The House on Seventh Street (5 page)

The moment their father walked through the door, Garfinkle got in a terrible panic. He ran and hid under the kitchen table, cowering and whining with his face to the wall, terrified of Henry.

Nora figured that where he'd come from, a male in the household had been cruel to him, had probably dumped him off in the country. That's why he was afraid.

Henry got down on his haunches to talk to Garfinkle.

“Look here, fella, come on out from under that table,” he coaxed. “I won't hurt you. It's okay, pooch, you look like a real peach to me.” After a few days of pleading, Winna's father had sweet-talked the dog out from under the table and into his arms.

It wasn't long before Garfinkle was completely at home. He dozed in his cool spot under the hedge, his eyes traveling from Henry to the lawnmower. When Henry had to mend a fence or haul trash to the dump, the dog followed him like a toddler.

Puffing slowly on his pipe, Henry would pump up a bicycle tire, or clip the hedge, or look for a tool in the garage. Then he'd draw smoke into his lungs and talk to his best friend.

“Where'd you put that hammer, Garfie?” he said, scratching his head. “It belongs right here on this nail. Okay, fella, fess up. Where'd you hide it?” They had become inseparable.

WINNA HAD FINISHED her tea and her memories. Dad had never been angry with Garfie, never scolded him, never hit him. He loved that dog. Winna tried to dismiss a twinge of envy.

BY SUNDAY,
AFTER SHE
missed church again, exhaustion grabbed Winna and flung her into bed at the La Court Motel, where she had stayed since her arrival. She needed a nap and a shower before joining old friends for cocktails.

Lying in bed in the air-conditioned room, she thought of the old La Court Hotel. They had torn it down—a tragedy in her mind. What grew into a 125-room hotel started small in 1904 with only 22 rooms. Enlarged in the late twenties, the building had always gleamed white under its red roof at the west end of Main Street, a beacon of refinement, the grandest building the town had to offer. A comfortable lobby with cozy fireplaces welcomed guests to the best dining room in town—the only place in Grand Junction where Gramma Juliana enjoyed dining.

Winna remembered the hotel best during the 1950s when she was a teenager. Her grandmother took her there for birthday luncheons followed by a shopping trip to Grumman's. On these occasions, Winna would dress carefully—always in her best dress with a hat and gloves. Juliana wore fashionable suits, usually dark, a mink stole of whole pelts (by May it was too warm for one of her fur coats), a brightly colored hat with a short net veil, and gloves. Together they would ascend the front steps hand in hand, grandmother gently reminding granddaughter to watch her manners. She needn't have bothered. Winna stood in perfect awe of that venerable hotel, with its elegant dining room, and hoped to make her grandmother proud.

On her fifteenth birthday, the day she wanted to remember, Winna saw herself sitting with her grandmother in the hotel dining room at a table draped in white linen. A waitress in a dove gray uniform with a ruffled white apron and starched white triangle at the top of her head approached and handed them the menu. Winna had a hard time deciding what she wanted to eat. She knew the rules for dining out. Never order the most expensive thing on the menu and never complain about the food in the presence of your host or hostess.

Gramma always asked for a table near the windows overlooking the porch. From there she could keep her eye on the movement of diners and businessmen as they came and went. Winna figured she knew everyone in town.

Her grandmother stiffened, then nudged Winna's arm. “That's Lillian Collier and her daughter—see the woman in the red hat?”

Winna nodded yes as a matronly woman walked arm in arm with a girl up the front steps toward the door.

“That poor woman. Her daughter—not the young one you see—but the elder. While she was away at college, she married someone Lillian had never met. She didn't even tell her parents until after the wedding—now she expects everyone in the family to welcome the man like nothing had happened—like they hadn't been forgotten on the most important day of their daughter's life.”

Winna tried to sympathize with Lillian Collier's terrible misfortune. She'd heard of things like that happening before and knew it was frowned upon—by her grandmother at least. But she did not connect the comment with the fact that Juliana's son, Winna's father, had done the same thing—got married out of town without his parents' blessing or presence.

The Shirley Temple and the martini arrived; her grandmother pulled off her gloves and reached for her drink. She took a sip and sighed. “Your father and mother did much the same to me, but I've forgiven them.”

“Maybe Mrs. Collier will forgive her daughter too,” Winna said.

With the martini half gone, her grandmother wanted to reminisce about the day Vice President Richard Nixon came to town. It was during Eisenhower's first electoral campaign. In her role as president of the Colorado Federation of Women's Republican Clubs, she had been responsible for welcoming him and had enlisted her eldest granddaughter's help.

