“She needs a rest or she’ll crack.”
“So will you. Stay with me, Birdie, come back to bed….”
She ignored his hand that reached out for her. “I’ll bring you coffee….” Slipping her feet into slippers, she hurried out the door. Even after the spats of yesterday and with her stomach spinning this morning, she felt a tangible pull to hurry downstairs to the kitchen.
She wanted to be with her sisters.
Jilly woke up groggy. She’d lain in a stuperous state for hours, watching the light of dawn change on the blue wallpaper. The memories had left her feeling vulnerable, as though she’d just given birth all over again, except this time she was coming home and everyone knew she had delivered a baby. When she walked downstairs this morning, she realized with both horror and relief, everything would be different.
The secret was out.
After all these years, what did honesty feel like? she wondered, wiping the sleep from her eyes. Did Birdie and Rose have any idea how much she needed them right now? She felt the stirrings of the devotion she felt for her sisters as a child, when they were playmates and Birdie and Rose were her very best friends. It had been so long since she allowed herself this connection and she felt wary. She had changed over the years. And so, she knew, had they. But they were sisters. Bound by blood and history.
She sniffed, catching the scent of cinnamon and coffee in the air. Hunger for food, for coffee, for life, growled within her. Rising from the bed, she wrapped herself in her lavender silk robe, pulled her wild hair back with an elastic and went to the bathroom to splash cold water on her face. Despite the lack of sleep, she felt lighter, younger, and not the least bit tired. She followed the sound of clanking dishes and soft chatter down the stairs. She was a bit nervous about facing them, but pushed open the door and walked into the room.
She couldn’t wait to see her sisters.
She found them in the kitchen, laying the table. Birdie and Rose each had hold of an end of a lovely robin’s-egg-blue tablecloth and were spreading it out over the long wood table. The mood was chummy and they were chatting without a trace of the tension that had permeated the air the day before. Jilly stood at the door, hesitant.
Birdie spied her first. Her face revealed caution, followed by a searching glance. Then, seeing the openness of Jilly’s expression, her face broke into a warm smile without restraint.
“I don’t believe it. Look who’s up.”
Rose hurried to fetch coffee. “Good morning!”
Jilly felt a tremendous relief that no one was going to dive into angst while the sun was still rising. She also felt a bit sheepish and looked at her coffee, the table, anywhere but her sisters’ eyes. “Yes, I’m up,” she replied with bluster. “Me and the birds. If you can’t lick ’em, join ’em.”
And Jilly did join right in, fetching tableware from the cupboards. Rose went to bring out the freshly baked granola while Birdie set large earthenware bowls. They readily fell into the old, comforting habits of childhood. Then, while they ate, Birdie brought them up to speed on the estate.
“Mr. Collins wants us to inform him of what to do with the house and estate by Thursday. Let’s just table those decisions for the day to give us a little more time to think. Agreed?”
The others nodded their heads, relieved.
“The big job now is to divvy up the household between us. The furniture, paintings, and all the china, crystal and silver. The house is jam-packed with stuff. Mother was a first-class pack rat. But before we do that, we have to catalog what’s here. I shiver to think of the attic and basement.”
“The attic is full of treasures,” said Rose, quick to rise to the defense. “I don’t want to throw any of it out.”
“Rose, we all know Mother isn’t the only one who’s a pack rat,” Birdie said teasingly.
“Let’s just agree not to throw anything away unless we all agree.”
“It will take forever that way.”
“Then I’ll do it myself.”
“Hold on,” Jilly said, holding up her palm. “Let’s start with the top and work our way down. We can make decisions as we go. All together.”
A short while later, Jilly stood in the dusty, dimly lit third floor with her mouth agape. It was worse than she could possibly have imagined. The place was imploding. The roof showed signs of sagging and waterstains on boxes, walls and floors revealed numerous leaks. The windowpanes were rotting, the glass was cracked in places and the whole place, smelled of dust, mold and mouse droppings.
