An Uncollected Death Read online

of her from those days, and brought it to show you—.”

  Helene rummaged through her purse and pulled out a black-and-white photograph of a classic Beatnik girl in tight black capris, striped French boatneck sailor top, and black ballet flats. Her dark hair was pulled back into a pony tail. It was the eyes that Charlotte recognized, dark and daring, looking right into the camera. Olivia Bernadin had once been a strikingly beautiful woman, but the eyes said that her beauty was irrelevant to her.

  “I’m so glad you showed me this. I can just tell she was unconventional, as well as beautiful.”

  “Oh, that she was, much more than I was, certainly. It wasn’t long after that photo was taken that I got a postcard from France—Olivia was in love with a writer, living in Paris, and writing some plays. After that, I heard almost nothing from her, nor did our parents, for two or three years. One day out of the blue she shows up with an American army officer for a husband—and a baby boy. I don’t know for certain where she met Ronson, but I think at the time he was stationed at the American base in Orleans. Maybe they met at a nightclub. He was a rigid, traditional sort of man, the perfect soldier. We all wondered what in the world he saw in her. Maybe opposites attract? They moved here when he was given a new duty station, because it is halfway between Camp Atterbury and Fort Custer. Not quite sure what he did, but he was gone a lot, mostly to one base or the other, and especially during the Vietnam War.

  “Then, as you know, Olivia evidently stopped writing. She never did do anything more with her education and talent, just stayed home, a wife and mother and homemaker. In fact, she went from completely wild and independent to quite stodgy and even critical of my life as a pianist and the wife of an architect. I just assumed it was because we traveled so much and never had children. Paul always said that she was jealous and disappointed, but I didn’t want to believe it of her.

  “Ronson seemed to not care if she was happy or not. He did provide for her and Donovan, but he wasn’t engaged, if you know what I mean. I know she went on various antidepressants through the years. You could tell when she wasn’t—she’d fly off the handle at stupid stuff, slap Donovan if he didn’t hand out Christmas presents fast enough, snap at us all. Even through those fits Ronson seemed unconcerned, just ignored it and went through all the motions of doing what was needed—everything except a hug, it seems.

  “But after he died, about five years ago, I would hear from her a little more often. After a time, I could say that we had something of a restored relationship, if not close, but there we were, both widows, and her own child so absent that she might as well be as childless as I am. Perhaps old age is a bit of an equalizer. Or maybe she just felt freer to say and do what she wanted once Ronson was gone. At any rate, it seemed reasonable to move here, and closer to her, when the house at Lake Parkerton was just too much and too far from things I needed.

  “Sometimes she’d open up a bit and tell me more about her time in Paris, both before and after the war. She’d met Hemingway, Jean-Paul Sartre, James Baldwin, and so many others. And she’d talk about Kerouac and Ginsberg and Burroughs, she knew them when they were still in New York, and there were several others in that circle. She never did say which one she was in love with. Once she married Ronson, though, I don’t think she ever went to either New York or Paris again.”

  Eight

  Tuesday, September 17th

   

  Donovan Targman unfolded himself from the armchair and rose to shake hands with Charlotte as Helene introduced them. He was thin and looked much taller than he actually was, in part because his sports jacket was slightly too big in the body and slightly too short in the sleeves, in part because of the shock of auburn hair that rose up nearly two inches before it draped over to the sides. He had the bony, long-fingered hands of a pianist, but they bore the scars and calluses of manual labor. He looked sadder than Charlotte had expected him to be, given Helene’s description of his relationship with his mother. Or perhaps he was simply tired or unwell; his glasses emphasized his eyes with black rectangular frames over slightly sunken cheeks. His manner was pleasant, if somewhat quiet; there were awkward silences during which he looked preoccupied and nervous, rubbing his hands, and he glanced frequently at a simple bronze urn on the coffee table. Charlotte did, too, as she had never seen it before, and then it dawned on her that it held Olivia’s ashes.

  During one such awkward moment, Helene brought Charlotte up to speed.

  “I was saying to Donovan that I was so sorry we couldn’t find him before Olivia passed away, but….”

