A Timely Concerto (2 page)

Lillian sank bank against the pillows and tuned out the stories. She knew them by heart, anyway. One told of a man who appeared on the staircase one morning and then vanished; another was the dark figure that stood over her mother’s bed while Mom, then about eight years old, shivered with terror. None of the stories ever seem that terrible to Lillian but they had been her mother’s bane for decades. She picked up the conversation in time to finish it.

“And that’s just a few of the things that happened so you watch out.”

“I will.”

“And call me again tomorrow.”

She would without the reminder. “I will, Mom. Good night.”

Ghosts did not scare her; she did not believe in supernatural entities. She wondered more about the man her grandfather was what he was like and if she had inherited any of his traits. The lack of a grandfather bothered her; in grade school, she had written him a letter but lost it before she could send it. In her early readers, grandfathers were genial old gentlemen who bought ice cream cones or hair ribbons. The man described by her mother was not like that at all. If Sylvia’s stories were accurate, he had been a selfish man who wouldn’t listen to his daughter when she explained that she was in love. His response was as hard-hearted as Pharaoh’s was when the seventeen-year-old Sylvia told him that she was going to be a mother and that the father was a student at the local junior college. After the battle that ensued, Mom packed her suitcase and left, never to go home again.

I was that baby he wanted her to abort, Lillian thought, as she turned off the lights to sleep. Wonder what he would have thought about me if he could have known me. Even more, she wondered what he would think of her plans for the old house. Why he had left his home to her in his will and directed that no one – not even her mother – hear of his death until six months after his cremation remained a mystery. Stranger still was the fact that he revised his will ten years before he suffered a debilitating stroke that put him in a long-term care facility. Thanks for the house, Grandpa, Lillian thought, her gratitude mingled with sarcasm. Then she slept.

Her dreams were about the house but on waking, she could not remember the details, just a sense of Seven Oaks, and the large rooms. Her original plan was to contact a realtor and an antiques dealer but she decided she wanted to visit the house again before calling anyone. With a bag from McDonald’s in hand, she walked back into the entryway and was as entranced as she had been the day before.

If anything, the rush of emotions was stronger now and the house felt like home. With the sun shining from the east, the entry hall sparkled with bright light that highlighted every speck of dust. Cleaning the place – or hiring it done – was a priority. She would do that before making any phone calls. That faint musty smell she noticed on her first visit lingered but there was something else. She sniffed and wrinkled her nose. If she didn’t know any different, she would swear she inhaled the scent of fresh sausage frying and something that reminded her of Ivory soap.

Chalking it up to the power of suggestion, she sat down on the steps to eat the sausage biscuit and drink the orange juice. That aroma of sausage, she realized, came from her breakfast and the Ivory soap was a figment of her imagination. By the time she sat down at the desk in the study with a phone directory she found in a kitchen drawer, Lillian wasn’t looking for an antique dealer or a realtor. A listing for a cleaning service caught her eye and she punched in the numbers on her cell. Within moments, she arranged for a team from Tidy Gals to clean the old house from top to bottom. She would have liked to have done the chore herself but it would take too long.

Since the crew would not arrive until tomorrow, she explored the house again, this time visiting the attic – a wide, open space filled with furniture and odd bits from the past – and even the cellar. There she found some ancient jars of some murky substance that must have been jam or jelly, a broken table with three legs, coal in the coal chute, and a carved wardrobe. Inside it, she found men’s garments, suits from long ago. Each was on a hanger and covered with old sheets to preserve the fabric. Whose they might have been she did not know but the styles were too outdated to have been her grandfather’s.

Lillian whiled away the rest of the day poking into every corner of the house. She rifled through desk drawers, sorted through kitchen cabinets, and opened drawers in the bedrooms upstairs. In the largest bedroom, she found an old copy of
The Virginian
by Owen Wister, a novel she remembered from a college lit class. The red cover had faded to almost pink and she opened it with care. Handwriting on the flyleaf was too faint to read until she carried the book to one of the windows and squinted at it in the sunlight.

“Howard Speakman, Christmas 1902, from Mother”.

Speakman was the name that Mom said might have been the original owners. If so, then the book must date back to the early years of the house. Howard was such an old-fashioned sounding name now but back then, it could have been a young man or even a boy. Lillian carried the book with her when she left the bedroom; she could read it in her motel room later if she was careful with the fragile pages.

