A
CHARMED LIFE
By
Nicole M. Bouchard
The discovery following his death,
though an unsettling one, did not announce itself in the conspicuous, crude
fashion that such discoveries typically do. It came more subtly, in fragments:
items left behind, remembrances triggering revelations, and most particularly,
in the form of all the things that were not
there. Indeed, it was what was missing, far more than what was found, that provided
the framework of his life’s story. All of the absent moments, hollow spaces of
a lifetime that ought to be filled—the words unsaid, roles never assumed, a
vacant chair across a table, the photographs never taken and placed upon the
mantle. Paired against what little remained, one theme, soft as a whisper at
first, started to echo in all of the empty places. Surreptitious in the days
immediately after his passing, the graceful figure with long, lean lines like
the sketch of a 1920s Vanity Fair
cover was no more than a haunting. Gliding through, her slender fingers brushed
along the surfaces in abandoned rooms so lightly, that not even the particles
of dust, newly gathered without his care, were disturbed.
She might have gone unnoticed all
together in the apartment, what with the relatives talking more regularly with
the passage of days—the men discussing furniture, a few legal matters and
disposals, along with the occasional baseball score or gadget reference. The
veil of solemnity disintegrating faster than the few antiquities left to his
name…
She probably would have disappeared
as the vapor she was if it hadn’t been for one mis-step. It was when she wanted,
most impudently, to announce her presence in her grandiose way that for one
second, she almost made herself real upon entering the room. And it was that, that
prideful sweep of a porcelain arm dripping in furs, which registered a flicker
in Allison’s mind. At the corner of her eye, at the crossroads of grief,
belief, imagination and want, Allison thought she saw a tiny glimpse of someone
she recognized, someone who did not belong—and it troubled her immensely.
At the news of her uncle’s death,
Allison had been the only one to cry, cry with the kind of sobs that shook her
body. The world had been deprived of the kindest, most unfettered soul she’d
ever known. And no one else seeming to give a damn had the harsh consequence of
making his life seem as though it mattered less.
She was suddenly twelve years old,
standing in the rain to pound on her uncle’s door at ten o’clock on a school
night. Her father had left the year before and this was the second time her
mother had forgotten to pick her up at school and hadn’t come home for over
twenty-four hours. No call, just a note in fuchsia lipstick drawn directly onto
the kitchen table: Going out xo. The
door opened and arms extended in the wake of the porch light. Nothing had to be
explained as the rain blended with her tears. A comforting smile and a warmth
from eyes that looked just like hers signaled that he understood everything.
Frank never disparaged his younger sister, but instead took up the mantle of
guiding his niece through her most uncertain years.
Nights she stayed with him, he gave
her his bedroom and slept on his small sofa for which he was much too tall. The
image of his legs hanging over its right arm with his large, socked feet in
mid-air, reminded her of the king in a storybook who wanted more than anything
to be of formidable stature. He tried all manner of tricks, notions, and
potions, but his height always remained the same; his daughter, to put an end
to his discontent, had builders come in the night to make all the furniture in
the palace smaller. The king awoke to find his legs hanging over the bed, and
to his joy, viewed himself as substantial in appearance as the princess knew
him to be at heart. The thought of the book, one he’d read to her in a series
when she was small, always made her smile. In the mornings, following tea and
toast, he’d either take the city bus to see her off to school or, if she begged
to miss a day, he’d take her to work with him—and to Allison, that became an
experience above all others.
As Head Tour Guide, Franklin, as they
called him at the mansion, had access to anything and everything. There was a
world of shimmering glamour and charm preserved, suspended in time as a portal
she could escape into. The structure reached up its stone walls to demand the
acknowledgment of the sky above it as though it had always existed, and was
deserving of the status of conduit between heaven and earth. In the French
Baroque, Neo-Classical style, it was meant to mirror elements of Château de
Saint-Cloud, a palace in France, expanded by Marie Antoinette in the late 1700s.
It was there that Allison was first
introduced to the striking figure that would serve as idol, mentor, and elusive
friend for the next seven years of her life. Back then, it never seemed strange
to either of them that this central woman they shared was an heiress neither
had met, someone whose personage was limited to the pages of history. With her
jet black, chin-length bob and red lips, Elaina Flannigan was as alive to
Allison as a young aunt who’d just left the room—or who’d gone out for the
evening—might have been. The lack of her physical presence made her all the
more covetable. It became possible to project into her personality whatever
traits Allison wished, choosing to get swept into the embrace of a woman who
had the secrets of life and could tell a blossoming girl how to live.
