“But it made me feel closer to him,” she smiled at me. “Like time really is a continuum, is fluid somehow—that people die, but are still there in memory, or in the things they owned or made. I actually held my husband’s baby teeth in my hand!” she said, stretching out her right hand to me then curling back the fingers slowly. “I can’t tell you how that made me feel.”
“I know what you mean,” I nodded. “I feel that way every time I hold an antique. Though your feeling, of course,” I added quickly, “is more personal.”
“Um, yes,” she agreed, drawing back her hand and tucking it beside her on the chair. “Well, shall we have a look-see?”
The talk of time and history made me slightly forgetful. For a second, I thought she wanted me to look at her husband’s baby teeth with her. Then I remembered the scrapbook.
It was larger than the photo scrapbook I had of Lucy’s, and it was from a slightly different time. Roger had apparently kept the clippings loose at first, perhaps in a box, then pasted them into the scrapbook at a later date, maybe after Harriet’s death. The book wasn’t the rich Moroccan leather of Lucy’s, but heavy cardboard covered with black, leather-look cloth binding, probably from the Depression.
“Roger was born in 1915, so he was just twelve when his aunt died,” Mrs. Timberlake explained. She stayed with me while I read the first clippings, but soon tired of how long I was taking and excused herself. She didn’t come back till my stomach was rumbling and I knew it must be lunchtime. I hadn’t looked up from the book in almost two hours.
There was the clipping I also had, of Harriet’s stage debut. Or rather, her professional stage debut, because before that there had been starring roles in school and community productions, right up until she won the role in the local photoplay where she met Lucy. There was, in fact, a large ad from the Saratogtan in 1917 announcing the opening of that film, called Samantha at Saratoga, from a nineteenth-century novel by the same name. “Introducing Saratoga’s own, MISS HARRIET TIMBERLAKE,” it broadcasted in bold capitals.
There were playbills from theaters up and down the East Coast for plays I’d never heard of by writers who had fallen into probably well-deserved obscurity. In a few instances, there were publicity pictures of the productions, and in fewer still, photographs of the leading players. They were so stilted and fuzzy, I hardly recognized Harriet. There was only one picture I knew well, because the original was in my scrapbook: a rakish profile, with Harriet smiling from beneath the brim of a cloche hat.
I had just moved into the most interesting part, the part of Harriet I knew nothing about—the movies—when Mrs. Timberlake returned, burdened with a huge tray that held our lunch. I lied and said I wasn’t hungry, but she could have heard my stomach from across the room.
“Well, I’ll just leave it then,” she said. “I know you haven’t much time.” Which was true, but she looked so lonely when she said it, I put the scrapbook aside and insisted she sit down.
I don’t remember much of the lunchtime conversation. I’m not sure I even participated, or if I did, if my words made sense. Because somehow in my left ear, Harriet was quietly whispering, “Not a bad career, I’d say. So I never became Helen Mencken, or Marion Davies. Who remembers them now anyway? They’re only known for the men in their lives, the Bogarts and Hearsts.” I had to agree.
• • •
Intermixed with clippings and playbills were the cards and letters Harriet sent to her nephew over the years (probably with the official notices of herself inside—how else could an adolescent boy in Saratoga get hold of papers from as far away as Bar Harbor and Atlantic City?) I marveled at how sincere and caring she was in the letters, yet with a trace of the coquette I’d known her to be.
June, 1925
Dearest Boy,
Yes, today your old auntie made her first appearance in a real movie! Isn’t it thrilling?! I wish you could have been here to see it. I had to get up extra early, before the sun came up, to travel all the way out to Astoria, Queens, to the Famous Players/Lasky Studios there. Then there was makeup and costuming and hair styling and I don’t know what else before they finally started shooting my scene at ten o’clock. I say “started shooting,” because they shot and shot till we got it right. Sweetie, Auntie Harry flubbed her part a bit at first, walked left when I should have gone right, and knocked over part of the set. I thought I’d had it then, but they knew it was all nerves. Next time through, I did it perfectly—but someone else goofed! Didn’t get home to Manhattan till later that evening. But sweetest one, I got the very best present for you—an autograph! I went right up to Clara Bow and said, Hey, you’ve gotta sign this for my buddy boy! And here it is, precious. Look for your auntie in The Love Bandit later this year.