After picking up a turkey and Swiss sandwich at a small market not far from the house, Lillian retreated to the motel and ate a solitary supper. After making phone calls to both mother and sister, she settled down with the book and lost herself in the world of late 19
th
century Montana. Although the language was flowery and outdated, she enjoyed the story and stopped when she became too sleepy to keep her eyes open.

Twenty-four hours later, she was as exhausted as if she had cleaned the old house alone but mounted the front steps with her suitcases in tow. The lawn – cut down to size by one of the Tidy Gal’s teenage sons – got a nod of approval. As she opened the front door, a burst of fresh, clean scents rushed out in greeting. Each surface sparkled and was dust free; every bit of glass and each mirror shone and the floors glistened. In each room Lillian looked for something to find fault with, some little job left undone but could find nothing. Tidy Gals had done their job well.

No more motel rooms, she mused, as she chose the larger of the two front bedrooms as headquarters. Both rooms faced out onto the lawn and had large windows. Each of the rooms adjoined the bathroom. Privacy standards had changed, she thought, no one today would want two bedrooms opening onto the same bathroom but in 1900 or so, indoor plumbing was still a marvel. For the first time she wondered where her grandfather had slept since neither of the front bedrooms held any personal effects. Curious enough to search, Lillian toured the remaining upstairs rooms and found that the smallest room, near the top of the rear stairs, must have been her grandfather’s lair. That room held a narrow cot, the nightstand held an outdated magazine, and the closet yielded men’s clothing, mostly polyester slacks and Arrow shirts. A faint hint of liniment, Old Spice, and Vicks Vapor Rub still hung in the air even after half a year. The very small bathroom next door held a commode and sink; the shelves about it held a razor, dried out soap, and a comb.

Mystery solved, she returned to the front bedroom and unpacked the new bedding bought that afternoon at the local Wal-Mart Supercenter. She changed the faded, thin linens and dropped them down a laundry chute in the rear hallway, then went for a soak in the claw foot tub. Fingers crossed that the plumbing was in working order; she filled the tub with warm water and added a swirl of lavender bath salts. Lillian sank into the bath with a sigh of pleasure, comfortable as a cat on a cushion in a sunny window.

From the tub, she could see through the oak branches over the lawn and to the hills that ringed the small town. Orange from the setting sun streaked the sky and filtered through the green leaves on the trees that ringed the house. Most of her fatigue slipped away into the bath waters and Lillian relaxed, really relaxed for the first time since arriving. Although the house she had expected to be a white elephant or an albatross around her neck had proven to be comfortable and homey, the decision to stay was definite, made during the long day and she felt content enough to sing.

She had never had much of a singing voice and she could not quite carry a tune but Lillian loved music so her voice soared, off-key into old songs, the kind of songs she remembered from childhood. There had been a time when her mother sang to her each night and the songs had not been traditional nursery rhymes but vintage tunes. Strange but the songs were not from her mother’s own era but even earlier, songs popular from around the turn of the century. Songs, Lillian, thought that would have been popular in the era when Seven Oaks was new. Although she discounted the idea of ghosts and haunting, a small shiver rippled across her shoulders and she decided that bath time was over. She dried off on a faded, thin bath towel (and made a mental note to buy new towels) and combed out her waist length hair, then braided it wet.

Shadows reached toward the high ceilings of the bedroom and she pulled her robe tighter as she moved through the dimness to the lamp beside the bed. The pretty lamp was as vintage as the rest of the furnishings. Roses bloomed on the white porcelain base but the light cast by the lamp banished most of the shadows. Out of habit, she pulled the drapes shut although no one who was not at tree top level could see into the house and climbed into bed. Although the mattress felt well used and more than a little lumpy, she wiggled into a comfortable spot and opened
The Virginian.

Although the book engaged her senses, she found herself glancing through the open bedroom door into the darker hallway every few minutes. The shadows there were deeper in the darkness. Lamp light filtered out into the corridor and cast odd shaped shadows. One that looked like an oval vase was the shadow of the lady’s chair at the dresser and although she could not quite identify the source, the outline that looked like a man in a broad brimmed hat must have a source inside the bedroom. Reading about Montana cowboys was enough to imagine such a hat, she thought, as she turned the final page and glanced out in the hall. The shadow was gone.