Frank gave her select articles and
book excerpts that he’d uncovered in his research. At the mansion, his stories
were more detailed than the other guides and the extent of his knowledge superior—the
lines poured out the door just to get him. Most of all, though, it was the
delivery that was the principal distinction. He spoke with fresh conviction
each time, each tour. Even the most disinterested tourist, from teenagers with
headphones to weekenders snapping only photos of themselves, stood up
straighter to listen and put away their distractions. They would leave lit with
a flame of wonderment about Elaina and the work she did. Frank was passionate
about his vocation and took it upon himself to be the consummate guardian of
all concerning the Flannigan heiress.
Allison took to imagining Elaina as
her confidante, someone accessible, yet also a figure to look up to. At home,
Allison and her mother had become passing shadows, rarely overlapping spare for
unwanted intrusions that served as a reminder of their wintry existence
together—a door to memory left open too long to let in the chill. Perhaps it
was because she was too much her father’s daughter in little ways that chipped
away at her mother’s façade of forgetting. Thus, she let go of one hand to take
hold of another. Allison played at the idea of being encouraged to sit down
close by on the chaise lounge while Elaina sat at her vanity in a silk gown to
apply her rouge, readying herself for the kind of 20s soiree that Allison could
only dream of. Elaina would smile in the reflection and hand the thirteen-year-old
her red lipstick to try. She wouldn’t treat her like a child but would talk to
her like a friend and educate her with the views that a cultured woman of the
world would possess.
She’d
speak of her work on reform and fighting for women’s rights domestically and
abroad—her role as a women’s advocate in the 30s when females able to attain
employment during the Depression were perceived as having robbed their male
counterparts of available labor and wages, causing them to lose their positions
without warning or fair compensation. She would tell her about leadership and
taking one’s place. She would speak of friendships, and how to be beloved in
the right circles. She’d tell her about love and give advice on what to look
for in a man between sips of champagne. Elaina would issue anecdotes and
cautions so that Allison would grow to be the kind of lady she ought to want to
be.
By the pool of the grotto, they’d
laugh over boys and growing pains as Allison worked hard to try to emulate the
inner calm and outward grace that Elaina found effortless. She would dream of
her hair being brushed by steady, elegant hands as they conversed about life
and she wouldn’t be ignored or forgotten but made to feel as though she was
worth something.
At nineteen, in her sophomore year of
college, Allison was running down the steps on the last day before winter break.
She was an Art History major by this time and working on a paper concerning one
of the mansion’s many paintings. There was a youthful painting of a queen that
would later turn a city of celebration into a graveyard overnight. It said
nothing of what she would become, the torment she’d undergo in an abusive
marriage, or the unspeakable things she herself would do. The image was
innocent and hopeful. The painting hung as a fascinating contradiction, making
it ideal subject matter to explore in diverse layers. Allison had acquired some
of her uncle’s passion for the past.
Allison
was also minoring in Women’s Studies, the work of Elaina as inspiration. Her
auburn hair was cut into a chic bob, her lips always either bare or some shade
of red. Her mind was on getting home, the hour drive she’d speed through to
spend the holiday with Frank, when she collided with one of her guy friends on
the stairway. He shoved a wrapped package into her arms, his enthusiasm
underestimating momentum, nearly knocking her backwards.
“Hey! Merry Christmas!”
Quick, graceful steps avoided a loss
of balance. Her expression was one that he recognized too well. The look one
might feel compelled to give an affable waiter following a lousy meal. Try as
he might, of all the guys that rallied for her attention, it seemed that he was
always serving up disappointment. His was a world of numbers and electronic
algorithms. To him, art was discretionary, travel a preoccupation for the
discontented, wealth (and its accompanying finery, typical decorum) a
consequence of a character flaw. But she, despite possessing interests in these
less than desirable areas, was an anomaly his awkward heart wanted to
incorporate into a working equation.
“Oh. Hi. Merry Christmas, Allen. For
me?” she said holding up the package with a polite smile. “That’s really sweet
of you—you didn’t have to get me anything. I’ll look forward to opening it when
I get home.”
His silence, the unblinking stare,
his solid stance hindering her way down the stairs, meant she was to open it
then and there. The familiar expression crossed her face, but she adjusted the
things in her arms to free both hands and unwrap what she could feel was a
book.
“Have you read this? I know you love
all that history stuff at the Flannigan mansion, so I thought you’d want the
new, authoritative biography. Went downtown to a signing so you’d have an
autographed copy. It’s pretty bizarre. Kind of a nutcase. People were talking
about it in the store... Weird little rich bitch, right?”
The cover showed Elaina leaning
against a column at a soiree, appearing scarcely able to stand, the weight of
alcohol or unseen despair heavy on the tiny body. Eyes wild, dark circles, a
glare daring judgment from the crowd with a champagne glass dangling in her
hand.
Allen was always making a study of
Allison’s face with geometric precision; each shape, angle, or shift with a
different meaning. This was a look of hers he hadn’t seen. Was it shock?
Something that would settle down into being impressed with his ability to hand
over truth about her idol? It would be fascinating, right? Heroic of him, even.
