“I won’t complain. I’ve canceled all my important appointments for the day, including tea with the governor.”
“Wise guy,” Dad muttered, clenching his teeth but smiling.
“I’ve already seen two raccoon families who won’t appreciate us bulldozing all this away, not to mention those crows,” Todd said as soon as we got out of the truck. “Hi, Kristin. Your dad putting you to work in construction already?”
“No. I’m just along for the ride.”
“The ride?”
I nodded at the wreckage. “I just want to see it all close up,” I told him, and he nodded and looked back at what was left of the mansion.
“Hard to believe it was once the place people describe, with a ballroom and all, magnificent chandeliers, elaborate woodwork, and stained-glass windows. People who live in houses like this usually don’t get burned out. The rich don’t die in fires.”
“Hogwash. Fire and water don’t discriminate,” Dad said. “Besides, that’s how the world will end if we don’t find a better way, and goodness knows, we’re working on it.”
“Thanks for the cheery news, Burt,” Todd said. “Where do you want to start?”
“We’ll begin on the east end here.” He stared at it all a moment and then nodded. “They don’t build foundations like this anymore. It’s the original one. Who’d build one like it now? It’s the instant gratification generation, including instant house slapped together with spit and polish.”
“Amen to that,” Todd said.
He’d say amen to anything Dad uttered, I thought. He didn’t have much of a mentor in his own father, who Dad said was as useless as a screw without a head. He spent most of his time nursing like a baby on a bottle of beer and was one of the fixtures at Hymie’s Bar and Grill just southeast of the city.
Dad looked at me with those expectant eyes. Now that I was here, he was anticipating my disappointment. There was nothing sensational to see, no clues to what had happened here either the first or the second time. There was no way to understand how elaborate the mansion had once been. I saw legs of tables and chairs and crumbled elaborate stonework, but remnants of beautiful pictures, statues, curtains, and chandeliers were burned up or so charred that they were unrecognizable. There was certainly not much for me to do.
“I’ll be fine,” I said. “I’ll take that walk to the lake.”
“You be careful,” he said.
“Watch out for ghosts,” Todd called.
“Mind yourself,” Dad told him, and Todd laughed.
They started toward the foundation, and I walked around it all first. I kept looking up, trying to imagine the way the mansion stood, how high it really was, and where exactly the attic loft in which the children spent most of three years would be. Would they have had any view? Maybe they could have seen the lake. And if they had, would that have made things easier or harder, looking at places they couldn’t go to and enjoy? The surrounding forest was thick, the trees so tall that from my position, I could barely make out some of the hills in the distance, and only the very tops of them at that. But it had been decades since they had been here. The trees weren’t so high back then.
I saw Dad and Todd begin measuring parts of the remaining structure, moving charred wood, and inspecting the walls of the foundation carefully, as if they anticipated something grotesque jumping out at them. Right now, it was difficult to imagine anything frightening about Foxworth. It looked like one of the structures devastated in bombings during the Second World War that we saw in films in history class. However, I knew there were even adults who believed that if they stood inside the wreckage at night, they could hear screams and cries, even laughter and whispers.
Do all houses keep the sounds of those who have lived in them, absorb them into their walls like a sponge would absorb water, and then, in the quiet of the night after they are deserted or left waiting for the wrecking ball, free the memories to wander about the rooms, resurrecting happy times and sad ones?
I started to make my way to the forest and then walked slowly through the cool woods. Most of the leaves were gone because of the recent wind and rain, but some had clung determinedly to their branches and flooded the forest with their bright yellow, brown, and amber colors. Where there were thick pine trees, there were shadows. I saw rabbits and thought I saw a fox, but I wasn’t sure, as it moved so quickly out of sight. About fifteen minutes later, I reached the edge of the lake my father had described. The ducks had already gone south. There were few birds, in fact, not even the crows I had seen. The lake was still, desolate, and silvery with clouds reflected in the surface and small circles here and there created by water flies.
Almost halfway around the lake, I saw what looked like a collapsed dock, most of it underwater. I drew closer, looking for signs of fish or turtles in the water as I walked, and then suddenly, I stopped and shuddered. The rocks and grass beneath the surface of the pond in one spot had somehow taken the shape of a small child. I knew it wasn’t real, but it looked so much like a skull and skeleton that I gasped and backed away.
A dead little boy very well could be in the lake.
Why not?
A lake would be a perfect place to hide a dead child, weigh him down, and let him sink to the darkness below. When I closed my eyes, I imagined him staring up from the bottom with his glassy eyes. I was suddenly much colder than I had been. I thought I heard an owl, but that was unusual in the daytime. What was it? I hugged myself, turned, and started back, moving more quickly now, actually trotting and then slowing down.
When I stepped out of the forest, I could see that Dad and Todd had moved around three-quarters of the property, making their evaluation. Dad looked up, saw me, and beckoned.
“Did you find the lake?” he called as I approached.
“Yes, but it looks so cold and deserted with so much overgrown around it. I’m sure it was once very pretty.” I didn’t want to mention the strange sound I had heard. Todd might start teasing me again.
