Mine to Tell

by Donnelly, Colleen L

  She flung her jacket onto my sofa, exposing a colorful jumper, with contrasting tights on her too-thin legs. She was lithe, and so was her chin-length straight brown hair as it swung around her face when she set her suitcase on the floor. The camera equipment made it gently to my table and everything else was dropped.

  “Marvelous,” she said, as she spun in my little main room. I was flattered. Jill had an artist’s eye—that’s what made her such a compelling photographer—and if she saw zest in my sparse surroundings, then she might just capture the underlying vibrancy that I believed Julianne had left behind.

  She rounded my direction. “This is going to be absolutely wonderful, spending time with you, shooting this old home, and taking a breather from Cincinnati.” She laid it all out there while I continued to smile. She didn’t need a breather from the city, it probably needed a breather from her. She was just what I needed, though, and that was suddenly clear.

  I’d moved my belongings into the empty bedroom upstairs, the one with the trap door that led to Julianne’s sanctuary. I loved Jill immensely, but Julianne was sacred, and I felt better putting myself between her and the world, protecting her as much as I could and leaving myself in control.

  In the other bedroom my mother and I had arranged old relics of furniture with lots of age and character. Jill squealed when we entered. “Oh, it’s perfect,” she sang. I helped her unpack amidst the din of her oohings and ahhings, and then we marched downstairs.

  “I want to see and know everything,” she said, fitting her camera with lenses as she stood near my kitchen table.

  “So soon? Don’t you want to relax first?”

  “This is relaxing.” She laughed. “This is a real treat for me.” She looked up and snapped a completely candid shot of my face as I stood marveling at her enthusiasm and equipment.

  “None of me in the shoot, right?” I was suddenly stern. “My family wants their identities protected.”

  “Got it!” she said, her playful artistic side showing no sign of feeling rebuffed.

  “Really, Jill, it means everything to my family.”

  “No problem,” she said again, fiddling with a lens. “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  She looked up at me. I knew Jill wouldn’t hurt anyone intentionally, but she was an artist, and artists respond to unexpected spurts of creativity like plants do to sunlight. Her promise was there in her imaginative eyes, their glitter almost overpowering it, and I knew that was as chaste a response as I was probably going to get.

  “Edith can’t wait for pictures,” she rambled on. “This storyline has drawn more interest in our paper than the national news.” She looked up at me. “Do you suppose it’s the daring, independent woman slant?” she asked. “Or the unrequited romance?”

  I thought for a moment. A woman in the early 1900s taking off for two unexplained weeks, risking everything and then losing it for…what? I still didn’t know, but maybe in the heart of every housewife, girl friend, or single working woman was a lust for individuality, for laying claim to that thing which called her, something bigger than the life and the circumstances she was supposed to be cut out for, the ones she found herself in.

  “Whatever it is, it’s certainly changed my life,” I said, not meaning to say that out loud.

  She pinned me with a gaze. “You mean since you moved here?”

  “Well, yes, that.” I looked around.

  “You don’t know what you’re going to do next, do you?” she asked suddenly. She took a seat at the table, instead of waiting for an answer, and settled her camera in her lap. “This story is really real for you, isn’t it?”

  “It is me,” I said, “I just don’t know how much yet.”

  She resumed tinkering with her camera, but distractedly, her hands doing one thing and her mind another. I could see it in her expression.

  “I saw Trevor the other day. I’ve seen him several times lately, at the usual places where I used to run into the two of you.” She looked up. I tried to hold my face expressionless, something she wouldn’t be interested in photographing. “He didn’t say much,” she continued. “Didn’t look like he wanted to, either. Kind of busy, in a cold and frightened sort of way.”

  I tilted my head, guessing what she meant but wanting to play dumb, to be dumb, to never have to go through these pangs of being a piece of something broken that was trying to mend and create a new identity for itself again.

  “He doesn’t look good. He’s kind of callous, like he’s hurt and trying to pretend he’s not.”

  “He’s with someone, you mean,” I finished for her.

