Red House Blues (5 page)

Such as that I would care what’s in these
boxes from a period of Sean’s life he didn’t care to share with me.
Even this infernal guitar was more a part of him than I was. Not a
thing here has anything to do with me.

Claire opened the long box and pulled out
the guitar case, setting it beside the couch, then turned her
attention to the other box.

How Sean had loved that guitar, thought
Suzan. He bought it from a guy stationed on Whidbey Island who had
bought it from a friend on the coast. Against all her arguments he
scraped together every bit of money they had set aside and bought
it. Supposedly it had once belonged to Kurt Cobain when he lived in
Aberdeen. Probably nothing but a lie to jack the price up, but Sean
believed it. There had been times Suzan wanted to smash the thing
into kindling. She wanted to smash it now, throw it back into the
FedEx box, take it to the back yard and burn it. She crouched
before it, where it rested in its case next to Sean’s brown
chair.

Claire sawed away at the strapping tape.
With a pop the last strip of tape parted and the box was open, a
neatly folded plaid shirt the first item on top.

“You were right. Just clothes.” said Claire
as she rummaged through the contents of the box.

“Claire, did you know it has a name?” said
Suzan, opening the case.

“What, the shirt?”

“No, the guitar. Sean called it Persephone.
I’ve no clue why but that’s what he called it. All underworldly, I
suppose. His quirky sense of drama.”

“That’s sort of odd. I would have thought
Eurydice was more appropriate for a singer to name his instrument.
Could have been worse, though. It could have been Old Betsy or
Rover.”

Suzan gazed down at the blue Gibson, her
pinched face reflected in its gleaming surface.

“Strange no one stole it or pawned it when
Sean died. It’s like the thing has a charmed life and only its
owners are cursed.”

“Suze, let’s leave this till some other
time. It’s clearly upsetting you,” said Claire. “None of this stuff
is going anywhere.”

“It’s been too long already,” said
Suzan.

She put the blue guitar back into its case
and snapped the case shut.

Claire pawed through the other box.

“Probably nothing you’ll want to keep in
here. Didn’t Sean know Grunge was dead?” She held up a torn pair of
jeans. “Though, whoever sent this stuff washed it first and folded
it. Nice touch. They must have liked him. That’s good to know,
don’t you think?”

Hearing Suzan reopen the guitar case, she
looked up. Suzan was feeling around in the elastic pocket in the
lid. Then she lifted the guitar out and felt under the padding in
the bottom.

“What are you doing?”

“Something is wrong here, Claire,” she
said.

Suzan moved to the box beside Claire and dug
through the shirts, underwear, and pants with her good hand,
scattering clothes over the floor.

“What are you looking for?” said Claire.

“Sean’s notebooks.”

The look on her face told Suzan that Claire
had made the connection.

“Shit,” said Claire. “He never went anywhere
without a little notebook tucked in his shirt pocket.”

“No, he didn’t. and he can’t have changed so
much that he quit scribbling. Once, I actually saw him stop in the
middle of the street to jot down a lyric. He filled a dozen of
those little notebooks a year.”

“Yeah, Tony always said he was going to get
himself killed someday doing that,” said Claire. “So where are
they?”

“They could have shipped them
separately.”

They both knew it was a hollow hope. Nothing
more was coming from Seattle.

“You could write to the return address and
see if the person who packed up the clothes has seen the
notebooks.”

“Sure. And while I’m at it I could ask them
if they know what my dead husband was doing for the last two years
that he didn’t want me to know about. Damn him, Claire! How could
he have done this to me? What did I ever do that I deserved this
and what am I supposed to do now, carry on as if none of it
happened? My whole life from here on is going to tainted by his
death.”

“I kind of doubt he planned it that way,
sweetie.”

“Of course not, but you see what I mean. If
only he had stayed here so that we could . . . I don’t know, fix
whatever was wrong. I feel as if I’m marked, that it’s just one
nightmare after another I can’t wake up from. I can hardly wait to
see what’s coming at me next.”

