Backstage Stuff Read online

  “Passport?” Jane asked. Nick slapped his right cargo pocket and dug into his eggs.

  She and Charley had made Nick their priority, making sure they never let any stray bits of anger, any clouded moments of grief or regret or recrimination put him into shadow. Nick knew, of course, that this separation of his mother and father was different, weightier than the usual comings and goings, but his parents had lived separate lives and professed happiness at doing so for so long, this legal pronouncement of separation did not carry the jolt it might for a child of a two-parents-in-constant-residence-all-meeting-for-meals-at-the-table kind of family. Did Nick notice his mother’s sleeplessness? Did he hear her drift off in the middle of a sentence? Sometimes. But Nick was a teenager, a self-professed geek who could lose himself sifting through soil at a digging site as quickly and deeply as could his dad. And Nick had grown up watching Jane get glassy-eyed, sifting through a tin of buttons, rubbing her thumb over a red plastic disk until she produced the formaldehyde perfume of her beloved Bakelite. Each member of this odd triangle of a family had a method and a madness for getting lost in work, in play, in passion. And Jane and Charley, for all the things they had done wrong in their lives together had done one thing right. They had loved their son, put him first, and made sure he was on solid ground with each of them.

  “No-blame divorce,” Jane had told Tim, “that’s what it will be.”

  “No-fault,” said Tim, correcting her.

  “Oh, there’s plenty of fault,” said Jane, “but we’re trying for no blame.”

  * * *

  “Too many T-shirts, Mom, I’m dumping these,” said Nick, inspecting the main compartment of his pack as Jane pulled the car onto the expressway. “We’ve got laundry in town and we go once a week.”

  “I have this new phone, you know, like the one Tim bought you, so we can tech to tech to each other…”

  “ ‘Tech to tech to each other’?” Nick said, finally interested in what his mother was saying. He stopped tossing clothes overboard, lightening the load of his backpack, which he had filled with essentials and which his mother, he now saw, had stuffed with extras.

  “That’s what Tim called it. There’s a keyboard and I can type messages,” said Jane, shocked and appalled at how quickly they were nearing the airport.

  “Text, Mom. We can text easier,” said Nick. “You know that word, you texted on your old phone. You tried, anyway.”

  Jane realized just how vacant she had been as Tim had handed her the phone. It was such a new, shiny thing, she figured there must be a new terminology for it. Of course, she and Nick could text more easily. Tim was trying to think of everything.

  “Just kidding,” said Jane. “Yeah, I can text or tech—whatever you prefer.”

  “Sign up for Facebook and Twitter. Tim’ll show you how. Dad set up a site for the dig so you can follow what we’re doing with pictures of everything. It’s going to be cool and it’ll be like you’re there,” said Nick, tossing an extra tube of toothpaste on the floor of the car.

  “I’m not always at the computer, honey. I…”

  “It’s on the phone, Mom. That’s what makes it so smart. You are always online with it. If you go to Twitter, you can follow what we’re doing—and Dad’s posting videos all the time, so you can click on the links and see us.”

  “I promise,” said Jane. “I’ll sign up for everything you say. Maybe I’ll twitter back at you.”

  “Tweet,” said Nick, pawing through the Ziploc bag of snacks and throwing the banana yogurt–flavored bars on the floor.

  “Sweet,” said Jane.

  * * *

  Jane heard the dull buzz again and wondered if she was getting a migraine. She had never had a migraine before, but if she was ever going to get one, she thought it might be now. She had hugged Nick good-bye at the airport after filling out the necessary paperwork for him to travel alone, returned home, and almost immediately nodded off on the couch. The house was quiet and dark and cool, and now, what the hell was that noise? No wonder Jane couldn’t sleep at night or during the day. There was something quietly coming unstrung in her house or in her brain, and now she was alone and there would be no one to find her when her head exploded.

  “Jane, are you in there? Open up!”

  The dull buzz had morphed into a loud banging.

  Tim was standing on the porch, his phone glued to his ear, knocking and yelling.

  “Where have you been all night?” asked Tim, still holding his phone, waiting for whomever to answer on the other end.