That disconcerted her enough that she tossed back the new comforter and stalked out into the hall, eyes rotating back and forth. No shadows resembled the one she had seen earlier and she felt no sense of dread, none of the angst a haunted house should summon. Mimicking the cocksure tone of the team in
Ghost Busters,
she called out,

“I ain’t afraid of no ghost.” Music from the theme song rocked her mind and she danced a little to the imaginary beat. “If anyone – or anything – is here, come out, come out wherever you are!”

No shapes separated from the shadows, no odd sounds echoed through the quiet house so she smiled, secure in her house and retired for the night. Once or twice, she stirred, not quite to full consciousness but floated out of sleep for a few moments. Through her sleep clogged senses, she heard the rhythmic creak of the old rocking chair in one corner and once she thought – and wasn’t scared at all – that a man was seated there, face hidden by a broad brimmed farmer’s hat. Awake, under normal circumstances, a stranger’s presence in her bedroom would have both frightened and angered Lillian but half asleep, she didn’t mind.

A line of morning sunshine filtered through the drapes and shone on her closed eyelids until she roused from a deep sleep. Her body begged for its’ morning caffeine fix and her stomach rumbled with emptiness. As she stretched, her foot exited from beneath the covers and bumped the rocker and Lillian remembered the man.

It was a dream, she thought as she padded into the bathroom with bare feet, nothing more. A few moments later, the distinct sound of a door closing below was enough for Lillian to reconsider. Maybe her mother was not wrong – perhaps there was a presence in the house. If so, though, she was not scared and she still felt very much at home. With effort, she summoned the image of the man in the rocking chair, a man with a broad-brimmed farmer’s hat that made her feel safe. If he was a ghost, he was not frightening at all but it was more likely that she imagined him, conjured him from her mother’s oft-told tales.

On cue, her cell phone rang from somewhere in the bedroom and she dashed, half dressed to locate it on the bureau.

“Hello.”

“Lillian, I didn’t think you were going to answer your phone.”

With a sigh, she settled into the rocking chair. “I was in the bathroom, getting dressed.”

“Are you still at the Best Western?”

“No, I spent the night at Seven Oaks.”

Silence for thirty seconds and then her mother’s voice charged frantic over the connection. “You spent the night there? Why did you do that? You are coming home in a week, aren’t you? Did you see anything? The Man?”

Her teeth clenched. “One question at a time, Mom. Yes, I spent the night here, because I wanted to stay here. I like this house. In fact, I like it enough that I may stay if I can find a job at one of the local schools and no, I haven’t seen The Man.”

Unless I saw him last night, she added silently. Telling her mother that she planned to stay was like throwing a lit match into a barrel of gunpowder and she steeled herself for the explosion.

“Lillian! You can’t stay there! You said you would just check it out, sell some of the antiques, and then list the house on the market. You cannot stay there and I don’t see why you would even say such a thing. Your principal was kind enough to hold your position open after you took personal leave before school got out – you have to come back.”

“Mom.” She said the word with care, with love to dull the coming blow. “I’m an adult. I am twenty-seven, not seven. You hate Seven Oaks – I don’t. I have not decided for sure yet but I plan to stay the summer. I have enough savings to live on easily. I may decide I have had enough and come back to KC or I may settle down in Neosho. Please don’t pressure me, Mom. I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”

That was true but it had been for years now. Lillian had been old enough to take a job at Bannister Mall when she was seventeen, working at a department store, but her mother nagged until she quit after just five days. Becoming a teacher – a steady occupation – had been Mom’s idea, not Lillian’s dream. She would rather have studied art or taken journalism classes.

“Well,” she said with a wounded tone, the voice that Lillian hated to hear. As intended, it caused instant guilt. “I guess you know what you’re doing but when strange things start happening, don’t whine to me. I tried to warn you, Lillian. You’ll pour all your money into that old rat trap, go broke, and get haunted but if you won’t listen. And, honey, Joe agrees with me.”

