The Diary of Ellen Rimbauer: My Life at Rose Red (30 page)

documents (the diary of tina coleman, for

one) promote the idea that john was behind ellen’s

“illness,” and that switzerland was his attempt to

remove her from rose red once and for all. this

plan failed, regardless of its source. on 17 october

1920, a serious FIre claimed an entire wing of rose

red. the cause of that FIre has never been named. it

must be considered as a possibility that ellen set

that FIre herself in protest to john’s attempts to be

rid of her.

a study of the contractor’s notes and plans

show no work on the tower scheduled for nearly

twenty months. another theory behind the FIre and

all their relationship problems was that ellen

found out john was purposely delaying work on the

tower. regardless of disagreements, construction

on the tower began in earnest in early november

1920. to this day, three important questions remain

surrounding the period 1918–1920: (1) ellen’s mental

state; (2) the “activity” of the house (e.g., there

are reports of nearly a dozen disappearances in this

twenty-four-month period); and (3) john’s growing

fear of his wife; his wife’s maid, sukeena; and the

house that together the rimbauers continued to

build, and remodel, at an alarming pace.

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there are writings (though no substantial evidence)

that suggest it was john, not ellen, who had

lost touch with reality, and that during this time

he became badly addicted to laudanum, spending

days at a time in the opium dens south of the city

and away from the monstrosity of a house he had

come to fear.

—joyce reardon

19 june 1921—rose red

Sparks. I see robins outside my window. Twiddle-dee, twiddledum,

I smell smoke in the auditorium. Where have I been? I ask

myself, looking back at your pages. Is it possible I have not written

my thoughts down here, except once in a blue moon? I feel as if I

write here every day, but perhaps that is just my imaginings. I

have been overcome with fever quite regularly. In truth these

fevers always seem to follow my nights spent in the company of my

husband—a pleasant way to write down here what is not often

pleasant at all. For several years now he has included Sukeena in

our . . . participation. I’d rather not say. Twiddle-dee, twiddledum.

Sparks. The servants are out testing explosives for our

annual Fourth of July party. I watch from my window, singing

songs I recall from my childhood. How can childhood seem so far

away, a part of another person’s life, surely not mine? Sparks.

Boom, boom, boom. If once I held any innocence, it has burned

away like the gunpowder in these displays I watch. No innocence

in the bedroom. No innocence at the window (at least not the

night I helped Sukeena wrap George Meader in thorny vines). No

innocence inside my head, where I spend an increasing amount

of time trying to foresee my husband’s maneuvers to remove me

from this place. I’ve hidden from him—up in the attic, still working

on the stairs to the Tower—for days at a time. John wandering

the house calling out, perhaps secretly hoping Rose has claimed

me once and for all. Me, waiting. Waiting. Letting him wet his

whistle on this notion, letting his heart beat with excitement at

the possibility I’m gone forever. And then I waltz into the

Breakfast Room, as if not away from him for more than a few

minutes. I watch his face sag. I smile enormously and greet him

with bright, rested eyes and good humor. Later, he stews. Angry.

Alone. I like him that way: angry and alone. I want him to pay for

all the innocence he has taken from me. From us.

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I talk to Rose openly now. No longer afraid. I tell her I want

to see my daughter. I offer myself to her walls. But she asks

strange things of me. We have remodeled an upstairs hall to

become the Perspective Hallway: it diminishes in the same fashion

as train tracks, one end to the other. It’s in honor of the late

George Meader and his rail company, but this is a hall—and the

deeper you enter it, the lower the ceiling, the tighter the walls. It

is not unlike my life itself—the longer I have lived, the more con-

?ned I feel by my surroundings. (At thirty-four, I feel more like

eighty years of age.) I have hidden doors off the Perspective

Hallway, in the same manner my husband has hidden his viewing

rooms throughout this palace. Some go nowhere. Others lead to

mazes of hallways. (In one such secreted hallway I hung a great

nude on the other side of glass, just to annoy my husband should

he stray inside. Life imitates art, they say. Or is it the other way

around?)

To-day marks the grand opening of the Tower. (Our friends,

I hear tell, are referring to my endeavor as “the tower folly.” Be

that as it may, I’m quite proud of the addition.) It includes the

stairs that lead from the attic to a single room of generous proportions

offering a full, panoramic view of all of Rose’s wings,

our property and its forests, as well as the commanding sight of

the city and Elliott Bay beyond. It is the most beautiful, most

important addition to our grand home, and is certain to take its

place as one of my favorite spots. Now that it is open—complete

with the lovely Venetian glass window and the twenty-four-karat

gold-plated Italian cherub that adorns the peak of its roof—I feel

as if I have a retreat of sorts, a place to hide, a place to pray, a

place to seek my missing daughter.

John has not been in favor of the Tower. (He fears I put too

much faith in the Tower helping me to locate April, and I admit

here that he is quite right about that—my faith, that is—but our

beliefs differ so greatly that John also trusts that there is little or

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no hope of any such physical structure providing a conduit, a

medium that might reconnect us with our missing April, a fallacy

in him I strive to correct!)

My mind wanders so frequently now, led as I am in so many

directions. My “wonderings” come with more frequency and last

longer. I see the staff steer clear of me in the hallways, shaken by

my pale face, no doubt, or my unsteady walk. They have never lost

a child, as I have. They have never compromised their existence as

I have, obeying my husband and tolerating untold embarrassments

in order to remain in the house of my child’s disappearance.

