Home Song

by Thomas Kinkade

“You know,” Sara said carefully, “these old photographs really are a piece of history. It would be wonderful if they were organized into a series of albums. You could do it chronologically or perhaps—” She stopped speaking as she saw Lillian’s eyes narrow. Had she just said the wrong thing?

  Lillian peered at her sharply. “That’s not a bad idea,” she allowed, “but it sounds like a tremendous amount of work. I don’t even have the energy to find all my old photographs, let alone—”

  “I could help you,” Sara offered. “I could pick up some photo albums at Nolan’s Stationery. Then it could be sort of an ongoing project that you and I could work on—whenever you feel up to it.”

  She waited what seemed an endless moment before Lillian said, “Yes, I think that would be a fine thing to do.”

  Sara felt a little guilty for tricking Lillian into telling her the family history this way. But Lillian seemed to genuinely enjoy it. This was one of the few times Sara had seen her relax and let down her guard.

  “So many photographs here.” Lillian sighed as she continued to search for one of her brother. “My daughters obviously don’t have the slightest interest in helping me organize them. But I’m sure they’ll be grateful for it once I’m dead and buried.”

  Lillian often referred to some future time when she was “dead and buried” and her family would finally appreciate her, Sara had noticed. As if dying were some ultimate trump card she held, waiting to toss it down just to spite them all.

  “Ahh . . . here’s Lawrence,” Lillian said, picking out an oval-shaped portrait and handing it to Sara. “I believe he’d just finished law school when this was taken. Harvard,” she added, as if that were a given.

  Lawrence had his father’s long nose and stern expression, coupled with his mother’s curly hair, Sara noticed. He stared at the camera, his expression unsmiling, his neck rigid in a high starched collar.

  “He became a judge, you know,” Lillian said proudly.

  It was clear that Lillian’s parents were quite demanding of their children, just as Lillian seemed to be of her daughters. And would be with me, if she ever found out I’m her granddaughter, Sara thought.

  But there were other reasons why Lillian was so obsessed with Emily and Jessica making their mark on the world, bringing recognition to the Warwick family name, especially here, in Cape Light. Sara had heard about the family scandal, how Lillian’s husband—Sara’s own grandfather, Oliver Warwick—had been accused and convicted of embezzling funds from his firm’s accounts. Although he had never gone to jail, the family had lost almost all their money. Forced to give up the Warwick estate, Lilac Hall, they’d come to this house on Providence Street. Oliver had died soon after from a bad heart. Or maybe a broken one, Sara thought.

  Lillian frowned as she sifted through the photographs. “There aren’t any here of my sister, Elizabeth,” she said. “I know I have some of all three of us, right at Durham Point Beach. We came here nearly every summer. My father loved ocean swimming, the colder the better.” Her stiff fingers flipped through the pile of photos again, and Sara saw her pause, her brow wrinkling in concentration.

  Lillian’s memory was still amazingly sharp, nearly as sharp as her tongue, Sara thought with a secret smile.

  “They must be up in the attic,” Lillian said, looking up at Sara. “There’s an old trunk with leather straps up there, near the small window at the front of the house, I think. It’s filled with papers and things I packed up when we moved. I don’t believe I’ve ever even opened it in all this time.”

  Sara knew that Lillian meant since the Warwicks moved out of Lilac Hall. That was a long time ago, she reflected, more than twenty years.

  “I’ll go up and get it for you,” Sara said, coming to her feet.

  “Oh, no, don’t bother,” Lillian replied. “I’m sure it’s a perfect mess up there. You’ll never find it, and you’ll only get yourself all dirty.”

  “It’s no bother,” Sara insisted. “I don’t mind at all. You should have a picture of your brother and sister for the first album. It won’t be complete otherwise.”

  Sara was careful not to sound too eager. But the prospect of going through a trunk of Lillian’s old belongings—and possibly some that belonged to her mother, too—was far too tempting to pass up.

  “I suppose so,” Lillian agreed slowly. “It would be nice to have a photo or two of them. . . . though I’m still not sure who I’m making these books for,” she grumbled a bit crossly.

