The House on Seventh Street (19 page)

“LOOK IN
THE TRASH BARREL
,” the authoritarian male voice boomed in the dream. Winna, hovering in a gray, murky place somewhere below, answered, “But all I'll find is rubbish.” She was whimpering like a spoiled child.

“Rubbish of rubbish,” said the judge. “Everything they left behind is rubbish. There is no remembrance of former things, nor will any who come after know you.”

She woke with a start, certain that something profound had come to her in her sleep. In an effort to reorient herself and make sense of the dream, she sat up and looked around the room.

Lit with early morning light, the stained-glass windows sparkled, sending shafts of violet, aqua, and green onto her pale coverlet. She thought again of her grandmother's magical shade garden and the colors there, then of Juliana sitting here in the light on just such a morning, looking out that same window.

In a moment of clarity, Winna understood the meaning of the dream.

I cannot know them, not really. My search for the real Henry, the real Juliana, the real Edwin is useless. I can't know the past—no more than I can know the truth—and what's worse, when I die, no one will know the real me.

The bedside phone rang and Winna jumped. She let it ring several times, then picked it up. It was John calling to invite her on a picnic. Could she be ready by nine o'clock? She hesitated, thinking of all the work she had to do.

“I can't, John. I'm so behind.”

“Look, you've been holed up since your fall and I'll have you home by two. You'll have the rest of the day. Come on, don't spoil this beautiful day with work. I'm taking it off.”

Winna hesitated.

“Aw please,” John begged.

“Maybe it would do me good,” she conceded.

“Put on something cool—sandals, a big hat.”

WINNA WAS READY when John picked her up at nine. As she climbed into his white Mercedes convertible, she noticed a wicker picnic basket in the back seat. No amount of pleading on her part got John to reveal their destination. He headed west out of town as she told him about finding jewels sewn into Juliana's old clothes.

“But wait till you hear what happened yesterday.”

“It looks like your grandmother hooked up with a rich man and it looks like you hooked up with a fist,” he said, referring to her black eye.

“I'd better put on my new sunglasses so you can't see,” she said. Their conversation had distracted her from the stunning view. “One last thing, then I don't want to talk about this anymore. I want to be in the here and now.”

“When Chloe and Todd came by yesterday, she wanted to show him what we'd found sewn into the gowns. She really upset me the way she pushed her way in. It was so obvious that she had come to see the jewelry, not her poor injured sister. I felt offended or territorial or something wicked like that. She dragged both of us upstairs to the guest room for a look and when she opened up the hiding place, the jewels weren't there.”

“The jewels are gone?”

“That's what she thinks. I didn't tell her that I had put them in the safe deposit box. She thinks they were stolen. I still haven't told her.”

“That is bad—you are bad. How are you going to get out of this one?”

“I don't know. Do you have any ideas?”

He turned to give her an affectionate smile. “Forget about it and look at the view.”

Winna promised to try. “It's been years since I've been up this road.”

Built during the Depression by the Civilian Conservation Corps, the drive snaked up Pinyon Mesa around sharp turns with precipitous drops to the canyon floor. Tunnels cut through solid rock in places as the road traveled the very edge of the red sandstone cliffs, an impressive engineering feat, especially for back then.

The breathtaking ascent into the blue cloudless sky was entirely familiar to Winna, like coming home. Twisted junipers and pinyon pines, the dusty green of rabbit brush topped by golden blossoms, tufts of heat-withered grasses, worn remains of long-dead pines gnarled and dry, lay along the side of the road. From that dizzying height, she could see dry creek beds lined with water-seeking junipers, meandering green ribbons at the bottom of the canyons. The faraway valley spread into the distance, fortified to the east by blue Grand Mesa and to the north by the white Book Cliffs.

Suddenly, Winna remembered something she'd forgotten to ask. “Did you know your company tore down Whitaker's boyhood home on First Street?”

John looked puzzled.

“It was on the site where you are building the donut shop.”

“No. Are you sure?”