Joe would. Her mother’s husband, stepfather, only dad she had ever known, Joe Dorsey would never disagree with his dear Sylvia. He had loved Mom since the day he met the struggling single mother washing clothes in a cheap Laundromat, Lillian in a second hand stroller at her feet. Her mother said more but Lillian watched a pair of cardinal flitter through the top of one of the tall oak trees instead of listening, made a perfunctory good-bye when the call ended, and with a burst of feeling free, dashed down the stairs to the kitchen. Last night, she stocked the refrigerator and cupboards with basic supplies. As she spooned strawberry-banana yogurt into her mouth, she made a list of supplies to buy and things to do.

The first day to spend alone in Seven Oaks seemed bursting with possibility and pregnant with promise. If it was possible to fall in love with a house, Lillian had fallen hard and if it was an addiction, she had a problem but one she embraced with joy.

Exploring Neosho was almost as seductive as the house. Urban settings like mega malls, multi lane highways, and skyscrapers had not prepared her for a downtown Square that reminded her of Andy Taylor’s Mayberry. Although it was apparent that most of the major retailers had pulled up stakes to move out near the highway, the shops that ringed the square dominated by a plain, square courthouse were intriguing. Antique shops and close cousin flea markets made up the majority but an upscale gift and home shop carried everything from Yankee candles to expensive figurines. Most of the structures dated to the turn of the 20
th
century and many had names carved into the cornerstone for posterity. BERGER BLOCK proclaimed one stone and others had just the dates. Kansas City raised and a lifelong resident of the metro KC area, the small town square was surreal, as if she had stumbled onto a movie set unaware. Few people were visible but she saw an older man in faded, stained overalls step out of a pickup truck. While he entered the squat courthouse to transact business, a huge black dog lay down in the truck bed to wait.

A lone pharmacy remained and faded signs proclaimed names of businesses long closed or relocated, furniture stores, jewelers, and restaurants. One of the more interesting specialty shops was a vintage clothing store called Retro Rags with a display window that featured a ladies’ suit that looked like something Kate Winslett wore when she filmed
Titanic.

At the bank on one corner – the Bank of
Neosho with a logo that stated it dated back to 1888 – she opened a modest checking account. After the banker reviewed her application, he remarked,

“You’ve moved into the old Speakman house then. Are you Charles David’s granddaughter? You remind me of his daughter, Sylvia. I went to high school with her and your Aunt Monica too.”

Such small town connections were new and she wasn’t sure if she was amused or annoyed at the personal intrusion. If he was one of her mother’s former classmates, then he knew that her mother left town before high school graduation as an unwed mother in disgrace with her father. The old taint of scandal surrounding her conception rankled but Lillian swallowed her ire. Conjuring a smile, she nodded.

“Yes, I’m his granddaughter, Lillian Dorsey.”

“That’s a beautiful old home,” Stanley Sims, according to his plastic nameplate, reached into a drawer for a pad of starter checks. “Are you planning to stay?”

“That’s a possibility. I’m here for the summer at least.”

“Good, good. Well, I hope you decide to stay. Neosho is a nice place to live, great place to raise a family.”

The bank was the first of several stops and it was past noon when she returned to Seven Oaks, arms filled with purchases. Before she would take time to place the assortment of Yankee candles (she chose two scented with lilac and rose, two old-fashioned scents she thought suited the house’s personality), or replace old extension cords with power strips, or hang the inexpensive lace curtains she found at an outlet department store, Lillian warmed up the chili from the Family Market, a small store just a few blocks away.

As she savored the spicy taste of the chili on her tongue, she paused when she heard a few notes of music, happy notes with the lilt of ragtime.
I haven’t had a radio on
, Lillian mused, as she rose from the kitchen table to search for the music’s source. A radio playing without human intervention could mean an electrical short but after a survey through each of the downstairs rooms, she found no radios on. There was just one radio downstairs, a 1960’s vintage plastic model in the kitchen plugged into the nearby outlet. If there were any stereos – save an antique upright cabinet record player in the second parlor – she had not seen any. Maybe the music had wafted from a neighboring home, she thought, or a passing car radio and returned to finish the chili with appetite.

Details that needed attention niggled at her like hands pulling at a sleeve but Lillian pushed business aside. Tomorrow would be soon enough to think about her apartment in Overland Park and if she should send her Neosho address to friends that might want to get in touch. Like a child who wants to play house but can’t, she was bored after she placed six Yankee candles through the house so she mounted the steps to the attic again.

