The House on Seventh Street (8 page)

1999

WINNA WAITED
UNTIL
the heat wave had passed before she ventured into the attic early one morning. The stairs to that dark inferno lay behind a door at the end of the second floor hall, just outside Juliana's bedroom. The attic stretched the width of the front of the house. In the back, old rooms once used by servants were accessible only by the backstairs. As she came to the top of the stairs, cold light from the dormer window at the north end fell like a searchlight across a shambles of old furniture: a landscape of tangled wooden and metal shapes, a haphazard growth of abandoned objects once central to life. Over her shoulder, like a tall dark figure in hiding, a brick chimney rose out of the attic floor up through the nail-pierced roof.

She shivered with eerie recognition as she pushed past an old-fashioned wooden high chair sitting erect beside a metal flour cabinet. At her feet, discarded kitchen implements lay in a half-empty cardboard box. They looked old enough to have come from her father's childhood.

Kneeling beside the box, she carefully picked her way past tarnished silver and rusty knives to the apple peeler lying at the bottom. She brought the ingenious device into the light, remembering when her grandmother had let her turn the gear that made the iron implement swiftly pierce, core, and peel the fruit for her apple pies.

ON SATURDAY MORNINGS when Winna was thirteen, she went to the house on Seventh Street for lessons in French and housekeeping. She was aware that her grandmother saw these Saturday mornings as an opportunity to remedy what was lacking in Winna's education at home.

She could still hear her grandmother's voice: “Edwina”—she didn't believe in nick-names—“it's apparent to me that your mother has no intention of teaching you the things a well-bred young woman should know. Your mother is so busy painting those ridiculous pictures, she doesn't have the time to bother—but I do. You do want to be a good wife. I can't begin to understand how you'll get along in life unless I teach you myself.”

Her grandmother had explained that Winna should do her best to marry a wealthy man. “After the first couple of years, it's easier to love a rich man than a poor man,” Gramma cautioned. “I do not care one bit for George Bernard Shaw, but he did say, ‘The lack of money is the root of all evil' and I know from experience that he's right about that. Still, my dear, you should hope to love the man you marry—he should be someone very like you, with the same interests and, more importantly, the same background.”

Gramma had said that if she didn't marry a wealthy man like her grandfather, Winna would need to know how to keep up appearances and, using her own wits, fit into society. Juliana taught her how to polish silver, write thank-you notes, keep accounts, write checks, sit like a lady, hold a cigarette like a lady, and all the rules for accessorizing her clothes in every season.

On child rearing she had said how important it was to keep a child in a playpen most of the day where it was safe and that the best way to amuse a toddler was to put him in a highchair, dip his fingers in honey, and hand him a feather. On getting her way with an obstinate husband she had said, “You must use your womanly wiles. A man cannot bear to see a woman weep. Most will give in if you start crying.”

Young Winna was repelled yet fascinated by her grandmother's lessons, for along with the particulars seemed to come a scandalous philosophy for impressing others and getting one's way.

Eager to explore the rest of the attic, Winna rose to her feet taking the apple peeler with her. It held such happy memories for her. Cleaned up, it might be usable again. It was, after all, a handy tool—a much better implement than any modern convenience that had followed.

Winna had come to the attic on a mission she had almost forgotten. After the party and her reunion with John Hodell and other old classmates at Kate's party, she wanted to find her high school yearbooks. She vaguely remembered that her father had mentioned putting them in the attic—or she assumed he had—along with a box of other things that belonged to her.

On the far wall, she noticed a stack of tall metal shelves loaded with boxes and books. The attic was hard to navigate, but she made her way to the shelves weighed down with old account books, boxes of canceled checks, and check registers. Another crate held dozens of 78 phonograph records and some complete operas in their own boxes.

Admonishing herself for stopping to look and remember her childhood with every object she touched, Winna pulled away from the dusty shelves. She turned toward the large dormer window and made her way to the light end of the attic. In the midst of the clutter, she found a curiously large open place where a familiar braided rug sprawled over the floorboards. Someone had positioned furniture around it.

