Bert laughed. “Oh, you’re a pistol! Okay, let’s go.”
Bert led them into a room just off the living room. If Jane had to label it, she’d call it a library, but it was also an office. One side of the room was dominated by a massive antique partners desk of dark walnut wood. An iMac computer, handsome ceramic lamp, and neatly stacked papers and files sat on its forest green leather top. Three walls were covered with shelves: some held books and sheet music, but most of the space was filled with pictures of Julie Robin and artifacts of her career. The fourth wall had a window seat that looked onto the yard, and the rest of it was covered with framed photos. Maybe this room was more of a museum than a library.
Jane scanned the pictures on the wall: Julie with Kennedy, with Reagan, with Clinton, with Bush. Photos with Ed Sullivan, with Elvis Presley, with Jack Nicholson, with Nicolas Cage; withDebbie Reynolds, with Cher, with Dolly Parton, with Renée Zellweger. A picture of Julie with Lauren Baker reminded her that Julie had played Lauren’s salty grandmother in one of the last movies she’d seen her in.
The pictures on the bookshelves—headshots, portraits, family photos—were in standing frames. The earlier photos captured Julie’s insouciant sultriness; the most recent ones showed a dignified older woman who had aged as gracefully as Hollywood would allow. There were lots of pictures with Bert. He had been an old-school hunk when they first met; they were a very glamorous couple. There were images of their children, a boy and girl, from their tow-headed infancy to adulthood. Due to the capriciousness of genetics, sometimes extraordinary-looking people had ordinary-looking children, but Julie and Bert’s children were gorgeous. Jane felt tinges of both admiration and jealousy.
“She certainly has had an amazing career,” Jane remarked.
“Incredible, you guys have met, like, everyone!” Lindsey added.
“Yes, it’s been quite a ride. We feel very lucky...”
Bert trailed off so Jane jumped in.
“I have some ideas about how we can organize, but tell us what your priorities are.”
Bert steeled himself. “Yes, great, so... I’m not sure we’re going to be in this house much longer. Julie isn’t very well, and I’m not sure I can give her the best care here, so... my daughter thinks it’s time to sell the house. Downsize. Which means I have to figure out what to do with all our things.”
This hint of melancholy spurred Lindsey to shift into therapy mode. “Is that what you want?”
Jane was slightly mortified by the baldness of the question, but Bert didn’t seem to mind. “It isn’t what I want, of course itisn’t, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t the right thing. Anyway, you girls can see why I’ve been putting this off.”
“Yes, it can be very hard. Very emotional,” Jane said soothingly. “So, are we packing for a move...?”
“No, not today. Today, I want to start paring some of it down, some of this stuff I want to give to our kids, some I think might be good for a museum, you know, motion picture or music, or maybe even there is talk of something in her hometown in Ohio, I don’t know, maybe some of it I can take to an auction house, there are a lot of possibilities. What I need for now is to get it all organized and catalogued somehow, then I can start making decisions.”
Jane was impressed by his logical restraint. “That makes perfect sense. We’ll start with smaller steps. We can prepare an inventory. I wouldn’t want to touch all the pictures you have on the wall—”
“And those are only some of them—we have pictures all over the house—”
“Yes, we saw some gorgeous ones on the piano!” Lindsey exclaimed.
“Anyway, if it’s okay with you, we can sort all the standing frames on the shelves, so the professional images are separated from the family ones, and then we can sort chronologically.”
“Yes, that’s good,” Bert said, valiantly trying to sound cheerful about it.
“It’s tedious work, and if you don’t want to stay, we can get a lot done on our own. We can stockpile questions we have for you whenever you want to drop in,” Jane told him.
“I think I’ll stay with you for the time being.”
Usually, working under the watchful eye of a client made Jane feel self-conscious. But today, she was glad that Bert was going to be there.
“Oh boy, I remember that like it was yesterday.”
Bert was holding a framed photograph of Julie from one of her variety specials in the seventies, in which she stood behind a checkout counter on a grocery store set. Done up in a huge bouffant wig with a headscarf and heavily applied makeup, Julie wore a checkout girl uniform, complete with a name tag that saidJULIE.
“When is that from?” Jane asked. She was cataloging the mementos in a spreadsheet on her MacBook while Lindsey organized books and cleared the shelves.
“Oh geez, I think seventy-five? Maybe seventy-six or seventy-seven. Julie did a bunch of variety specials in the seventies, and she did Julie the Checkout Girl on almost all of them.”
Jane had a vague notion of what a seventies variety show was from the clips she had randomly seen on YouTube. It was such a different time—they seemed so innocent and goofy. Now they’d been supplanted by reality shows, the professional entertainers clowning replaced by amateur clowns trying to entertain, undeterred by lack of skill or talent.
“She looks so cute!” Lindsey chirped.
“She loved playing this character. The gag was, she was a motormouth who would talk at the customer the entire time she was ringing up the purchase, oversharing all kinds of personal stuff, so the customer could hardly get a word in. And then she’d mess up the cash register, charging two hundred bucks for a carton of milk, so she’d have to start all over.”
“Oh, I’ve met people like that. It must’ve been hilarious,” Jane said.
