Unclaimed Treasures

by Patricia MacLachlan

  “Maybe”—Old Pepper’s wrinkled face popped up over the second row—“the answer is that ordinary and extraordinary are the same thing. Morning light? The smell of grass? Who you are and what you think and how you live?”

  Bella-Marie stared up at Willa. Willa leaned back and closed her eyes.

  “And something,” said Old Pepper, “will let you know which is which for you when the time comes.”

  Willa’s eyes flew open.

  “What? What something?”

  “I wish I could remember,” said Old Pepper, yawning. “I am presently tired and plan to go to sleep.”

  And that is what he did, falling over peacefully between the rows of tomatoes in the warmth of the garden.

  It was unbearably hot and still in the attic room, even though it was early.

  “Three or four more mornings at the most, Willa,” Matthew murmured, standing back to peer at his work. “Nearly done.”

  Only three more mornings. Willa hadn’t even seen the painting yet. How could it be nearly done? She had come to depend, count on these mornings. Her time in the attic room shaped her days. Her life. Like eating. Like sleeping. Like going to the bathroom. Willa studied Matthew. He was, she decided, both sad and excited at the same time. Willa smiled, aware that she, too, felt Matthew’s own mixture of sadness and excitement.

  “What makes you smile?” he asked, brush poised in his hand.

  Willa shook her head slightly.

  “I was thinking about ordinary things,” she said, turning to look out the window at the garden and the wide slope of yard and the tree full of apples.

  “Ted, Ted,” murmured Wanda. “You are truly extraordinary. Your face, your hair, your eyes like prunes stewing . . .”

  Willa felt herself smiling again.

  “What is extraordinary for you?” she asked in the silence. “A finished painting?”

  “Yes, that,” said Matthew brightly, leaning back to look at her. “But more, too.” He sighed. “Too much more to even begin talking about here,” he added softly. And the sad look came back, around the eyes and the mouth.

  I wish I could remember, Old Pepper had said. But you’ll know. I know I know something, Willa told the beautiful girl in the mirror. But I don’t know what it is I know. Presently, that is, she added, echoing Old Pepper.

  Her thoughts caused Willa to raise her chin a bit. Defiantly. Fiercely. Matthew looked up and stared at her for a long time. Willa never noticed.

  Silence filled the room. A fly crawled up the back of Matthew’s easel. Though she didn’t know it yet, Willa was on the edge of knowing. And soon she would know, mostly because of two strangers not yet met. Two people, unrelated, who would never come to know one another, never even hear the whisper of each other’s name. As is the way of life sometimes. As is the way of things ordinary and things extraordinary.

  “What is this?” asked the man, bending over an attic box. “Pieces of paper only. A bunch of them.” He looked at the woman who was sitting, peering over her huge stomach at her toes pointed in front of her.

  “A torn-up list,” she answered without looking up. “A very important torn-up list.”

  “Why is it torn up if it is important,” asked the man, “or shouldn’t I ask?”

  “It is important because it is torn up,” said the woman patiently.

  The man laughed.

  “Shades and memories of Old Pepper.” He began to read: “One, Flying. Two, Becoming king—”

  “Three, Finding your true love.” The woman said the words as he did.

  “And what about this?” he asked. He held up a small torn edge of a paper. On it the woman could see four letters printed. ILLA.

  The woman smiled.

  “That,” she said, shifting in her chair, “has to do with something very extraordinary I did once upon a summer when there was a tree full of blooms that would become apples, and a pair of twins, a boy and a girl . . .”

  11

  The End

  It was vacuuming time again in the study with the sun and the plants and the smell of her father’s pipe. Willa was bent over the desk, reading:

  “Ted, Ted,” cried Wanda in a distraught manner. “Tell me I am the stars, the moon, the universe to you.”

  “All of the above, Wanda dear,” said Ted, trying to keep his pipe lit.

  Willa frowned. There was something here. A hint of something familiar. And it did not have to do with vacuuming, or the painting nearly finished, or the baby due in ten minutes or a week. What is it I know that I know? A sudden movement parted the curtains, and Willa saw Bella-Marie perched on the windowsill.