As light from the dormers seemed to shift then dim, and the smell of old things, of decay, weighed the air, she stared at the scene in disbelief. Winna put her hand over her nose and mouth. Stunned, she realized exactly what lay before her—the reproduction of a room she remembered very well. Shrouded in thick, slanted light, two small wicker beds with matching night tables, twin brass lamps with pink, fringed lampshades, an ornately carved oak dresser with an adjustable mirror, and a child-sized walnut rocker surrounded a handmade cedar chest stacked with old dolls. Winna closed her eyes, fully expecting that the vision would be gone when she opened them again.

Decades had passed, yet she found herself standing at the edge of the bedroom she had shared with her sister, the furniture arranged as it had been when she and Chloe were very young. Pale blue plisse spreads covered the beds. Layers of dust grayed the chest and the dresser as cobwebs made their way between the mirror and the coat rack hung with a child's woolen coat and hat. Winna saw her reflection in the cloudy mirror. In the dim light, the dark roof boards pierced with sharp fang-like nails hovered like an open mouth close over her head.

She trembled as she reached out to touch one of the dolls in the toy box—a baby doll dressed in a white dress and cap lay there with her eyes closed. Winna picked her up. The doll's colorless eyes snapped open as her small voice cried “ma-ma.” There was something diabolical in that faded face with the button nose and open red mouth baring two pearly-white teeth. Winna shivered and let her fall like a hot coal.

Who had made this tableau? The act of stepping on the rug brought her to her knees. It had to be Dad. She burst into tears as her memory climbed the stairs to that very room in the old house on Ouray Avenue where they had lived before they moved to the country. There, she had played with Chloe on this rug. There, she had slept in her bed under the window facing the street.

She knelt to open the bottom dresser drawer. A memory came so fresh it frightened her. Winna had been bad and her mother sent her to her room, this room. She had run there to hide from her father. Her mind racing, she tried to come up with an excuse to tell him. Why had she taken little Chloe by the hand and led her out of the yard for a walk down Twelfth Street where they were not allowed to go? They were both barefoot and Chloe had cut her foot. Dr. Sloane had to come to the house and stitch up her wound. Then her mother had called her father to come home from the store and spank Winna.

She heard the screen door slam shut and her father's voice call her mother's name. Little Winna couldn't think of any good excuse for what she had done. There were voices—her mother and father talking—then his footsteps came up the stairs. She got up off the rug and ran into the closet to hide. Footsteps tramped up the stairs and from her position behind a hanging bathrobe, she wished someone's arms were around her.

“Come get your spanking.” He knew where she was. He opened the closet door, his forehead contorted with rage. Winna looked up at him and saw his neatly pressed suit and vest, his spotless starched shirt, and the red stripes on his blue tie. He glared down on her, his dark eyes sparked with rage, then turned to sit on one of the beds. Winna had been so bad that he had to come home from work.

He had been spanking her for as long as she could remember and she knew what to do. She had to be very brave—braver than when her mother took her to the dentist. She had to will herself to pull down her panties and lay bottoms up over his lap, then wait for him to spank her with his big hand.

He hit her for what seemed like an eternity. At first, she did her best not to cry, but it hurt so much that she couldn't help it. When he'd had enough, he let her slip off his knees to the floor. He told her to go to bed and that she could not come down for dinner.

As if she could memorize every thread, the child stared at the rug of rose-and-moss-colored wool. She couldn't look at his angry face and was glad when he left her alone.

Exhausting herself with tears, she lay in bed under the open window hoping for a breeze, listening to the voices that came up through the floor. She looked out the window, at the blue sky and the street below. Her father got into his car and drove away. She stayed by the window a long time, watching the street, the people passing by—mothers pushing baby carriages and good children riding their bikes. None of them knew what she had done or what had just happened. They didn't know that the worst girl in the world lived on their street or that she was looking at them, wishing she were good too.

As the afternoon light deepened, the delightful smell of dinner simmering on the stove downstairs made Winna hungry. She was hot in the upstairs room and could hear Chloe and her mother talking. Out the window, she watched the fathers come home from work and park their cars in their driveways. The whole neighborhood went about the business of the early evening. After a while, her father came home again. As the sun sank low behind the trees, she finally felt a hint of cool air breathe in through the window. It took forever to get dark and cool down.

