by John Searles
We both looked around the small, dim room, and I couldn’t help but wonder how this was any better than where he’d been. “My father never even talked about this place,” I said. “I figured it was closed or torn down a long time ago.”
Howie let out a short, exasperated laugh. “That would have been too easy. After your grandfather died, this theater was left to your dad and me. We couldn’t sell it. Nobody wanted it, considering what the neighborhood had become. So the place sat vacant for years, until an offer came to rent it—as a movie theater, of all things, only not the kind that showed the sort of films that used to play here.”
“My father—he never would have gone for that,” I said.
“What choice did he have? We needed to cover the taxes that drained us every spring, taxes your father usually ended up paying. And then I had this idea of taking back the place. Doing something better than renting it out.”
“You mean, making it a regular movie theater again?”
“Afraid not, Sylvie. The days of people getting dressed up to come to this neighborhood and see a film are long gone. I had another idea. Making it a venue for bands. Something I’ll tell you more about. But your father wouldn’t allow it. Despite his grandiose morals, he preferred to let it stay what it had become, rather than give his own brother a chance. When he passed, since there was no will, the property went through probate. In the end, his half went to you and your sister.”
“Rose and me?”
“Yes. This place, crumbling as it is, belongs to the two of you as well. You might not be aware of it, since Rose was made your legal guardian and she has the say for both of you. When I told her what I wanted to do with it, she agreed so long as I send half of whatever money I make. And so long as—” Howie stopped, considering his words.
“So long as what?”
“So long as I stayed out of your lives.”
I thought of that morning at the bus stop when Rose scoffed at Howie’s “pipe dreams” and told me about his refusal to let her come live with him. I wanted to find some way to ask about all that when a noise came from out in the hall—footsteps, I was certain this time. Howie must have heard them too, because we both turned just as Sam Heekin stepped into the doorway.
I had been so caught up in seeing my uncle again that I’d momentarily forgotten about Heekin, and his abrupt appearance surprised me. Howie stood, shoving his sleeves farther up his arms, displaying more tattoos. In a voice so gruff it seemed to come from a wholly different person than the one who had just been speaking to me with such tenderness, he shouted, “What the hell are you doing here?”
“He’s—” I began, but Heekin was already talking, though not doing a very good job of it.
“I d-d-drove here with—”
Howie cut him off. “I made it clear I didn’t want to see you around here again.”
“Hold on,” I said, standing too. “He brought me here. He’s a friend of our family.”
“Friend?” My uncle all but spat the word. “I read his book. Read every one of his articles, too. A lot of what this guy has to say hardly seems like something a friend would write.”
Heekin shut his eyes and took a deep breath. When he opened them and began speaking again, his voice was calm, his words clear. “I don’t deny my mistakes, and all the things I’ve done that might have seemed unfair to this family. But I’d rather not do any more harm when it comes to Sylvie. That’s why I found my way inside here. I wanted to make sure she was all right.”
Howie kicked the articles, sending my mother and Penny and Albert Lynch, who I glimpsed among the photos too, spinning around the floor. “Of course she’s all right! She’s with her uncle!”
I could only imagine how skeptical Heekin felt about that comment, since I felt the same. Neither of us let on, though. Instead, Heekin gazed around the room, making a quick study of the place. “I’m okay,” I told him at last. “We’ll just be a little longer.”
“Okay, then. If you need me, I’ll be waiting outside.”
I expected Howie to make another jab, but he just watched Heekin step back into the hall. When we heard the metal door opening and closing, Howie told me he was sorry. “Can’t stand filthy reporters and scumbag detectives poking around my business. And that guy does not give up. There’s something about him I don’t like.”
“My mother was the best judge of character I knew, and she liked him. In the beginning anyway.”
“Yeah, well, your mother was human too. Like the rest of us, she could have been wrong. And I’m telling you, she was wrong about that guy.”
I sat on the cot again, doing my best not to look at those pictures on the floor. Even if what Howie said might have been true, I didn’t like him talking about my mother that way. I stared blankly at those milk crates as he walked to the desk and fished an envelope out of a drawer. “I want to show you something, Sylvie,” Howie said, sitting beside me on the cot, the thin mattress sinking in a way that brought our bodies closer. I felt his arm graze mine as he opened that envelope.
From inside, he pulled a few black-and-white photos, like those in my father’s desk, only with none of the blurry shafts of light or mysterious figures. The first picture was of the theater—not the ramshackle place it was now, but back when the building looked majestic, when that marquee stood upright just as I’d imagined. In the crowd out front, I saw women with dark lipstick, spidery eyelashes, and dresses so glittering they seemed to be made of hundreds of tiny flashbulbs. The men at their sides sported dapper suits and bowler hats. Howie let the picture speak for itself before handing me another of a man and woman dressed more simply. The man twisted the crank on a taffy machine; she held the finished product in the air, stretching it thumb to thumb, laughing. Something about them seemed familiar, and I felt a stirring in my chest.
“Are they—”
“Your grandparents, Sylvie. In the candy shop that was once part of the theater.”