  “Bella.” Willa leaned over the desk. “What brings you here?”

  “Bella,” repeated Bella-Marie, grabbing at the curtain with her beak.

  Willa grinned, then frowned again, sitting in her father’s chair. She leaned on the manuscript. Something was just out of grasp. Something.

  Sighing, Willa went to the closet and stood on her head, leaning her legs up against the door. The blood began to fill her head, making her wiser.

  “Wait, stay like that,” said Nicholas, suddenly sitting cross-legged in front of her. He opened his sketch pad and began drawing.

  “Your nostrils are hugely awful upside down,” commented Willa.

  Nicholas smiled.

  “Something like the Carlsbad Caverns,” she added, feeling full of words and ideas.

  “Wise Willa,” said Nicholas, drawing furiously. “Becoming wiser by the minute.”

  “Yoo-hoo.” A small voice came from the doorway.

  Nicholas looked up.

  “Oh, stay, stay,” the voice said. “I see you are in the midst of an artistic endeavor.”

  Something. A touch of something known.

  The girl moved into the room, bringing with her the scent of something strong and sweet. A bush of honeysuckle?

  Nicholas’s jaw dropped open.

  “One more cavern,” said Willa softly, not moving from her upside-down perch.

  “I am looking for Dr. Pinkerton. Ted,” said the girl. She was astonishingly tall. Her legs, from Willa’s view, went up and up and up until they turned into blouse and necklace and huge earrings and a head of red hair.

  “Our father,” began Nicholas, and Willa snickered at the thought of Nicholas beginning the Lord’s Prayer.

  “Our father,” continued Nicholas, glaring at Willa, “should be home soon.”

  “Oh,” the girl’s tiny voice peeped. “Children? Ted has children?”

  “We are two of a grand array of many,” said Willa, still upside-down.

  “Many?” peeped the girl uncertainly. Under her arm was a picnic basket. “I have an appointment for sometime this wonderful afternoon to talk about my writing. I thought that we’d amble down to a gentle stream for our talk. I think there is a gentle such stream somewhere close by.”

  A picnic basket. A gentle stream. Willa felt herself growing into the wisest thing in the world. Was everyone in love with everyone else?

  “There is,” said Willa in a clear voice, “the sewer outlet down in back.”

  Nicholas stared.

  “The rest of the children should be down there,” she added.

  “The rest?” asked the girl, frowning.

  “The other dozen,” said Willa, “waiting for word of the grandchild.”

  The girl stared.

  “Grandchild?”

  “Yessir,” said Willa, feeling like the wisest person in the entire world. Greater than the stars, the moon. The universe.

  “A grandchild should be here in ten minutes or a week.”

  “Ted’s?” squeaked the girl.

  Nicholas smiled.

  “Stay,” offered Willa kindly. “I’m sure he’ll give you a cigar, too. A symbolic gesture.”

  “No,” said the girl sharply, moving toward the door. “I’ll go along now.” She paused in the hallway and waved her fingers. And then she was gone, the only sign of her the lurking stench of hon
eysuckle. There was a silence.

  “I never,” said Nicholas slowly, “ever thought about Dad’s name being Ted when you read me the Ted and Wanda story.”

  Slowly Willa let down her legs and stood up, reaching out her hand to Nicholas to steady herself.

  “Good-bye, Ted, good-bye, Wanda,” she said.

  “Good-bye, Ted, good-bye, Wanda,” echoed Bella-Marie in the window.

  One stranger met.

  “You told her what?” exclaimed Willa’s father, dropping his pipe and sending sparks everywhere. “No, sit still,” he ordered Willa’s mother, who was laughing so hard she couldn’t get up anyway. He stamped around the rug.

  “Willa had been standing on her head,” explained Nicholas. “She took care of everything.”

  “I’ll bet you never ever noticed her long, meaningful looks,” said Willa to her father.

  “Eyeballing,” said Nicholas.

  “I noticed her writing,” said Willa’s father, trying to keep his pipe lit. “I noticed that all right! Witless love,” he murmured.