“Remember the day Dick and Pat came to town?” she opened.

“Dick and Pat?”

“Yes, the Nixons. I was so proud of you—my beautiful granddaughter in that lovely dress. Surely you remember meeting them at the airport with a bouquet of roses for Mrs. Nixon. Don't you remember your picture on the front page of the
Sentinel
, precious?”

Winna smiled at her grandmother's obvious pride and blushed. “I was so scared. I practiced what I was going to say over and over again. ‘Welcome to Grand Junction, Senator and Mrs. Nixon.' I can still say it in my sleep.”

The appetizers arrived, fresh grapefruit sections minted and swimming in ginger ale served in long-stem dessert glasses. Winna asked if she might sprinkle it with sugar. Her grandmother grimaced but nodded “yes.”

“The best part was having lunch at your house with you and the governor's wife. I still remember what you served—chicken salad.”

Juliana laughed. “And Jessie blackened it with the pepper grinder.” She looked at her granddaughter and smiled. “You were very naughty, Winna. I still remember what you said to my distinguished guest. ‘My goodness, you sure do like pepper,'” she said, imitating her granddaughter's faux pas.

They both laughed. “Does she still speak to you?” Winna asked.

“Of course. Politics are strong cement.”

Winna's memory included Chloe's tears. She had not been asked to meet the Nixons at the airport or to lunch with the governor's wife. Both Winna and her mother had tried to comfort her. Winna had felt so bad about it that she had spoken to her grandmother, asking if Chloe could come too. But her grandmother explained that Mrs. Haffenreffer, the vice president of the Republican Women's Club, wanted her granddaughter to hand Mrs. Nixon a Grand Junction peach and that they couldn't have a whole gaggle of grandchildren trailing after the Nixons at the airport.

After the election, the invitation to President Eisenhower's inaugural ball arrived. Winna had watched with excitement as her mother, a talented seamstress, made the ball gown. She used a Vogue pattern and the antique lace her grandmother insisted on wearing. Nora had cut the gown out of black satin—a long circle skirt and bodice with wrist-length sleeves, topped by the lace cape collar. It was a dignified yet glamorous evening dress for a woman of a certain age.

Winna shivered in her air-conditioned room at the motel and pulled the covers close, trying to calculate if it really was her fifteenth birthday when her grandmother bought the ring. She thought so.

After lunch at the hotel, she had taken her time at Grumman's. Her grandmother said she could have any one thing she wanted and not to worry about the price. When she was younger, they stopped in the toy department and it took her about ten minutes to find a china tea set or a beautiful new doll in a pink dress. But by the time she was fifteen it took time to decide which one thing on all three floors at Grumman's she wanted more than any other.

They stopped at the jewelry counter, then the shoe department, then back to the jewelry counter. Then Winna remembered the dress department. They ended up at the jewelry counter again where she was urged to select “something real.” Her grandmother did not believe in costume jewelry.

“Never waste money on junk,” her grandmother said, pointing to a ring with a smooth oval emerald set in yellow gold and studded with diamond baguettes. Both Juliana and Winna had May birthdays and the emerald was their birthstone.

Her grandmother burst into verse. “Who first beholds the light of day in spring's sweet flowery month of May and wears an emerald all her life, shall be a loved and happy wife.”

How could Winna resist? She decided on the ring because it symbolized a bond between them—born in the same month, they belonged to the same club. The emerald was their insignia. Ultimately, the emerald proved to be a foolish purchase. She had lost it.

Winna felt the delicious warmth of the blanket in the chilly room and closed her eyes. Following Gramma Juliana and young Winna as they strolled hand in hand down the wide aisles at Grumman's, she fell asleep.

STILL MARRIED AFTER forty years, Kate and Jim Cross had been high school sweethearts. They lived comfortably in a spacious adobe home north of town. Their living room—crowded with about two dozen other guests, none of whom Winna recognized—had a magnificent view of Kate's remarkable flower garden planted against an adobe wall with the red rocks of Pinyon Mesa in the background.

Across the living room, the windows looked out on the Book Cliffs rising abruptly from the flat arid land, sealing off the valley to the north, a ragged, barren study in weathered rock and plunging shale, the colors of alkali, ash, and terracotta. To Winna, the Book Cliffs resembled an earthbound moonscape. She wanted to photograph it at sunrise or during a snowstorm—a blizzard would be best. She laughed at herself.

