she could be right. The picture was painted in front of potted ferns, clustered next to the fireplace in the library. At the bottom, almost obscured by a long lace veil, is a fireplace screen with a beagle painted on it.
“Look.” I point it out.
“What?”
“Here, it’s Great-grandfather’s beagle screen.”
She looks up at me. “Great-grandpere had a beagle?”
“Yes!” She’s only been obsessing about it for days. “It’s painted on the fireplace screen you want.”
She shakes her head and her nose pinches. “That’s ugly.”
I’m about to ask if she still wants it but stop myself just in time. She’s obviously forgotten all about the screen, and I can cross it off my search-and-find list. Thank God I don’t have to put on a pith helmet and spend my day sucking up dust bunnies in that attic.
Mom moves her finger to photos of various tables and knickknacks. “And these too.”
“I think I saw those in the pink bedroom.” The day started out well and is getting better. We have a great time laughing at a black-and-white of Mom standing on the front porch and sticking her tongue out at the person behind the camera.
“I was five. Momma wanted me to tap-dance like Shirley Temple.”
Decked out in crinoline and curls, Mom looked like an escapee from the Good Ship Lollipop. “I guess you didn’t feel like dancing.”
Mom shakes her head. “I didn’t like being called Shirley.”
Amazing that a sixty-nine-year-old memory is still embedded in her brain.
She turns a page in the album. “I want this.” Her attention has landed on a silver tea service on a sideboard in the dining room. “It’s on the third floor with all of Great-grandmere’s silver.”
“Third floor?”
I recognize the look pulling her brows together. “Up there.” She points at the ceiling. “You know.”
Yes, I know. The old me would have employed my best distraction techniques. The new me closes my eyes and whispers, “The attic.”
“Find me this and this here and I have to have that.”
I listen to her rattle off just about everything she sees. The old me would have plotted an escape by pretending to make an urgent phone call. Or maybe I’d have brought up Earl and his Craftmatic. The old me would have suspected Mom of torturing me on purpose. The new, extra-patient me says, “I’m happy to get anything you want.”
What I thought would take a few hours in the hot attic drags on until it becomes part of Mom’s daily routine. I haul family treasures to the parlor for her inspection, and she looks through photo albums and orders more.
The attic is hot and musty, and I open all the dormer windows to let the slightly cooler air from the Mississippi blow through. Each time I leave for the day, I make sure to close them tight in a futile attempt to keep flying insects from taking up permanent residency. I hire a local exterminator to spray the entire house, inside and out. However, I have no doubt that the tough Southern bugs and spiders will rise again.
There are close to two hundred years of history in the attic, documented mostly by fragile newspaper articles, yellowed letters, and several family Bibles inscribed with births and deaths of members of the Sutton family. I am intrigued by them, but I remain emotionally detached from the people who lived, worked, and died here.
The huge space is almost as packed as Simon led me to believe it’d be when he was here several weeks ago. Trunks of every shape and size are heaped on top of one another, filled with everything from clothes and portraits to records for the Victrola phonograph in the front parlor. Different eras of furniture are stacked in high piles. Some pieces just need to be cleaned, reupholstered, and stuffed with foam rather than horsehair and moss. Some furniture made of wicker and rattan is beyond repair. An exceptionally creepy baby carriage leans to one side and has big holes in the bottom. It’s a fire hazard and needs to be hauled out and thrown away, but I am not about to risk Mother finding out that I’ve tossed away family treasures and getting anxious and angry.
The attic is so eerily quiet that the slightest sound, like a floor creak or raindrops on a dormer window, makes me jump. If I were a woman with a weak bladder, I might be in danger of an accident—especially if the baby carriage rolls toward me for no reason.