All my love, sweetie,
Your loving Auntie,
Harry
Pasted next to the letter was a yellowed scrap of paper with Clara Bow’s signature. Underneath, a clipping from the Saratogian advertised the one-day run of The Love Bandit on January 4, 1926, at the Broadway Theater. One day? I thought. Then I remembered from some long-ago film history class that that’s how Hollywood made a lot of its money in those days—in cheap productions that took a few weeks to film, and that were called “daily changes,” a term that meant they played only one day in each town. It was not glamorous for the actors, and the plots were worse than many of the regional theater plays Harriet had appeared in. She had gone from bad to worse.
As the sunlight was fading, I began reading a sensational story of how an actress was suing a director because she had been hoisted into the air by a wire in a circus film and left to hang there while the director and rest of the crew went to lunch. The actress, it turned out, was none other than Harriet Timberlake. She had the director arrested and pressed charges of disorderly conduct. The letter that accompanied the clipping was half defiant, half sad.
Maybe this will hurt my movie career, but I can’t let that horrible man get away with this. They just wouldn’t do that sort of thing if I weren’t a girl!
So, I smiled as the room began to get too dark to read, Harriet’s consciousness got raised. Lucy’s influence, I was sure. Suddenly the table lamp went on next to me, and I started. It was just Mrs. Timberlake, looking concerned, probably because she might have to feed me a third time.
“Mrs. Timberlake,” I began bravely, “I know I have no right to ask and no real reason to hope, but is there any way you might consider selling this to me? Or at least letting me borrow it to photocopy?”
She took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “I’ve watched you looking at it,” she sighed. “You’ve hardly budged from that spot all day. Harriet Timberlake must be important to you.”
It sounded lame to say “She is,” but it was the only thing I could think of.
“Then I’m sure my husband would have wanted you to have it.” I couldn’t believe she was saying the magic words. “He loved his aunt dearly and would have wanted someone to write something about her. My children don’t know it exists. Besides, they’ll have plenty to remind them of their father.”
I made a mental note to send her a gift from the store when I got back. It was the least I could do, for giving me such a large piece of Harriet Timberlake.
• • •
I finished reading the scrapbook sometime after midnight, as I had gotten back late from Saratoga. I closed it quietly and didn’t open it again for a long time. But that night, I had horrible, vivid nightmares—people flying through the air, hitting trees with dull thumps, dead bodies scattered along the roadside as I drove the familiar route to Saratoga in sunlight so bright it seemed to cut through the windshield. I woke in a sweat, screaming out loud, just as my car was about to swerve into a tree at sixty miles per hour.
“No!” I was screaming in my sleep, but when I woke sitting up in bed, I was really crying, “Harriet, no!”
“It’s all right, honey,” she said soothingly. “It really wasn’t painful. I lost consciousness immediately.�
�� I thought I felt her pat my hand, but it may just have been the smooth sheet against my skin.
“Harriet,” I whispered, “I didn’t know.”
“Lucy was the one who suffered,” she said, her voice trailing off into the darkness. “It was like part of her died, too.”
“I’m so sorry,” I said, though it was unclear what I was sorry for. Because of a freak, accidental death that took place almost thirty years before I was born? Because I hadn’t lived then, hadn’t known her? Or because of my sudden, stomach-wrenching fear that, having read about and confronted Harriet’s death, I would now lose her?
“Harriet,” I said to the blackest corner of my bedroom, “I still need you. There are things I still don’t know. You won’t leave me yet, will you?”
But the only reply was some soft rain at the window and a faraway cry somewhere out on the street.
