At the Corner of King Street (6 page)

The
Constance
sailed away three days ago and the doctor packed a bag so that he could make rounds at several plantations. I was left alone with only Penny for company. Work continues on our house and I long for the day we will live in a real home again. The doctor has promised that the
Constance
will return with fine English furniture for our home. He plans many purchases with his profits.

I found a bundle of purple wildflowers lying by my front door this morning. They reminded me of Scotland. And of Faith.

T
he drive to Grace's warehouse on King Street took close to twenty minutes. As the crow flies it was a five-mile journey, but winding in and out of the steady commuter traffic added to the trip. I didn't mind the delays. As anxious as I was to get back to my life, I was in no rush to talk to Grace.

Turning onto Seminary Road, I made my way past the strip malls toward Old Town Alexandria. Concrete gave way to green lawns and century-old homes and the road curved left past the tall spire of the George Washington Masonic Temple, fashioned after the ancient lighthouse in Alexandria, Egypt. Soon I was in the heart of Old Town, driving past eighteenth-century brick buildings that now housed a collection of shops, pubs, and bookshops.

The summer season brought lots of tourists, who meandered and crowded along the Mount Vernon trail that snaked along the Potomac River, visiting the tony shops.

A half block before the end of King Street, I turned into a side
alley and parked in one of the spaces marked Shire Salvage Yard Parking. I shut off the engine and, with a sigh, got out and walked down the alley, dodging potholes, to the corner and the salvage yard's main entrance. Block letters still arched over the main glass window, now covered with thick metal bars. The front door, once a vibrant red, was faded and chipped. Hanging in the front window was an Open sign that tipped slightly to the left in a half-hearted greeting.

Seven years since I last stood in this door, weeks after the car accident. Janet was nowhere to be found and my body was bruised and battered. As I'd hauled myself up the stairs, the pain had convinced me that if I didn't break free, this family would drown me.

I gave Grace my notice that day, went to my apartment, sold what little I owned, and packed the backseat of my car with the remains of my possessions.

Holding tightly to my purse, I pushed through the door only to be greeted by a familiar musty smell that followed the old and discarded. There was a time when I welcomed the scent, but now it carried with it memories past I did not want to remember.

You could say my Grandmother Lizzie founded the Shire Architectural Salvage Company when she was in her early twenties. She hated how the old Alexandria homes in the 1940s were falling into disrepair, so she drove the streets searching for signs that houses were on the verge of ruin or demolition. Whenever she saw demo crews assembling, she'd be there with her 1941 black Ford pickup truck to collect whatever the crews discarded. Lizzie began with fireplace mantels, chandeliers, and doorknobs.

She stored it all in her father's side barn, located on his farm south of Alexandria in Prince William County. On one of her salvage missions, she met Philip Shire, a third cousin. The two quickly fell in love and soon married. As a wedding gift, Philip, charmed by Lizzie's
quirky love of the past, gave his wife the warehouse property at the corner of King Street. Lizzie's father, it was said, was as thrilled to see his daughter wed as he was to rid himself of her junk.

Philip Shire, my grandfather, understood the madness plaguing the women in his family as well as his own wife. His mother often talked to spirits and rarely left her house. He prayed the curse would leave him alone. He prayed for sons. Lizzie gave him two daughters, Elizabeth and Grace.

By today's standards, Lizzie might have been called a hoarder, but back then she was simply a beautiful woman with an infectious laugh and a big empty warehouse to fill. Her need to collect was part of the package.

Philip's architectural practice grew, as did his girls and Lizzie's collection. For a time, both girls were healthy as if the curse passed over his family.

When Lizzie and Philip died suddenly in a car accident in their late forties, Grace, just eighteen, was one of the first to inspect the warehouse, now crammed to the rafters. She began sorting the goods her mother so lovingly collected and slowly began to find buyers who shared her love of the past. Elizabeth, my mother, showed little interest in the warehouse full of junk, as she called it. Her dream was to be an actress on Broadway, so two weeks after her parents' funeral, twenty-year-old Elizabeth left Alexandria. She never became an actress. Seven years after leaving Alexandria, she returned, newly widowed, with four-year-old Janet and one-year-old me in tow. And, of course, voices rattling in her head.

When I left Alexandria, the front end of the warehouse was crammed full of items. Now the space was as nearly empty. All that remained was a marble mantel, an old elevator, doorknobs, and a handful of stained glass windows, all coated in a thick layer of dust. There was a time we were a regular stop for designers and builders and items didn't linger long enough to gather dust.

“Grace!”

She kept an office in the back, behind rows of reclaimed doors, and she also maintained an apartment upstairs on the second floor.

“Grace!”

When she didn't answer, I climbed the stairs to the sprawling space, divided into rooms that ran the length of the building.

“Grace!”

From the back of the space where the kitchen was tucked away, I heard the rattle of pots and pans. I wandered through the living room and past the three small bedrooms that lined the center hallway. There were bathrooms, each tiled with reclaimed subway tiles and sporting claw-foot bathtubs. All the rooms were located on the east side of the building and their small windows offered a wonderful view of Union Street and the Potomac River. This was a nice piece of real estate and I was somewhat surprised Grace hadn't sold out yet.

I ducked into the last room on the right before the kitchen. Narrow, it sported two beds, a low three-drawer dresser in between, and a round braided rug. The walls remained a light blue and the twin beds were still dressed in the handmade quilt comforters. Even the gray and blue rag rug on the floor was unchanged. Rehang my posters and put my lava lamp on the dresser and it was the room I lived in twenty years ago.

I turned from the room and found Grace in the kitchen. Like the rest of the apartment, it was furnished with salvaged items, including a white stove that dated back to the nineteen forties, a large farmhouse sink that predated World War I, and a white block refrigerator with a long silver handle that dated to the fifties. The countertops were butcher block, rescued from an old restaurant, and the kitchen table was built out of salvaged planking from a Fairfax County barn.