Feeling like a treasure hunter, she peeked into dim corners and opened moldering trunks. The Tidy Gals had not touched the attic and as she stirred, dust raised in clouds that sparkled in the sunlight that streamed through the curtain less windows. Because the glass was original, looking out from them gave the world below a wavering quality that reminded her of opening her eyes underwater.

Lillian hit pay dirt when she opened a trunk tucked far back into the rear eaves of the house and found books. Packed with care with now rotten blankets over the volumes, the books had survived the passing decades very well. On top, she found what must have been popular novels of the day,
Sister Carrie,
by Theodore Dreiser; Jack London is
The Iron Heel, and
several volumes by Charles W. Chesnutt, a name she didn’t recognize. The next layer of books dated to someone’s boyhood, popular titles like Twains’
Huckleberry Finn
and
Tom Sawyer
and James Fenimore Cooper’s
Last of the Mohicans.

When she opened one of the books, the name on the flyleaf was the same one written inside the cover of
The Virginian,
Howard Speakman. Book after book yielded his name, the older volumes with the name scrawled in a childish scribble. The older books listed an address in Illinois but the books on top had Seven Oaks’s address in a bold hand beneath Howard’s name.

“Who were you?” Lillian said unaware that she spoke aloud. “You must have lived here.”

Curiosity about this Howard fired her imagination. Could he be her mothers’ ghost, the supernatural visitor she did not believe existed? Maybe Sylvia had found these books and dreamed up an imaginary companion, a ghost. Lillian wanted more information and so she sifted through the trunk’s contents with a careful hand. Near the bottom, she discovered a sheaf of letters tied with a ribbon that might have been green.

The yellowed paper was so fragile that slivers pulled free when she opened the first one. Although the ink had faded, the words were still legible and so, cross-legged on the floor, jeans grimed with decades of dirt, she began to read.

Dear Cousin Howard,

I trust that this letter will find you well in the distant wilds of Missouri. How do you find it there? Are the people uncouth and uncivilized like I feared or are they much the same as folks anywhere? I am so curious to hear about this town of Neosho.

You wrote about the fertile land and I am not surprised for farming has ever been your interest but mine lies with the more mundane. I want to know if there are many shops and if the ladies wear faded sunbonnets or if they wear Paris millinery.

I want to know what you think, not just what you do.

Life here without you is dull. You were always more farmer than gentleman so I could be myself with you, not a Lady but in your absence I find that I must assume the role of lady for my suitors and for the other young people that Mother invites for social occasions.

She hosted a tea today and the young men talked of bicycles, of tennis, and about Teddy Roosevelt. While I would prefer to talk about rainy day shirtwaists or if I want a garden wedding or to be married from our church, I would rather hear you speak of strawberries and how they can be made both larger and sweeter than those fools pontificate about nothing.

That said, though, I must tell you that I have met a young man of interest to me. His name is John Hunter and although not a farmer like you (he is an attorney), he is most engaging and attractive.

Were we not cousins, you know well that my heart would belong to you, dearest Howard, but we share too many memories that date to me in pinafores and you in short pants. Too much hair pulling and the eating of green apples shared between us for romance to ever blossom. My poor belly still aches when I think of the day that we spent in your father’s orchard eating little green apples. Oh, how we suffered!

Let me know if you have been able to acquire the land that you desire, the rolling hills above the railroad track and just outside the town. And, please, please tell me more of the house you plan to build for your parents and for the happy day when you find a bride! What you have written sounds so fine that I hope that when you have built it, I can come on the train to visit!

Write to me, Howard, for you are ever in my thoughts and prayers. No brother and sister could be any devoted than we.

With love,

Margaret (Maggie)

Such personal words written in a fancy script by a young woman long dead moved Lillian’s heart
. Margaret wrote with such enthusiasm and affection that it was hard to believe that she had married, become a mother and grandmother, and died long before Lillian was born, probably even before Sylvia. More than Margaret’s appeal, however, the clues about Howard Speakman brought the owner of the books to life. He was a farmer, that was obvious, but he must have been educated as well to be such an avid reader. Was Seven Oaks the house he planned to build and if so, did he bring a bride into the lovely home? Did he raise children in the high ceiling rooms and did they ever play games in the attic on rainy days?