Winna's mother had taught her that when she was afraid or sad, she could make herself think about something happy. She knew how to fill her mind with pretty pictures and remember her favorite places and things—like how it felt to taste ice cream or smell roses.

The next morning the room was cool. Before she got dressed, she used a hand mirror to look at the red marks her father had seared on her bottom. As if those marks were a perverse kind of trophy, she put on a fresh pair of white cotton panties and ran downstairs to show her mother.

Nora scrambled eggs for breakfast and reminded her daughter that spankings are what you get when you don't mind. “Your father and I hope that someday you'll learn to listen.”

Winna hoped so too.

Desperate to chase away the gloom, to make her mother and sister smile, she danced around the kitchen in her panties mugging in the mirror. She sang as she danced, making up a silly song about big red handprints on a little white butt. Stretching her elastic waistband, she gave the mirror a peek at her bottom. Chloe laughed so hard she fell off her chair.

When her dance was over, Chloe asked to see the handprints up close.

“First let me see your cut,” Winna said, lifting her sister's little foot for a look at the gash and the black threads holding it together.

Chloe must have seen the shame on Winna's face, because she reached out to pat her sister on the cheek. “You're sorry, Winna,” she said, her eyes warm and sad as she kissed her. “I heard Daddy spank you upstairs. It made me cry.”

RAYS OF SUN, coming in through the dirty attic window, splashed the old rug with soft light. Reassuring herself, Winna looked around making sure she knew where she was. Feeling exhausted, she got up off the rug and wiped away the tears.

Look what this house has done to me. She could not spend time going down memory lane with every object she saw or she would never get home. Feeling like Dorothy stranded in Oz, she looked again at the room with no walls. It seemed eerily sad. She did not want to stay there another moment. Her stomach wrenched with hunger and she guessed it must be time for lunch. As she stood to go, she realized that she no longer had the apple peeler in her possession. Thinking that she must have put it down somewhere, she decided to return to the shelves.

Just then, she noticed a second wall of shelves on the south side of the attic. As she approached, something caught her attention. An old wooden trunk sat alone in an uncluttered spot just behind the chimney. She stepped over several boxes, pushed aside an aged easy chair, and reached out to touch it. She had been looking for one of these for years.

Lifting the brass latch, she opened the lid. The trunk opened up like a dresser full of drawers. Winna delved into one empty drawer and then another. The third contained a thick package wrapped in sea-green satin, tied with a tarnished gold cord. It looked like a stack of letters. Because of the darkness behind the chimney and her growing hunger, she closed the trunk and carried the package down to the kitchen.

BEFORE WINNA
COULD
cook and eat at the house on Seventh Street, the cupboards had to be cleaned and the refrigerator scoured and stocked. Realizing she might be in Grand Junction for weeks, she readied her grandmother's old bedroom at the back, away from the street, and moved in.

As she made a salad, she reminded herself to ask Seth—the handyman referred by John Hodell—to help her rip up the ugly avocado green rug on the kitchen floor. Winna remembered the handsome tile floor underneath and hoped it was still in good condition.

As if in answer to a prayer, Seth had arrived at the kitchen door the day after she called him. He parked his Ford pickup truck—
Seth's Yard Service
painted on the doors—in the drive and introduced himself as an admirer of the old house and a sometime employee of John's. He showed interest in helping out, saying he had done a lot of painting and could repair just about anything. He gave her references, and offered the use of his truck to haul trash to the dump.

Smiling as if it was a joke, Seth Armstrong Taylor had given Winna his full name. He looked about her age and reminded her of someone. She could not put her finger on where or if she had seen him before. Clean shaven, Seth wore his graying hair long, tied in a ponytail at the nape of his neck, one earlobe pierced by a small diamond stud. Winna had seen men wearing small loops in their ears but never adorned with something that sparkled. She assumed he was gay and tried to remember which ear she'd heard gay men pierced—left or right. Though dressed in jeans and a leather vest over his tee, there was something ascetic about his appearance, maybe his thin angular face or the startling pale gray eyes. He spoke like an educated person, perhaps an artist, and immediately seemed at ease.