We looked at them for a long moment. I studied their faces, hunting for glimpses of Rose in my grandfather’s strong chin, of myself in my grandmother’s wide eyes. In each, I saw my father, Howie too.
“I must be getting old,” my uncle told me, speaking more calmly, “because I’ve never been the nostalgic type until lately. But I’m finding it’s a strange thing to be the last one left in a family. You spend a lot of time thinking about the past, wondering why things turned out the way they did.”
His words led me to glance away from the photos and down at that messy carpet of newspaper clippings. My mother and Penny and all those headlines.
“You must be wondering why I kept those,” he said.
I nodded, then said, “Yes. I am.”
My uncle tucked the first two photos back into the envelope, holding on to the third facedown so I couldn’t see it just yet. “If there’s one place drunks love, Sylvie, it’s a public library. Nice and quiet when you’re nursing a hangover. You can sleep the day away without anyone bothering you except maybe some nag of a librarian. The Seventy-Eighth Street Community Branch in Tampa—that was my favorite whenever a rent check bounced and the landlady padlocked my door. In my more sober moments, I used to dig around there for stories about my brother. Even if I didn’t believe the things he claimed, I felt proud he’d made something of himself. Jealous, too, since he was keeping me from the dreams I had for the theater. Later, after what happened, collecting those papers became a kind of obsession—one I’ve kept up since I got here. Guess I’m still trying to make sense of it all. Thing is, all those articles list the same facts. I know how hard it must be, Sylvie, but you were there that night. Can you tell me what happened inside that church?”
Shhhh. . .
As he drew closer to that question, the sound in my ear grew steadily louder. Useless, I knew by now, but I pressed a finger to my ear anyway. The thought of Rummel and Louise filled my head. “I tried,” I said,
offering an answer I did not plan, but one I might well have given them, because it was true, “always to be their good daughter, the one they could count on and be proud of. But when it mattered most, that night in the church, I failed. Not only couldn’t I save them, I can’t even identify their killer with any real certainty now that they’re gone.”
“But the papers—”
“I know what they say. But I’m telling you otherwise.”
When he spoke next, I heard something different in Howie’s voice, a kind of hunger. “Are you saying you don’t know who you saw?”
I shook my head, staring at the final picture in his hands and waiting for him to flip it over. “What is that last photo?”
He let out a weighted breath and handed me the picture: two shirtless boys cannonballing off a rocky cliff into a pool of water. It was taken, he explained, at an old Indian well a few miles from the theater. “Our dad used to drive us there on hot days when the AC broke in this place. Lucky he got that shot, because it was one of the few times your father actually jumped with me. He was always so nervous and preferred to walk the path down to the water. I swear he was more at home with the things he thought he saw in the theater than out in the real world.”
“That night in Florida,” I began, bringing up something I’d always wondered about, “when you and my sister drove off in your truck, she told me later you said things that made her stop believing our parents. What did you tell her?”
My uncle took back the photo and returned it to the envelope, then thought better of it. “Here, Sylvie. Why don’t you keep these? They’re the few pieces of our family history I have to offer. And who knows? Maybe they’ll give you some small comfort if ever you need it.”
I thanked him and took the photos, slipping them into my coat pocket next to my journal.
“I have an idea,” Howie said, standing from the cot. “Come with me.”
We headed out into the hallway and on deeper into the building, passing more movie star ghosts as we went. On each side of the hallway, open doors led into other shadowy rooms like the one where Howie had been working and living. So black and boxy, those rooms would put anyone in mind of a prison cell, and in every single one, I imagined Albert Lynch, pacing or sitting, gazing out at me with a desperate, penetrating glower. When it became too much, I looked away, just as Howie took my hand, guiding us through a minefield of missing floorboards. All the while he spoke with an excitement in his voice I’d not heard before about his longtime dream for the building—the dream my father kept him from in life, but no longer could in death.
“The Philly Chamber of Commerce started an initiative to revitalize the neighborhood,” he told me. “They’ve even helped me secure a loan. Nothing short of a miracle considering my credit. It’s barely enough to make some basic changes, bring the place up to code. That’s okay. I’m banking on the look of the old place to give it a certain coolness.”
We arrived at a set of double doors. Howie released my hand and pushed them open, leading us out onto a balcony inside the theater. In the flickering light, I could see hundreds of seats filling the orchestra below, hundreds more on the mezzanine above. Despite the peeling paint and web of cracks in the ceiling, the ornate chandelier and the stage with velvet curtains flanking a blank movie screen offered hints of former glory. “Used to be an old vaudeville house before your grandparents owned it. Your dad and me, we spent our childhood between these walls. Scouring the floor after people left in search of dropped change. With this many seats, you’d be amazed at how much we made. If we got lucky, we’d come across jewelry or a wallet—that was hitting the jackpot.”
“Did my father make you return it?”
