by Susan Finlay
Should he let her? After Bianca fell down the bottom three steps one day and got a bruise on her cheek when Lucas was home alone with her, Tawny insisted they keep the baby gate at the top and bottom of the stairs. It didn’t help that Tawny was already overprotective because Bianca had been a preemie and was small—dainty—for her age.
“Okay, but we’ll take it slow going up. Stay close to me and let me know if you need help.”
“Daddy, you’re funny. I’m not a baby.”
From the upstairs hallway, Lucas surveyed his brother’s bedroom. A double bed with an antique headboard, frame, and footboard, a matching dresser, and chest of drawers filled the above average sized room. When they’d moved in to the house, Lucas had wanted this room—who wouldn’t?—and explained that, as the oldest by three years, and being a teenager in middle school, he should get it. Dad had countered that his brother deserved the bigger room because he was an athlete and needed space for all his gear. Lucas had argued that being older should have some privilege. Seth and Dad had countered that Lucas should be happy that he wouldn’t have the inconvenience of having to give up his room whenever they had guests staying with them. Hah, right. Lucas couldn’t remember them ever having any house guests while he lived here. Returning to the present, he assessed the room. Hmm, those pieces of furniture could be worth a bit of change.
He turned on his heels and said, “Come on, Bianca.” He strode to the entrance to his parents’ room again, this time actually seeing it instead of hunting for an animal. Unbidden, he pictured his mother lying in the bed, thin and frail, waiting for the end to come.
He wanted to turn around and run down the stairs, but forced himself to hold fast. Glancing to one side, he spotted an antique dresser with another pair of photographs in frames sitting on top. It was an old-fashioned piece that, when he thought about it, was actually kinda half dressing table and half dresser. A large oval mirror was affixed in the center with a small armless cushioned chair perched in front of the mirror, creating the dressing table. Three large ornate dresser drawers sat on each side of the chair.
He walked over to it and picked up one of the photo frames.
“Can I see it?” Bianca asked.
He picked her up, and she touched the edge of the frame with her tiny fingers.
“Who is that baby?”
“That baby is me. That’s my mommy holding me.” His mother was beaming in the photo.
“You cute baby.” She smiled, then placed her hands on both of his cheeks.
“Not as cute as you, munchkin. I’ll have to show you your baby pictures when we get home.”
She giggled. “I want to see.”
In the second photo Lucas was a young boy, maybe eight or nine, standing on the shore of a nearby lake beside his father and Seth. Lucas was proudly showing off a fish he’d caught. His father stood beside him with his arms crossed, looking angry. Lucas remembered his father being angry at him for not catching more fish.
Turning away, he stared at the closet door. He supposed he would have to sell or donate his father’s clothing.
Closing his eyes momentarily, Lucas tried to brace himself, unsure how he would feel about seeing his father’s clothes. Then he opened his eyes and set Bianca down, not seeing anything that could hurt her if she looked around the bedroom.
He walked over and opened the closet door. His father’s clothes somehow still carried the manly smell Lucas remembered. He struggled to keep memories at bay. Best get this over with. He reached in and began pulling hangers out, laying them and the attached clothes on the bed. He’d have to find some boxes to put them in. Maybe Tawny would know where he could get some. There might even still be some in their garage, leftover from when they moved into their house in Roseville last year.
What the hell? His mother’s clothes were still in the closet, too, hidden in the recesses away from the doorway. Lucas had assumed his father had donated them to charity after her passing. Oh, man, he really didn’t want to take her clothes out and get rid of them.
As he began removing them, tears threatened to come. He struggled, surprised at how strong his emotions were still, after all the years she’d been gone. Maybe that’s why Dad never got rid of her clothes. Maybe his emotions wouldn’t let him.
Once all the clothes were out of the closet, Lucas could found something he’d never seen before—a crack in the wall, but a crack that seemed artificially straight, behind where his mother’s clothes had hung for all those years. He probed at the wall, thinking he’d have to get that patched up before selling it. As he pushed on one side, the wall moved, slightly outward. It was a hidden doorway. Maybe an access door to plumbing. Wait. He bit his lip. The master bathroom was on the other side of the room. An attic? Was there an attic in the house, after all? Was this the way up to the attic? He reached for the small indent, a tab-like space, and pulled it. The door opened into the closet, revealing stairs.
“Hello! Are you here, Luke?” Tawny yelled from downstairs.
“Mommy!” Bianca yelled. “Hi Mommy.”
Lucas grinned, rushed out of the room, and stopped part way down the stairs, leaning on the railing and staring down to greet his wife, then turned, remembering Bianca. She was poised at the top of the stairs. He told her to sit there at the top, then after seeing her sit, he turned to his wife. “Hey, you. I’m so happy you could come. I found something interesting up here. Come on up.”
“Okay.” She kicked off her shoes, which she always did at home, and ran up the stairs, stopping and kissing him when she reached his steps.
“Careful you don’t pull me down the stairs,” he said with a chuckle.
“That would not be the sort of tumble I would think of.” She grinned and kissed him again. “I didn’t think I would get here before you left. Work was crazy, no pun intended, and I didn’t finish with my last patient until half an hour ago. I’m happy you picked up Bianca already.”
