Rescuing the Crospey

“And what are you going to do with all this money, once it’s in your account?” Mia looked up expectantly.

The money had been a surprise. My uncle Francesco, a school administrator in Haymill, had left me $20,000 in his will. I remembered, of course, having looked after his property after a fire had gutted his barn and partially damaged the farmhouse ten years ago after Aunt Maria had died. I came to love that farmhouse and the scraggly land with its dried riverbed. It had an unemphatic beauty, spare and unadorned flat ground, with willow oaks at the western perimeter and sweetgum and tulip poplars on the eastern. In the two months I had become close to Uncle Fran. Since then I had visited him at least once a year, the last two times with Mia, as our engagement ripened; I never expected to be in his will.

I became like him in another way. I got into in education too, as a high school guidance counsellor. This $20,000 was as much of a nest egg as I had ever had. You even might call it a dowry for Mia. It would certainly help after my wedding with Mia a year from now, next fall.

“My cousin wasn’t happy about the will.”

“Which cousin? Lila? Did she know your uncle well?”

“I don’t think so. I know she was unhappy that she wasn’t a direct beneficiary. When I arrived at Uncle Fran’s that weekend she was already there. Jerry, his son and heir, said that she had driven down from Massachusetts to lay claim to Fran’s binoculars and watch and knickknacks. She took a key to the house. She told me privately that that painting you loved over the credenza was also meant for her. She said Fran had promised it to her. I doubt that. I just hope she doesn’t want it to sell it, or to be mean. Wouldn’t put it past her.”

The oil painting showed a river meandering through a September landscape. It could have been an old picture of Uncle Fran’s twenty acres. I wasn’t sure of the artist. It might be someone named Crapsey (ha ha) or Cropsey. Maybe I was reading that into the signature because there were crops in the picture. Mia would have found a spot for it. We would have. Damn that Lila.

“Heck, I guess we don’t really have the place for it anyway,” I said.

“You don’t believe that. You liked that picture too.”

“Yeh, but I also wanted it because you liked it.”

Jerry, also my co-executor, had flown in from California to tend to his father’s estate. A chunky, aimable man, with a wife and five children and a farm job, he could use the money.

That initial weekend, Jerry, Lila, and I held a yard sale to dispose of andirons, pine furniture (including the credenza), floor lamps, a dining room set, tables, anything Lila hadn’t claimed that we thought might bring in $25. There remained boxes of books, clothes, an armoire, bureaus, and a Commodore computer Uncle Fran had scarcely learned to use. The farmhouse and adjoining twenty acres—too small to be a real farm, too large to maintain, yet land I loved—had been left fallow for the last decade after Aunt Maria had died. It needed tending. Jerry and I had hoped that a real estate company could find a developer so he would strike it rich. It was not to be, but it worked out better. Hugh Ervin, who owned the adjoining acreage, would buy everything and keep the property intact, if we could transfer title in time for spring planting.

So, pressure being on, one Saturday Mia and I drove down from Hartford to Haymill to inventory and figure out what to do with what hadn’t sold: rugs, the workbench, tools, easy chairs, two televisions (Francesco never missed Antiques Roadshow), bed frames, Aunt Maria’s sewing machine, an Electrolux vacuum cleaner, rakes and hoes, Francesco’s battered pick-up—the detritus of a life that had stopped ten years ago but that had gone on, as life does, even after half of a partnership vanishes.

To my surprise the house was open. “Hello?”

Something was moving upstairs.

“Who’s there?”

Mia laid a restraining hand on my arm. I shook it off. I walked softly up the stairs, into the second floor bedroom Uncle Fran used as a study. Beneath the desk someone was crouching. Then a ruffling and scraping. A figure stood up.

“Tony!”

It was Lila, in blue jeans and a cotton plaid shirt.

She looked frightened as a cat, but she relaxed and recovered. Exhaling, she set a cell phone she had been holding down on the desk. “You gave me a shock. I didn’t know who it was.”

“I didn’t know you’d be here.”

“Nor I you.”

“What’s going on? Didn’t you take what you wanted?”

“Not all of it. Besides, with Jerry back in California and the tag sale done, I thought I’d see if I couldn’t help you and clear out some more.”

“Really?”

“Oh, nothing much.” In front of the prized painting, which Lila perhaps hadn’t taken with Jerry still around, stood two boxes of miscellaneous goods—figurines, old toys, a Teddy bear, a dull blue vase, board games, velvet boxes of what looked like costume jewelry—an assortment such as people might bring to Antiques Roadshow. “You’re not interested in this, are you?” Lila held up a scarf with I LIKE IKE in blue capitals, simultaneously and deftly closing an app on her phone.