“It might not be so bad as all that if we
take some positive action. Here’s an idea. I get some time off and
we go to Seattle. Talk to Sean’s fellow band members, hit some of
the clubs. Doctor Phil would probably call it finding closure,”
said Claire. “Okay, don’t cringe, you know what I mean. Girls
taking control of their destiny.”

Suzan levered herself from the floor and
threw the green plaid shirt she had been holding back into the
box.

“I don’t want to think about it any more. It
won’t do any good.” She tore the return address label from the box.
“What I’m going to do is write to this address and thank them very
kindly for Sean’s junk. That’s all I’m going to do. As far as I’m
concerned Sean can rot in peace. He chose his road and he had no
room for me on it.”

She closed the box.

“That’s it, Claire. I am sick to death of
taking the blame for Sean’s death. You can tell that to Tony. Tell
him I’m putting it behind me and moving on. It might even be true
eventually.”

“You can tell me to mind my own business but
you need to find the notebooks, Suze. What if they explain
everything? You’d want to know, right?” said Claire. “There’s
another concern you probably haven’t considered, a purely practical
matter. What if someone else is performing songs that Sean wrote?
What if Sean’s being ripped off? Ripping you off too since you’re
his widow. He worked hard on those lyrics and they were good. You
said so yourself. He deserves credit. Even if the lyrics are just
stuck in a drawer someplace, you still need to find them and maybe
get them published or something.”

“You’re kidding, right? Even given the
remote chance some freakishly wealthy Punk band would want to buy
them from me, how can you seriously think I’d agree to profit from
Sean’s lyrics? You see me as Courtney Love all of a sudden? That’s
pretty low, Claire. I thought you knew me better than that.”

Claire strode out of the room toward the
kitchen.

“But.” Suzan shouted at her retreating back.
“I’m waiting for the but. But if the notes are valuable Sean should
get credit. But I owe it to myself. But, but, but. Damn it, what I
say is everyone else needs to butt out. So, can’t we just put these
boxes away, clean up the place and put on a pot of coffee?”

Suzan gave the box guitar case a kick and
headed for the kitchen.

“I’m already putting on the coffee,” said
Claire. “It’s something to do while you think.”

“And what is it I’m supposed to be thinking
about?”

“About when we’re leaving for Seattle.”

“We’re not going to Seattle,” said Suzan.
“Even if I agreed with you that there’s unfinished business in
Seattle, which I don’t, it would be something I’d be doing for
myself. I couldn’t drag you into it.”

“I can accept that, though you know you can
count on me if you need me. It wouldn’t be that hard for me to take
some time off. I doubt the Ford would make the trip but we could
borrow or rent a car . . .”

“Just drop it. It’s not going to happen,
Claire. I can think of at least two reasons I can’t run off like a
maniac to Seattle even if I wanted to, which I don’t,” she said.
“In case you have forgotten I just shishkababed my hand and have a
zillion stitches that won’t come out 'til next week. Second, I
still have two weeks until the end of the quarter and haven’t even
started the term paper for Metcalf. Which, as it turns out I’ll
have to type one-handed.”

“Okay. I see your point. But . . . here’s
the ‘but’ you wanted . . . if you don’t go down there, if you run
away from this, how are you going to live with yourself?”

“I’ll cope in the same way everyone else
does. I’ll take each day as it comes. And Claire, even if I wanted
to go down there on some fool’s errand I can’t afford it. The
funeral took every last dime I had saved for grad school.”

“
You could catch the Amtrak
out of Fairhaven. That’s cheap. Then when you get there you can
rent a bed in a hostel.”

“You can’t be serious. A hostel? Bunked in
with sweaty teenage backpackers? That alone would keep any sane
person in Bellingham.”

“You only need a bed, Suze, not a spa
experience. And from there you can e-mail me every day so I won’t
go out of my mind with worry while you are in the big nasty
city.”

“No, the answer is no. I realize you think
I’m making a mistake and I’ll regret it. You’ll have to deal with
that. I don’t need anything in Seattle. The Sean part of my life is
over and done. All I need now is that cup of coffee. Then maybe you
could help me clean up a little around here. This place is a
dump.”