“Probably good duck hunting in the spring,” Todd said. “But the land’s been posted for years.”
“We found something,” Dad said when I reached them. “From the looks of it, we think it was part of the original house. When the second Foxworth Hall was built, they didn’t do much about the original basement.”
“No one can read what happened to a house like your father can,” Todd said. “You know he’s been called in to evaluate some properties that burned down where there might have been a murder or somethin’.”
“All right. Enough of that,” my father said.
I didn’t know about those things, but right now, I wasn’t as curious about other houses or stories as I was about this one. “What did you find?” Had they found the remains of the child? Probably not. He wouldn’t sound so casual about that.
“Todd moved some boards that had to have been in the original basement and shifted a few things, and that appeared.” Dad nodded at a dark brown metal box about seven or eight inches long and six inches wide. “It’s locked,” he continued. “Might mean something valuable is inside it.”
I knelt beside it. There was a lot of rust.
“Look at what was scratched on the side,” Todd said, and I turned it to look.
“It’s a date: ‘11/60.’ That’s November 1960. More than fifty years ago,” I said.
Todd nodded as if we had found something that belonged in a museum alongside Egyptian ruins. “Maybe there are millions of dollars in jewels inside it,” he said. “Old jewels are worth more, aren’t they?” he asked my father.
“Maybe a hundred-year-old cameo or something,” my father offered.
I looked up at him. Was he serious? “Really?”
“Or thousands in cash. People used to keep money under the mattress, especially someone like old man Foxworth, who I heard was a real tightwad unless it was for the church,” Todd said, wishing that we would find money.
Dad smiled at him. “Well, he’s not wrong. People still hide mone
y in their homes. They’re afraid the banks will find a way to steal it. Anyway, Kristin, we waited for you to open it. Ready?”
“Sure.”
He pulled a hammer out of his tool belt and knelt beside me. Then he put the back of the hammer under the latch and began to force it up. It gave way quickly because it was so rusted through. He handed the box to me. “Yours to open,” he said.
Slowly, I lifted the top and gazed down into the box. There were no jewels, and there was no money. There was only what looked like a leather-bound diary. I plucked it out carefully and showed it to my father and Todd.
“Maybe it has a treasure map in it or something,” Todd said, disappointed.
I opened the cover carefully, as the pages looked yellowed and fragile. “No, it’s actually someone’s diary,” I said.
“Unless it’s Thomas Jefferson’s, there’s no money in it,” Todd declared mournfully.
Dad smiled and shrugged. “He’s probably right. We’re about finished here. The foundation is in pretty good shape. Whoever the buyer is could build on it if he wants. I’ll just make a few notes, and we’ll head out.”
I put the diary back into the box and went to our truck. After I got in, I put the box on the seat and then sat back and took out the diary again.
The very first page identified whose it was. It read: Christopher’s Diary.
I thought for a moment. Christopher? Who was Christopher? Was he one of Malcolm Foxworth’s servants or relatives?
I read the first page.
When I was twelve years old, I read “The Diary of Anne Frank.” First, I was interested in it because it was written as a diary, and when someone writes a diary, he or she usually doesn’t expect anyone else will read it. A diary is like a best friend, someone to whom you could confide your deepest, secret thoughts safely. I really didn’t have a best friend. This would be it. I thought that whatever was in a diary had to be the most honest words anyone could write about himself or herself and about the people he or she loved and the people he or she met.
How do you lie in a diary?
I looked up when Dad opened his door to get in. He unwrapped his tool belt and put it behind the seat.
“So, whatcha got?” he asked as he got behind the wheel.
“A diary written by someone named Christopher.”
“Really?” He started the engine.
“Do you know who it might be?”
He started to turn the truck to drive off. Todd beeped his horn and waved to us, and Dad waved back.
“Christopher, huh? Well, it could be one of those kids in the attic. I seem to remember now that the older boy was named Christopher.” He glanced at me. “It might be nothing but someone’s silly ramblings, Kristin. More garbage about the Foxworth family. I wouldn’t waste my time reading it.”
He looked at the diary. I put it away.
“What a place this was,” he continued as we pulled away from the property. “Land with a lake on it like that. I’d buy it myself if I had the money. Too bad there wasn’t any in that box, or at least valuable jewelry. We’d make an offer.”
I looked down at the diary again. Maybe it was worth more than Dad thought. There was no way to know without reading it, but I didn’t want to read it while we were driving. I never liked to read in a car or in the truck while it was moving. It made me dizzy. The writing was all in script, but it was a careful, neat script that, although it was slightly faded in places, was quite legible.
We had to stop at the quick market for some basic groceries on the way home, so for a while, I put the diary out of my mind and concentrated on what we needed. When we got home, I helped carry the bags of groceries in first. After everything was put away, I went back to the truck and got the metal box.
Dad was on the phone making a report to the president of the bank about the property. I went past him and up the stairs to my room. I took off my sweater and got comfortable before I fixed my pillows and sat on my bed with the box beside me. Then I opened it, took out the diary, and again, very carefully, began to turn the page after the line How do you lie in a diary?