  Willa sighed.

  “I loved it at first,” she said wistfully. “Her writing. It was full of eyeballs and sighs and murmurs. Just like love.”

  “Except,” said Willa’s father, “the extraordinary parts of love.”

  Willa stared at her father.

  “There you go,” she groused. “Ordinary, extraordinary. Which is which?”

  “You’ll probably know,” said her mother. “When the time comes.”

  “What time?” exclaimed Willa. “Now you sound like Old Pepper.”

  Willa’s father grinned broadly.

  “Get on outside, the two of you. So I can sit here in peace. Quietly and joyously”—he looked at Willa—“eyeballing your mother.”

  “How did you know?” asked Nicholas.

  The leaves of the apple tree fell around them. The apples were ready for picking. Summer was over.

  “I saw her leave,” said Horace, admiringly. “Her legs ended at her neck.” He bit into an apple. “How did you know?” He leaned close to Willa, smiling.

  Willa shrugged.

  “I knew Wanda well,” she said simply.

  12

  The last morning. It was cool in the attic at last, a hint of autumn to follow. The figure in the mirror looked taller. Wiser. Serene. The girl watching the figure in the mirror knew why.

  You are you, Willa silently told the figure. I am me.

  “What’s the smile for?” asked Matthew. “Different. You look different somehow.”

  “It must be the jeans under the dress,” said Willa. She pulled up the dress to show him. “No more itching.”

  Matthew laughed.

  “Extraordinary, Willa.”

  The word made Willa smile. Maybe today would be the day. The day to do something extraordinary.

  “Will I see the painting today?” she asked.

  Matthew shook his head. “Not today, Willa. It’s my way, call it superstition. I want it completely done.”

  Willa nodded and watched the cats on the roof run after late-summer butterflies. Extraordinary filled her head.

  “The name. What’s it to be?” asked Horace at lunch.

  “What name?” asked Willa.

  “The baby,” said Horace patiently. “The baby’s name.”

  Willa’s father drank some water.

  “We have never thought about names ahead of time,” he said. “We had decided that naming children was much like naming dogs or guinea pigs. You had to see them first to know.”

  Willa’s mother nodded.

  “Willa came first,” she said, remembering. “Pushing and squalling into the world.”

  “We almost named her Fury,” said Willa’s father.

  “You didn’t!” said Willa, aghast.

  “No.” Her father reached over to smooth her hair. “We named you after a pioneer. The writer Willa Cather. You were, after all, our first pioneer into the world.”

  “Nicholas we named after a horse I once knew,” said Willa’s mother, making them laugh. She looked at them indignantly. “I loved that horse. He was pleasant and dependable, with quirks now and then.”

  “Such as riding too close to fences,” said Willa’s father, “and under low trees.”

  “That’s true, isn’t it?” Willa’s mother smiled at them all. “I suspect we’ll think of a name when we see the baby. Her.”

  “There’s always Wanda,” suggested Willa slyly.

  “I think,” said Horace, leaning his elbows on the table, “that if I were to have a child I would name her Jane.”

  “Jane?” Willa’s mother looked at Horace.

  Horace nodded.

  “Jane,” he said. “Straightforward and honest and calm.”

  “Like you,” said Willa’s mother, something in her tone and look causing Willa to peer at Horace more closely.

  “Jane,” said Horace, biting into a green Granny Smith.

  Inside her house, watching the deepening shadows across the lawn, Willa waited. They had all gone off; Matthew and Horace and the Unclaimed Treasures, in a fairly obvious effort, Willa thought, to avoid the Treasures’ latest experiments with cooking. This week, Horace had told Willa, it was rice. Rice cereals, rice casseroles, rice pudding desserts. “We’ll all swell up and burst,” he said, “and explode all over town.” Willa had smiled. Horace. Straightforward and honest and calm.

  Willa watched and waited. She knew they never locked their house. And if they did, an extra key was hidden in the back shed next to the store of apples.

