. “Not a one!”
Charlotte sat in thought, continuing to scan the bookshelves as if they could tell her what she needed to know. Simon sat in the recliner and looked over at her. “Penny for them?” he asked.
“Olivia clearly loved to read—and write. But she hid her writing and now it looks like she hid her reading, as well.” Charlotte pointed to several books with red heart-shaped stickers on the spine. “I bet a lot of these books were purchased after her husband died. The ones with the red hearts are from Ramona’s Resale, which has only been open three or four years.”
“That would fit with what I knew of Ronson,” added Helene. “He was the sort that would have felt threatened by Olivia’s intellectual leanings, or wouldn’t want to be outshone by a wife.”
Charlotte felt it was now safe to reveal something of the notebook she’d read. “Olivia was actually quite bitter toward him, judging by what little I’ve read of her writing. Something very warped about their relationship, I’m afraid.”
“And it shows in Donovan.” Helene sighed. “I wonder what it all means, though, and if it has anything to do with what happened here?”
“I would say it does,” Simon asserted. “There are many cultures that believe the way we live contributes to the way we die, that nothing is entirely an accident, even if we can’t immediately discern it. Personally I don’t think it’s karma, just cause and effect. An obvious example would be lifestyle choices affecting our life and health, but more often it’s less obvious, like when the choice of work affects the route we take to the job, which in turn puts us in the path of a drunk driver.”
“Oh you could take that back to childhood, when seeing something on a class trip triggers an interest that leads to choosing that line of work,” said Helene. “Or still further, when one’s parents chose a line of work that sent them to the town with the school that had the class trip that inspired the child’s profession. We could play the chain reaction game all night.”
“True,” said Simon. “But this is more direct. Olivia was a collector, and some of the things she collected were valuable. This could have brought her to the attention of someone who wanted those valuable things for himself.”
Helene looked worried. “Or she was a difficult woman who ended up alone in her old age, and that made her seem an easy mark.”
“Or maybe both,” said Charlotte, the inklings of ideas beginning to form. The process was interrupted, however, by the sound of a car with a muffler just about to go out pulling up in front. She stretched up to peer out the front window. “Guess who’s here?”