By the time we reach the top of the stairwell, Ruth has overtaken me. I’m uncomfortable after the confrontation, so I let her take the lead, mainly so I can compose myself before she realizes how on edge our chat has left me. I’m so caught up in my head, I’ve almost forgotten where we’re headed and why...until Ruth reaches the top and lets out a horrified squeak. The door is resting against the wall at the top of the stairwell, and behind it, chaos waits.
I stand at her side as we take in the attic space. What was once a pristine studio is now a tableau of utter madness. Overflowing cardboard boxes are stacked almost to the roof in places, surrounded by heaping baskets and piles of papers and candy wrappers and discarded items of clothing, dirty bowls and soda cans, and half-built shelves upon half-built shelves. It’s a massive space—big enough that when we were kids, we could roughhouse and run around with our friends and it never felt cramped or crowded. Now this room is full to bursting. There’s so much junk up here that Ruth and I can’t even step into the room. Random junk is stacked or dumped or dropped at least waist height on every single square inch of space. I know there are floorboards and rugs under there somewhere, but I can’t see even a sliver of either.
There’s a bewilderingly confused scent hanging heavily in the air. It’s stale food and mold and paint and dust, and as it registers, I cover my nose and mouth as if that will help. When I glance at Ruth, she’s white as a ghost, also holding her nose. The sight of the messed up attic is upsetting, but watching Ruth react is almost worse. I can’t remember the last time I saw her cry, but right now there’s a definite shine in her eyes.
I look back to the piles of trash, skimming my gaze over it all, trying to understand. At first glance, the only objects in the attic that don’t appear to be trash are the paintings. Some are colorful, and some are dark. Some feature color palettes which seem completely random—jarring clashes of color without rhyme or reason. Some are done in acrylics, others are watercolors; one is a mosaic of tiny cubes that I suspect are tile. Some are simply lying flat on the other junk, some mounted on the walls; one is on an easel. They are differing sizes and shapes—most are rectangular, but two are square.
My sister fumbles for my hand and squeezes it, hard. “Jesus Christ, Beth. What is this?”
“I don’t know,” I whisper back. It’s like we’re both afraid to raise our voices, in case we stir up more trouble in this once-innocent space. Maybe there’s even some logic in that. “There’s got to be mice up here. Maybe even rats. Or snakes. Or all three.”
“There might be some mice,” Ruth concedes, tentatively tipping a box over with the tip of her shoe. “But probably not snakes. I mean, they’d be hibernating at this time of year anyway. Right?”
“Yeah. Hibernating in this vast sea of undisturbed trash,” I shudder.
“We’ll soon know. If there are droppings...” We pause, stare at each other, and then faux-gag. My sister and I will merrily deal with even the most menacing spider, but we both hate snakes with a passion. “I can’t let you pack this up on your own. I’d never forgive myself.”
“I’m not really giving you a choice,” I mutter, wrapping my arms around my waist. “I have time, you don’t. It’s simple.”
“Are you really going to bring Noah here while you clean this up?”
“Chiara offered to watch him.”
“This will take days.” She puffs out a breath of air. “Hell, Beth. It might even take weeks.”
I shrug, and Ruth sighs.
“At least let me get a dumpster. No, we’ll need at least two, and we’ll put them on the lawn out in front. And I’ll get some laborers to help ferry the trash downstairs.”
“Let me sort through it first,” I sigh, gingerly kicking a box right side up with the very tip of my shoe. Beneath it I find an unopened packet of paintbrushes and a moldy coffee cup. “Who knows what family mementos are lost among this chaos?”
“It looks like Dad used this as a trash room,” Ruth says. “I have a feeling you won’t find anything of value up here. You know what Dad was like. He was so precise with the things he loved.”
“Maybe. I’ll start sorting through it, and if it is all just trash, I’ll call you for help.”
“What do you make of the artwork?” she asks.
“Maybe he was trying to perfect an idea he could see in his mind.”
“Is it a letter? Half of the letter B?”
I tilt my head to stare at the nearest canvas, then shake my head. “Oh, I see what you mean. I don’t think so—why would he paint the curves of a letter like that?”
“Well, what do you see?”
“I didn’t see anything at first—just abstract paintings. Now that you’ve pointed it out, though, I do see that they all have something in common.” I skim my gaze around the paintings, squinting at them. “They’re all so different, but every one does feature a similar shape. It’s like a little curve, then a big curve right beneath it, right?”
“I see why you’re not an art critic,” Ruth laughs softly. “I meant how do you interpret it?”
I stare around the room and think about it in the context of the house, then I wrap my arms around myself, feeling suddenly chilled.
“I honestly have no idea what—if anything—the paintings represent. But I suspect that Dad was deeply ashamed of what he’s left up here—that’s the only explanation for the lock. And if you think about what he left on display—how pristine the rest of the house always was, it kind of makes sense that he’d lock away this mess.” I hesitate, then suggest, “It’s like we’re seeing inside his head, if you know what I mean. He managed to hide the problems he was having for so long, until he just couldn’t hide them anymore. This attic is kind of the same.”
“Maybe this is where his savings went,” Ruth says suddenly. “I don’t know how expensive art supplies are, but surely this junk represents a lot of wasted money.”
“Maybe that’s part of the puzzle,” I sigh. “But Tim said there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars missing—pretty much all of Dad’s retirement savings. There’s not that much paint up here.”
Ruth shakes her head slowly.
“Sometimes I feel like I can’t bear to watch Dad fade away. It’s almost too much to bear, but at the same time there’s just no way to escape it, because the signs of his illness are everywhere now.” She suddenly, furiously kicks an empty soda bottle. It flies across the room and hits an exposed beam, then drops and disappears into the mess below. “Even in the damned attic.”
I disentangle my arms so that I can link my elbow through hers, and rest my head on her shoulder.
“I know, Ruthie. I know exactly what you mean.”
In this pain, I can connect with her. This is our family’s tragedy, and we each play a part in the suffering. By sharing it, we can survive it, because we subconsciously remind one another that one day soon, this will end, and we’ll still be standing side by side. Dad will be at peace, and Ruth and I—and Jeremy and Tim—will all still have each other. We are his legacy, and despite the tragedy of his current circumstances, that’s actually a pretty spectacular thing to have in common.
But just like Dad’s locked attic, there’s a whole other world inside my mind that I have to keep separate from Ruth at the moment. I can’t bear to talk about what’s going on in the quiet moments when I’m alone, or worse, when I’m alone with my son. I don’t have the language because I haven’t made sense of it myself.
If Ruth wants to support me through that world of pain, she’ll have to be patient with me...just as I’m trying to be.