“Yes. I found the address in the newspaper story about his death. Did you see the house—before you tore it down?”

He described the house as a small bungalow. “But you should ask Todd,” he said, entering a tunnel carved through the canyon wall. “He ran the crew that took it down.”

“Do you know if it stayed in the Whitaker family?” she asked.

“Not many families like you Grummans keep the same house for eighty years,” John said.

After several miles of steady climbing, he pulled over and parked at Cold Shivers Point.

“This is where Edwin proposed to Juliana,” she said as they got out of the car.

John grabbed his camera and they headed down the path to the canyon rim, Winna still walking with traces of a limp.

“I grew up hearing stories about how Poppa had proposed to Gramma. They came up here in a mule-drawn wagon, with a crowd of their friends.”

“Yeah,” John said. “Grandma got Grandpa at the very edge of the cliff and threatened to push if he didn't marry her.”

She looked out over the spreading table of pink rocks. “There it is.” Winna pointed at a series of flat rocks, one balanced at the very brink over the canyon.

“Why don't you walk way out there and I'll take your picture,” he said, dragging her toward the cliff by the hand.

“Don't, John,” she said as a sudden thrill of fear caught her. “I'm still a little shaky after my fall.”

“I did it once,” he said, releasing her. John lifted his camera to take her picture with the balanced rock in the background. “Back in high school a bunch of us got liquored up and took turns walking out there. Smile.”

“Look,” she said, pointing north, as two brave little swifts chased a hawk out of their territory overhead. “See the clouds way off to the west?”

“A storm,” John said, leading her back toward the car. “We still have time.”

Winna asked if he would put the top up on the car. “It's so hot I'm crisp.”

Back on the road, John explained that because of the approaching storm, they would not stop again until they reached the picnic site. Winna assumed he would park at the picnic tables with the view of Independence Monument itself, but he whizzed past the tall sandstone monolith towering alone at the conjunction of two canyons. As they drove off the mountain, he made no move to stop even though she hinted that she was getting hungry.

“It won't be long now,” he said. “Another twenty minutes.”

Her mind was racing again. “Where did the jewels come from? Certainly not from Dolph. She must have had another lover.”

“He'd have to be super rich to afford the jewels you found.”

The conversation stopped as John took the car down back roads she had never traveled. He drove past a dry creek bed making its way through flat arid land whose only crop was parched tumbleweeds, past dry pastures sprinkled with cattle and horses, past a grove of spreading cottonwoods in whose gentle shade someone had parked a trailer. Finally, he turned onto north First Street and, almost immediately, onto a little dirt road Winna remembered very well. Slowly, he drove the car across the irrigation canal on a rickety old wooden bridge. He had taken her back to the place where they used to swim. He pulled to a stop alongside the canal.

“This is where we'll picnic.”

“Perfect,” she said, “but aren't we on some farmer's land?”

“Probably,” he said, opening the door. “Damn, it's hot out there—so hot that it feels like it's gotta rain.”

“Let's eat in the car with the air conditioner running,” she said.

He closed the door and pushed back his seat before reaching around with one hand to lift the lid on the picnic basket. He felt around and pulled out a bottle of chilled white wine. “Can you reach the glasses while I open this?”

“Sure,” she said, getting on her knees.

“Look around in there and see what there is to eat.” He uncorked the bottle.

“Cold fried chicken, potato salad—this is great. Who packed this for you?”

“The gal at the deli.” He handed her a glass of wine.

With plastic forks and paper containers of potato salad, marinated vegetables, and drumsticks, they relaxed into the cool leather seats.

“I can't believe I'm here,” she said, sipping wine, watching brown canal water swirl under the old bridge as it headed out to the thirsty fields.

“Remember how we used to swim under that bridge?” John said.

“We had to duck and come up under the bridge for air, then back under the water to the other side. Remember how dark it was and how our hair got tangled in spiders' webs?”

John said nothing. He leaned back in his seat. With the engine idling, they fell into silence as they ate.