“It’s nice spending extra time with her. Not every day I get off work three hours early, you know.”
“This is a beautiful house,” she said, turning around and surveying the stairwell and the upstairs and downstairs of the house from that perspective. “Are you sure you want to sell it?”
“I don’t like this place. Too many bad memories.”
“Good memories, too?”
He didn’t respond. He felt a wave of something—he couldn’t put his finger on it—hit him. Overwhelming sadness. His father was gone. Forever. His mother was gone. Forever. And he knew nothing about either of them. Not really. Nothing about their families’ pasts. Nothing about who they really were as people. Why hadn’t he ever pushed them to tell him and his brother about themselves and their heritage?
“Surely, you must have some good memories from living here.”
He shrugged.
“Well, anyway, if you want, we could remodel and move in here.”
He couldn’t tell if his wife was joking or being serious.
“Uh, we have a house already, remember? And jobs near that house.”
She shrugged. “I’m just saying. This house has been in your family for a while. And it’s much bigger than ours. Did you forget that our family is growing? We have to sell one house, but nobody says it has to be this one. And as for jobs, we can get counseling jobs closer to this area, you know.”
Uh oh, she’s serious. “We could get a lot more money selling this place. Don’t forget that.”
She shook her head. “I know, but money isn’t the most important thing.”
He didn’t respond. His choice had nothing to do with money. It had everything to do with his mother’s pain, her death here, and with the way his father had treated his family. Was it any wonder that Seth had turned out the way he did?
“Anyway, what did you find?”
Thank God, she’s letting it go. “Come on. I’ll show you.” After walking up a few steps, he added, “To be honest, I’m not sure what I found. You arrived before I got a chance to check i
t out.”
At the top of the stairs, Tawny bent down and picked up a very patient Bianca, giving her a tight squeeze. “Did you have a good day at preschool?”
Bianca nodded.
In the master bedroom, Lucas closed the bedroom door and locked it so Bianca couldn’t get out of the room, and then grabbed Tawny’s free hand and pulled her into the closet.
“Wow, this is a good size closet. See, you’re making my case for moving to this house.”
Crap! She’s still thinking about it. He pulled the knob again and reopened the door.
“Oh, my Gosh!” Tawny said, sounding more South African than usual. “It’s a secret passage. To where?”
He chuckled, loving to see Tawny bubbling over like a little girl and letting her British accent from her childhood out. “The attic, I suspect. Come on. Let’s find out.”
They climbed the narrow stairs and landed in a large attic with wood floors, one small window, and loaded with junk—lots of junk—old toys, an old wooden cradle, several trunks, and various odds and ends, apparently having been used as a storage room over the past one hundred and fifty years.
“Wow! This is incredible. It’s like a museum. I can’t wait to see what’s in those,” she said, pointing at the old trunks and suitcases.
Oh crap! Lucas wasn’t sure what he was expecting, but not the big mess he was seeing. He shook his head. Leave it to his wife to get excited about more work. That’s what this was, no question about it. He walked around the attic, almost as big as the whole second floor of the house—well, not quite, but it seemed like it. The room was musty smelling, assailing his nostrils, and he noticed cobwebs and mouse droppings in a few places. Good, that’ll probably dampen Tawny’s desire to move here.
Six huge trunks took up residence along the length of one wall and a few more around the corner on another wall. At least that’s what it looked like from where he stood. He couldn’t see much detail as the lighting was too dim at the back of the room and the outside light coming in through one small window was waning as the sun set.
He looked around for a light switch. Where the hell was it? Then he noticed a pull-string hanging down from light bulbs on the angled rafters. Reaching up as high as he could, he was barely able to pull the string. Good thing I’m six feet tall. Tawny certainly couldn’t reach it. The room lit up a bit more, with a yellowy glow.
Oh, hell! What had looked like six trunks was much more. Behind them and in the corner and part way up the next wall were row upon row of trunks and dozens of antique suitcases or valises, or whatever they were called, the kind he’d seen in old photos and on display in his university’s history museum, dating back to WWI and WWII. Though the museum display of historical chests, trunks, and clothing held only minor interest for him, at the time he’d been enthralled by the black and white photographs. Stark, eerie.
He remembered wondering about his own family’s history, back when he’d toured the museum with his classmates. His mother’s family, he vaguely remembered his mother saying once, had originally come from Ireland, but had already immigrated to the U.S. before the first world war, or was it the second world war? He couldn’t remember which. He had no idea where his father’s family had been during wartime. All of Lucas’s life, his father had been closed off about them, as if he . . . well, what, he couldn’t come up with any good reason. Back when Lucas was sixteen and heard about the witness protection program, he’d even imagined his father being in that program. At least for a while that made him feel as though his father had a good reason to hide everything from them.
But later having learned that this house had been in the family for generations, Lucas gave up that fantasy. He also concluded that he wouldn’t have had any family in Europe during wartime, unless they were U.S. soldiers sent over to fight.
Dismissing those thoughts, he pondered the antique trunks and suitcases now confronting him. The hinges and closing mechanisms on the ones he could see were ancient and very rusty, some tinged with green. Copper. Some had leather straps, all broken, long ago having lost their flexibility and strength.