24
“For you,” Catherine said with a big smile, plunking a large, flat paper bag onto the shop counter.
“What a gorgeous girl,” Tuttie said, pinching Catherine’s cheek as she walked over to see what she’d brought. “She brings you presents, and it’s not your birthday and too early for Christmas.”
“Well,” Catherine said, blushing (or maybe the flush was just from Tuttie’s pinching her), “it’s not the most romantic present I’ve ever given.”
“Quick,” said Tuttie playfully, “what is the most romantic present you’ve ever given?”
“To Susan, or anyone?” Catherine asked with a sly grin.
Tuttie looked embarrassed and added quickly, “To this precious girl, of course.”
Catherine and I looked at each other carefully, coming up with different answers.
“A dozen roses,” I said. “Long-stemmed.”
“No,” said Catherine, putting her arm around Tuttie, “I think it has to be the crotchless underwear.”
This time Tuttie and I both blushed, and Tuttie giggled, “Oh, you bad girl!” I pulled my present out of the bag.
It was a Ouija board, the classic kind from when I was a kid, with the image of a ghostly blue spectre on a jet black lid. Instantly, I felt a chill come over me at the memory of all the slumber parties where candles blew out and keys fell to the floor at the appropriate moment, just after someone had asked for a sign. Ouija boards were both the terror and the delight of my youth, for while I always had trouble going to sleep afterward, the light of day made me realize it was just a game like Monopoly and Life.
“Isn’t it great-looking?” Catherine said. “I never had one of my own. My mother thought you could conjure up evil spirits with things like this. I couldn’t convince her it was just a game.”
“I never had one either,” I pointed out. “My mother thought it was a lot of crap.”
“I got this,” Catherine said, “because I remember reading that Ouija boards were popular in the 1920s, and I thought maybe your ladies might have used one.”
“Maybe Harriet,” I said skeptically, “but not Lucy, and the others I kind of doubt. They were so practical and academic.”
“What did they do for fun?” Catherine asked, and I had to admit I didn’t know. I had assumed traveling was a favorite pastime, but Elinor had dislodged that theory.
“My friend Marlene had one of these,” Tuttie remarked. “That was back in the late twenties. I must have been twelve or so.”
“Let’s try it,” Catherine grinned mischievously, as if we were all twelve again and our mothers were gone for the day.
“Here?” I asked. “What if we get a customer? Besides, you need atmosphere. Candles, a dark room, wind whistling through the trees, maybe a full moon.”
Tuttie, at the thought of it, whispered, “Oh, my.”
“Let’s do it tonight then,” Catherine persisted. “At Susan’s. We’ll take you home afterwards, Tuttie.”
Tuttie smiled nervously, pleased at being included but probably uncertain about what we were going to do.
“If I can call up my sister, Miriam,” she said finally. “She died five years ago.”
“Sure,” Catherine said, “whoever you want. We’ll order in. It’ll be like a slumber party. You can even stay over, Tuttie, if you want to.”
“Oh, my,” she said again and went back to dusting the books.
• • •
There was no full moon that night, but the wind whistled obligingly through a window I left open a crack. We ordered in from a Middle Eastern restaurant, because Tuttie wanted to try stuffed grape leaves. She liked them less, it turned out, than the falafel she had also never tasted before.
“I like this,” she said between bites. “I could get used to eating this. When you said it was called ‘falafel,’ I was worried it would be ‘awful.’” She smiled impishly over her pita bread, and Catherine and I groaned at the bad pun.
When we finished, Catherine quickly cleared away the paper plates and crumbs and brought out some black candles she’d bought for the occasion at the card store around the corner. I’d tried to talk her out of them—I worried we were taking this too seriously—but she persisted and finally won. She stuck the candles into two shot glasses after dripping some wax into each.
“There, that should hold,” she announced, setting them at opposite ends of the coffee table. “Unless the vind blows them out,” she added, in her best Bela Lugosi voice. She came up behind me and poked me lightly in the ribs, and I jumped a little. “Nervous already, Suze?” she laughed.