  “Here,” said Jane, “and there,” waving her hand around the house, “and everywhere. Couldn’t sleep so I roamed and fixed Nicky breakfast and took him to the airport … damn it … can you hear it? Can you hear that noise or am I going all Kafka, turning into some kind of buzzing insect? I’m ready to tear my hair out.”

  Jane followed Tim, who didn’t answer but walked straight back to the kitchen. He scanned the kitchen counter, the small round table. He moved the morning newspapers aside from where Jane had scattered them.

  “Help me find this noise. It’s not the refrigerator and I don’t think it’s from the basement although I haven’t … Are you listening?”

  Tim had fixed his stare on the small metal typewriter table next to the comfy chair. He whirled on Jane, almost ready to speak, then flopped into the chair.

  “I thought you might be dead, for God’s sake.”

  “What are you talking about?” said Jane. “And who the hell are you calling?”

  Tim looked down at the table at Jane’s phone, a twin to the one he held in his hand.

  “You,” he said, pointing to the vibrating, humming, thrumming, buzzing phone. “I’ve been calling you all night.”

  Tim picked up Jane’s phone, slid his finger across the touch screen, and showed her where to find her missed calls. There were twelve—all from Tim Lowry.

  Tim ran his fingers through his hair. He looked as exhausted as Jane felt.

  “I couldn’t sleep and you said you were up every night, so I thought I’d just call and we could talk the night away—you know, put each other to sleep with old boring stories of our lives. You didn’t answer and I thought maybe you’d taken a pill like I told you to and then I…” Tim let his sentence drift, then started anew. “It was a terrible idea to drop your land line. You’re not ready to depend on a cell phone, I am going to pay for—”

  “Timmy, you know I never take pills for anything,” said Jane. “Nellie taught me two things: You’re supposed to be in pain most of the time, and if you did manage to stop the ache, how do you know when you’re better?”

  “Yeah, Doctor Nellie,” said Tim. “Anyway, you know how it is when you can’t sleep, imagination running wild, and I thought what if you did take a pill or two and couldn’t wake up and I knew Nick was leaving and then I got scared all around … you’ve been so … sedentary … all winter and when you mope around, you get—”

  “No fair. It’s not moping if you’re getting a divorce. Moping is what teenagers do when they can’t have the car.”

  “Anyway, I decided to drive up…”

  “Moping is what a toddler does when he loses a toy—”

  “And what you need is some—”

  “Moping is what Rita does when I don’t throw the ball for her,” said Jane. She stood up as tall as she could. “Moping is what—”

  “All right!” Tim stood up and looked directly at Jane. “You’re not moping!”

  “Damn right, I’m not moping,” said Jane. “I am at a normal stage in the grieving process.”

  “Yeah? Well, I gave you the whole winter to move through these stages and you’ve had long enough. Time’s up. I’ve got something that will bump you out of that stage, right into the acceptance-and-let’s-move-the-hell-on-with-life stage.”

  “It better be a hell of a house sale,” said Jane. “It’s going to take three floors of untouched treasures and a basement full of packed boxes from four generations. And an
attic full of vintage purses and jewelry and gorgeous old hard-sided suitcases filled with buttons.

  “It’s going to take scrapbooks and photo albums and autograph books. It’s going to take rugs, Timmy, and pottery and so many junk drawers full of string too short to keep, it’s going—”

  “I got you something better than that, sweetheart,” said Tim with a smile.

  “Better than a suitcase full of buttons?” Jane asked, aware of a strange sensation. She felt like something had cracked inside, but instead of something breaking, she felt something warm seeping in. Her whole body felt as if it might be thawing. She began to smile.

  “Better than Bakelite buttons?”

  “Yup,” said Tim, patting her cheek. “I got you a murder.”

  2

  HERMIONE: Yes, Detective, maybe you have found the murderer … Maybe You’re looking into the eyes of the murderer right now. You tell me, are my eyes those of a murderer?

  CRAVEN: I think I Know something about people, Miss Finn, and your eyes are … are …

  Jane dropped the script and burst out laughing. Real laughter—sunshine after a storm, dessert after dinner, bells ringing, chords striking … loud, genuine, joyous laughter.