He thought about how much of a struggle it must have been for someone to drag all those trunks and suitcases up the main house stairs, into the master bedroom’s closet, and then up the narrow staircase to the attic. And to dispose of all this junk in order to sell the house and possibly convert the attic into another bedroom to market it as a fourth bedroom meant that he would now have to drag it all back down.
Ugh! Junk! How long had this stuff been up here, collecting dust and who-knows-what-else?
He swung around and studied the rest of the space. Along another wall were three old four-drawer metal file cabinets. Next to those he counted five rows of boxes and crates stacked up five high against the wall. “Three file cabinets and twenty-five boxes to look through,” he said, groaning. A fleeting vision of opening the window and tossing out the boxes, contents and all, to crash down onto the lawn sounded appealing. Back to reality, he decided maybe a paper shredder could be brought up here to get rid of the stuff in the file cabinets at least.
He looked around, trying to decide where to begin this hopeless journey. Tawny beat him to it and was trying to open one of the trunks.
Lucas strode over and tried to open it, discovering that the lock was either locked or jammed. Seeing no other choice, he said, “I’ll go downstairs to the storage shed and get some tools. I’ll have to jimmy the lock.”
Once he got the first two trunks open, Tawny brought Bianca up to the attic. Bianca was enthralled, wanting to peek into every crevice. Tawny spread out a blanket for her to sit on, and after dusting them off, gave her some toys she found in the corner of the attic. “I’m going to look through one of these trunks, if you don’t mind,” she stated to Lucas.
“Go for it,” he said. He sighed and eased his butt down onto the floor, knees up and arms draped over them as he studied the task ahead of him. He glanced over at the boxes, thinking, probably should have brought up a small step ladder, too.
THE OLD TRUNKS and chests Lucas and Tawny had searched through so far, while not containing anything of monetary value, were filled with antique clothes that Lucas figured a history museum would love to get their hands on. Lacy evening gowns, casual dresses and skirts, silk blouses, white gloves, assorted hats and hat pins. This was a treasure-trove reminding him of the costumes in old movies he and Tawny sometimes watched. Some looked like they might have been worn by those doomed travelers on the Titanic. It was his choice what to do with them. Anyone interested in turn-of-the-century clothing from California would certainly want some of the stuff he’d found and he was sure an antiques dealer would pay money to get them. But he would personally rather see them go to a museum where they could be displayed and lots of people could enjoy seeing them.
They stopped looking through the trunks after a couple hours because they all needed dinner and needed to get home to put Bianca to bed.
By the time they got home, they were both bone tired and went to bed early. In the morning, Saturday, they rose early, ate a quick breakfast, dropped Bianca off at Tawny’s mother’s house, and then went back to his dad’s house. It’s gonna be a long day, Lucas thought as he turned into the driveway.
Lucas decided to look through one of the filing cabinets while Tawny continued with the trunks. Opening the first drawer, he rifled through the folders in front. Looked like old house papers. Hmm, maybe the deed to the house was in there? He made a mental note to check more closely, later. Then came folders for insurance policies (really old), medical bills (again really old), newspaper clippings, and other miscellaneous junk.
Near the back of the drawer was a really fat manila binder. He reached for it, wondering what could be in it. He had to pull hard to get it out from between the tight folders. Unraveling the tie that held it closed, he opened the binder and peeked inside. Photos! Tons of black and white photos, loose, turned every which way.
He carried the binder over to the folding
card table he’d set up in the middle of the room, set it down, and plopped his butt onto one of the folding chairs.
Maybe he would see someone—relatives, maybe?—wearing some of the clothes he and Tawny had found in the trunks. That might make Tawny’s suggestion of keeping some of the clothes more desirable, not that they would be considered family heirlooms, but at least feeling some connection might make a difference.
Dumping out the contents of the binder, he spread the photographs across the table and started turning them in the right direction and right side up to view them.
Kinda like starting work on a jigsaw puzzle. He leaned over to reach some of them better. After several minutes he scratched his head.
“Hey, Tawny, can you come over here for a minute? I need your opinion?”
“Sure.” A few moments later, she stood looking over his shoulder. “Whatcha got here?”
“Damned if I know. Far as I can tell it’s a bunch of photos of lots of different people from totally different time periods. Do you think someone was collecting photos of strangers, or what? My brain is boggled trying to figure this out.”
Tawny began rearranging the photos into four groups, while Lucas watched.
“Ah, now I see what you’re doing,” he said. “You’re way better at this stuff than I am. How many time periods do you think we have here?”
“At least three. These,” she said, pointing to one group, “look like they were taken in this area, maybe in the mid to late 1800’s. Photos weren’t so common back in those days, which may be why there are only a few.”
“Yeah, that makes sense.”
“And do you see their clothes and the tools they’re holding?”
“Oh, I didn’t notice that. They look like miners.”
She grinned. “Kinda like the seven dwarfs, huh?”
He chuckled.
“This second group,” she said, “looks like they were taken around here, too, but later. I’m thinking early 1900’s, possibly during the Great Depression.”