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“Don’t be. I’m having the time of my life.” He opens the door for me. “Goodnight, Charlotte. I hope you have the sweetest of dreams.”
17
CHARLOTTE
Isit at the card table in my living room and pull Lucky onto my lap with the new video camera Auggie dropped off a few hours ago in front of me. Unlike Lloyd Graham’s broken camera from the storage unit, a little red light turns on when I plug this one in. That’s a good sign. Also, the empty cassette compartment on this one actually opens and closes. Will this new camera actuallyplaythe box of cassettes on the table in front of me? That remains to be seen. I’ve finished working on my kitchen cabinets for today, though; and now, I’m eager to find out.
I sift through the box of cassettes, trying to decide which one to watch first. Besides the name of Auggie’s grandma, Althea, there are also three other women’s names sprinkled throughout the various cassettes: Mabel, Jeannie, and Clara. My gut tells me to start my journey with one of those names first—to get myself acclimated to Lloyd Graham’s pervy despicableness before diving into the depths and suffering through one of the cassettes I’m emotionally invested in.
At random, I pick a cassette marked “Jeannie” from about twenty years ago.
I press play on the video camera, and,voila, a pretty middle-aged woman with salt-and-peppered dark hair appears on thecamera’s tiny display screen. The woman is laughing gleefully while dancing around a living room with a cute little infant swaddled pink.
A piano comes into frame in the background—the piano from the storage unit!—which, thankfully, I was able to sell for four hundred bucks two days ago. Which means this happy woman is prancing aroundthisvery living room—the one I’m sitting in now. It was fully furnished back then with 1970s-style furniture and colors. But even if the décor wasn’t to my taste, there’s no denying the room is as neat as a pin. This was an ordered, bright and happy home that bore no resemblance to the pigsty it became later—the one that confronted me when I opened my new front door last week.
I look toward the empty corner of the living room where the piano sat in the video and feel a certain wistfulness wash over me. In fact, all of a sudden, I’m seeing this woman’s ghost all around me.
A younger woman comes into frame and begins dancing with the older woman and the baby. After a bit, the younger woman takes the baby and nuzzles her affectionally while the older one moves to the piano in the corner. Clearly, the younger woman is the baby’s mommy. That much is clear. Does that make the older woman her grandma? That’s the vibe I’m getting.
I turn up the volume and the tinny tinkling of piano music fills the air, like it’s being funneled through a straw. The sound is compressed, due to the small speaker on this camera; but still, I can tell the older woman, the grandma, is playing the instrument beautifully. So much so, I feel a pang of regret I sold the thing. Maybe I should have tracked down the younger woman or her baby to give the instrument to them? If only I’d seen this video in time.
A male voice from behind the camera says, “She reminds me so much of you, Clara. Mommy used to dance around likethis with you when you were a baby. Turn Jeannie’s face to the camera, love. I want to get her face clearly.”
The younger woman, Clara, tilts her baby’s face toward the camera, and the male voice coos, “Hi there, Jeannie-girl! Look at you, dancing with your mommy, just like Grandma danced with her!” Well, that answers the question of who’s who.
“Come over here, Mom,” the younger woman says to the woman at the piano. “You, too, Daddy. I want to get all of us in the shot.”
“How?” the man asks.
“Turn the camera around.”
“How do I do that? My arm’s not long enough.”
I laugh out loud, along with the younger woman on-screen.
“I’ll do it, Daddy,” the younger woman says gently. “Come here. Squeeze in tight. Mom, would you hold Jeannie for me?”
There’s a shift. A shuffle, and then I’m suddenly looking at three smiling adult faces and a wide-eyed baby—the new face belonging to the man behind the camara: an older gentleman with graying hair that must be the Peeping Tom himself, Lloyd Graham. Lloyd’s got a kindly face—and that’s disturbing to me, considering the peephole he created. In fact, he looks like the type of person who wouldn’t hurt a fly. The type who’d be a safe space. Man, can looks be deceiving.
The family portrait doesn’t last long. The younger woman points the camera at her parents and says, “Let me get you two with her. You’re never in any videos together because Daddy’s always recording. Show Jeannie how to waltz.”
The couple happily obliges, and the screen fills with the sounds of Clara’s happy giggling from behind the camera as she records her parents cheerily taking her baby girl for a dancing whirl around the small living room.
The scene ends. Suddenly, we’re in a church for Jeannie’s christening. The baby’s mother, Clara, is dressed up andstanding next to her husband or partner, a short, squat man with glasses, while a pastor or priest says a blessing over the child.
The scene shifts again. We’re in a restaurant. Clara and her partner are in the same clothes as the christening, so this must be the celebration afterward. At one point, Lloyd behind the camera calls to that same older woman from before, “Mabel, honey, say hello to Jeannie!”
“Hi, Jeannie! We love you!”
Okay, that means we’ve now got confirmation that all three names on the various cassettes, other than Althea, were members of Lloyd Graham’s immediate family. Mabel, Clara, and Jeannie were Lloyd’s wife, daughter, and granddaughter, respectively. Not women recorded without their knowledge through a peephole or otherwise. What a relief.
When the cassette ends, I pop in another one, this one dated from thirty-six years ago and not marked with a name at all. Lloyd’s wife, Mabel, looking much younger than in the prior video, appears on-screen. She’s dancing around in a field of flowers with a little girl who’s clearly a younger version of Clara, the adult daughter from the video with Baby Jeannie.
A male voice from behind the camera, Lloyd’s voice, chuckles as he watches his wife and daughter dancing around in the flowers. Clara picks a bloom and slides it into her mother’s dark hair. “You, too, Daddy!” she calls out. “We all have to wear flowers in our hair today. It’s Flower Day.” Lloyd laughs, and the scene ends.
The next scene features Clara in some sort of school play. The one after that is Mabel showing Clara how to make something in the kitchen. I watch the rest of the cassette at double speed, confirming it’s filled with nothing but scenes from a happy family life.
I take the cassette out and replace it with one marked “Jeannie” from almost fifteen years ago. It’s Jeannie’s fifthbirthday party, which I know because there’s a banner hanging in Lloyd and Mabel’s living room—myliving room—that reads, “Happy 5thBirthday, Jeannie!” Once again, the condo I’m now sitting in is neat as a pin. A bright and happy place. I watch on double speed until Lloyd Graham appears on-screen, at which point I return to normal speed and watch him waltzing around his living room—myliving room—with his wife, Mabel, in the midst of their granddaughter’s fifth birthday party.