Yes; yes, he assured himself he’d finally done it.
Allison didn’t answer, but broke her gaze, turning the book over in her
hands and read the back cover that toted the biography as the first tell-all
about the “real” Elaina Flannigan—a violent-tempered diva who struggled with
alcoholism and divorced eight times before dying alone at sixty-five. She was
undiscovered for two days because the servants were told never to disturb her
and they feared incurring a torrent of her verbal abuse. Allison’s hands shook.
She kept flipping the book over as though she expected to read something
different.
“It’s…it’s just a book-length gossip
column. I would’ve heard about these things before. Most of this probably isn’t
even true—just some perspectives of people with an axe to grind trying to get
their fifteen minutes of fame.”
“I don’t think so. I read the review
in The New York Times. Did you know
she threw stuff at her servants? Really, it’s true. She tried to hit a guy in
the head with a Chinese vase; I bet they don’t mention that on the tour.” Pride swelled. He opened his mouth to give more
helpful facts, but without glancing up, she murmured, “Thanks, Allen,” in a
tone that couldn’t be misinterpreted.
Though the exact reasons wouldn’t
appear on any chart or graph he could plot, it was known to be beyond recovery.
Accepting defeat, it would be the last time he’d try. She brushed past him as
the shadow she could become when she wanted to disappear, nearly brushing right
through him.
In her dorm with the door shut, she
fought back tears as she read. She dug deeper and pulled up old articles, ones
that her uncle had never mentioned. It was crazy, she thought, to be
heartbroken that someone she’d built in her imagination didn’t live up to the
image. She couldn’t make sense of why she was angry or why it seemed she’d been
deceived. A foundation had been ripped from underneath her. She felt a good
part of who she was had been molded on a figure that didn’t exist. Her own
identity, still vulnerable in its youth, felt at attack. The image of that
vulnerable twelve-year-old not knowing where her mother had gone, burned in her
mind. Would reality take Elaina from her too? The wanting-to-believe was
replaced with a defiant need to tear down all the facades. Elaina was human,
yes, and the good was true, but Allison couldn’t reconcile how the bad could
also be true. She needed more, better from her, selfish though it may have been.
She gathered up the articles, the
book and stuffed them into her backpack. She would go to her uncle and he would
have to address this. Did he know? Had he been deceived? Could he find some way
to explain it away and make it alright? She drove to her uncle’s home in a
fever, looking for answers about what could have just been a tempting illusion
all those years. Finding the place empty as he’d left early for his shift, she
left her car there not wanting the hassle of parking at the mansion and took a
cab.
Flushed and furious, she burst in and
found him in the private office. He got up and suddenly looked much older than
she’d noticed before. Older than perhaps she’d allowed herself to notice before. An unseen weight on his lean
frame. Standing in front of her, leaning on the desk with both hands, he gave
her the same smile he’d given that rainy night she’d shown up at his door.
Without words, he looked inside of her mind and understood. They both knew it
went back to then, a different kind of loss, but a loss just the same that was
written all over her features. Confused about whether he did or didn’t know,
she wondered at that moment if maybe he needed to believe. She didn’t want to
shove his face into the facts and upset the only person who’d ever loved her.
She caught a ride to leave the
mansion early that day and as she left, it started to snow. Allison could
almost imagine the shape of Elaina standing in the drive as she pulled away,
looking through the back window. The face was shaded with a deep sadness and
Allison continued to watch it shrink in the distance, not turning around toward
the front until the mansion was out of sight. Allison thought she’d have to
make excuses about not visiting the mansion any longer, about finishing her
paper absent from the company of the painting, but they were never necessary.
Her uncle ceased any mention of Elaina during their discussions and didn’t once
ask why she didn’t go with him to work like she used to. They continued their
close relationship, neither mentioning the abandoned world between them or the
figure that inhabited it.
As Frank aged, Allison watched his
stature diminish, his shoulders stooping as his back curved slightly, and she
worried about those secret weights he carried. She wanted him to retire but knew
through talk passed along from decades of staff that he’d never missed a day of
work since he started at the mansion in the mid to late 60s, not too many years
after it was opened to the public. Cane or no cane, he was going up and down
the endless staircases because he chose to. Spare for nights, weekends and
holidays, that was where he lived for well over forty years. She often wondered
whether he regarded that as his real home, never moving out of the apartment
into a house of his own, hardly having more than the most basic furnishings to
suggest the idea of living there. The apartment started to remind her of a set
in a play more than a place that he could have felt was real to him.
When a neighbor of his called to tell
her that he’d left the stove on for the second time and someone had to break
the lock to get in, she told him that he had to retire. He could move in with
her. It wasn’t the only instance where he was starting to forget important
things. He lovingly but firmly refused, consenting only to cut his hours. He
asked if she would come with her children to see him do a tour at the mansion;
the subject hadn’t been broached for nearly twenty years and she knew he’d
never ask if it wasn’t important.