“I suppose not… But, uh, as a matter of form, Lila, maybe you could phone me or Jerry if you come again, since we’re the executors.” Lila glared.

“Hi.” Mia came in slowly. “What’s all this?” Lila edged protectively in front of her booty.

We chatted about this and that. I saw a desk drawer partially open and jumped. “Mia!”

“What?” Lila craned her neck.

A handgun lay in the right drawer.

“Wow. I’ll take care of that!” Lila said abruptly. I pulled the gun out and turned my back to examine it. I don’t know much about guns. This one was grey metal with a brown plastic piece screwed into the grip. I was trying to figure out whether it was loaded when Lila reached for it. “Guns make me nervous, Tony.” In the brief tussle, she got it.

Immediately the gun fired, the bullet hitting a table, sending it crashing to the floor.

“Watch out, Lila!” I whirled and swept the gun from her hands. Mia shrieked.

“That should be mine,” said Lila very loudly, with sudden authority. She reached for it again. I whipped it behind my back.

“Tony, what are you doing?”

“Lila, what are you doing?”

“I should have the gun. I might need it. For—protection.”

“You were doing all right until Mia and I got here.”

“I didn’t know there was a gun.”

“We didn’t either. But now you do.”

“It’s not right. Give me that.”

“No. I won’t argue. Lila, you should go. You can take what you put on the table, and the table too if you still want it, but that’s it until I clear things with Jerry.”

“Jerry’s got his hands full in Sacramento.” She sat in the rolling desk chair. The three of us stood a moment in silence, as our nerves tried to settle. I kept the gun. It felt awkward. Just to do something, I opened a second desk drawer. It contained pens and a small, pocket size notebook, with a black cover that looked well thumbed. Mia watched me set the gun on top of it.

I saw her look lovingly at painting, as though it were a baby.

“Lila,” I said. “You can’t have it.”

“Can’t have what?”

I nodded my head at the corner. “The picture. The painting. The river and the harvest crops. It’s ours.”

“Uncle Fran promised that to me.”

“It wasn’t in the will.”

“Lots of things weren’t. Jerry gets the property. He can have it if he wants. You get $20,000 cash. That’s a lot. You can have any books you want. Jerry can have whatever he can carry to Sacramento. But I get what’s in those boxes and the picture.”

I moved to the corner and picked up the painting. Mia gave me a warning look.

I was carrying the picture out of the room when Mia called, “Tony!”

Lila faced me, the gun now in her hand. “Put that picture down.”

I said nothing.

“You heard me, Tony.”

“Are you going to kill me for a painting, Lila?”

“Put it down.”

I walked down the stairs, waiting to be shot. Lila followed me outside. For the first time I noticed her car parked far off on the road, away from the farmhouse. It started to rain. A crow landed in one of the tulip poplars. I threw the painting in the back seat. I kept waiting to be shot.

It was over.

When I turned around, Mia was walking toward me. She had held the desk drawer in front of her, as though that would offer protection against a bullet. In the distance Lila turned around and ran inside. Terrified, Mia threw the drawer in the back seat, I tremblingly turned the key in the ignition, and we drove away, leaving Lila, presumably, in the farmhouse.

In the car Mia said, “You’re a fool. You could have been killed.”

“I couldn’t stand it. The thieving little—”

Once we were in downtown Haymill, Mia phoned the police to tell them about Lila and the gun. Then she hung up. Her hands were shaking.

It was raining hard as we arrived in Hartford. I threw my coat over the painting and Mia used the drawer that had served for a shield as an improvised umbrella. We hugged when we got inside our apartment. Later I hung the picture on the wall. It looked wonderful. It seemed like ours.

Mia had carried the drawer upstairs. Inside it we found the little notebook. It turned out to be Uncle Fran’s notes from Antiques Roadshow. Each broadcast was dated, with a list on the left pages of what of interest had been brought into the program and on the right the appraised value.

13 October

Navaho rug $1400

Martin guitar $12,000

Majolica [indecipherable]

Steiff bear—like Maria’s? $250

Keep from moths

On one of the final spreads, the right hand page had been roughly torn out.

3 November

Civil War sword

Philadelphia chair, refinished

19th c. dental equipment

Painting by Crospey

Was that our picture? Did Uncle Fran mean “Cropsey”?

Had Lila see it and torn out that page? Or someone else?

Jerry came back once from California for a final settling up. Lila returned to Massachusetts, and we have not heard from her in years. Mia and I and Mia Jr. live outside of Hartford. We thought we should offer Jerry the picture, though, since it might be valuable and he didn’t know it.

“I thought Lila wanted it. She’s probably forgot about it, and you have it now. Pictures were meant to be loved. So you keep it. It’s yours.”