  “Oh, Timmy, this is priceless,” said Jane, when she could speak. “I wouldn’t have guessed you could find a cornball play that would do this. I haven’t laughed like this in— You really do know me. Bring me drivel and you drive away the demons!”

  Tim held on to his script, still speaking in the stagy voice he had been using to read the part of Detective Craven. “I wanted you to like it,” he said, rising from the couch and crossing to the window, “but you know, it’s not exactly a comedy.”

  “Detective Craven is movie-star handsome, a figure clearly more cosmopolitan than his small town, a sophisticated fish in a backwater pond?” Jane read, stopping again to laugh and wipe her eyes.

  “Even the character descriptions are too much. Where did you find this relic? Library sale? Wait, is it from some old house in Kankakee? Have you really got a good sale?”

  Jane poured both of them more coffee from the thermal pot, added a quarter inch of half-and-half into Tim’s mug, and grabbed another cookie for herself. Her fourth. Tim never showed up empty-handed. In one hand he had been holding his phone, ready to teach Jane the difference between a ring tone and the vibrate mode, but in the other, he had two bags of Jane’s favorite chocolate cookies from Myers Bakery, a Kankakee institution just blocks from Jane’s childhood home, and a pound of Peet’s coffee, Major Dickason’s blend, which Jane did not think he could have found in Kankakee.

  “Honestly, this might be the worst play I’ve ever—”

  “Stop,” said Tim, “before you say something you can’t take back.”

  Jane froze. The script she held was a bound published script—it wasn’t a clutch of random pages in a binder. It had to be real, authentic, and vintage, just from the feel of the paper, the wear on the cover. Even the title, Murder in the Eekaknak Valley, sounded like some escapist melodrama from the thirties. But Jane heard defensiveness in Tim’s voice. She couldn’t be making fun of something he wrote, could she? He couldn’t have somehow written this terrible play and had it bound to look like … Jane looked at the cover. The author was listed as Frederick A. Kendell.

  “Tim, it’s not yours, is it? You didn’t write this, did you?”

  “Oh, now she asks, the insensitive brute,” said Tim, striking a dramatic pose at the window. “Am I Freddy Kendell, playwright, playboy, and playground equipment heir? Am I Kankakee’s answer to Noël Coward?”

  “Just…” Jane stood up to brush the cookie crumbs off her lap. “Just tell me where this fine dramatic work came from.”

  Tim, still in character, whirled on her in his most debonair Detective Craven manner. “Darling, you’ve been entombed in this house with your son the entire winter, acting the part of earth mother, as far as I can tell. You’ve packed school lunches, you checked homework, you’ve even learned how to dust.” Tim stopped to run his finger across the top of a carved Ivorex plaque dated 1908. “And rightly so. I, too, want my godson to emerge from this situation as well-adjusted as possible. But now it’s time to emerge from your cocoon and welcome springtime in Kankakee.”

  “Ah, yes,” said Jane, “springtime in Kankakee, when the river rises, the flowers bloom, and Nellie stops making chili at the EZ Way Inn.”

  “Flowers, shmowers—I got those year-round in my store. It’s the estate sales that blossom, honey.” Tim returned to his regular Tim voice—earnest, persuasive, and poetic. “I have two houses pending and one enormous fabulous place that I’ve been trying to sort through and stage off and on for two months. Heirs now want it ready by the end of the month. I knew I couldn’t get you to leave Nick this winter … I know you and Charley had work to do, but your last message said you couldn’t come down this week, even after Nick left, because you were working out a budget. What the hell is that?”

  “It’s a list of expenses—”

  “You know what I mean.… You and Charley aren’t having a moneybags, high-profile split. Figure out what you want and if it’s fair, and it will be, Charley will say yes. You made more money than he did for years when you were at Rooney, so it’s all evened out. Just tell him what you want.”

  After hearing Tim’s sensible advice and reading his partial listing of what was in the house he was in the midst of prepping for a gigantic sale … extensive collection of 19th-century children’s literature, antique needlework, two Martha Washington tables, each filled with engraved sewing notions—thimbles, sterling silver thimble holders, scissors, etc.—8 bedrooms filled to the brim with toys, dolls, vintage clothing, stage costumes, trunks filled with scripts and props, bric-a-brac from three generations, puppet theater, basement and attic untouched for decades … Jane allowed Tim to pack a bag for her. Tim loved to select her clothes and necessary items, and she loved the surprise of unzipping her old leather duffel and finding a cardigan she had forgotten she owned. Besides, Tim had a much better sense of what looked good on her, what she would need, and what would be appropriate for every occasion. Besides (part two), Jane had a phone call to make.

