by Dan Walsh
“What?”
“I’m assuming you guys know all about his personal life, the stuff he’s always kept hidden from the public. I’m not talking about dirty secrets. Your grandfather seemed squeaky clean. I’m talking about, you know, the family stories. How he and your grandmother met. The kind of questions he’d never answer in all those interviews. A book like that coming out now, we’d sell a hundred thousand, maybe a million.”
This was awful, just awful. “So, you’re not interested in hearing about any of my novel ideas?”
“What? Your what?”
“Novels, books. Stories I’ve made up in my head.” I wanted to say, like my grandfather wrote, but didn’t. Because they wouldn’t be like my grandfather’s books. They’d be my books. Books nobody would ever want to read.
“Oh . . . I see.” A long, awkward pause. “Well, Michael, I’d be open to that, maybe after this. I can almost guarantee, you write a biography about your grandfather and you’ll have a huge audience ready to hear anything else you have to say. Even if you kept a fraction of his fans for yourself, you’d still have a bestseller on your hands. So what do you think? How about I get a contract written up and overnight it to you. And you can start doing some research, start organizing things in your head, collecting old photos, maybe think up some interview questions to ask your family members.”
Awful. I was feeling almost sick to my stomach. Why didn’t I see this coming? “Can I think about this for a while?”
“Sure, it’s a big deal. I don’t want to steamroll you here. You give it a few days, talk it over with your wife. I’ll get the contract written up, start a conversation with my ghostwriter, see how quickly he can get on board. How’s that sound?”
“Fine, Mr. Samson, I—”
“Rick, remember.”
“Right, Rick. I really do appreciate you thinking about me for this project.” What am I saying? I do not. “I’ll get back to you real soon.”
“Good. You do that. And seriously, we get this thing together, I’ll get one of my best agents to get back with you on one of your novel ideas. I promise.”
One of his agents . . . that was something anyway. “Thanks, Rick.”
“Gotta go, Michael. Keep in touch.”
We hung up. I picked up the bag with the milk in it. Another with frozen vegetables. I turned toward the front door. There was Jenn standing in the doorway. She knew something was wrong; I’m sure it was all over my face.
If I was going to do this thing, I’d need to call my sister Marilyn and get her help.
I really didn’t want to do that.
8
I was depressed. For so many reasons, I had no right to be.
And that depressed me more.
Jenn and I had just finished a fabulous dinner. She’d warmed up some of the leftovers from the catered dinner with my family, compliments of Bradley and Dunn. We were sipping coffee while sitting in a pair of Adirondack chairs out back. My grandfather’s favorite section of the courtyard, which wrapped behind the house, out of sight from the street. The temperature was a mild sixty-seven degrees, low humidity. A slight breeze wafted over the brick wall and across the yard, moving the tree branches ever so slightly as well as serving up an aroma of night-blooming jasmine from a few houses down.
The historic house sitting directly behind me was mine and mortgage free. A small fortune was sitting safely in our checkbook. A blue, decked-out Mini Cooper S was on order. Beside me sat Jenn, looking gorgeous. What in heaven’s name did I have to be depressed about?
“You don’t have to do this, Michael. It’s not like we need the money.”
I set my coffee down. I can’t talk unless I can move my hands. “I know, Jenn. But I’m wondering if maybe I should. Both Vincent and Aunt Fran suggested the same thing the other night. Marilyn would be thrilled. She’d probably do anything I asked just to be a part.”
“But you don’t want to do it,” Jenn said. “Not even a little, I can tell.”
I sighed. She had a point. “I don’t see how you say no to someone like Rick Samson. You should’ve heard him. He is seriously jazzed about this. If I could do it, I’m pretty sure he’d have me on a huge book tour, traveling all the big cities. I’d be on talk shows and radio interviews. I’d go from being a complete unknown to bestseller status in a matter of months. That’s a crazy opportunity to walk away from.”
“Is all that stuff something you’d even want to do?”
“Someday, yeah. But I was hoping it would be because of my own novels. Maybe not the first or second book, but . . . someday. I figured being the grandson of Gerard Warner might open a few doors, then I’d have to keep them open myself, because people would see my writing deserved the attention.”
“Well, you can still do that. It would just take longer.” She reached over and took my hand. “And that’s not a problem. You’ve got the time.”
She was right. I had nothing but time now. All the time in the world. So what was the rush? “There’s something else I’ve been thinking about.”
“What’s that?”
“The research for something like this. Rick’s assuming my family knows all the things about my grandfather he never wanted to talk about in public. But we don’t. I never cared about any of that stuff. He was just Gramps, she was just Nan. I mean, I could write about all kinds of family stories, favorite Christmases, how we spent the Fourth of July. But I don’t even know how my grandparents met or where he was born.”
“Apparently, Marilyn couldn’t find out any of those things either.”
“Right. I think they’d be expecting that in a book like this. Biographies usually start with the person’s birth. Gerard Warner, the early years.”
