I poked my head in one door and saw a toilet, a clawfoot tub, pedestal sink, a hair dryer that would’ve blown fuses in the house in 1920. In another room I saw red lace curtains, a four-poster covered by a jet-black comforter and matching pillows, women’s clothing draped on a chair, including a black bra and thong. Crossed swords were on the wall above the bed, which looked hazardous in the event of an earthquake. A fencing mask had been hung in the lower part of the X, centered, completing the effect. All in all, lace and foils, the room looked very French.
Another room. More female things. Doors had been left ajar and I was alone, which made snooping easy work.
I stuck my head in one empty room, then another. Dusty cobwebs hung between a lamp shade and a bookshelf, grayish-gold strands waving gently in a feeble ray of sunlight. I guessed the room wasn’t Winter’s favorite hangout. Or anyone’s for that matter.
I found a flight of Dickensian stairs at the end of a hallway so dark it made me wish for a flashlight. Floating down from above was that ethereal sound of jazz I’d heard earlier, outside the house.
I went up, then along a short hallway, and knocked on a door where the music was loudest.
“Come in, come in,” said a voice. I turned the knob, one of those cut crystal things I hadn’t seen since I was in the house of a great aunt when I was a kid, and went in.
Edna Woolley wasn’t what I’d expected, but then, people rarely are. I recognized her from that time on television a number of years ago, but the T-shirt with a purple pirouetting hippo on it was a surprise, as were the green Bermuda shorts and the Air Nikes. The shoes looked enormous on her feet. She’d put on a helmet-shaped strawberry-blond wig that made her face seem even smaller, and her eyes, now that I could see them behind the wire-rim glasses, were made up poorly with liner and a hint of pinkish-orange color. Her lipstick was bright red, applied with approximately the skill of a six-year-old. She weighed all of eighty pounds. She’d probably lost six full inches of height since she was a young adult.
Thirties jazz issued softly from a CD player sitting on a wooden table, hand carved in an Oriental design.
“Oh, my,” she said, dismay written on her face. “I’ve forgotten your name.” She stood in the middle of the room, a cluttered, place with an overstuffed couch and matching armchair, their arms and backs covered with yellowed lace. The ceiling was all slopes and angles under the gabled roof. The area in front of the dormer window was free of furniture, making it easy for her to see out. Old oil paintings crowded the few walls that were vertical, and photographs in small, tarnished silver frames appeared everywhere, like geometric mushrooms.
One small section of a wall held nothing but a single crucifix, a beautiful thing made of silver, fourteen inches high. If it was solid, it was worth a small fortune.
“Mortimer Angel, ma’am.”
“Mortimer. That’s a fine name.” She smiled, then grappled with her hair, trying to get it straight. A pure-white strand leaked out from under the helmet by her left ear.
“Thank you, ma’am.”
She gave me a disapproving squint. “You should call me Edna, dear. Family, you know.”
“Okay…Edna.” That bit about family threw me, but not for long.
“Do sit, dear,” she said.
We sat. I sank into the couch and she perched on the edge of a century-old armchair close to my left elbow, touching my hand with dry, skeletal fingers.
“Now then, how is dear old Charlie?” she asked.
“Charlie?”
“Your father. How is he?” Before I could figure out a suitable response, she went on, “I don’t believe I’ve seen him in…since…” She pursed her lips then pressed a finger to the side of her cheek. “Well, since my Herman passed on, but…of course…” She looked at me, apologetic and flustered. “I’m afraid my memory isn’t what it used to be.”
“Mine either.”
She smiled. “Charlie. Goodness, but didn’t he and my Herman raise Cain in Chicago, growing up? Those two! Oh, the stories! Herman was two years older, of course, or”—she frowned—“was it three?”
“Two,” I said helpfully. I doubted that it would matter.
“Thank you, dear.” She patted my hand. “Your father Charlie was best man at our wedding. But of course you would know all about that, wouldn’t you?”
“I’m Charlie’s grandson.” I didn’t know if she would pick up on the improbability of my being the son of a man about a hundred years old, but I didn’t want to take the chance.
“You look so much like him, too,” Edna said, beaming at me, eyes bright.
Like who? I wondered. Did Charlie even have a grandson? I sat tight.
“Did you know Jacoba?” Edna asked, leaning toward me.
“I, ah…don’t think so.”
“Such a pity. She was so lovely, so very beautiful.” Slowly, like a wilting flower, Edna’s face grew sad—a gradual transformation, powered by a deeply rooted, forlorn memory, lost in time.
I glanced at several photos on a nearby table. People I didn’t know. All the pictures were faded, a few of them sepia toned. In one, a woman in her forties was in a rose garden, holding a baby wrapped in blankets, smiling happily.
“Would you care for some tea, Douglas?”
Suddenly I was Douglas, whoever that was. I didn’t try to correct her. It didn’t matter. Not all of Edna Woolley was there, and that didn’t matter either. Her past was a montage of images—years and decades blending into one another, faces, names, events. We are all headed in that direction.
“Tea would
