Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117574 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 588(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 392(@300wpm)
“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 actually play the 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 the camera’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 around this very 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 like this 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.”