The wine tasted chilly and brisk and the food delicious. Winna thought back to summers sitting beside John on the bridge in her one-piece swimsuit, the sun burning her back. One moment John would kiss her, the next, he would hoot like a movie Indian and push her into the muddy water. She would let the current carry her away from the bridge and John. He would dive in and swim to catch her. His strong arms brought him swiftly alongside her floating body. Gently, he would right her, pulling her to the bank into the cattails and rushes where they dug their toes into the mud. Anchored, he would pull the top of her swimsuit down to the waist and cover her with kisses.

John sighed. His head rested against the back of the car seat and he turned to look at her with a smile. “What were you thinking just now?”

A dreamy smile was her only answer.

“Winna, every time I look into those eyes, I see you as you were back then—so lovable, at first so scared to give in to me,” he said, putting his hand on her cheek. “You are the most maddening woman I've ever known.”

“Back in high school I spent a year kissing you, touching you, trying to get you to give in to me and when you did, I spent another year making love to you every chance I got. I haven't forgotten, Winna.”

Saying nothing, she put her glass down and reclined into his kiss.

He turned and, without a word, moved the picnic things onto the back seat. He settled back into his seat and took her into his arms. “You can't go back to New Hampshire, Winna.”

“I can't?”

“No, we're in love.”

“We are?”

“I am,” he said, before he kissed her again. “Still in love.”

She closed her eyes and drifted with John back to a hot summer day when they were young, to the canal and the cool water, where clasping him near with both arms and legs was the most urgent business in the world.

Suddenly, he pulled away, put his hands on the wheel, and backed the car down the canal bank and over the bridge. “I'm taking you home,” he said.

Winna did not refuse.

A THUNDEROUS SHATTERING of the atmosphere by a bolt of lightning woke Winna and John from their afternoon nap. She shivered from the air conditioning as one bolt after the other lit up the room and gusts of dry wind rattled the wall of windows.

“Where's the rain?” he asked sleepily, as she drew a white blanket over his naked form.

“Mother Nature's going to have a temper tantrum first.” Quite aware that her body was no longer the young body he had known, she pulled on her tunic. “Shall I close the drapes?”

“No,” he said, taking her hand. “Come here. Let's watch the storm.”

He plumped up their pillows and leaned back, tugging her against him. The view from John's bed looked off the mountain. From their vantage point, they watched colossal blue-black storm clouds hovering above the valley as long fiery fingers of lightning streaked the sky with a vengeance.

He sleepily nuzzled her ear. “A fitting conclusion, don't you think?”

She kissed him lightly and whispered, “Definitely worth the forty-year wait.”

“Hell—we wasted a lot of time,” he said, yawning. “I'm not seventeen anymore. I'm exhausted.” He closed his eyes and, with a smile on his lips, drifted off.

She lay a while in his arms feeling his breath against her neck, watching the sky as the storm finally brought the rain. Coming first as splats against the dusty window, the rain built to a crystal deluge washing the window clean. Wishing she were still seventeen, she gently slipped out of his arms and walked barefoot into the kitchen to make a cup of tea.

The thunder had passed and a glint of radiant sunlight lit up the dampened red earth. As a steady gentle rain began to fall, the sun disappeared behind a dark rain cloud. Mercifully wetting everything, rain beaded up on cactus flesh, slid down blades of grass, dripped off twisted branches of pinyon pines, and ran in little rivulets into the thirsty ground. She thought of the creek beds on the mesa, flowing with rainwater, cutting deeper into the floor of the canyons. She wished she were out there with her camera.

The sight from a different kitchen window during a thunderstorm came to mind—Walt running away from her, taking shelter under a spreading maple. How like him to leave in the middle of an argument and put himself in harm's way under the tallest tree in the landscape. She remembered cuddling Emily in the middle of the night after thunder had startled her awake. Winna would take her out to the porch. It was their ritual to snuggle under a blanket on the porch swing. She had made up a story about young robins that watched the storm from their nest in the cherry tree. Emily insisted she tell it every time it stormed.