Years later, I would remember “The Diary of Anne Frank” for another reason, a more dramatic reason. Just as Anne Frank was forced to hide in an attic, my sister Cathy, our twin brother and sister, Cory and Carrie, and I were forced to hide in our grandparents’ attic. We weren’t hiding from Nazis, of course, but the way our mother described her father and the way our grandmother Olivia treated us, we probably didn’t feel much less afraid than poor Anne Frank.
Anne Frank’s father had her diary published. He wanted the world to know her story, their story. Everyone sees the same story in a different way. My sister saw our story one way, and I saw it another. When I began writing this, I didn’t do it because I thought it was so important to tell it from my eyes and ears and memories. But now I do. So I’ll be more careful about what I continue to write.
I paused to catch my breath. Is this what I thought it was? Dad’s guess about who Christopher could be was right, but more important, this was not some silly rambling, as he had said. It was so well written. I was excited, and I wondered if I should call Lana or Suzette. All my friends would like to know about this. I reached for the phone and then stopped.
No. I thought there was something about a diary that demanded respect. Although Christopher wrote that he had come to the point where he wanted his view of everything to be known, I felt very special being the first one ever to read it. I should read it all first and not tell anyone about it until I was finished, I decided. It was almost a sacred trust. Maybe I was meant to be the one to discover it because I was a distant relative.
Others might not see it that way. They might just see it as something sensational and tell me to send it to a supermarket rag or something. I could just hear Missy Meyer saying, “You could get lots of money for it, maybe. I’ll ask my father to look into it for you. The local newspaper might pay you and serialize it. You’ll be famous and make a lot of money!”
No, thanks, I thought. This was too special. I returned to the diary, now determined to read as much as I could before I went to sleep.
There are times now when I think back to what our lives were like in the mid-’50s and remember it all the way you might remember a dream. Often, with dreams that are so vivid, you’re not sure how much of it was fantasy and how much of it was real. There is so much of it that I want to be true, but I’m not the kind of person who is comfortable fooling himself.
I’ve always had a lot to think about, so it’s not really so unusual for me to have decided to keep a diary. My thoughts are very important to me. This diary will be a way of keeping my history, our history, authentically. Nothing Momma has said, nothing Cathy has said, and nothing Daddy has said will be as easy to recall later on when I’m much older if I don’t remember to write down what was important as soon as I can.
I didn’t do this right away. I kept telling myself diaries were something girls kept, not boys. Then I read about some famous diaries in literature and, of course, ships’ captains’ logs, all written by men, and I thought, this is silly. There’s nothing absolutely feminine about writing your thoughts down, about capturing your feelings. I just wouldn’t do something silly like write “Dear Diary.” I’d just write everything as it happened and be as accurate as I could.
I bought this diary myself with my allowance, but I never told anyone I had, not even my father, who was interested in everything I did and thought. It seemed to me that the whole point of keeping a diary was keeping that secret until it was time to let others read it, if that was your purpose. And it would be no good if it was done cryptically so that people had to figure out what I meant here and what I meant there. That’s why I have to be as honest as I can about what I saw, what I heard, and especially what I felt.
Like Otto Frank, I think it’s important that more people know what really happened to us before and afterward. Cathy used to call us flowers in the attic, withering away. It helpe
d her to think of us that way. But we weren’t flowers. We were young, beautiful children who trusted that those who loved us would always protect us even better than we could protect ourselves.
Besides, I can’t ever think of us in any symbolic way. We weren’t the creations of someone’s imagination. We were real flesh-and-blood children. We were locked away, not only by selfish greed but by cruel hearts that used the Bible like a club to pound out the love we carried in our innocent hearts. How that happened and what became of us is too important to just let it disappear in the dying memories of those who lived it.
“Hey, you,” Dad said from my doorway. I was so involved in my reading I didn’t hear him come upstairs. He said he had been calling up to me.
“Oh, sorry, Dad. I didn’t hear you.”
“Aren’t you having any lunch today?”
“Oh, is it lunchtime?”
“You have a nice watch, Kristin, and four clocks in this room.”
“I don’t have four. Just the teddy bear clock and the Beatles alarm clock you found in an old house.”
“Okay. I’m going to make myself a ham and cheese sandwich. You want one?”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“You didn’t tell me if you wanted the chicken with pasta or the meat loaf tonight.”
“I’m a fan of your meat loaf, Dad. You know that.”
“Uh-huh. So what’s got you so involved? What is that, anyway?”
“You were right. It is the diary of the older brother, just as you thought it might be. He’s telling their story from his point of view.”
“Really? The whole story?”
“I think so. I just got into it.”
He stood there thinking. He narrowed his eyes and bit softly down on the left corner of his mouth as he always did when something troubled him. “I don’t know if you should read that, Kristin.”
“I won’t be corrupted by it if I haven’t already been corrupted by other things I’ve read.”
“Hmm,” he murmured. “There’s always a first time.”