by Garth Stein
“It’s natural to want to make money. You can use it to buy food and clothes and cable television—all good things to have.”
“So tell me the story.”
“I don’t know the story,” he said with an edge of anger. “I don’t know it, and I don’t care about it. Now go upstairs and leave me to clean this mess.”
I waited for a moment, hoping he would relent. He didn’t meet my eyes, but he knew I was still there.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m getting a headache. I didn’t mean to snap at you.”
I left him to clean the kitchen. On my way out, I stopped at the telephone table and swiped the Post-it that had Grandpa Samuel’s writing on it. As I walked down the long hallway toward the front door, I read the words he had scratched on the paper: MUIR MTNS CA. The letters were written in caps, and he had gone over each letter several times so they were boldfaced. He must have been pressing down hard when he wrote it because I could feel the indentation on the paper from underneath. But what did it mean? I looked up and met the eyes of Elijah Riddell, who glared at me from the portrait in the parlor. The old man with his white hair and his cane, reaching out his hand as if to pull me into the painting with him.
– 4 –
THE MIGHTY ELIJAH
Since 1990, I have devoted much of my free time to researching my family’s history, and I have yet to discover an authorized biography of my great-great-grandfather Elijah Riddell. I have no corroborative evidence, but I’ve constructed a fairly convincing circumstantial case to prove, at least to myself, that Elijah had lieutenants whose job it was to listen for reporters with ambitions—those who might be found sniffing around the mills and yards with questions about Elijah’s past in order to advance their own careers. When approached, an author of an accounting of Elijah’s personal and business activities would likely be persuaded that continuing with such a project would not suit the best interest of either party, while a cash settlement would be mutually beneficial. The offer, I believe, was made only once. Should it be rebuffed? Well, in those days many tragic accidents happened in the north woods of Minnesota—where Elijah first began to assemble his empire—and often bodies were not recovered until after the spring thaw, and memories rarely lasted through the winter anyway.
This doesn’t mean several unauthorized biographies weren’t written, published on small presses and left to linger in the remote stacks of small-town libraries, or available for fifty cents in the dusty reaches of a St. Paul used bookstore. Over the years, I have come into possession of several of these accountings of Elijah’s life, which profile his thoughts and motivations, so that, while much of Elijah’s history remains vague, some of it is known. Enough for me to paint a picture of the man, at least.
Judging by the writings I have unearthed, as well as Elijah’s private papers, he was a solitary man and a shrewd negotiator. He kept no counsel. He conducted his business in a small building on the site of his first mill in St. Paul, Minnesota, and, from that cold room, he built an empire that was truly impressive, even by American standards. He worked doggedly, never taking a vacation or break, never stopping for illness. He worked six days a week, and, though he observed the Sabbath by conducting no business on Sundays, he worked in his mind every Sunday, making plans and conducting business in his head in order to make up for the lost work on the following Monday, when he would work doubly hard. He lived alone and worked alone, corresponding with his deputies by letter or telegraph. Such was his reclusive nature. But one day, feeling a profound emptiness inside, he stepped out of his shed, looked at the world he had created, and saw that it was empty of people. So he set about to rectify the situation by creating a child.
It was not hard to execute his plan. He had a house built to look like the houses of other wealthy citizens of St. Paul. He had clothes made so he would look like another wealthy citizen. He hosted large parties, to which he invited the other wealthy citizens, and at one of these parties, he selected a woman of satisfactory breeding and intelligence, who was also sturdy enough to withstand the difficult Minnesota winters. Her name was Sara Green. Elijah paid a healthy dowry to her family, married her immediately, and impregnated her. He then packed his things and left for the rich forests of the West Coast. After all, he had an empire to build.
He detailed his departure for the West in a letter to a colleague:
Before I departed, I told my wife I would send for my son when he was ready. She giggled at me in that flirtatious way I always find annoying, and asked me how I was sure it would be a boy. About certain things, I have no doubt. When my child is born, he will be a boy. I know this much. His name will be Benjamin, and he will change this world for the better.