The room should have looked like an outdated hodgepodge of stuff, but Grace wove it all together in an oddly pleasing sort of way.
The retro decorating magazines would have loved it. During my short tenure here at the warehouse, I wanted to reach out to several publications that catered to designers. She thought it was a great idea, but nothing ever came of it.

The evening summer light, still bright and warm, streaked in through the small window above the sink that overlooked Union Street. The light illuminated the silver in her hair. “Would you like a cup of coffee?”

The coffeemaker looked like a prototype of the first automatic coffee makers.

She dumped grounds into a white filter and settled it in the machine. “Zeb bought me a fancy coffeemaker as a thank-you for watching Eric from time to time. But I've never seen the point of using those little cups. Seems a waste.” As the machine gurgled, she leaned against the counter, folding her arms. “Eric's a bright, happy child and he loves exploring the warehouse.”

“It's a great place for a little boy. I loved it here as a kid.”

Grace looked at me, her gaze searching and a bit lost, before she turned toward the counter where a plump cherry pie cooled. She reached for a knife and two plates and dished up two slices.

I remembered begging Grace and Mom to let me stay beyond the summer and go to school in Alexandria. Both women refused, and I was whisked away from the orderly chaos of the warehouse to the hardcore chaos of living with Mom again. Grace understood the depth of Mom's illness, but couldn't deal with it. I once thought I was different than Grace, more dedicated to family, but time proved otherwise.

The coffeemaker gurgled. I rose and got cream from the fridge. Grace set the pie and the coffee on the table and lowered slowly into the seat across from me. For a few minutes we both ate and drank, savoring the bitter and the sweet. We both knew there was a
mountain to climb and neither of us wanted to start the conversation. So we kept eating.

“Pie's good,” I said.

“Came from the Union Street Bakery. Daisy's doing a good job with the place.”

The bakery was located a block south, around the corner on Union Street, in the heart of Old Town Alexandria. I remembered the McCrae sisters and the Union Street Bakery. Daisy and I went head to head over a book. Each of us grabbed one end and yanked. The book ripped in half. “When I left, she was working in Washington, D.C. Some kind of rising star in finance.”

“Lost her job. Moved back home.”

I stabbed a juicy cherry with my fork. “That couldn't have been fun.”

“She's made the best of it. She got married and produced a baby.”

“That, I cannot picture.”

“She drools over the kid.”

That jostled a laugh. “What about Rachel? Pregnant and married as I remember.”

“Her husband died, so she and her twin girls live on the second floor of the bakery.”

“Damn.” I didn't have a lock on trouble. “And Margaret?”

“Back in town. Drifts from job to job. Helped me a few times last year.”

“At least some things don't change.” I couldn't picture Daisy pushing a stroller with a fresh baked pie in hand. “Daisy wearing a white apron and slinging crust? I've lived to see it all.”

“She does real well. Life's softened her a little. She came by an hour ago with the pie. I told her about Janet and the baby.”

I cringed a little. One thing to have a troubled family, but another to have people know it. “I suppose it's not a secret.”

“No hiding a baby.”

I pressed my thumb against the crumbles of crust on my plate and savored the last bit of sweetness. “Grace, we've got to figure out what we're going to do.”

The lines in her face deepened with her frown. “I'm out of steam, Addie. I don't know what to do, and there's no one in the family other than you that I could ask for help.”

I pushed the plate away. “You called Zeb.”

Dark eyes flashed and narrowed. “I called him after I saw you.”

“When you came bearing threats.”

“Not threats. Just a reminder that you have family who know you better than most.”

“Why call him?”

“He's got a right to know what's happening.”

The sweetness of the cherry pie melted and a bitter taste settled in my mouth. “We all know where each other's skeletons are buried.”

“You've always carried with you a strong sense of family,” she said, ignoring me. “You kept your family together when your mother couldn't. You know how to handle this kind of burden.”

“You must have lived through this before with Mom when you were younger.”

“Maybe I did. But that was a long time ago. Like I said, I'm old.”

As easy as it was to remind Grace that she backed away from my mother when she was a much younger woman, who the hell was I to judge? Being AWOL for seven years undercut any claims to self-righteousness. “Mom used to call Janet her superstar and me her glue. Janet shined and I was invisible.”

Grace dug her fork into a plump cherry, but she didn't raise it to her lips. “She was giving you a compliment and didn't even realize it.”

“How's that?”

Grace inspected the cherry and then lowered her fork. “Without a superstar, life is quieter. Without glue, it all falls apart.”

“She always smiled when Janet walked into a room. Hell, everyone did. And I bet they still do. I bet Janet can still turn any dull day into a tremendous adventure.”

Grace swirled the cherry on the plate. “She's sick, like your mother. Maybe worse.”

I wanted to disagree, but couldn't. “She was sleeping when I saw her today. She looked peaceful, and even after what she's been through, beautiful.”

“She was raving mad when they brought her into the delivery room. Screaming that a witch cursed her and that she needed to get away before it stole her soul. It took a couple of men to restrain her so that the doctor could sedate her.”

The scene played in my mind: Janet's arms flailing, and yelling doctors scrambling to restrain her and deliver the baby.

“The baby was born by C-section,” Grace said. “She was breech.”

“Didn't want to come into the world? I can't blame the kid.”

“Addie,” Grace warned.

I shrugged, the bitterness tightening around my heart like a vise. “I lived with a crazy mother. It's horrible.”

“So did I, Addie.”

“She wasn't a Shire by birth,” I said.

Grace tapped her finger on the edge of the plate. “She and my father were third cousins. Go back far enough in her tree and you find a Shire.”