My Dark Places - James Ellroy [163]
I jumped ahead. I had to. There were no pictures of my mother as an adolescent. I jumped ten years. I saw Geneva at 20. Her hair was darker. She possessed a severe and breathtakingly implacable beauty.
She wore her hair in a bun. She parted it down the middle. It was a frumpy hairdo. She wore it with imperious confidence. She knew how she should look. She knew how to control her image.
She looked proud. She looked determined. She looked like she was thinking about something.
I jumped ahead. I saw three color snaps from August ’47. My mother was two months pregnant. She was standing with Leoda. One of the pictures was cropped. Leoda probably x’d out my father. My mother was 32. Her features had settled in resolutely. She still wore that bun. Why get frivolous and mess with your trademark? She was smiling. She wasn’t abstracted. She wasn’t so fiercely proud.
I saw a black & white shot. My father wrote the date on the back. I recognized his printing. He wrote a little note below the date:
“Perfection. And who am I to gild the lily?”
It was August ’46. It was Beverly Hills. It couldn’t be any place else. A swimming pool. Some French-chateau cabanas. A scene from a movie-biz party. My mother was sitting in a deck chair. She was wearing a summer dress. She was smiling. She looked delightedly content.
She was with my father then. He was on Rita Hayworth’s payroll.
I saw some more black & white shots. They were mid-’40s vintage. I recognized the common exterior. It was 459 North Doheny My mother was wearing a light-colored dress and spectator pumps. The dress was perfect for her. It looked like high fashion on a low budget. She was poised. She wore a different hairstyle. Her bun was braided and pinned on the sides. I couldn’t read her face.
I came to the most stunning pictures. They were posed photographs blown up to portrait size.
My mother was sitting on and standing by a split-rail fence. She was 24 or 25 years old. She was wearing a plaid shirt, a windbreaker, jodhpurs and boots that laced up to the knees. She was wearing a wedding ring. The pictures looked like honeymoon shots sans husband. My father or the Spalding guy were somewhere off-camera. This was Geneva Hilliker. This was my mother with no male surname. She was too proud to pander. Men came to her. She pinned her hair up and made competence and rectitude beauty. She was there with a man. She was standing alone. She was defying all claims past and present.
Tunnel City and Tomah were three hours northwest. We drove there in Brian Klock’s van. Brian and Janet sat up front. Bill and I sat in the back.
We took back roads. Wisconsin shot by in five basic colors. The hills were green. The sky was blue. The barns and silos were red, white and silver.
The landscape was nice. I ignored it. I balanced a stack of pictures on my lap. I looked at them. I held them out at different angles. I held them up to odd shafts of light. Bill asked me if I was okay. I said, I don’t know.
We picked up Jeannie. I recognized her. She had my beady brown eyes. We got the beads from Jessie Hilliker and the brown from our respective fathers.
Jeannie found this Ellroy thing disruptive. Her father died three weeks ago. Bill and I were drama that she did not need. She was distant. She wasn’t rude or inhospitable. Bill asked her about the murder. She retold Leoda’s story verbatim. Her parents never talked about the murder. Leoda stonewalled it. She lied about her sister’s death and revised her sister’s life accordingly.
We drove through boondock Wisconsin. I talked to Jeannie and looked at the pictures. Jeannie thawed out a bit. She got into the road trip spirit. I held some pictures up to my window and did some juxtapositions.
We passed an army base. I saw a sign for Tunnel City. Janet said the graveyard was just off the highway. She drove out here once before. She knew the key Hilliker sites.
We stopped at the graveyard. It was 30 yards square and unkempt. I looked at the headstones. I matched