  “Here’s what I want. I need to stay on Charley’s health insurance policy as does Nick, of course, and I want Charley to continue to pay our life insurance. For now, I want him to continue to pay half the mortgage, but I’ll put the house up for sale as soon as there is the slightest break in the market. We’ll split any profit on the house fifty-fifty. I want Charley to pay for Nick’s travel back and forth to Honduras and anything else Nick needs if I can’t afford it,” said Jane. She nodded at Tim as he came down the steps with her bag and a small vintage vanity case in which, Jane knew from past experience, he had carefully arranged hairbrush and comb, shampoo, and Jane’s pitifully small collection of makeup brushes and products, all of which were samples and giveaways. Jane’s only indulgence was lipstick. She regularly splurged on full-sized tubes of an earthy red.

  “No. No list, no budget. I’ll pay for whatever I need and want. If I don’t earn it, I don’t spend it, and I certainly don’t want Charley paying for household stuff when it’s just me here in the household. Absolutely not. You have what I’m asking for. That’s it. No. My car is my car … bought and paid for and in my name. Okay, put in something about that, that Charley and I will divide education costs for Nick. Oh … and send me an itemized bill of the hour you’ll spend on faxing this over. No more than an hour, okay, or I’ll do it myself. Obviously. Yes, that’s right, I won’t.”

  “That sounded more like my in-charge girl,” said Tim. “Your lawyer quit, didn’t he?”

  “She,” said Jane. “Yes, she quit. She said I obviously don’t know how to take advice. I’ll save a bundle in legal fees.”

  “You really have enough to cover mortgage and utilities and…”

  “I have enough for this summer, depending on how much you’re paying me to help with the house.”

&
nbsp; “Plenty, plus I have one other teeny, tiny job that I need you for that also pays,” said Tim, filling a large canvas bag with Rita’s dry dog food and tennis balls.

  “I have to call Oh, but I can do it from the car,” said Jane, distracted. She couldn’t believe how much light Tim had brought into the house. She hadn’t admitted how much she had dreaded Nick leaving for the summer, her tenuous and unfamiliar supermom role eliminated for three months. She hadn’t even admitted to herself, let alone Tim, how tough it had been to drag herself to sales, fighting bigger and bigger crowds, longer and longer lines. Either everyone had decided to take on picking as their next career or everyone was just scraping for a bargain, but the previous years’ fun-loving attitude at St. Nick’s Rummage had turned dog-eat-dog, where last week two people stood on either side of a five-by-seven Afghan rug priced ridiculously low, each tugging on a side, claiming first dibs. Jane smiled down at the Bokhara now in her hallway. Okay, so she had won that battle, but did she really want to keep fighting tooth and nail over every textile, dish, and spoon? A month or so of working with Tim would plump up the bank account without involving her in any more near fistfights.

  “Tim, the murder you mentioned,” Jane said, setting the light timers, “that’s just that silly murder mystery play, right?”

  “Maybe,” said Tim. “Maybe it’s just a silly play. But there’s this,” he said, taking a piece of yellowed paper out of his pocket. “I did find this in my copy of the script.”

  People foolish enough to put on this play will die—

  And they will die fools.

  Listen to Old Bumby on this!

  “Who’s Bumby?” asked Jane, hoping Tim didn’t notice her slight shiver. She knew the note was probably a joke, a child’s prank, yet the spidery handwriting, the fading ink, the blots at the bottom of the page … something about it gave her the creeps.

  “Maybe Freddy Kendell’s father? I don’t think the old man approved of his son the actor/writer/bon vivant,” said Tim. “Maybe he thought he’d scare him straight…” Tim shook his head at Jane’s raised eyebrow. “Straight into the family business. Freddy was married, widowed early, had one son who did go straight into the family business, then sold it off, leaving his kids, who are now my clients, richer than God.”