“I have an idea.”
I looked over at her. Man, I hated the fact that she was leaving tomorrow. “What’s that?”
“Maybe after I fly home, you could do some exploring. Up in the attic or maybe in your grandfather’s study. People don’t usually throw out their old things. You know, old photo albums, love letters, birth certificates. When my grandmother died a few years ago, my folks found five boxes of stuff they’d never seen before. They had a blast going through it all.”
It was actually a great idea.
“Why don’t you do it?” she said. “See where it leads? I’m sure Marilyn will give you anything she has.”
“I’m sure she will. But let’s don’t call her just yet. I’m not even sure I—”
“Michael, don’t worry about that. It’s not like Marilyn and I talk all the time and it might slip out.”
“You’re right. It’s just, I’m not even sure I want to do this yet, even if I did find a ton of old goodies.”
“Then don’t make a decision, either way. Just take it one step at a time. Pray about it. Think about it. When did Rick say he needed an answer?”
“He said take two or three days.”
“Well, take them then. We don’t have to decide anything now.”
“All right,” I said. I reached for my coffee mug, took a smooth swallow, and leaned back in my chair.
“There’s another decision I’d like to talk about,” Jenn said. She had a mischievous look in her eyes and sat forward in her chair. “A totally different subject.”
“Okay . . . do I need to brace myself?”
“No, silly. It’s a good thing . . . a really good thing.”
“I could use a really good thing about now.”
“You know I’m going back to Orlando to work my last two weeks.”
“I did know that,” I said, smiling.
“Well, I’m also going to make a list of things I want to bring back. I think I’m going to give most of it away. There’s very little in our apartment that compares to anything in the house.”
I didn’t see where this was going, but sometimes Jenn did that—got offtrack when she had something big she wanted to talk about. “Is this still about the ‘really good thing’?”
“Okay, I’ll jus
t say it. After my two weeks are over, I was thinking . . . I don’t see any reason why I need to rush back here and find a new job.”
“No, I agree with that.”
“So . . . how about . . . we start our family, start trying to have a baby?”
“Really!” I was almost shouting. I’d been wanting to start having kids for months.
“Really,” she said.
“Jenn, I would, that would be . . . definitely. It’s a perfect idea.”
She stood up, still holding my hand. “And I was thinking . . .” She pulled me to my feet. “We could start trying tonight.”
I wrapped my arms around her, and we kissed. Holding hands, we walked down the brick path toward the house. I stopped a moment. “Don’t you want to get the coffee cups?”
“They can wait till the morning,” she said.
I smiled and we walked some more.
Suddenly, my depression had completely disappeared.
9
Jenn was in the air now, flying the friendly skies back to Orlando. And I was spending the rest of the day in our new home, alone.
At the airport, I’d finally convinced her there was no way I could live without her for two weeks in a row. I’d said, since we’re millionaires now we could probably afford a couple hundred dollars to fly her back to Charleston for the weekend. I knew she’d say yes because she loved me and wanted to be with me as much as I wanted to be with her. So I ignored the fact that she’d given in only after I’d reminded her that if she came home, she could drive the new Mini Cooper all weekend.
I closed the car door and fiddled with the keys, trying to single out the one to my new front door. As I walked up the front steps, I took a moment to admire the covered veranda running the full length of the house. Two finely trimmed topiaries stood on either side of the door, boxwoods, I think. Their healthy days on earth were numbered, now that I was their master. A dark green set of wicker furniture spread out to my left, the perfect place for evening coffee and conversation. To my right, a wicker dinette set, with a round glass table and a silk floral centerpiece.
On their own at the far end of the porch, two white-painted rockers sat angled toward each other, like a couple wishing some time alone from the crowd.
How did I rate coming home to something like this?
As I closed the front door, the grandfather clock just inside the living room began to chime, informing me it was now 3:30 p.m. The clock was a fine piece of furniture, one of my grandfather’s favorites. I wasn’t sure I could get used to it sounding off every quarter hour, day and night. I set my keys down on the foyer table and immediately gave myself to a little project I wanted to accomplish before dinner.
I still hadn’t decided whether to write the book about my grandfather but thought I should at least search the house like Jenn had suggested, to see if Gramps kept any boxes of old memories lying around. Of course, the attic was the place to start.
Ascending the winding stairway to the second floor, I admired the amazing trim work in the handrail, in the stairs themselves, even on the circular medallion surrounding the light fixture suspended from the ceiling. I crossed a short landing and opened the door leading to the attic. This was a more basic stairway with steeper steps. Plenty of natural light came down the stairwell from the attic dormers. Gramps had turned the front half of the third floor into a nice guest bedroom, mostly in sky blue. Jenn and I had stayed there on our second visit.
I cleared the final step, which opened right into the guest room, kind of a loft effect. I still felt like I was standing in someone else’s guest room. I felt that way wherever I went in the house.