  “Not someone in particular,” she said, setting the camera down again. “Just with…well, with other people.”

  “Blonde?” I asked with what little breath I had.

  “Sometimes, but not always.”

  I didn’t know whether I should be relieved or not. He was going through the motions of relationships, but his heart was still his…or mine…or malfunctioning…at least it wasn’t anyone else’s…if that mattered.

  “Well, he’s free to do that,” I said to the air space in front of me. “It isn’t fair to ask him to wait, when I’m not sure what he’d be waiting for. Not sure what I’ll have to offer him when I’m finished here.”

  Jill looked around the room, soaked it in, not in an evasive way to slip out of our conversation but in a pensive one. “This is good,” she finally said with a slow nod. “There’s something of you here, but I don’t know what it is. Maybe we’ll find it while I’m around. You think?”

  She looked optimistic, her love of life not daunted long over the changes going on in mine. I smiled, or at least I tried. It would be wonderful if she helped me. It would be so wonderful.

  ****

  I couldn’t bring myself to tell Jill everything. Sharing Julianne required complete trust, and even though I knew at some level Jill could be trusted, we weren’t at the point we needed to be. The one where Kyle and I were, and I realized that as I pondered how much to share. How had Kyle reached that place with me? There was no initiation like I wanted for Jill. He was just there. Actually, he was there before I was.

  At her request we’d dug right in, and I was reading her selections from Julianne’s letters, and from Kyle’s and my transcribing, when the door opened and he was there, as if on call, as if he’d heard my voice and Julianne’s words. My heart beat a little harder when I looked up and saw him. I felt myself redden as I gazed at his tall, lanky form.

  A flash filled the room, and I realized Jill had captured the moment. Another flash and she had him too, both of us on film in that raw moment of seeing each other, with Julianne binding us. I jumped to my feet, wanting to steal that moment back, erase it, save Kyle from exposure in the same way I wanted to protect Julianne.

  “Jill, put that thing away!” I admonished her as I made my way across the room. “Kyle, come in,” I said guardedly as I reached him. “Come in and meet my friend from Cincinnati.”

  Kyle drifted behind me as I made my way to Jill. She’d stood, her camera dangling around her neck, a large smile on her face. She leaned around me and grabbed Kyle’s hand and pumped it vigorously.

  “She’s my photographer,” I said. It almost sounded like an apology as this energetic woman intruded on Kyle’s solitude. I wanted to step between them and spare him Jill’s enthusiasm, but when I glanced at him, he seemed to be holding his own.

  “I’m Jill,” she explained, even though it was apparent who she was. “You must be the neighbor man who’s helping Anna.”

  “I am,” he said, taking her wrenching handshake well.

  “Join us,” Jill pleaded. “It’s perfect that you’re here, since you’re such a large part of the story.”

  It had taken me awhile to assure Kyle our story would be protected. Now I worried Jill’s zeal would drive me back to step one and I’d have to begin again to gain his trust. He was eyeing her, probably wondering if I’d misled him.

  “Same
rules.” I tried to rein Jill in. “No photos of us, and no clues about anyone’s identity.”

  “Of course,” she said with a winning smile. “The two I just took of both of you…those are for me.”

  The three of us sat down, and I briefed Kyle as to what we’d covered so far of Julianne’s story and letters. “We haven’t toured the house thoroughly yet,” I said, wondering if Isaac’s house should be brought into the story also. Kyle was watching me, reading the things I wasn’t saying, and he nodded. It was okay. He knew I was deliberating Isaac, and he thought it was okay. “And then we can go to her husband’s home,” I offered. Jill squealed.

  As we made a slow and easy tour of my home, along with the attic, Jill filled the air with snaps, clicks, editorial comments, and flashes. On occasion I caught Kyle in her viewfinder and I wondered if she’d stolen candid shots of me, too. When we moved to the outdoors and she was rounding the house for pictures, I cornered him and warned him about her.