She had dressed for the occasion in a brown silk blouse with a matching broomstick skirt, her mother's squash blossom necklace, and turquoise earrings. All dressed up, sipping white wine, she was more interested in the play of violet shadows on Mount Garfield than she was in anyone in the room.

She heard Kate call her name and turned away from the window. With a naughty sparkle in her eyes, Kate held the hand of a man with white hair and a beard. She pulled him toward her. “I'll bet you can't guess who this handsome hunk used to be.”

Winna smiled as she studied his face. “Wow, I'm stumped.” But just as the words left her mouth, she recognized the blue eyes and felt her face flush with embarrassment. “It's been such a long time, Johnny.”

“Over forty years,” he said, reaching for her hand. “Look, Kate, I'm at an advantage here. Winna hasn't changed a bit.”

“It only took me a second,” she insisted. “I could never forget Johnny Hodell. The last time I saw you, you had brown hair and didn't have a beard, in—when was it—1956?”

He pulled her in for a hug. “You were and are gorgeous.” Then turning to their hostess, he said, “Please excuse us, Katie, we are going to retire to the patio.”

Suddenly Winna found herself in the soft light of a fading day standing on the Crosses' patio with John Hodell. He had been her steady during their junior and senior years in high school. Back then, he was a handsome member of the baseball and ski teams. He drove a highly polished red 1954 Chevy convertible with leather seats. Their whole relationship had developed in that car. Those were the fun memories, but there were others. Winna looked at him and pushed them from her mind.
Surely he had changed—grown up.

Suddenly tiny beads of sweat moistened the backs of her hands and trickled down the curve of her spine. “It's awfully hot—or is it just me?”

“It's nice out here,” he said, looking cool and relaxed, his smiling eyes fixed on Winna's burning face.

As the reflected light of an approaching sunset splashed Mount Garfield pink and silver, she took the hand John offered. He led her to the porch chairs facing the view. With forty-some years to account for, they fell easily into conversation. She went first, bringing him up to date with a quick review of her life: college, marriage, child, career, divorce. Drawn to him as if their separation had been forty minutes, she wondered why she felt frozen in time, why she was still holding his hand. Gently, she slipped her hand from his grasp and picked up her drink.

His voice was soft, deep, musical. He looked at her the same way he had when they were sixteen. Then, she had loved him. He smoothed his moustache with two fingers and ran his hand through what was left of his hair. Had he always done that, stroked his hair?

“Nothing much has happened to me.” He appeared almost apologetic. “After you and Maggie, I never found another love. But I've had fun looking.” His eyes twinkled as he gave Winna an achingly familiar smile. “No children—of that I'm certain. I spent three years in Vietnam. I was luckier than most, I had a job with my dad when I got home. Now it's all work all the time—very boring.”

For a second it had slipped Winna's mind that during college he had married their schoolmate Maggie Hart, one of Winna's best friends. Maggie was a natural athlete, a striking blonde with naturally curly hair, one of the prettiest, most popular girls at school. During the last two years of high school, Maggie and Winna had been best friends with Kate. The three of them did everything together. After high school, Winna had lost touch with Maggie. She tried to remember why. She had gone off to college and Maggie had not. Winna had written, but her friend hadn't answered her letters. She remembered her disappointment. Maggie had died young, while Winna was living on the East Coast. She searched her mind for the forgotten details.

“Actually, I don't want you to think I'm boring,” he said, resting his drink on the little paunch hidden under his loose-fitting shirt. “I still ski and play tennis. I like to read—history mostly—and I collect Indian art.”

Winna laughed. “Then you are not boring.”

Suddenly his eyes wandered and he caught himself. “I see your sister, Chloe, here and there. She's been married a few times, I understand.”

“Twice—working on a third,” she said, wishing she had worded it differently.

“I've seen her with Todd Cody. Is he her guy?”

She brightened. “That's his name. I haven't met him yet. He's fifteen years younger than Chloe. Of course, she looks twenty years younger than she is—so they're probably a great looking match.”

“I didn't know he was engaged.”

Winna smiled. “Well, I doubt it's formal.”

“Actually, he's one of my foremen.”

“Really?” She was eager for a personal reference.

“Todd's a great guy—reliable, hardworking, fun to bend an elbow with.”

Winna breathed an audible sigh of relief. “I've been concerned. Chloe's been through a lot. Dad was beastly toward her. He left everything to me, including the house.”

“Wow, that's tough.”

“The house—it's a mess.” Uncomfortable, she wondered if she had been too open about her sister. Winna rolled her eyes. “You must come see my mess. I'm up to my neck in antiques at the house on Seventh.”