Geneva at 20. Her hair was darker. She possessed a severe and breathtakingly implacable beauty.
She wore her hair in a bun. She parted it down the middle. It was a frumpy hairdo. She wore it with imperious confidence. She knew how she should look. She knew how to control her image.
She looked proud. She looked determined. She looked like she was thinking about something.
I jumped ahead. I saw three color snaps from August ’47. My mother was two months pregnant. She was standing with Leoda. One of the pictures was cropped. Leoda probably x’d out my father. My mother was 32. Her features had settled in resolutely. She still wore that bun. Why get frivolous and mess with your trademark? She was smiling. She wasn’t abstracted. She wasn’t so fiercely proud.
I saw a black & white shot. My father wrote the date on the back. I recognized his printing. He wrote a little note below the date:
“Perfection. And who am I to gild the lily?”
It was August ’46. It was Beverly Hills. It couldn’t be any place else. A swimming pool. Some French-chateau cabanas. A scene from a movie-biz party. My mother was sitting in a deck chair. She was wearing a summer dress. She was smiling. She looked delightedly content.
She was with my father then. He was on Rita Hayworth’s payroll.
I saw some more black & white shots. They were mid-’40s vintage. I recognized the common exterior. It was 459 North Doheny My mother was wearing a light-colored dress and spectator pumps. The dress was perfect for her. It looked like high fashion on a low budget. She was poised. She wore a different hairstyle. Her bun was braided and pinned on the sides. I couldn’t read her face.
I came to the most stunning pictures. They were posed photographs blown up to portrait size.
My mother was sitting on and standing by a split-rail fence. She was 24 or 25 years old. She was wearing a plaid shirt, a windbreaker, jodhpurs and boots that laced up to the knees. She was wearing a wedding ring. The pictures looked like honeymoon shots sans husband. My father or the Spalding guy were somewhere off-camera. This was Geneva Hilliker. This was my mother with no male surname. She was too proud to pander. Men came to her. She pinned her hair up and made competence and rectitude beauty. She was there with a man. She was standing alone. She was defying all claims past and present.
Tunnel City and Tomah were three hours northwest. We drove there in Brian Klock’s van. Brian and Janet sat up front. Bill and I sat in the back.
We took back roads. Wisconsin shot by in five basic colors. The hills were green. The sky was blue. The barns and silos were red, white and silver.
The landscape was nice. I ignored it. I balanced a stack of pictures on my lap. I looked at them. I held them out at different angles. I held them up to odd shafts of light. Bill asked me if I was okay. I said, I don’t know.
We picked up Jeannie. I recognized her. She had my beady brown eyes. We got the beads from Jessie Hilliker and the brown from our respective fathers.
Jeannie found this Ellroy thing disruptive. Her father died three weeks ago. Bill and I were drama that she did not need. She was distant. She wasn’t rude or inhospitable. Bill asked her about the murder. She retold Leoda’s story verbatim. Her parents never talked about the murder. Leoda stonewalled it. She lied about her sister’s death and revised her sister’s life accordingly.
We drove through boondock Wisconsin. I talked to Jeannie and looked at the pictures. Jeannie thawed out a bit. She got into the road trip spirit. I held some pictures up to my window and did some juxtapositions.
We passed an army base. I saw a sign for Tunnel City. Janet said the graveyard was just off the highway. She drove out here once before. She knew the key Hilliker sites.
We stopped at the graveyard. It was 30 yards square and unkempt. I looked at the headstones. I matched names to my family tree. I saw Hillikers, Woodards, Linscotts, Smiths and Pierces. Their birthdates ran back to 1840. Earle and Jessie were buried together. He died at 49. She died at 59. They died young. Their graves were badly neglected.
We drove into Tunnel City. I saw the railroad tracks and the railroad tunnel. Tunnel City was four streets wide and a third of a mile long. It was built along one hillside. The houses were brick and old clapboard. Some were nicely maintained. Some were not. Some people mowed their lawns. Some people dumped junk cars and speedboats on their lawns. There was no town center. There was a post office and a Methodist church. My mother went to that church. It was boarded up now. The railroad station was padlocked. Janet showed us the old Hilliker house. It looked like a raised bomb shelter. It was red brick and 25 feet square.
I looked at the town. I looked at the pictures.
We drove to Tomah. We passed a sign for Hilliker’s Tree Farm. Janet said Leigh’s kids owned it. We pulled into Tomah. Janet said the sisters moved here in ’30. Tomah was a time-warp town. It was a prewar movie set. The Pizza Hut and Kinko’s signs gave away the era. The main drag was called Superior Avenue. Residential streets cut across it. The lots were big. The houses were all white clapboard. The Hilliker house was two blocks off the avenue. It was adorned and refurbished and rendered anachronistic. My mother lived in that house. She grew into her stern beauty in this pretty little town.
We parked and looked at the house. I looked at the pictures. Bill looked at them. He said Geneva was the best- looking girl in Tomah, Wisconsin. I said she couldn’t wait to get out forever.
We drove back to Avalanche. We had dinner at Jeannie’s house. I met Jeannie’s husband, Terry, and her two sons. Her daughter was away at college.
Terry had long hair and a beard. He looked like the Unabomber. The boys were 17 and 12. They wanted to hear some cop stories. Bill riffed and riffed and took the social heat off of me. I lapsed into a spectator mode. The pictures were back in the van. I resisted an urge to blow off the party and hole up with them.
Jeannie thawed out some more. Bill and I crashed her life. We distracted her. We jelled with her husband and kids. We gained credibility.
The party broke up at 11:00. I was dead-ass tired and speeding. Bill was fried. I knew he was running at a high RPM.
The Klocks drove us back to the Holiday Inn. We drank some late-night coffee and flew. I said we had to hit Chicago and Wisconsin again. We had to hit Geneva’s nursing school and Tomah. We had to find old classmates and old friends and surviving Hillikers. Bill agreed. He said he should make the trip solo. People might freeze up around Geneva’s son. He wanted them to talk with total candor.