  “She’s been stealing snapshots of you,” I whispered. “Probably has been of me too. I tell you, she’s an excellent person, but she’s an artist at heart and sometimes it’s difficult to control her.”

  He looked down at me and gave me a half smile. “I know she’s been taking shots of me, and it’s okay. She knows I know. And don’t worry, she hasn’t been taking any of you.”

  My jaw dropped. Had I just stepped off my own planet onto another where the rules suddenly changed? “But…but…” I stammered.

  He touched me. Something Kyle rarely did, but at this moment he chose to. His hand graced my shoulder, slipped almost undetectably down my arm and squeezed. “I’m okay with it,” he said. “She won’t violate what you’ve asked. She’s a good person and a good friend to you.”

  I waited for him to add the inevitable, “I like her,” but it wasn’t there. I let out the breath I’d been holding, not sure why it mattered. Maybe it didn’t.

  Chapter 28

  “I might have sent you away with joy and with songs, with timbrel and with lyre.”

  Jill added a new dimension to my world, and to Kyle’s too, as it related to the work we’d undertaken. As we divulged as much as we felt safe sharing with her, she, with her intuitive eye, added photos to what we were trying to say. And before she went back to Cincinnati the three of us sat together and studied the panorama of Julianne’s life Jill had visually told. Pages and prints of color, texture, and angles panned before us, bringing depth and dimension to the invisible Julianne. Kyle and I sat spellbound as we looked at the pictures, at Jill, and at each other.

  “She’s here,” he said to Jill, just as he’d said to me long ago in Julianne’s attic.

  “You’ve done her story such a service,” I added, knowing I couldn’t give Jill a better tribute than what Kyle had.

  Kyle nodded, admiring the photos with the same eye that must have put his house together, the kind that knew how to bring life where there had previously been none.

  Jill put them away when we’d finished reviewing them, and I handed her a file of the next few articles to go with them.

  “This should be a book someday,” she said, as she tucked everything away for her trip home.

  “What if the ending’s disappointing?” I asked, not wanting to have to remind her again that a book was impossible, since I didn’t want this spread all around.

  “It won’t be disappointing,” Kyle said unexpectedly. We both looked at him, my mouth falling open and Jill’s widening in a grin. One side of his kicked up in a half smile. “The story’s worth knowing, beginning to end.”

  “I’ll bet you’re right,” Jill agreed. “So, for my last night here, how about we go out? My treat. Well, newspaper’s treat.”

  We did the appropriate balking and arguing, but Jill won when she said Edith, the editor, was okay with it. We piled into Jill’s car, and she drove us two towns away so we could go to a raucous bar and grill, her preference, to celebrate. She entertained us the whole way there with humiliating stories about me in the city and a mad series of half songs on the radio because she only listened to fragments before she flipped to another station. I glanced over my shoulder into the darkened back seat where Kyle was sitting and gave him an apologetic eye for the commotion Jill brought everywhere she went. I was used to her, found this part of her charming, but I knew she was too brash for a man like Kyle. I could see his smile by the lights of the dashboard. He was okay, and I settled back in my seat. I’d miss Jill when she was gone, but it would be nice to return to the quiet orderly work Kyle and I shared so well together.

  Casey’s Bar and Grill was no disappointment to Jill, who bought us each a beer and fed money into the jukebox. We ate well and sat long, talking and laughing, and making me miss those fun evenings of long ago back in Cincinnati. A band set up in one corner, just three instruments and a female singer. We watched them distractedly as we devoured food, then let the conversation wane until more beer arrived.

  “You should dance,” Jill said looking at Kyle and me when the band members finally introduced themselves and began to play. “She likes to dance,” she said to Kyle while nodding toward me, “and she’s good.”

  I felt my face heat up even more than the beer flush had caused. “That was a long time ago,” I said, eyeing her beneath furrowed brows.

  “Not so long ago. You may be living in another generation, but in real time you’ve only been here a number of months. What? Four or five, maybe? Six? Has it been that long?”