She felt like an intruder, an
ungrateful infiltrator in her old stomping grounds. Everything felt different,
except Frank. His tour was exactly the same—the same clarity, passion, and
almost youthful zeal, that gave him a lightness that she hadn’t seen in a very
long time. To Allison’s amazement, her daughter had turned off her iPod without
being told to. He still had it.
The day before he died, he’d been giving holiday
tours for Christmas.
Allison was alone with her thoughts.
Her mother hadn’t returned for the services. She was out West—where she had
been since the day Allison went to college—away from rain, cold, death, memory,
and the kind of love that takes hold deeply enough to be painful. Though her
immediate family, her husband and children, were supportive, there was no one
who could quite understand this. No one who’d understood Frank as she had, so
consequently, no one to truly empathize with the stranglehold of grief.
Allison couldn’t shake the phantom glimpse
out of her mind. How dare she? To appear then. Had this specter of an obsession
robbed him of a full life where he could have had a family of his own? Had she
taken a promising man and used him for her own glory? Where was the evidence of
his life? Where were his memories,
his travels, other passions and possessions…great loves, an adoring spouse? A
yellowed scrapbook of the articles he’d chosen to keep about Elaina was one of
the few things Allison found in his desk. This woman, highly superstitious, had
charms for love scattered throughout the mansion in hidden places. She’d never
found what she was looking for. Had Elaina ensnared someone beyond her time?
Unable to sleep, Allison drove to the
apartment. She let herself in and sat at the desk. Opening the scrapbook, she
found an old note addressed to her that she’d never been given:
It takes both eyes open to see an image
clearly. I trust that you will find this one day and won’t discard something
that gave you hope and helped bring us together.
She stayed to read the scrapbook,
articles she hadn’t seen before, and started to put together the image of a
woman who had suffered, triumphed and lost herself in her later years. She
thought of her uncle and the way that his loyalty and devotion was all that
Elaina Flannigan had ever wanted. For him, the purpose of reaching people
through history, whether or not the figure was flawed, was his way of inspiring
the best in others. His stories, his life and the way he’d saved Allison
herself, were his legacy.
Laying her head down by the note, she
closed her eyes and started to see a pathway that she’d walked thousands of
times in her youth. This time, she walked it as the grown woman she’d always wanted
to be and could see a figure with a jet black bob extending her hand in the
distance.
She’d take it.
Outside,
it started to snow.
* * * * *
Nicole
M. Bouchard has spent a decade as a writer and editor of various mediums in
both literary and journalistic sectors. She has shared her experiences and
expertise in interviews, essays, and contributions to professional anthologies.
Following an early mentorship and advanced English coursework, she chose to
take a road “less traveled by,” and combined independent study with extensive
hands-on experience. Her freelance journalism career sprouted partly from a
seed of counter-motivation. Having written to a famed male journalist for
advice, she was informed that breaking into the field at her age was nearly
impossible, particularly for a female. The rest of the advice, however politely
put, had an opposite effect, fueling her to land a feature story a year later
at nineteen in a regional publication where she'd then be referred to
entertainment journalism, interviewing a visiting Broadway actress, a Hollywood
producer with regional roots, and singer/songwriter Jewel prior to a New
England event. She also served in an editorial capacity for numerous magazine
issues. Through further journalistic experience, she penned various cover
stories and features.
As
her literary work started to receive notice and the advent of electronic
publishing was creating shifts that were opening doors for online publications,
she saw an opportunity to form a publication that would be an embracing
community of writers and artists, personalized in its approach. In 2008, at
twenty-one, she founded The Write Place
at the Write Time literary journal which has interviewed a number of NYT best-selling authors and featured
contributors ranging from newly published to having written for The New Yorker, Newsweek, The Wall Street Journal, Time magazine, Glimmer Train, Georgetown Review,
Simon & Schuster and Random House. The eighth anniversary of the magazine
also celebrated a reach to eighty countries as of 2015. Her chapter
"Founding Female Editors: Your Voice, Your Vision and How to Make it a
Reality" was featured in Women, Work,
and the Web: How the Web Creates Entrepreneurial Opportunities, Encourages
Women's Studies (Rowman & Littlefield 2015).
She
served as a speaker on the Small Press Panel: How Online Journals and Social
Media Transform Poetics at the Fourth Massachusetts Poetry Festival. She has
been a Letters member of the National League of American Pen Women since 2009.
She was profiled on the television program, Creative
Women Today. She also serves as a content editor for manuscripts and as a
coach through a separate website with writer resources and testimonials. At
thirty, she is most grateful for the incredible people in her life: her family,
her friends, and the literary family of writers, readers, and artists she has
the privilege of knowing.