  “For Emily and Jessica . . . and your future grandchildren.”

  Sara watched Lillian’s face carefully, studying her reaction. Did Lillian ever think of her, the child Emily had given up for adoption, her first grandchild? Did she ever wonder what had happened to her?

  For a moment Lillian’s gaze seemed unfocused, then she stared back at Sara with a sour expression.

  “Yes, if I have grandchildren, I’m sure they’ll be very much in the future. And they won’t be burdened with the last name Morgan, either, I pray,” she added under her breath.

  Knowing how Lillian felt about Jessica’s engagement, Sara decided to avoid that topic. “The staircase to the attic is on the second floor, right?” she asked, starting out of the room.

  “There’s a door just past my bedroom, but I keep it locked. The key is in the little blue cloisonné vase on the bookcase.” Lillian rose from the couch with some effort, using her cane, and walked to the staircase in the foyer.

  “And don’t get lost up there. I’m sure it’s horribly dusty,” Lillian called from the foyer, her tone suggesting she was having second thoughts about permitting Sara to go up there.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t be long,” Sara promised. She raced up the stairs and out of view. Lillian said something more, but Sara didn’t quite hear her or turn back to find out.

  She quickly found the key in the vase, just where Lillian said it would be. She felt her heartbeat quicken as she unlocked the attic door and it creaked open. She was immediately hit with the smell of old wooden rafters, cedar moth repellant, warm, stagnant air, and dust. Attic smell, enticing and mysterious. The narrow staircase seemed a portal to some forbidden tomb, the repository of her own mysterious past. A shaft of sunlight pierced the shadows, flecks of dust floating in the golden light that led her upward.

  At the top of the stairs Sara looked around, trying to locate the trunk Lillian had mentioned. She said it would be toward the front of the house, near the small circular window where the roof peaked. Sara walked in that direction, carefully stepping around the miscellaneous flotsam and jetsam of a lifetime. There were several lamps in various states of disrepair, a ballroom chair with a carved back and a torn silk cushion, a dressmaker’s dummy, and a brass mantel clock with a crack in its glass bell jar cover. A dusty black hatbox overflowed with offerings, from ribbon-trimmed straw bonnets to a gentleman’s gray felt fedora. A yellow and blue felt banner caught Sara’s eye. She picked it up to read the boxy letters that read “Cape Light Tigers.” Just underneath she found a shoe box full of miniature china cups and saucers, perfect for a doll’s tea party.

  Some of this may have belonged to Emily, Sara realized. She felt a sudden tingling awareness and studied the various cartons and their blurry, almost indiscernible labels with even sharper curiosity.

  Christmas decorations, several boxes of those. Books and tax records. Sara stepped around the boxes, checking the labels without finding anything of interest.

  She worked her way to the small round window and found below it the trunk Lillian had described—black and battered with stamps of foreign ports and large leather straps across the top, the kind of trunk people took on ocean voyages decades ago.

  The dull brass lock was open, and Sara leaned over and lifted the top back. Her nose was immediately assaulted by a cloud of damp, musty air and the scent of camphor. She pushed aside a pile of musty woolen blankets and an old military uniform. Beneath them, she found a box marked “Photographs.” She checked inside and saw that it
was filled with scenes of Lillian’s early marriage when Jessica and Emily were very young, and then beneath those, the photos Lillian had been looking for, the ones from her childhood.

  Taking the box of photographs, Sara stood up and closed the trunk. A large puff of dust set her coughing. When she opened her eyes again, she was looking straight at a cardboard carton pushed back against the wall. Its label read “EMILY—Maryland,” and she felt her heartbeat speed up again.

  Maryland. That was where Emily lived when she was married to my father. Sara quickly walked over to the box and pulled open the flaps. She wasn’t quite sure what she was looking for, anything about her father. Or Emily for that matter. Or even her own birth.

