Amber House: Neverwas (8 page)

N

When we went inside, my dad was in the front hall, winding the

grandfather clock. “How was Severna?” he asked, smiling.

I contemplated telling him that Severna was the kind of place

that sicced attack dogs on protestors and gassed little kids who

were just innocent bystanders, but my throat hurt too much. I’d

tell him later.

“Fine,” I answered.

Sammy added generously, “We went to the hardware store,

Daddy.”

Dad nodded and smiled again. “Sounds like you had fun, then.

You two have been making a lot of trips into town. Isn’t that four

times in three days?”

“Nothing else to do around here,” I said, helping Sam shrug

out of his coat as I nudged him up the stairs. “Why don’t you

show me that radio you took apart, Sam?”

Mostly I really liked my dad — always good-natured and

unassuming, even though he was a well-known surgeon at Johns

Hopkins, whose medical innovations had been adopted by doc-

tors all over North America. At the moment, however, I thought

he was incredibly irresponsible for dragging Sam and me away

from Astoria, so I didn’t really want to stay and chat.

14 O

At the upper landing, I followed Sam into his bedroom, full of

antique sailing gear and various disassembled electronic devices.

The Nautical Room, it was called. Which was another one of

those weird pretentious things that came with living in a home

as old as Amber House — a lot of the rooms had names. Not

regular names, like “the den” or “the dining room,” but capital-

letter-type names like the “White Room” or the “Chinoise

Room.” I felt I ought to be wearing pink chiffon whenever I

brushed my teeth in the “Primrose Bath.”

“Thanks for coming today,” I told him.

“You’re welcome,” Sam said. “You really want to see my

radio?”

So I looked at the gutted thing, picking up a couple of pieces,

returning them carefully to their places. “Not much of a radio

anymore. You going to be able to put that thing back together?”

He made a dismissive face. “I’m making something
better
.

Something that will listen to different places.”

I wanted to ask him,
almost
asked him, “what places”, but

thought better of it. I just nodded. “Really cool, Sam.”

He selected a screwdriver, and went back to his work.

My room was just through the arch to the east wing. It was

the Flowered Room — a fairly recent naming, as my mother

had done the flowering of it. She’d been eleven or twelve when

she’d decided to transform the room, covering its pale green

walls with a child’s fantasy garden. Roses, hydrangeas, wisteria,

irises, even bees and snails.

I judged every other bedroom in the world against my moth-

er’s Flowered Room, with its four-poster topped by a crewelwork

canopy and warmed by an heirloom quilt, its cozy window

seat, its bookshelves of first editions that flanked a doll-sized

Amber House faithful in its every detail, right down to the fur-

niture and the tiny compass rose inlaid in the floor at the top of

the stairs.

o15

I saw that Sam must have been playing with the doll house

again, because its catch was undone and the two hinged halves of

its front rooms left slightly ajar. I swung them fully open to make

sure the contents were all present and secure. The only things he

appeared to have moved were the little china dolls — the daddy

and the little blond girl had been put together in the front bed-

room, while the mama and two dark-haired children had been

seated in a circle upstairs in the nursery. I left them as he wanted and swung the front rooms closed.

Dinner wouldn’t happen for an hour or two, so I got out some

note paper, thinking I could dash off a letter to Bethanie back

home. I loved Bee; I loved her family. They were the type of

people who recycled, only bought products from American

nations, and picketed the German Embassy for the full truth

about what had happened to the Jews of Europe. They were

true-blue Astorians. I missed them.

I sat at the desk and started scrawling:

Dear Jecie —

I stopped to stare at what I had written.
Jecie? Who’s Jecie?

Disturbed, I balled up the piece of paper and started again,

describing the protest and the racism still obvious everywhere.

As I struggled to fill the page, I realized I could hear humming.

A simple melody. six or seven notes long.

It seemed to come from the far side of the bed, but no one was

there. It was a sweet, high-pitched voice, singing with no par-

ticular rhythm, as if someone was keeping herself company

while concentrating on a task. As I stood there, staring at the

empty corner, confused, the sounds faded away.

My eyes settled on the heating grate in the wall. The hum-

ming must have been coming through that, probably from

Maggie in her room directly below mine.

I went back to my letter. I told Bee a little about the Amber

House exhibit my parents were putting together to help Senator

16 O

Hathaway. Practically as soon as we’d moved in, they’d started

collecting stuff from the entire life of the house relating to

“women and minorities of the South” for a display the senator

had arranged at New York’s Metropolitan Museum. It was

intended to raise his international profile as someone who priori-

tized civil rights, helping him in his bid for the Confederation

presidency. I knew Bee would be as surprised as I was that my

folks were getting into the whole political thing. Pleased, because

she thought
everyone
should be political. But surprised.

A little tap caught my attention. I jumped, even though I

knew the sound: a pebble on glass. I smiled.

From the window, I spotted Jackson on the flagstones below.

He was getting ready to make another toss but saw me and inter-

rupted himself. He waved and I waved back. He pointed toward

the other end of the house.

I nodded, turned, and headed for the west wing.

CH A P T ER THR EE

K

I crossed the second-floor landing, cut around the staircase that

led to the third floor, and plunged into the west wing’s hall,

where I quickened my pace a little. Amber House was an odd

place at any hour, but it was oddest when the darkness started to

fill it at the end of a day. Especially in the rooms and halls that

were hardly ever used anymore, like the entire second floor of

the west wing.

