Goddess of Love Incarnate. Leslie Zemeckis

Minneapolis (where he listed his age as twenty-two and claimed no living relatives).

Idella and Ian were married in Grand Rapids, Wisconsin, on May 2, 1923, at age twenty-six and twenty, respectively. They were a gorgeous couple. Ian stood six feet tall, brown-haired with gray-blue eyes. He had a scar (possibly from a motorcycle accident years earlier) behind his right ear. Idella was petite and copper-haired. By the following year the two had a daughter, Idella Ruth (hereinafter “Barbara”). Fourteen months later Rosemary (hereafter “Dardy”), named after Ian’s favorite sister, was born.*

       Sisters Barbara and Dardy (front) in Minneapolis

      From 1924 to at least 1927, Ian was listed as a “helper” for the Minnesota Linseed Oil Co., residing at least once in Minneapolis.²⁷ The company was the major producer of flax and linseed oil in the state.

      Ian struggled financially, and with four children—Betty, Jack, Barbara, and Dardy—in tow he moved his family to Pasadena, hoping to find permanent employment in the Golden State.

      MEANWHILE, MAUD’S SECOND HUSBAND, BEN KLARQUIST, HAD BEEN working for J. P. Klarquist and Bro., general contractors and presumably a relation. One afternoon Ben fell two stories and, while miraculously nothing broke, he damaged his optic nerve. Lili, their daughter, was four at the time. Gradually Ben began to lose his sight and was no longer able to work. It wasn’t a time in the country to be injured and unemployed. Maud, Ben, (son William was by now an adult and does not seem to have made the move²⁸) and Lili moved to a farm in Webster, Wisconsin, where the grueling poverty soon drove them on to Seattle, Washington, where Maud’s older sister, Katherine Willis Deem, had settled with her family.²⁹

       A young Marie Van Schaack

      It seems after Katherine died of a heart attack in 1930 the desperate family descended south to follow Ian and Idella to Pasadena, hoping life would get easier. Lili was around twelve or thirteen, a difficult age for a girl both sensitive and awkward who hadn’t grown into her looks nor made lasting friendships due to—she claimed—attending seventeen schools in all the years the family tried to find a permanent home.

      BOTH FAMILIES SETTLED NEAR EACH OTHER. IAN HAD PROCURED A JOB as a garage mechanic (Barbara was now five, Dardy four). Shortly thereafter Ian moved his family out of Pasadena to the more rural Eagle Rock, a twenty-minute car drive from Maud, Ben, and Lili. It was like leaving the city altogether. Coyotes howled at night; rabbits bounded across the dirt roads. It was perfect for Ian, who loved horses. His father had been a championship horseman, supposed “three-time winner of the Royal Military Tournament.”³⁰ With plenty of open land, Ian taught his young daughters how to ride while they were still toddlers.

      The Blackadder clan was a sprawling, rambunctious family and Lili bounced between her home and Eagle Rock, occasionally sleeping upstairs in a small bedroom. Ian encouraged the children to fill the home with friends. It boomeranged with the sounds of laugher and racing feet; dogs barked and horses neighed. He proudly nailed a sign to the house: “Bedlam Manner.” Among the chaos the affable and outgoing Ian sought to escape Idella’s foul moods that often turned to dish throwing. Idella hadn’t always been so religiously unhappy. But after eight years of marriage with too many children and too little money she had hardened into a cranky despot. By the time Dardy was born, she was tired of caring for a house full of children. She was also tired of poverty, stuck at home with a leg stricken by polio. She sometimes used a cane and was self-conscious of her limp. She also wore “some sort of devices on her legs.”³¹

       Idella in happier times sitting on Ian’s lap while Idella’s mother Maud sews

      There were too many dishes and loads of laundry and beds to make. It was not a happy marriage. Perhaps too she was resentful of the beautiful girls she was raising who would soon tower over her.

      A PORTLY WOMAN WHO WORE GLASSES AND DRESSED IN CONSERVATIVE flowered dresses, gray hair tied back in a bun, Maud was the matriarch of the disjointed family. Not a physically affectionate woman, she nonetheless professed a deep love for Lili. Maud was also overly protective, relaxing only when Lili was safely under her roof. Just shy of the age where she would get in serious trouble with boys and not yet chaffing at the reins, Lili was content to stay close to home.

       From Lili’s scrapbook, 1931, Lili at age 14

      Maud was a remarkable caretaker to Ben, now a semi-invalid whose eyesight had vanished within two years of his accident.

      Maud would remain one of the only constants in Lili’s life. A strong-minded woman, generous, upbeat, and a hard worker. She was Lili’s world.

      Though for a moment it all seemed to fall apart.

      FOURTEEN-YEAR-OLD LILI HAD COME HOME FROM THE LOCAL LIBRARY with an armload of books. Not a serious student by any means, they weren’t studious tomes, but fashion books with sketches of dresses that Lili wanted Maud to show her how to make. Maud was a seamstress of remarkable talent and expertise. She made all Lili’s clothes and was patient enough to teach Lili how to sew with equal skill, as what remains of Lili’s costumes today is confirmed by the sturdy and precise stitching.

      Lili might not have been thinking solely about dresses this day. She had received her first kiss from Jimmy Nichols, a cute older boy and a friend of Jack’s who spent hours at Bedlam Manner underneath abandoned old cars, barely mumbling to her, covered in grease next to Jack.

      It was her first romance and it sent her emotions soaring. She would become giddy by love, transported. Not knowing what to do, she pretended she was Garbo to Jimmy’s John Gilbert. She was swept up in a surge of ecstasy and experienced a previously unknown feeling of confidence and power. Jimmy looked at her completely smitten and obliging when their lips parted, like at the end of a movie when the camera closed in on the satiated faces of the two movie stars as the fade-out began to happily ever after. Lili wanted to live in that feeling forever.

      As Lili stepped into her house on Oak Street, her heart was pounding and her head was in the clouds. She was quickly brought down to earth. The atmosphere in the house was heavy and electric. Briefly Lili paused at the door, troubled, trying to discern what the dark essence was. She would recall the atmosphere as “grueling.”³² Dusk had fallen and it took a minute for her eyes to adjust. On the sofa her sister, Idella, faint traces of the beauty she had once been, sat clasping her hands in her lap. Maud sat stiff-backed, her brow creased anxiously. Lili stared at the two, suddenly wishing she was elsewhere.

      Lili could tell Maud was tense by the muscles in her jaw.

      For a moment the three generations said nothing.

      Daddy Ben wasn’t home. Unusual, as he was always in his room or on the porch.

      Maud began. She admitted there was “something we should have told you years ago.” But at the time it had seemed “unnecessary.”

      Idella spoke. “The time had come.” She and Maud would tell Lili the truth. Why that day is anyone’s guess.

      “It was done because