This had once been their playground. These rooms were the glorious dominion of the Upper Kingdom where the royal Season sisters ruled. To see the untidy shambles coated with gloom and spiderwebs cast a harsh reality over what was once the realm of the imagination.
The third floor of the large Victorian house had originally been designed as the maids’ quarters. There were two cramped bedrooms with pitched ceilings, another slightly larger room that was once presumably a sitting room, and a single, small bathroom with an ancient, yellow-stained tub and sink fit for midgets. The girls had loved these rooms when they were younger because they were somehow separate from the domain of their parents. Undecorated, unspoken for—theirs for the taking. And they took them, claiming rooms and creating make-believe villages. Until their mother chased them out, furious that they’d foraged through all her storage boxes searching for choice items they could use for their pretend “houses.”
“It looks like a rabbit’s warren,” said Birdie, coming up from behind, her arms filled with supplies.
Jilly couldn’t deny it. Narrow paths between boxes stacked from floor to ceiling were the only way one could maneuver through the low-ceilinged rooms. What was most daunting, however, was that it wasn’t an organized mess. Everything appeared to have been tossed up there willy-nilly. It was a great, giant kitchen drawer full of junk.
“We’ll never live long enough to get through it all,” said Jilly, aghast. “It’s like the deep Congo in here. They’ll find our bodies someday, after a long, arduous search. We’ll be in some stage of decay, our bones reaching into the boxes.”
“I say we should just get one of those enormous Dumpsters, open up the windows and pump ship.” Birdie’s face was set.
“Don’t you dare!” Rose called out, rushing up the stairs.
“Look at this mess!” Birdie opened a plastic bag filled with nothing but wire hangers. “This is what I’m talking about. What in God’s name were you saving hundreds of wire hangers for? And old magazines? There must be hundreds of Good Housekeeping.” She picked one up, leafed through it, then tossed it into the bag with a flip of the wrist. “Just what we need, another recipe for Velveeta.”
“I meant to take them for recycling,” said Rose.
Birdie rolled up her sleeves, a woman on a mission. “Yeah, well, I’ll recycle them, all right.” She pushed her way through the path to the other rooms. “It’s not so bad here,” she called out from a bedroom. “I think the worst of it is right by the door. Let’s start back here where there’s room to move.”
“That’s Rose’s castle,” Jilly called out.
“What?” Birdie poked her head around the corner.
“Rose’s castle, remember? And that room over there was yours. Mine was the big room, of course. The Castle of Splendor, I recall.”
Rose’s face became dreamy. Jilly could feel the memories flutter back by watching the expressions on her face.
“See what I mean?” Rose said with heart, seeking an ally. “There are so many memories up here. I don’t want Birdie to toss them all out as garbage. She has a one-track mind.”
Jilly wanted to tell her that the garbage dump might be the appropriate place for them, but refrained. “Don’t look so worried, Rose,” she said reassuringly. “We don’t need to make any big decisions today. Birdie’s right, though. We’ll keep what we can, but be prepared to dump stuff like hangers and magazines. I don’t intend to spend weeks at this chore. We’ve got to clear it out
and we simply can’t keep everything.”
They donned aprons, opened plastic garbage bags, set aside twine and scissors and set to work. They chatted companionably while they opened dozens of boxes, groaning when they found old bank records starting from twenty years back, two leather-bound sets of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, old books falling from their covers, framed pictures of the dime-store variety, dusty, plastic Christmas poinsettias and wreaths, and countless odd dishes, platters and bowls, none of them making a single matched set. In another room there was an old pram, miscellaneous tools none of them wanted, rusty silver toasters and other old appliances with frayed cords and missing parts, bags of rolled wire, and their old skis and ice skates.
Hours later, exhaustion got the best of their enthusiasm.
“Where is that Dumpster?” Birdie groaned.
“Look at me,” Jilly complained, staring down at herself. “In filthy jeans and a sweatshirt. Me! And my manicure…ruined.”
“I’ve never seen such a collection of worthless junk in all my life,” grumbled Birdie.