My mom had told me when I was small not to pay attention to

the house’s “creepies,” as she called them. She said Amber House

was old the way people get old — their knees start to pop, and

they groan a little when they settle into a chair. She said the sighs of an old house can make you start imagining things — hear

voices in the creaks, turn shadows into shapes. I had to try to

ignore it. Shut it out. So I learned how to do that. But I still

didn’t like Amber House in the dark.

I hurried down the hall past the six doors to four bedrooms

and two baths — all mercifully closed this evening, though

sometimes they weren’t. It was too easy to imagine people half

hidden in the deep shadows of a room. I tried to keep the doors

shut; I didn’t know who was forever opening them.

At the end of the hall, I burst out through the French doors

that opened onto a lacy metal landing at the top of a spiral stair.

I stood there a moment, trying to catch my breath and calm

myself down. I didn’t want Jackson to see how panicky I’d let

myself get. From the very start of our friendship, I’d always

tried to pretend I was braver than I was in front of him.

18 O

The conservatory had always been my favorite spot in Amber

House — built in about 1920 as a sixteenth-birthday present for

my great-grandmother Fiona. It was a web of iron framework

that rose from ground level to the peak of the west wing, form-

ing a glass chamber filled with trees and flowers too delicate

to survive a Maryland winter. Above me, outside, large white

flakes materialized from the darkness to settle on the transpar-

ent ceiling, but inside the web, birds sang and orchids bloomed.

Jackson and I had claimed it as our own many winters before.

We’d played every kind of game there, from hide-and-seek to

imaginary adventures. We’d even made up a friend to play with

us, a little girl we called Amber. I wondered how old I’d been

when we finally stopped pretending her.

I found Jackson waiting by the koi pool, standing below the

stone statue who guarded it: a blind-eyed Pandora who wept

tears that trickled soundlessly down her gown.

I went and sat on the stone edge of the pool and Jackson

joined me.

“Saw you at the protest,” he said. “Wanted to make sure you

and Sam were all right. What the heck were you thinking, Sare,

bringing him to that?”

He was scolding me. Again. Seemed like he was always scolding

me lately, but it hadn’t used to be like that, before Gramma died.

“I didn’t ‘bring’ him there,” I said. “We were going to the

drugstore. He just slipped away.”

“ ‘Just slipped away,’ huh? And your own curiosity didn’t have

anything to do with it?” He said it with a smile, but it stung

because it was true. I couldn’t fool him — he knew me too well.

My parents, maybe, but Jackson, never.

He shook his head. “This isn’t Astoria. Sam could have been

seriously hurt. And you could have too. A couple people are in

the hospital. You were lucky Richard was there. What if he

hadn’t been? You’ve got to —”

o19

“Sam’s fine,” I said shortly. I crossed my arms and legs; I hated

him making me feel so small. “Look, I know you’re right. I

should have taken Sam home as soon as I saw what was going on,

but —” I felt like I was talking to my dad. Of course Jackson was

right — he was
always
right — but I didn’t like him lecturing me, acting like he was so much older. We were practically the

same age. “Sam’s fine. I’m fine. I got a sore throat, but I’m fine.”

“I forgot.” Like magic, Jackson reached into his pocket and

produced exactly what I needed — a purple cough drop wrapped

in foil. I rolled my eyes and gave him a small smile — he was

forever doing stuff like that. I took it, unwrapped it, and popped

it in my mouth.

“Look, I know you don’t like it when someone tries to stop

you or tell what to do, Sare, even me. And in general, that’s a

good thing. More people ought to challenge authority. But that

kind of attitude can get you into serious trouble around here.

You have to be careful. You have to be
responsible
. People are counting on you.”

That was the first thing he’d said that wasn’t true. No one was

counting on me for anything. Which was probably a good thing.

But I said, “Got it,” and hoped that he would let it drop. I noticed then that Jackson’s skin had a bluish cast to it. He looked half

made of ice. “Where the heck is your coat?”

“One of the ladies was drenched. I figured she needed it more

than I did.”

I went around to the benches on the other side of a screen of

bushes, and came back with a lap blanket. I shook it out and

swept it around him. “I could not
believe
that fire hose,” I said, remembering. “That was like something the Nazis would do.”

“Fire hose is standard. Hurts
and
humiliates.” He shrugged

a little, but he looked as angry as I’d ever seen him. “We

expected it.”

“ ‘We’? Who?”

20 O

“Oh,” he said, shaking his head, “the people who were there.

The people who showed up.”

That was another thing he’d started doing since Gramma

died — not answering questions. Getting all
secretive
. Not like the way we used to be. I wondered about the yellow handkerchief

tied to his belt loop. I’d seen several other yellow handkerchiefs

at the demonstration. I thought it might have something to do

with who “we” were. But if Jackson didn’t want to explain, I

knew better than to ask.

“Listen,” he said, “can you do me a favor and not mention to

Gran you saw me at the protest?”

“Sure, J,” I said. I was a little angry, to be asked to keep a

secret I wasn’t part of. But of course I would. I’d always kept

Jackson’s secrets, like he’d always kept mine.

I didn’t remember much from when I was really small, but I

remembered meeting Jackson. Twelve years earlier, he’d come

to live on the Amber House estate with his grandmother, Rose

Valois, my grandmother’s housekeeper. He’d hidden halfway

behind her as she introduced him to us — a quiet boy covered in

bandages. His parents had died in a car accident that had burned

the left side of his body and made him have seizures, but I didn’t

know all that then. I just knew he was sad. So little-me took his

hand the way Sammy might have done and we went outside to play.

He’d been sort of a part-time big brother to me ever since,

showing me which trees were the best to climb and where to go

crabbing, guiding me to all the special places he found around