And it was so. Benjamin Riddell was born as his father amassed acres and acres of Northwest forests.
Elijah returned to St. Paul once a year to check on the status of his son, Benjamin, who was healthy, strong, terribly intelligent, and precociously wise. Elijah had provided servants and a generous allowance so mother and son could live quite comfortably in their expensive house. He never returned to St. Paul for more than a fortnight’s stay.
It was ten years later, the records show, in 1886, that Elijah returned to St. Paul to collect his wife and son, whom he planned to have join him in Seattle, a town which Elijah deemed acceptable for a woman and a boy—his previous headquarters of Portland, Oregon, and then Aberdeen, Washington, being too rough-and-tumble, according to him. Sara Green willfully refused to move westward one inch. In fact, she told him, rather than move west, she was planning to move east, to New York, where her family resided. She was tired of the cold and lonely Minnesota life; furthermore, she was tired of her cold and lonely bed. “I was so incensed by her intimations, I ‘warmed her bed’ for her on that very spot,” Elijah wrote in his journal. “The following morning, I departed for Seattle with Benjamin, who chatted without stop as we crossed the country by train in our private coach.”
A year after that, Elijah received a letter from his wife in New York. She had given birth to their second child, another son, and gave him the name Abraham. Elijah replied by return post that she and Abraham must move to Seattle immediately. She, by return post, flatly refused. And he: a stern warning that if she and her son did not report without delay, she should consider both herself and her son disowned. Thusly, their correspondence ended.
After a few short years in Seattle, Elijah escorted his son Benjamin to Phillips Exeter Academy, where the most promising boys from affluent families were sent. Years later, after Benjamin’s death, Elijah recounted their final dinner together. I learned this through his diary, which I found that summer at Riddell House:
We finished our meal in grand style with a toast of fine port. I told Benjamin I would come for him when he was ready. He looked at me in a striking fashion, with his thick black hair and piercing eyes and a sense of suppleness about him, like a tree bending in the wind so as not to be broken, and I remember thinking he was still a boy, but standing on the precipice of manhood.
“I will be ready, Father,” he said.
I nodded and left him in the care of the faculty there. I have always been amused that he did not afford me the chance to seek him out, for he was more able than that. Seven years later, when he had graduated from Yale College a full year before his peers, he delivered himself to my door in Seattle. My longtime manservant, Mr. Thomas, received him.
“Do you have an appointment?” Mr. Thomas asked the forceful young stranger who stood before him on the porch of my city residence on Minor Avenue.
“Tell my father I am ready,” Benjamin said.
Mr. Thomas stiffened with recognition.
“Master Benjamin,” he said with a deep bow, opening the door wide to reveal me standing in the shadows of the entry hall. “We have been anticipating your arrival.”
– 5 –
IN THE NIGHT KITCHEN
I remember feeling frustrated and homesick that first night at Riddell House. I had t
o walk down a long hallway to get to the bathroom, and I resented the fact that Riddell House was so big but had so few bathrooms. I wanted our old house back. It was small, and my bathroom was across the hall, not a football field away. And my parents were within easy reach when I was little and had the occasional nightmare. I missed our house. I missed my mother. I knew I wouldn’t be able to fall asleep, so even though it was late and the house was dark, I went downstairs to the kitchen to get a glass of water. I opened the refrigerator door, and in the blue light that spilled across the kitchen floor, I saw someone sitting at the table; my heart jumped before I realized it was my grandfather.
“Serena?” Grandpa Samuel ventured, squinting into the shadows.
“It’s me,” I said. “You scared me.”
“Where’s Serena?”
“I don’t know. She must be sleeping.”
“She usually makes my medicine.”