“You noticed. That’s a good sign, anyway.
Got any cookies around here?”

“No. I had to throw them out a while
back.”

***

It took longer to put the apartment into an
approximation of civilized order than Claire would have liked. By
the time the last crusty plate had been scrubbed and put away,
Suzan was gray in the face. Claire sent her off to bed with two
more Vicodin, let herself out locking the door behind her.

The temperature had dropped like a rock as
the clouds dwindled East toward the mountains, and would continue
to plummet during the night. Slush on the path out to the street
was already icing over. The drive home was a white-knuckle thrill
ride.

She found the house empty.
Tony hadn’t come home from work. He was finding excuses to stay
late on campus
. How long before he decides
not to come home at all?
Might as well be
a widow without having been married, she thought. There would be no
abrupt and tidy ending for her and Tony. She almost envied Suzan.
At least Suzan’s long wait was over.

Claire turned the furnace thermostat up to
seventy-two and hung her coat on the hall tree. Such quiet. So
still. The house seemed abandoned to vandals and mold. She could
have been a ghost standing ephemeral, unseen in the cold space of
her own home.

Chapter 5

Seattle - 1901

Thomas Morgan helped Miss Tess Jones off the
train to the platform, tipped his hat, and wished her well. She
watched him walk away in a cloud of rank cigar smoke, glad to see
the last of him. He had been a hopeless bore, dogging her every
step, clear across country from Chicago but as her late father’s
old friend she was duty-bound to be polite. Her mother asked Mr.
Morgan to “keep an eye” on her daughter who was setting off for
Seattle to sing in a new theater there. Much to her mother’s great
disapproval and trepidation. East Coast people imagined Seattle
still a place of wild Indians and free-roaming bears.

Tess tried unsuccessfully to brush the
wrinkles from her skirt as she searched the crowd for Mr.
Broadrick. She had no doubt he would meet her train. He had been so
kind to her in Chicago at her conservatory recital, praising her
voice and stage presence to the skies. When he asked her to perform
at the opening of his lavish new theater in Seattle she quickly
agreed, thrilled to be starting her professional singing career.
Her mother had wanted Tess to marry respectable Wilfred Boyd who
owned Boyd’s Dry Goods store in the neighborhood. At twenty years
old, and never having been out of Chicago, Tess wanted more. She
wanted to be a famous vocalist, traveling the world. She wanted to
sing in Europe. Broadrick’s chain of music halls would be an
excellent start. Though, truth be told, Tess was also a bit afraid.
It had been a harrowing, seemingly endless, trip across country
over perilous mountain ranges and featureless prairies. The train
stopped at every junction that boasted more than one house and a
general store. The rail car was cold and hot in turn, and
continuously filthy. She had tried to sleep but the jolting, bone
bruising motion of the car wore her down and made her feel ill to
her stomach the whole length of the continent. More than once she
wondered if fame could be worth such discomfort. And there was the
added misery of having to make polite conversation with Mr. Morgan,
who smoked one nasty cigar after another, and had nothing pleasant
to say about any of the scenery they traveled through. By the time
the train finally pulled into Union Station in Seattle, Tess was
half inclined to turn around and go home if she thought she could
have survived the return trip.

And she would have, if she hadn’t been so in
love with Jamison Broadrick. From the first time she saw him there
at her recital she had adored him. Tess would have followed him to
the ends of the earth. And Seattle certainly felt like the ends of
the earth. Thank God her mother hadn’t known the real reason she
had decided to take the job. She would never have allowed Tess to
get on the westbound train. Tess was confident that once Jamison he
knew her better he would return her regard.

But where was he? The boardwalk outside the
stationed was crowded with travelers and baggage and boxes. Porters
were loading wagons pulled up at the side of the brick street. At
the edge of the crowd stood a squat, ugly man in dusty black suit
holding a sign. At first Tess didn’t notice him but as she searched
for the one person she thought to see, the letters on the sign
finally registered in her mind. Miss T. Jones. The ugly little man
was waiting for her. Reluctantly she approached him.

“Excuse me. I am Miss Tessa Jones. I assume
you are here to meet me.”