  It was time, Willa thought. Time for her to see the painting. The face in the painting. And time to do something extraordinary. Or if not extraordinary, at least brave. She took the printed note out of her pocket.

  Matthew,

  I’ll love you forever.

  WILLA

  Willa’s mother was reading in the study, her father washing clothes. Fascinated, she was sure. Nicholas was upstairs working on a drawing. Slowly, quietly, Willa slipped out the kitchen door and crept across the lawn. She stood on the porch of Matthew’s house and carefully pushed the front door. It swung silently in, and Willa jumped as one of the cats streaked out. Willa closed the door again and walked slowly up the stairs past the first landing, turning, and up the steep old stairs to the attic. There was a light burning in the attic room. Someone else was there.

  The woman was small and slim, dressed in dark pants and a pale sweater with a touch of blue. She turned to look at Willa. Willa was not afraid. Something kept her from fear.

  A moment passed.

  “Are you,” asked Willa wildly, filling in the silence, “another Unclaimed Treasure?”

  The woman smiled, then laughed.

  “I suppose I am. We are all, let us hope, unclaimed treasures.” She looked closely at Willa, and Willa saw glasses perched on her head. She had been looking at the painting. “I know you are a treasure, though.” She put out her hand. “You are Willa.” Her gaze was steady and calm, and Willa knew suddenly. Horace’s mother. Matthew’s Winnie.

  Winnie turned to look at the painting. But Willa couldn’t take her eyes from Horace’s mother.

  “It’s finished, I’m glad to see,” said Winnie. “He needed to finish it.” She smiled then, and there was a sinking feeling in Willa’s stomach. Something final. Something startling, like when Willa had seen the picture of her mother’s baby. The baby is real, she remembered thinking. Winnie is real.

  “Well,” said Winnie, lifting her shoulders in a sigh—so much like Horace—“I must go. For now.”

  She loves him. Winnie loves Matthew.

  “Tell him,” began Winnie. “Tell him . . .” But the words trailed off. She looked sadly at Willa. “Never mind, dear.” And then she was gone. Leaving Willa alone in the attic room with a painting she had not yet seen.

  Even before she looked, Willa was afraid. Somehow she knew. And as many times as she replayed the scene later in her mind and in her dreams, it alway
s ended the same. The long white dress, the hat held in the hand, ribbons trailing. The face as real and alive as the face that had just stood next to her. A portrait of Winnie.

  And he loves her.

  Willa’s eyes filled with tears and she reached up to brush them away. Not the time, she thought, for anything extraordinary today. She saw Matthew’s signature in the far right corner of the painting, small and precise. And then something else caught her eye. In the left corner were more words written. Small letters, nearly hidden in the grass beneath the apple tree.

  Portrait of W

  W.

  A sudden movement against her leg startled Willa, and she looked down to see Blue, his tail high, his mouth open in a silent sound.

  Willa sighed. W. Slowly she took the note from her pocket. Ever so carefully she tore the note, making sure that one important letter would remain. Then she propped it against the painting. Just before she turned out the light she read it.

  Matthew,

  I’ll love you forever.

  W

  Willa would never remember closing the attic door, walking down the stairs and out the door. Later, the only clue, the only memory she had of what she’d done was the torn paper in her pocket with four letters printed there. ILLA.

  Another stranger met. Surely the stranger most important.

  13

  Willa hardly slept, and the next morning her mother watched her.

  “You’re pale, Willa. Are you all right?”

  Silently Willa nodded her head. She sipped her orange juice and finished her breakfast.

  We are all, let us hope, unclaimed treasures. Winnie’s words. Meaning what? Those words kept nudging Willa, pushing into her consciousness, demanding her attention. Winnie’s sad face drifted into Willa’s head no matter how hard she tried to forget. She thought of Matthew coming home from dinner, going up to his studio, seeing the note. She had stood at the diningroom window and watched in the darkness. The car had turned into the driveway, the inside light going on as the doors opened. Horace, Aunt Crystal, Aunt Lulu, Matthew—their faces glowing in the darkness. The kitchen light had gone on. Then the hall light. Then the attic light.