I closed the refrigerator door, and the room returned to darkness. I turned on the lights, revealing Grandpa Samuel, who sat at the table wearing pale sleepy-blue old-fashioned pajamas, with long sleeves and buttons up the front. He reached across and rubbed the stumps of his missing fingers, which was something I noticed that he did a lot, a nervous tic. When he was stressed, he massaged his stumps. I wondered if he felt his fingers still. Phantom digits.
“You don’t know how to make it yourself?” I asked.
“Serena makes my medicine.”
“What kind of medicine?”
“Sleeping medicine. She makes it for me when I can’t sleep. Will you make it for me?”
“Where is it?”
“She keeps it in the cupboard, there,” he said, indicating with his hand. “There’s a bottle of medicine in there. She puts some milk in it so it doesn’t taste bad.”
I opened the indicated cupboard door, but there was no medicine that I could see.
“What does it look like?” I asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t see her do it. It’s in a bottle with a white label.”
I saw only one bottle in the cupboard: the whiskey Serena and my father were drinking earlier. But it did have a white label.
“This?” I asked, pulling out the bottle of Jim Beam.
“Yes, that’s it.”
“It’s whiskey.”
“It’s medicine,” he said. “It helps me sleep.”
“I’ll bet,” I said. I wasn’t sure if it was clever or cruel of Serena to give Grandpa Samuel whiskey to get him to fall asleep. Either way, to misrepresent the booze as medicine was dubious. Still, I felt I had to abide by the customs of Riddell House, so I set the bottle on the counter and retrieved a glass from a second cupboard.
“Mix one part medicine with two parts milk,” Grandpa Samuel instructed. “That’s what Serena does. Sometimes she warms it up for me, but I don’t need it warm.”
“I’ll make it cold, then,” I said. “I don’t know how to light the burner.”
I mixed the drink as instructed and set the glass down before him. Then I poured myself some lemonade and sat across the table. I wanted to ask Grandpa Samuel about the ghost. I wanted to ask him about his fingers. So many questions. But we were doing the Zen thing, so I held off.
“Can you hear her dancing?” Grandpa Samuel finally asked, breaking the trance.
“Who?”
“Isobel. Can you hear her? Serena says she can’t hear her, but I think she can. Her steps are very soft because she was such a good dancer.”
“Isobel was?”
“When I met her, she was going to dance in the ballet. Not the kind with pink skirts, but modern dancing. Oh, she was beautiful, and when she danced, everyone sat up. No one could take their eyes off her. I told her I had a ballroom in my house and asked her if she wanted to see it and she laughed. She had a very long neck and a perfectly shaped face, and when she smiled, her whole face laughed. She said that was the best pickup line she’d ever heard, but then I showed it to her.”
“A ballroom?”
“On the third floor. You don’t believe me?”
“I haven’t been up there.”
“I brought her home and showed her the ballroom and she danced for me. I played records on a portable phonograph I had. I wanted to get a console, but my father refused to allow it, so I got the portable Crosley instead. I had jazz records I played for her, and she danced.”
He drifted into reminiscence, but I wanted to hear more.
“What did she dance to?” I asked.
“She kissed me. Oh, Isobel. You kissed me and I told you I would do anything for you, but I couldn’t do it. In the end, I couldn’t do what you wanted.”
He looked so sad and lost as he sipped his medicine. But I didn’t want him to stop talking; I was thirsty for clues about my past and about my father.
“How did she die?” I asked, because my father had never told me. I knew that she died when my father was sixteen, but that’s all I knew.
Grandpa Samuel looked at me through his liquid eyes and said in a hushed whisper: “Listen!”
I listened, and I could hear footsteps, like Grandpa Samuel said, coming from somewhere in the house. I was about to say something, but he hushed me, and then said, “Sometimes, if you’re lucky, you can hear music, too.”
I listened carefully. I practically stopped breathing, that’s how quiet I was. And I heard music. Jazz. A saxophone playing.
“I hear it,” I said.
“You do? Serena says she can’t hear it. She says I’m crazy. But do you hear it?”
“I do.”
I heard it all. Footsteps. Music playing very softly, far away. It was exhilarating.