  The box was full of books. Sara fought back a surge of disappointment. She had expected something more, something—important. Still, she dug through them, quickly scanning the titles. Half of them were classics by New England writers—Hawthorne, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville, Thoreau, and Emerson. There’s a surprise, Sara thought wryly. The rest were novels, all by women writers—Jane Austen, Edith Wharton, Virginia Woolf, Kate Chopin—her mother’s books, Sara assumed. Books Emily had read on her own, since she wasn’t enrolled yet at a college. Emily had once told her she had hoped to be a writer when she was young, but she had given it up. Well, clearly she had been trying, Sara thought.

  Finally Sara reached the bottom of the box. That was it. She nearly felt like crying from disappointment. Her nose felt clogged by the dust from the decaying pages and she sneezed.

  “Sara?” Lillian’s shrill voice called up to her. “What are you doing up there?”

  “I’ll be right down,” Sara called back, forcing her voice to an even tone. “I found the photographs.”

  Quickly she put the books back in the carton. Just as she piled the last few on top, a scrap of paper floated out of Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse. Sara turned it over. It was a photograph. A young man with thick black hair and dark brown eyes stared out at her. He wore a fisherman-knit sweater. His arms were crossed over his broad chest, and he was smiling with such affection and good humor at the photographer that Sara could practically feel his warmth wash over her.

  In an instant she understood.

  It was her father, Tim Sutton.

  She turned over the photo and saw the notation “Tim, dock behind our house. October ’78.”

  Sara stared down at his face and felt her eyes fill with tears. She touched his image with her fingertip. She looked just like him. The same-shaped face and mouth. The same eyes, except hers were blue like Emily’s.

  “Hi, Daddy,” she murmured.

  The face stared back at her, looking content with the world and everything in it. Surprised—but very happy to see her.

  Then the image grew blurry from her tears.

  “Sara, for goodness’ sakes, have you gotten lost up there?”

  Lillian’s voice was even closer and sounded more annoyed. She had climbed the stairs from the first floor, no small feat in her condition, Sara realized, and now stood at the bottom of the attic staircase.

  Sara abruptly stood up, closed the flaps of the carton and shoved her father’s picture deep in the back pocket of her jeans.

  “Sorry, Lillian,” she called out, making her way to the staircase with the box of photos. “There are a lot of interesting things up here. I got distracted.”

  “I haven’t been up there for years. I’m sure it’s a regular disaster.” Lillian sighed and stepped back into the hallway as Sara emerged.

  “Maybe I could clean it out for you sometime,” Sara offered.

  “Why bother? It’s just a lot of old, useless junk. When I go I’m sure the whole lot will be carted out and tossed in the trash.”

  “There are some interesting things up there,” Sara said gently. “Some antiques maybe.”

  Lillian glanced at her, a mixture of suspicion and tentative inclination. Sara could see her trying to guess if she was really so nice or trying to manipulate her. But Sara was used to it.

  “Well, I suppose you could go back someday and see if there’s anything you want. You might as well take some things away if you could use them. It would help clear out the clutter.” Lillian peered at her more closely. “It must have been horribly dusty up there. Your eyes are all red and watery.”

  “Oh . . . yes. The dust, I guess,” Sara said, wiping her tears away with her fingertips.

  Lillian stared at her again, suspiciously, Sara thought. But before she could say anything more, a sharp knock sounded on the front door.

  “That must be Emily,” Lillian said, moving toward the stairway. “Late, of course. She said she would be here by five.”

  Emily? Sara hadn’t expected to see her here today. I have to pull myself together. If Emily notices I’ve been crying, she’ll start asking questions. And I’m liable to say anything right now.

  Sara heard the key turn in the lock and then the sound of the front door swinging open. “Mother?” Emily called out.

  “I’m up here. With Sara,” Lillian called back to her. She peered over the banister. “She’s just been up in the attic, looking for old pictures. She’s helping me put them in order.”

  “How nice,” Emily replied in an automatic tone.

  “It’s the kind of thing you do before you die, I suppose,” Lillian said grimly.

  “Well, take your time then,” Emily replied as she shut the door. “There’s no rush.” She glanced up at Sara and smiled. Sara smiled back and nearly laughed out loud. Then she was suddenly aware of the photograph hidden in her pocket, sure that Emily must somehow sense it there.