Howie laughed. “Difficult as it might be to imagine, even your dad was a kid once. A pretty devious one when he wanted to be. The jewelry got pawned with Floyd’s help. We gave him a cut, of course. Wallets, we agreed to keep secret and split whatever cash was inside. Well, that was supposed to be the way things worked.”
“Supposed to be?”
“Yeah, until E-19.” Howie aimed a finger at the orchestra seats, ticking his way up from the stage until he was pointing to one chair in particular. “That seat right there. Doesn’t look any different from the others. But it’s where your dad used to stash most of what he found in a tear on the side of the cushion, so he didn’t have to share it with me. I used to think the reason I turned up so much more loot than him was because I was older and faster and had a better eye. Then I caught on to what he was doing.”
The lights in the theater blinked—off and on, then just off—causing my uncle to fall silent. Things remained dark long enough that I wondered if they’d come back on at all. Waiting out on that balcony, Howie’s figure became nothing more than a hulking silhouette beside me, one that put me in mind of those statues by the altar. I listened to the sound of him breathing, smelled the smoke on his breath from his last cigarette. “Is everything all right?” I asked into the blackness, feeling a tightening in my throat as his heavy shoes shifted on the floor beneath us.
“Should be. The wiring inside this monster is just so damn ancient. That’s one of the things I’m spending the loan money on: updating the electrical. Anyway, give it a minute and the lights will—” Just then, the theater blinked to life, allowing us to see again and allowing Howie to finish his sentence with relief, “come back on.”
I gazed out at all the empty seats, imagining the boys from the photo scrambling among them, imagining my father standing down near that one seat in particular, hiding whatever he found from his brother. “And this is where my father first saw . . . things?”
My uncle nodded. “Let’s go see the view from downstairs.” Back in the hall, he led the way to a set of threadbare drapes, the fringe as gray as mop strings. We were about to step through to the staircase just beyond when Howie stopped. “You know what, Sylvie? Why don’t you go on ahead while I grab the blueprints from the office?”
I stared past the drapes at that empty staircase, feeling that tightening in my throat again when I looked back at him. “Why?”
“Because I want to show you the exact plans. So just go on down to the orchestra level. I’ll catch up in a minute.”
Missing floorboards, faltering lights, the things my father used to speak of seeing among the seats—all of it left me wary. “I think,” I told Howie, “I should probably go.”
“Go?”
That odd tightening in my throat grew tighter still. When I spoke next, my words came out in awkward clumps. “There’s an appointment I have. In Maryland. At the police station. The detective there—he wants to talk to me. I need to figure out what I’m going to tell him.”
“Tell him about what?”
“I don’t know. But, well, Sam Heekin is waiting for me. I shouldn’t—”
“Don’t worry about that guy, Sylvie. Like I said, you own this place too. Now that you’re here, I want to show it to you. Who knows when Rose will let us see each other again. Now get down there.”
Get in the truck . . .
Unlike that night in Ocala, when I managed to avoid giving into his order, this time I couldn’t see a way out. I turned and stepped through the threadbare drapes, the drab fringe brushing my shoulders like limp fingers when I passed. Had there been a banister at some point during the building’s history, it was long gone; I was left to trail my hand along the wall while descending the steps. When I reached the first floor, I walked through another set of drapes and kept going out among the orchestra seats until I stood in the center aisle.
How many people had filled that place when it was a legitimate movie theater? How many more when it was a vaudeville house before that? I tried to imagine them, holding hands, laughing or crying about the world come to life before their eyes on the screen or stage. Somehow, though, the great yawning maw of that open room felt stronger than the past, making it difficult to envision. Inst
ead of those people, I ended up thinking of their possessions—coins and bills and bracelets and necklaces and wallets—all dropped to the floor, unknowingly, over the years. The thought led me to move in the direction of the stage, where the movie screen was plagued with cracks. At last, I stopped at one aisle in particular.
After so many years, it would seem someone would have repaired the tear in seat E-19, but reaching down, I felt the slit on one side of that cushion. How could I resist slipping my hand inside? How could I not wonder if I might pull out some long-forgotten treasure? But only a few stray puffs of loose foam filled my hand.
I let it fall to the floor, straightening up and waiting for Howie, who had plenty of time to get what he needed by then. When he didn’t show, it occurred to me that I’d not seen any blueprints on his desk or among those makeshift shelves. No sooner did that thought come than I began to wonder why there were no signs of renovations in the place. No tools or extension cords. No sawhorses or paint cans.
“Hello!” I called into the belly of that theater.
The word was tinged with a pleading sound. It was met with only silence before the lights flickered then snapped out, drowning me in darkness once more. As I stood with one hand on the back of my father’s torn seat, at the very place where he must have first seen those otherworldly visions, my own demons came seeping from the shadows:
Dot calling, Hello? Yoo-hoo? Girls? My mother saying, When you feel afraid, I want you to pray. And then there were the strange rumblings from our basement in those early months after our parents were gone—the breaking, the rustling, the shifting about—that led me to plead with Rose in a quivering voice, You’re crazy if you don’t hear those things. They’re pissed off. They’re sad. They want them back. I can tell. . . .