A door on my left opened to the back half of the floor, the unfinished attic. I opened it and fumbled for the light switch. A stack of boxes blocked most of the light coming in from the far dormer. I left the door open as I stepped inside, and soon my eyes adjusted enough to see.
The only boxes in plain sight were those blocking the window, so I started there. Twenty minutes later, I had nothing. Except I could see better now that I’d moved the boxes out of the way. They were filled with household goods—a bunch of old plates, pots and pans, musty linens and bedspreads. I continued snooping around, looking high and low for more boxes, anything that might help me write this book about my grandfather.
I covered every square inch of space and didn’t find a single photo album, a single box of old letters, a single container holding records of any kind. I sneezed a lot, which was pretty much all I had to show for my effort.
As I closed the door and started down the stairs, I remembered something. The pirate trunk. A Victorian-era wooden trunk at the foot of the bed in the main guest bedroom. Years ago, Nan had said they bought it because my grandfather thought it looked like something a pirate would use to bury treasure.
I hadn’t thought of the trunk before, because I already knew what was inside. She’d shown it to me herself before she died. “This is where I bury my treasures,” she’d said with a girlish smile. It was full of family photo albums. Over a dozen of them. But none of the early years, none of Gramps and Nan as children or even while they were dating. In the earliest pictures, they were already married.
Marilyn had confirmed this fact herself, in one of our many exasperating conversations a few months ago. She had sneaked upstairs to search the trunk on my grandfather’s last birthday. She’d come downstairs totally disappointed. But what if my grandfather had added some things to it since then? Maybe just before he died.
I hurried down the last few steps and across the hall. The bedroom door was already open. I knelt down and lifted the trunk lid. It creaked eerily, the way pirate trunks should.
Inside, it looked exactly as I remembered. Two stacks of neatly arranged photo albums filled most of the space. My guess was that Marilyn had been the last one here, and she’d put everything back the way Nan had left it years before that. A number of smaller boxes had been tucked along the sides. I lifted them out, but they were pink and flowery; nothing my grandfather would use.
I opened them anyway. They were filled with postcards. I scanned the dates, none older than twenty years. I spent the next thirty minutes lifting and thumbing through the photo albums. I could have spent hours there, reliving the memories. But I had seen them all before. I didn’t see a single picture or find a single document that shed any light on my grandfather or grandmother’s existence prior to a few years after they married.
This had never bothered me before.
After putting everything back as carefully as I could, I closed the lid and stood up.
It bothered me now.
10
I walked down the stairs, my mind awash with troubled thoughts.
I hated what I was thinking.
Every memory of my grandfather had only ever been positive. More than that, they were pleasant. I had never thought of him as being secretive or vague. I couldn’t recall him ever dodging a question I’d asked him or changing the subject. It was just the opposite; he’d fill the next ten minutes telling some wonderful story.
But then, I had never asked him the kinds of questions Marilyn had.
I walked through the dining room into the kitchen and poured a glass of iced tea, this question burning in my brain: Who doesn’t have pictures of their wedding day?
It was Marilyn’s voice asking one of the many irritating questions she tossed at me when this subject had come up. She’d pointed out that Gramps and Nan had gotten married in the forties. All her friends’ grandparents had lots of black and white photographs of their wedding day, and dozens of others during their dating and engagement years. Most even had pictures of themselves as children.
Why didn’t Gramps and Nan?
Right now, it seemed like a good question.
Why didn’t they?
For that matter, why no wedding license or birth certificates? They should be there too. Yellowed and frail, torn at the edges. And why no love letters? Theirs was a wartime romance; people back then
wrote dozens of such letters to each other. Did my grandfather even fight in World War II?
I always assumed he had. His books were filled with action and suspense scenes, many set in times of war. He certainly wrote like someone with firsthand knowledge of danger and dying and the intensity of human combat. But as I thought about it, I couldn’t recall having a single conversation about his own war experiences. Why had I never asked about it? It had never occurred to me that he wouldn’t answer me straight if I did.
It just never came up.
I walked back to the dining room table and picked up my laptop. I had a strong compulsion to write something, anything. I needed to clear my head before my mind fell down the stairs into total discouragement. “Gramps, you are still my hero,” I said aloud as I made my way to the back of the house to his study.
Was he a criminal, a felon running from the law? Had he killed someone? Did he—
Stop.
I had to stop listening to Marilyn’s conspiracy theories. I walked through the doorway to my grandfather’s study. “Watch your step” went through my head. He’d said it every time I’d walk into his office over the years.
It was the only add-on room in the house. It had floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on either side. The top three shelves on the left held first editions of all his novels, put there by Nan. The rest contained books he’d bought for research. Come to think of it, this room by itself was probably worth a fortune now.
But the first thing you noticed entering the study wasn’t the bookshelves. The whole back wall was filled with windows, the classic nine-over-nines famous throughout Charleston, which looked out over the most private section of the courtyard behind the house. There were the Adirondack chairs Jenn and I had sat in the other night. Centered beneath the windows was my grandfather’s desk.