  “Very amusing, Emily. I didn’t mean it that way at all.”

  “Well, it sounds like a great project for you, Mother. I’d love to look at some old pictures of our family,” Emily said in a more appeasing tone.

  “Yes, of course. Everyone likes to look at old photos. But never enough to help sort them all out,” Lillian said tartly.

  She moved slowly down the steps, in a sideways crablike motion. Emily came to help her, and Sara could see the veiled tension in Emily’s face as she held her mother’s upper arm and guided her into the living room.

  Lillian settled herself on the long, camelback sofa with an indignant sniff. Sara followed and set the box of photos on the coffee table.

  “Well, sit down. Take your coat off,” Lillian fairly ordered her daughter. “Or are you just here to make sure I’m still conscious and breathing?”

  “I have some groceries for you in the car,” Emily replied, ignoring her mother’s tone. “I’ll just run out and get them.”

  “I’ll go,” Sara offered. When Emily seemed about to argue, she insisted. “It’s okay. Really. I could use the fresh air.”

  “Yes, let her go,” Lillian cut in. “The girl has gotten all congested with the dust. Fresh air will do her good.”

  Sara ran outside, grateful for a chance to compose herself. She found two plastic bags of groceries in the backseat of Emily’s Jeep Cherokee and took a few minutes in the cool air to settle herself down. But she couldn’t forget the picture of her father hidden in her pocket.

  Maybe it’s a sign, Sara thought as she walked back up the path to the house. Am I supposed to tell her now?

  Sara stood at the front door, summoning her courage. But when she stepped into the foyer and heard Emily and Lillian chatting in the living room, her courage began to wane.

  How could she do it? she wondered as she carried the groceries to the kitchen. Finding her father’s picture had just gotten her all shook up. She wouldn’t be able to say it right.

  But there’s never going to be a perfect time to do this, she reminded herself. Or the perfect way to tell her. . . .

  “Here, let me put that stuff away. You don’t have to do that, too.” Emily entered the kitchen, her words breaking into Sara’s scattered thoughts.

  “It’s okay, I don’t mind.” Sara picked up a can of soup and opened the nearest cabinet. “Though I’m still n
ot sure where everything goes, and I have a feeling that Lillian doesn’t like to find things out of order.”

  “Yes, Mother likes her cupboards very orderly,” Emily said, with a wry smile. “We wouldn’t dare put a can of soup in the cereal closet. We might upset the entire balance of the universe.”

  Sara grinned, but her stomach was doing somersaults. I could tell her right now, she thought nervously. She watched as Emily turned away to put a carton of eggs in the refrigerator. No, not at Lillian’s house. That would be too much, Sara decided.

  Emily emerged from the refrigerator, holding a carton of orange juice. “Do you see a bottle of red pills on the counter near the phone?” she asked.

  Sara searched the counter and found the pills. “Varex?” she asked, reading the label.

  “That’s the one.” Emily poured Lillian a glass of juice, and Sara carried the pill bottle, and they went out again together to the living room.

  “Here, Mother,” Emily said, dispensing the pills. “Don’t forget to take these. The doctor said that they’re important.”

  “Important to him, you mean. I feel no difference at all, whether I take them or not.”

  “Just take the pills, Mother. Please?”

  Lillian glanced up at Emily with the sullen pout of a willful child but grudgingly swallowed the pills.

  “It’s a terrible thing to get old, Sara,” Lillian said, as though Emily weren’t in the room. “I strongly advise against it.”

  Sara smiled and glanced at Emily. “I’ll keep that in mind. Of course, the alternatives are not that attractive, either.”

  “No, they’re not,” Lillian agreed, sitting up straight and smoothing her skirt. “That reminds me, what do you hear from your sister, Emily? I haven’t spoken with her for weeks. I could be dead and buried for all she knows.”

  “Mother, don’t be ridiculous. It’s Tuesday. We just saw Jessica, Sunday at church.”

  “Saw her from a distance, like a stranger, you mean,” Lillian corrected her.

  “Well, I asked if you wanted to go over and say hello. You said you didn’t want to,” Emily reminded her.