“Is it a ghost?” I whispered.
“It’s her,” Grandpa Samuel said. “She comes and dances for me.”
And then the music ended and the footsteps stopped.
“What happened between you and Dad?” I asked Grandpa Samuel.
He looked at me with his milky eyes.
“Can I have some more medicine?” he asked.
“Not until you tell me. Something happened, because he hasn’t been back here for twenty-three years, and he never talks about you or Serena or Isobel. Something happened. What was it?”
“Serena gives me more medicine,” he said.
“Serena isn’t here,” I replied willfully.
“You’re just like him,” he hissed in a harsh whisper, his eyes fixed on me. “Spiteful.”
I stared at my grandfather for a moment, feeling stung by his words. I had no animosity toward him, and I wasn’t sure why he would speak to me so harshly. But then I remembered Serena’s talk of his dementia. I imagined a brain looking like a wet sponge.
“That’s okay, then,” I said, standing. I picked up the bottle of whiskey and uncapped it.
“One part medicine—”
“Two parts milk. I’ve got it.”
I gave Grandpa Samuel the drink, then I put away the milk and the whiskey.
“Do you want me to leave the light on?”
“Turn it off,” Grandpa Samuel said, so I did.
“It’s my house,” he said from the shadows at the dark end of the table. “You can’t have it.”
I was struck by the definitiveness of his declaration.
“I don’t want it,” I said.
“I can stay as long as I want, and you can’t make me leave.”
I didn’t understand my grandfather’s last remark, and worked to puzzle it out as I climbed the stairs to my room. When I got to the landing on the second floor, I heard a ticking sound coming from the third floor. I cautiously continued up to the landing; the air was humid and smelled of must. A long hallway, decorated with ornate wood panels and burgundy floral wallpaper, disappeared into the shadowy darkness; to my left was a small reception area with double doors opposite. The ballroom. I stood very still and listened: the house moaned, as I’d already grown to recognize, and I heard ticking from behind the doors. I crossed the reception area and into the dark ve
stibule both nervous and excited by what I might find. I opened one of the ballroom doors and peeked inside: it was a long low room with a bare wooden floor and a stage on the far side. A chandelier hung from the ceiling, and light sconces adorned the walls, but all the lights were dark. In the moonlight, I could see the cobwebs gathered on the fixtures, as well as in the corners of the room, and I could see a coating of dust on everything. I could also see footsteps in the dust on the dance floor. I glanced around in search of the ticking. On the floor next to the stage was an old portable record player in a leather, hard-sided case: the phonograph Grandpa Samuel had told me about. I crossed over to it and saw the cause of the ticking: the turntable was running; a record spun on the platter, though it had finished playing, so the needle ticked against the paper label.
I switched it off, and I sensed a stirring in the room behind me. As I turned around, I noticed someone else was in the ballroom, and I felt a tingling in my spine. It must have been my father or Serena, I thought, because I’d left Grandpa in the kitchen.
“Hello?” I asked as I took a couple of tentative steps forward. But the figure did not reply. “I see you,” I said, and a pang of fear cut through me, because if it were my father or Serena, they would have said something. I took a couple more steps, and I could see the person shift slightly in the shadows.
“This isn’t funny,” I said, my voice unsteady. “I’m turning on the lights.”
I bolted across the dance floor and hit the switches by the doors; the lights sprang to life, but when I turned around, the room was empty.
Whoever it was—and I knew someone had been there—had vanished. I was alone in the ballroom, and I was afraid.
– 6 –
THE TALK
I woke up late the next morning. After my encounter with the dancing figure in the ballroom, I wasn’t able to fall asleep until light started sneaking into my room. I couldn’t get the visions out of my head of record players playing on their own, footsteps at night, a spirit in a secret stairway who is revealed by striking a match. The voice I thought I’d heard say my name. Something weird was going on. And since we clearly weren’t going to abandon Riddell House based on my experiences, I had to get to the bottom of it.