(To leave John would certainly mean leaving Rose—and that

is even more unthinkable now than it was before.) Sukeena and I

have agreed to meet at midnight (providing John does not call for

our services) and, with the completion of the Tower, attempt to

summon sweet April. We will climb and listen for the winds that

have instructed me for these past several years, my hands bloodied

with my efforts as a carpenter. It seems to me I shall always be

putting ?nishing touches on my attic stairway, which ascends,

through three turns, to the Tower. It will never be perfect, will

always require attention—but so does a child, of course. This

Tower is my child, just as my child is this Tower. How could I

ever neglect it for even a single day? But alas, I am late for my

rendezvous with my maid.

Sukeena and I meet in the upstairs hallway, alongside the panel

that I had discovered previously, and let ourselves in. I carry a

battery-powered ?ashlight, heavy as it is, and lead the way along

the now familiar route, past the guests’ quarters, up and into the

attic. We stand at the base of my stairs, where the early work of my

carpentry is seen for what it is: crude and poorly done. Through

the door, the bottom stair is crooked, as are the next three, those

in lessening proportions. The wood is still raw and untreated, as I

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have much work yet to do and will not allow any of the workers to

touch a thing here. We climb slowly, to cries and complaints of

the poorly assembled stairs, and I shine the light on Sukeena as

she lags behind. Even she appears frightened. I take this as a good

sign and encourage her on. I certainly must look a bit ghostly

myself, drained of color as I am of late, standing there in my

sheer nightgown, the yellow light ?ashing around unsteadily as I

wave the ?ashlight unintentionally in my right hand, directing

her. Perhaps Sukeena is more afraid of me than this Tower. I

shouldn’t be surprised, everyone else seems to fear me and my

condition.

Now, as we approach the second turn, I ?nally hear what it is

that has frightened my dear friend, what she has heard that I did

not—the creaking of the stairs no longer sounds like lumber rubbing

on lumber, nails straining against nails—increasingly it

sounds like a voice, a familiar voice, a child’s voice. April! The

higher we climb, the more the creaking goes to wind, the wind to

voice: “Ma-ma . . .” it calls, and I hurry my ascent, climbing all

the faster. Sukeena, protective perhaps, is nearly running to keep

up with me. “Miss Ellen!” she calls, the condition of warning carried

in her tone. It is as if she fears that the door at the very top

of these stairs, a door that grows larger by the moment, will lead

not to the panoramic view I anticipate but to some dark, foreboding

place, where young April is kept hidden. And those who

enter, along with it.

Alas, as I burst through the upper door and out into the brisk

night chill (the Tower is not heated) I am bathed in colorful

light. For a moment, I feel as if I’m in the “light of God,” and I

wonder if indeed Rose Red has not claimed me and is in the

process of transporting me to wherever April lives. (I always think

of April as alive, but in another place; my motherly ways will allow

no other consideration.) Then I see Sukeena circling the Tower

in front of me. It is the moon and the stained-glass window that

have poured this light across me.

“April,” I call out, the wind rushing up the stairs below and

encompassing me: “Ma-ma, ma-ma.” I feel dizzy. My child is so

very close. I can smell her. Taste her sweet cheeks as I kiss away

her tears. I fall to my knees, trembling. I am pointing. Sukeena

misunderstands, believing I am pointing to her. Then, she slowly

looks around behind her, in the same direction as my ?nger is

aimed.

She, too, falls down onto her knees. She lowers her head and

kisses the boards we kneel upon—the ?oor to the Tower. The

Temple, I shall think of it from now on. I ordered that stainedglass

window of the rose more than a decade earlier, while on my

honeymoon with my husband, before the birth of Adam, before

the birth of April. And yet here, backlit by the full moon as it is,

the sound of my daughter’s voice swirling through the rotunda,

so clear, and crisp and young, this multicolored window does not

depict a rose at all. The tones and patterns have shifted in this

shimmering light, the moon playing tricks on the eyes—or so

some would say.

Instead of a rose in that window, it is a face that Sukeena and I

now see. As clear and as apparent as if I’d instructed the artisans

to fashion it in this regard so many years ago. But how could they

have? She wasn’t born yet. For you see, Dear Diary, the image in

that lovely window is not a rose at all, but a portrait. It is the face

of my child, April. Just as she looked the day she disappeared. As

the wind blows eerily in our ears, her lips move. And she talks

to me.

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16 november 1921

I return to your pages after too long an absence. John’s proclivity

toward moodiness has increased with each month. He seems tired

so much of the time. He returns from the city late, late at night

with odd smells on his clothing. (The closest I have come to experiencing

these same odors was while visiting Madame Lu.) His

husbandly appetites have subsided. He has not visited my chambers

in nearly three months. I cannot speak of my fears on these

pages, but I imagine the worst for poor John. While his fortune

continued to grow, his partnership dissolved, a good friend had

“an unfortunate accident” in his Health Room, his daughter disappeared

and his home began building itself without him. (A

protracted battle erupted between John and our contractor when

the contractor accused my husband of shopping out work to a

moonlighting crew, for a great deal of carpentry work is often

accomplished overnight within the walls of Rose Red. No explanation

has been given, but the contractor has been replaced by

one who asks no such questions.)

In the midst of his “depression” (what the doctors are calling

it) John has twice tried to force me to travel to Switzerland (once,

this summer, and again, in late September) to attend a health

clinic where he hoped I might ?nd peace from my af?iction with

fever. Reunited with my daughter as I am in my late-night visits

(wisely, I have told John nothing of this), I refuse to budge.

Nothing can take me from Rose Red now. (Sukeena believes this