Page 87 of We All Live Here
“Oh, Lila, I saw Jensen yesterday.”
Lila’s stomach drops at the mention of his name.
“He was in a very odd mood. He was actually rather curt, if I’m honest.”
“Perhaps you caught him at a bad moment,” says Penelope. “He’s normally such a friendly chap.”
“Yes. Perhaps a bad moment.” Bill ponders this. “Oh, he did say I should remind you about that tree at the front.”
Lila feels sick at the thought of Jensen being unfriendly. It’s like nature going wrong—waterfalls running upward or cats barking like dogs. She has done that to him. “I’m going to sort out some things in the attic,” she says, in an effort to change the subject.
“Oh, good idea. I’ll come and help you when we’ve had our tea.” He turns to Penelope. “You’re heading off soon anyway, aren’t you, darling?”
Darling.Something in Lila contracts at the casual use of the word and she is not sure whether it is grief for her absent mother or just evidence of love that she seems incapable of grasping for herself.
“I am. Cameron Williams has a grade-four exam tomorrow and we need to practice his sight reading. But I can help for a little while if you think I might be useful.”
“You’re terribly sweet. But, no, I think Cameron’s needs are probably greater just now.”
They are still murmuring companionably about minor scales and arpeggios as Lila pulls down the loft ladder and disappears into the attic.
•••
Lila sits onthe dusty floor and gazes around her in the too-still air, watching the dust motes settle in the dim light, and wonders if this was actually a really stupid idea. There is something about an attic, after all, that induces a kind of melancholy. Perhaps it is the sight of long-neglected items gathering dust unseen and unloved. Perhaps it is the evidence of a family life that has long passed. Lila looks around at themany boxes, Dan’s old CD collection that he had failed to take with him, the small coffee-table he had brought from his parents’ house when they had first moved in together, the bags of the girls’ outgrown clothes that remind her of when they were small, needy, and affectionate. There are other boxes here too: three labeled “Francesca” that Bill brought round after her mother died, things, he said, that he couldn’t bear to have in the house but neither of them could throw away.
Then she thinks of Gene’s extra boxes in the hall, and remembers she needs to do something to make her feel she has a grip on life. Dan’s stuff will be the easiest to deal with. She hauls over the boxes of CDs, starts going through them, and then, overwhelmed by the sight of music they had enjoyed when they were first together, starts carrying the boxes downstairs without looking at them. She will text him when she has finished to ask if he still wants them, and if not, she will take them all to the charity shop. And that will be two boxes gone already. And Marja will be welcome to the best of U2, and the Smiths album she always had to pretend to enjoy.
She has been up there for almost an hour when Bill arrives. His gray head appears through the loft hatch and he holds up a mug of tea that she takes gratefully. “Goodness,” he says, peering around. “What a lot of stuff.” As if he hasn’t filled her house with his own, she thinks, but she thanks him for the tea and carries on going through the Christmas decorations. In this box there are baubles Francesca bought, clumsily painted modeling clay decorations that Celie and Violet had made at school and she had never been able to discard. Lila has to steel herself not to think too hard about the kind of Christmas she will never have again. She thins them out, removing everything too broken to be useful, and drops a bin bag with the threadbare tinsel and smashed glass balls onto the landing, feeling a vague sense of satisfaction at another small space cleared.
Bill works alongside her in near silence, going through a box of oldphotographs. He says her name occasionally, drawing attention to a picture of her when she was small or the three of them on holiday in Scotland when Lila was a child, Francesca beaming—always beaming, morphing steadily from blonde to gray. He chuckles sometimes, pointing out some of Lila’s more challenging teenage hairstyles, sighs softly at a picture of him and Francesca on honeymoon in Italy. “I think I should frame this one,” he says occasionally.
They break for lunch and Bill helps her carry some of the boxes to the car. They can only fit two boxes and three bin bags in the boot, but she decides to carry on with the attic clearing. She cannot contemplate sitting in front of the laptop, with its implicit impossible decisions. The girls are at Dan’s tonight, which means that in theory she can do as she likes, but some part of her wishes they were with her, their conversation and myriad needs providing her with distraction from what is going on in her head.
They clear almost one whole side of the attic: battered Lloyd Loom chairs that she accepts she will never repaint, stained rugs that she had thought might come in useful one day, defunct electronic equipment, impulse purchases (mostly Dan’s), and boxes of plastic toys she had forgotten they even owned. She stares at the toys, wondering whether she should take them to the dump to avoid Dan having them, but the whole thing seems too complicated to contemplate right now, just another mess she is somehow enmeshed in, and she shoves them to the low part of the eaves, not wanting to deal with it. It is moving these boxes that reveals the doll’s house. She and Bill let out a lowaahas it is revealed, glancing at each other in a brief moment of nostalgia.
“I’d forgotten it was even up here,” says Lila, softly, hauling it forward so she can see it better.
Bill sits on a plastic Ikea footstool. “I did enjoy making that,” he says, leaning forward to run his hand over the dusty roof. “You were so delighted when we gave it to you.”
“I really was.” Lila opens the front, revealing the five rooms inside. There are the tiny stairs, onto which he had glued dark red stair carpet, the bathroom with its claw-footed bath. The furniture and fittings have been stacked into Tupperware boxes, which they open and exclaim at the perfection of everything, the exquisite details, the smallness of it all.
“Your mother sent off to Germany for lots of these things,” Bill said, examining a set of plates. “She was determined to get the best. She had such fun setting it all up for you.”
“I think it’s the best present I ever received.” They exchange a brief, awkward hug, and Lila rests her head on his shoulder, feeling grateful that one man in her orbit thinks she is an acceptable human.
Lila is just pulling on a light switch, exclaiming delightedly as it comes on, when Gene’s head appears through the hatch. “Hey, hey! Is this a party?”
He is beaming. He has been to an audition this morning and Lila suspects it has gone well. When it hasn’t he usually retreats to his room for a few hours to watch old videos of himself and prop up his battered ego.
“We’re just clearing some space,” Lila says. “And we found my doll’s house.”
“Well, isn’t that a beauty!” Gene exclaims.
“Bill made it,” Lila says. “For my eighth birthday.”
It takes her a moment to register the change in atmosphere. She is still exclaiming over the lights, testing each room to see which works, when she realizes Gene is gazing at the house with something less than admiration. “Good job,” he says, his face expressionless. And there is a short silence.
“Did Violet not want it in her room?” says Bill, who seems oblivious.