Rose’s head jerked up.
“No, Rose!” Jilly exclaimed, holding up her hand against Rose’s protest and taking sides with Birdie. “Don’t even say it. We don’t want to hear it. It’s all junk!”
In the larger room, however, they found more personal items. Treasures, Rose called them. There were large boxes in which their artwork, papers and report cards from kindergarten onward were packed away. In others, old family photographs had been carelessly tossed, many of them dating back generations, their sepia-toned edges curling. They found boxes filled with their old baby clothes, and more with toddler dresses with frills and pinafores. They howled when they found Jilly’s clarinet, Birdie’s flute and Rose’s ballet slippers.
They sipped iced tea and shared quips, comments and memories. As the afternoon sun waned, however, Jilly felt her old restlessness overtake her. History mingled with the dust and grime to thicken the atmosphere. The rooms were feeling too close and she was desperate for some fresh air. Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed Rose and Birdie sitting shoulder to shoulder, browsing through photo after photo with expressions of nostalgic pleasure on their faces. Fidgety, she rose to her feet, eager to be done and out of there.
“Okay, that’s enough for me,” she burst out when Birdie and Rose giggled over another photograph. “I’m exhausted, dirty, and I want a glass of wine and a hot bath. Let’s just toss this junk and finish up.”
“Rose was right,” Birdie said with a lazy smile. “There are treasures in here. Look at this one,” she said with a light laugh. She lifted a photograph of the three of them in their Easter dresses. “Your hair is in a flip with one of those little bows pinned in front. And Rose, you’ve lost your front teeth!”
Resting her chin on Birdie’s shoulder, Rose chuckled and said, “Look who’s talking. You’re scowling again! In every picture!”
“What a motley crew we were,” Birdie replied, but her voice was filled with affection. “I’d like Hannah to see these. They’re her heritage.”
“Fine,” Jilly snapped. “Then keep them. All of them. Toss them in the box and take them home. But can we just keep moving on? This is taking forever.”
“Jilly, don’t you want any pictures?” Rose asked.
“No. You keep them.”
“Or your old school papers at least?”
She shook her head. “No. I don’t want anything. There’s no value in any of it.”
Birdie’s brows shot up.
“How can you say that?” Rose asked with unflagging patience. “These are records of our past.”
Jilly took a deep breath and brought her fingertips to her temples. All these old family photographs, compounded by the memories of the previous night, had brought so much of her past whirling back to mind. And none of those incidents were included in this collection of their mother’s selected memories.
“They’re not the records of our past, that’s the point. Look at the two of you, hovering over those photographs, laughing, as if there was something wonderful to remember. Treasures, you call them. It’s all in your heads. There are no happy memories buried in that dust, only dear darling Mother’s orchestrated memories.”
“Oh, Jilly…” Birdie muttered with a wave of her hand, dismissing her.
“Don’t do that,” she snapped. Jilly was exhausted and Birdie had pushed the wrong emotional button. “Don’t dismiss me. I’m the eldest, not you. I was there. And all I see when I look at those photographs are smiling faces because Dad told us to say cheese when he clicked the camera. It’s all a facade. Mom loved to pretend downstairs every bit as much as we did up here. It was a game. A real and dangerous game of self-preservation and desperation. I covered for her drinking every day, pretending everything was normal. We all did, Dad included, and it makes me so goddamn angry to see all those photographs of the perfect American family. Here comes Judge Season and the four little Seasons!”
“Jilly, stop it!” said Rose.
“You dug up all the dirty little secrets yesterday, Rose. You can’t go back now. Let’s be honest. Where are the pictures that show what it was really like?”
Her sisters looked back at her, anxious and hesitant.
“Come on, don’t shrink back now.” She pointed to the box of photographs. “I’ll bet you won’t find a single snapshot in there of Mom toting a gin bottle around the house, or one of us sitting in front of the TV stuffing peanut butter sandwiches in our mouth after school because she didn’t bother to pack us a lunch. Or one of Dad escaping out the back door to go to the office. Or of me sneaking out the bedroom window, or of Birdie swimming her heart out to win another prize for them, or of Rose knocking herself out around the house trying to please them. Aren’t you angry?”