  “That’s okay, Aunt Helene, really,” said Donovan, as if he felt bad that she felt bad. “You know how hard it could be to do the normal family thing with my mother. And I did speak to her not too long ago.”

  Charlotte found herself wanting to know more about this unusual-looking man. “Did you have far to travel, Donovan?”

  He shook his head. “No, actually. Just down from South Bend.”

  “Ah, that’s not so bad, then. Have you lived there long?”

  “Just a few years, worked in Elkhart before that, Detroit before that, and, just, you know, where the work was.”

  “What kind of work do you do? Oh, I’m so sorry,” Charlotte stopped herself. “I don’t mean to interrogate!”

  He smiled a little and laughed. “It’s okay. At the moment, not much. Automotive type work, factory, repair shops. Economy’s shot, my health isn’t the best—not a lot of options out there. You could say I’m between gigs at the moment.”

  Donovan was leaning forward in the chair, arms on knees and hands loosely clasped, making him look as if he was all limbs, and a bit lean and hungry.

  Helene leaned forward and patted his hands. “Well, maybe that’s a good thing, because dealing with your mother’s house is going to be a job and a half.”

  He rolled his eyes and nodded in agreement. “I was thinking of having an auction or something, just getting it dealt with, but maybe I should take my time and just put a few things on eBay. Don’t know, though, if I want to stay in the area. Was thinking of going down to Mexico or Costa Rica. The winters here are getting to me and the dollar goes a little further there.” He was rubbing his hands again as if they hurt, but Charlotte wondered if it was simply a nervous tic, he did it so often.

  “Have you been to Mexico or Costa Rica before?” asked Helene.

  “Mexico once, long time ago. But I’ve been to Arizona in the winters a few times and I think maybe it would be good to relocate altogether.”

  “I sympathize about the economy,” said Charlotte. “I’ve taken a hit with my work, too, and have to rethink a few things.”

  “Yeah? What’s your line?”

  “I was a writer and editor for design publications. The two main magazines I wrote for have folded, and others are reorganizing, going online instead of in print.”

  He nodded his understanding. “It’s not like it was for our parents’ generation, is it? No working at one place until you retire, and a little nest egg to live on until you die.”

  “No—no, it’s not. So many of my neighbors have either lost their jobs, or they’re underwater on their mortgages, or have health problems with unimaginable medical bills, or even a combination of those things. A lot of credit card debt, too. Saw a Hummer being repossessed the other day.”

  He grinned, one side of his mouth turning up more than the other. “Yeah, I’ve seen that, too, some nice cars, big trucks and fancy SUVs, there they go, bye-bye.”

  Charlotte thought he was funny at first, and laughed, but then sensed there could be a tinge of his mother’s hard-done-by spiteful glee in others’ misfortunes. She glanced at Helene, who was smiling more politely than genuinely.

  Helene hesitated for a moment, then gestured toward Charlotte. “Charlotte is here because she is not only a close friend of mine, she is a professional writer. Your mother had just hired her to find and transcribe her notebooks, and then to edit them into something that could be published.”

&
nbsp; Donovan looked puzzled. “What notebooks?” There was complete silence while Helene and Charlotte took in the significance of his statement.

  “Did you even know your mother was once a writer?” asked Charlotte.

  “I knew that, yeah, but it wasn’t talked about like it was anything special. I thought maybe it was just a newspaper article or something like that.”

  “Oh, my,” Helene sighed. “She had published several stories, books of poetry, and a couple of plays. She was commissioned to write a screenplay before she married your father. Then she stopped. Just stopped.”

  Donovan looked as surprised as if someone had told him his mother was a secret agent. “I had no idea Mom had so much going for her. What happened? What made her marry somebody like my dad and leave all that behind?”

  Helene shrugged. “I don’t know. You have to realize that times were very different back then, women still had a difficult time professionally, even as writers, and many women were pressured to give up their careers if they married. Your father was a military man, very conservative and strict, so I wouldn’t have been surprised if he had something to do with it.”

  Donovan’s eyes went dark and sharp and his jaw tensed. “I hated him. He would never let my mother do anything kind for me, saying I had to learn to be a man, be tough. Even before I got into high school. When he