  I wished the band would play louder so Jill couldn’t be heard, but they were a rare polite band that didn’t come just to hear themselves play. They actually created a pleasant atmosphere. Jill’s face was alight with her usual gaiety, enhanced by the fueling effects of good food and beer. Her eyes shimmered as they shot from my face to Kyle’s and back again.

  “Well, heck, I’ll dance with either one of you, just take your pick,” Jill exclaimed, throwing up her arms.

  “It doesn’t go over so well here as it does in the city, when women dance together. I mean, it’s okay, but it just doesn’t blend in as well.” I glanced around and gave her a culture-warning look.

  “Okay by me,” she said, and she snatched Kyle’s hand from the table top and yanked him to his feet. “A goodbye dance, since I’m leaving,” she said, and the two hurtled off to the dance floor.

  I sat by myself, watching Jill weave Kyle through other couples, running my fingertip around the top rim of my glass. Kyle was keeping up with her well, and he didn’t look too overwhelmed. In fact he seemed to be enjoying himself.

  “Miss?” A voice broke my concentration on Kyle’s long legs chasing around the floor with Jill’s skinny ones. I looked up.

  “I asked if you’d care to dance with me?”

  I registered, then, the handsome face of what could have been a cowboy, tan skin laid over perfect bone structure and set off by black hair. His western, pearl-buttoned shirt blended well with the rugged, sharp features of his face.

  “I…I…” I muttered like an idiot. He extended a hand to me, which I took, and he gently lifted me to my feet. We floated to the dance floor, and he swiveled around until he faced me. Putting one hand gently at the small of my back and wrapping the other around my fingers, he brought back to me all the knowledge I had about dancing. He was wonderful, he was smooth, he was as agile as a muscular cowboy should be. I couldn’t take my eyes off his. He said nothing, but the smile he wore told me all I needed to know.

  We glided around the dance floor, everyone else vanishing as my heart rate increased, my energy surged, and my legs suddenly yearned to dance all night. The pain of Trevor disappeared even more as my system engaged in living again, enjoying again, maybe someday loving again.

  We bumped up against another couple, drawing my thoughts back to Casey’s Bar and Grill, and my eyes to who we’d collided with. It was Jill and Kyle, her face drawn into a not-so-cryptic wow and Kyle’s…Kyle’s unreadable. His eyes locked with mine for a brief second that
seemed to speak into an eternity, the past and present there, the future looming ahead. I tried to smile at him, but I couldn’t. My mouth was already in a grin, a happy, sated expression of life and fun. My cowboy whipped me away, and Jill swung Kyle around, too, across the floor until they were out of sight. I craned my neck and spotted them as they focused on their game of dance and chase. Kyle never lost tempo and his expression was content. He glanced up and caught my eye again. Like the flash of a camera his smile was there, a deep and meaningful smile on fire with gaiety. It flashed and then it was gone as they disappeared once again from my sight.

  Chapter 29

  “Our soul has escaped as a bird

  out of the snare of the trapper.”

  My house became so quiet after Jill was gone. The whirlwind had passed, and the calm returned to Julianne and me. Jill’s visit left its mark on me, a breath of what I’d been, and what I might still be, behind the quiet scenes I lived in now.

  It took a moment of sitting and gazing around my house to restore the reverie that had once been there. I felt like I’d neglected my sage for a few days and I needed to reconnect, remember who we were when we were together.

  I looked at the stack of letters that had been sitting there and waiting, feeling it was right to read the next one before I returned to her story.

  Settled on my sofa with my Julianne paraphernalia around me, I opened the top envelope as if it contained the name of the next Nobel Peace Prize winner, slowly extracting its contents as if the world were waiting. I unfolded the letter, seeing instantly it was from John, even though the name on the envelope said it was from Henrietta.

  ~*~

  May 28, 1908

  Dear Julianne,

  I almost asked Henrietta to write this for me but felt it would hurt you too much if you heard it from her rather than me. I also considered never telling you, since it was unlikely you’d ever find out, and probably be the better off for it.