“Oh, cut it out, Catherine,” I said, sternly. “You’ll scare Tuttie.”
We turned the lights out and began, with Catherine’s and Tuttie’s fingers lightly on the pointer.
“What do we do?” Tuttie asked, her eyes big and black in the darkness. Catherine’s face was shimmering in a way I hadn’t noticed before. I had a sudden desire to call off the game, to reach over and kiss that glowing face.
“We ask questions,” Catherine was saying, “or try to bring a spirit into the room. Like your sister. Want to start with that? We have to concentrate really hard.”
So we did. Catherine, who remembered better than I just how the game worked, orchestrated the whole thing.
“We would like to call the spirit of Miriam Posner Feldstein to join us,” she said solemnly, as if she were conducting a religious service. She paused, then continued, “Miriam, are you with us?”
I noticed a slight tremor in the pointer, but it was a false start. We waited a few minutes before Catherine repeated the request.
But the pointer remained firm.
“You’re not pressing too hard, are you Tuttie?” I asked. “It should be a light touch.”
Tuttie showed me that her fingers were barely touching the pointer.
“Try asking something else,” I suggested. “Phrase the question differently.”
“Miriam,” Catherine said, “why won’t you join us?”
Again, the pointer never budged. I was confused. It always worked when I was twelve. Did that mean someone was always cheating? I remembered calling up Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Robert Kennedy. They always spoke to us. It was like magic, cutting through time and mortality, and I didn’t like having my childhood notion of the power of Ouija boards destroyed.
“Let’s try just asking any old question,” I suggested. “Forget Miriam for now. What would you like to know, Tuttie? Something about the future.”
The party sobered as Tuttie, wise-cracking wit, asked the board, “How long will I live?”
We held our breath. Did we really want to know that? This time the pointer slid beneath their fingers and spelled out the simple word, “long.” “Well, good,” Catherine said, with real relief. “We’re glad to have you with us, spirit, whoever you are.”
We continued the game for over an hour, learning things about our future that we accepted with great hope. Catherine and I would find an apartment downtown. I’d publish a book. The store would flourish. Tuttie would have another boyfriend. Still, we could not summon Tuttie’s sister, bec
ause, our spirit told us, her essence was “too weak” matched against its own. Finally, the spirit seemed to be getting tired; it wasn’t finishing words and some were garbled nonsense messages. We decided to sign off. But before we did, Tuttie, now thoroughly entranced by the game, asked, “Will you tell us your name, you gorgeous ghost?”
The pointer hesitated, started to move toward “No,” then gave us two initials instead.
“Who do you suppose it is?” Tuttie asked, because she wasn’t as familiar as Catherine and I with my ghosts.
“My God,” Catherine said, looking for the first time as if she really understood what I’d been through. “It’s Lucy and Harriet.”
In the bedroom, the wind through the window blew something off my dresser onto the floor.
• • •
“So, when are you going to publish that book?” Catherine asked, out of left field. “And what’s it going to be about?” We were situated on my living room floor, Lucy’s cardboard box between us, papers strewn on either side of our legs. In our new, more open arrangement, I felt more comfortable sharing with Catherine. I had wanted a glass of wine for the work we were doing, but Catherine had prohibited food and drink from within ten feet of historical documents. “Now that you don’t have to think about term papers, and the store is managing pretty well, you don’t seem to have a good excuse not to write anymore.”
“Shh,” I said. “I can’t concentrate,” but mostly I didn’t want to hear what she had to say. I had used all my schooling as an excuse not to write anything creative, yet I still called myself a writer. One day soon I’d have to stop doing that. After all, I had officially quit Columbia when my leave of absence drew to a close. Now I had time to write, and I still didn’t. It was embarrassing when people asked, “Oh, and what are you writing?”
“A novel,” I often lied, because the truth was I hadn’t written a word of fiction in four years. “But it’s too raw to talk about right now.”
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