When they didn’t respond she cried out, “Well, I am! I’m so damn angry, even after all these years. The hurt is still so fresh. What kind of a mother was she? She neglected her duties. She wasn’t present, Birdie. She abandoned us. She—”
Jilly stopped abruptly, her own words sinking in with bruising intensity. Not present…abandoned…God help me, she thought as her face drained of color. I’m just like my mother. Looking at Birdie and Rose, she saw in their eyes that they understood she was thinking of her own child.
“I can’t go into this,” she said in a choked voice. “I just can’t.”
Rose’s face crumpled. “It wasn’t all like that and you know it.”
“How do you know? Rose, look at the pictures!” Jilly went to grab a handful of photos from the box. She held them out to her. “You were so little. In this one you look about four years old, and in this one, what—two? Do you know why you think these photographs are your heritage? Because you don’t remember what really happened. These pictures are your memories! And you know what? They’re not real!”
Rose looked up, her hazel eyes full of hurt and reproach.
Jilly dropped the photographs into the box and walked to the corner of the room to lean against a tall box. “I’m sorry,” she said, more calmly than she felt. What she felt was that the ceiling was falling down on her. “I didn’t want to dredge all this muck back up. I’ve deliberately avoided thinking about any of this stuff for years, and believe me, it’s the last thing I’d intended to get into when I came home. But you forced open Pandora’s box, Rose. With Merry’s letter. Now all the demons are released and I can’t keep them from pouring out. I don’t mean to hurt you, or you, Birdie. I don’t want to hurt anyone. But it’s obviously not settled in my mind, because it still hurts me.”
“I didn’t mean to hurt you, either,” Rose said, her eyes filling.
Birdie opened her mouth, but shut it again. Her face looked older, tired. In the resulting thick silence, she picked up a handful of photographs and idly flipped through them. Then, intrigued, she grabbed another handful, and more quickly sorted through these. “Wait a minute,” she said with a ring in her voice. Rising to her knees she began digging into t
he box. She scanned a dozen photographs, then went to the clothes boxes and sorted through them while her sisters watched. “I think there’s a pattern here.”
Jilly and Rose didn’t reply, lost in their own thoughts.
“Yes, there’s no question about it,” Birdie continued. “Take a look, Rose. Jilly’s right. All the photographs are of us when we were very young. All these things that Mom collected were from the early years back when Merry was still a baby.”
“So what?” Jilly raked her hair from her face. She was dying for a cigarette.
“Jilly, don’t you see?” Birdie straightened to face her. “Mom wasn’t drinking then.”
Jilly took a deep breath and put her hands on her hips. She didn’t want to go where Birdie was leading.
“Look,” Birdie urged, and held some photographs out. “These pictures…they were happy times.”
Jilly didn’t take them. “You’re saying that she stopped saving and collecting all this stuff after she started drinking.”
“Right.” Birdie paused, letting the photos in her hand slip back into the box. “And she started drinking after Merry’s accident.”
There was a moment’s pause as the words sunk in.
“I don’t remember when exactly she started drinking,” said Rose. “I just remember there was a happy period of time when I was little, then there’s this blank when I don’t remember hardly anything, and then I remember being older and her being drunk a lot. But it makes sense that she’d start drinking after Merry’s accident.”
“Makes sense that it’s a blank period in your memory, too.”
“That’s so sad. Poor Mom. That explains it.”
Jilly turned to look at Rose carefully. There was something in the way she moved, or maybe it was the dim light, but with her tiny frame and pale strawberry-blond hair, she looked so much like their mother just then. “Rose, we don’t need to make excuses for her. Mom was an alcoholic.”
“No she wasn’t.”
“Oh, no, here we go….”
“Jilly,” said Birdie, her voice demanding, halting Jilly from walking off.
The Four Seasons Page 12