He went to work on the overgrown shrubs about to block the kitchen entrance and painted Juliana's bedroom so that Winna could move in. By the end of his first week, Winna had to restrain herself from giving him a hug and telling him he had changed her life. Seth seemed to know, almost before she did, what needed doing.

With her salad almost complete, she heard a voice at the front door echoing through the house.

“Winna!” Chloe called musically. “Winna, where art thou?”

Her sister had shown up at last. “I'm in the kitchen.”

Chloe Elizabeth Grumman Ayers Thorpe—now back to Grumman—breezed into the room looking radiant. “I parked in front—decided to use the front door for a change. I was going to ring the doorbell. Did you know it's unlocked?”

Winna let her eyes fill with the vision of her sister who had inherited their mother's long legs and the grace and presence of a dancer. Chloe never dieted or worked out. She had milk chocolate brown eyes wide-set in a heart-shaped face. Her lips painted cherry red, she wore her ash blonde hair long, cut and curled like Farrah Fawcett, falling just between her shoulder blades. Her bare feet in sandals, the nails painted red, peeked from under a long flowing skirt, teal blue printed in metallic gold. Her matching shirt yoke, fashioned from the skirt fabric, made the whole outfit scream cowgirl.

“My goodness, Chloe,” Winna said, holding a salad spoon aloft, “you are full of surprises.” They hugged. “It's good to see you.” She didn't add the “at last” that lingered at the back of her tongue.

Chloe pecked Winna's cheek. “I meant to get here before now.”

“Never mind that. Do you want lunch? I've made a salad.”

Chloe cast a doubtful look at the salad bowl. “Sure. Do you have enough?”

“I'll beef it up. Sit down.”

Her expression thoughtful, Chloe sat down at the oak table and almost immediately began tracing the outline of the grain with her long polished thumbnail. Except for the vermillion nails, Winna was reminded of her sister as a child, her hesitance, the way she waited for Winna to engage her.

Winna went to work. “How are the boys?” she asked of Chloe's two teenaged sons.

“Right now they are in California with Austin. He wants them to go to school out there next year.”

“How do you feel about that?” she asked, tearing more lettuce into the bowl. She bit her tongue and did not add that Chloe would surely miss them. On the other hand, maybe she would be glad to have them off her hands. In that case, her sister would take Winna's words as a judgment against her. Talking with Chloe could be tricky.

“Well, I am considering it. It's a great school and a great chance for them to spend more time with their father—boys need their fathers.” Chloe paused, then looked at her sister, “How are you doing?”

Winna sighed. “This house has made me into a time traveler. I'm no longer living in the last year of the twentieth century. I'm no longer sixty-one. I'm twelve and you're eight.”

They had lived in the country then, on seven acres of land, in an old farmhouse. Winna's happiest memory of their days together in the country flashed to mind.

“Do you remember that summer evening on Peach Tree Ridge when you and I sat holding hands on the side of the hill watching the sun set over Pinyon Mesa?”

Chloe's face lit up. “I remember it perfectly—the sky ablaze with a violent orange and purple fire,” she said, using the words of a painter. “We were close then.” Chloe paused as if she was considering that loss. “Why do you suppose both of us remember that sunset?”

“Because we saw God. Wouldn't you say?”

“Yes, but I wouldn't say it that way. You know I don't believe in a bearded man in the sky.”

“I know. Neither do I,” Winna said as she peeled another hardboiled egg, cut up more lettuce and tomato, and added the rest of a can of tuna. She turned to look at Chloe and caught her staring, her expression filled with questions as she lowered her eyes. “What are you thinking?”

“Oh, just about those days.”

“It's fun to know someone with the same memories,” Winna said.

Chloe got up and went to the silverware drawer for a fork and knife. “Todd moved in the last of his things this weekend—that's why I didn't make it,” she said, looking at Winna. “I'm sorry. I can't stay long today, but I promise to come back tomorrow—all day if you need me.”

“I do need you. I hoped you'd go through the library and decide which books you'd like and which should be sent for appraisal. There's so much to tell you—we have to talk. Guess what Emily and I found—a gigantic canary yellow diamond ring worth big bucks, the jeweler says.”

“Here—in this house?” Chloe sat down.

“Yes, we found it in the front hall closet in our old box of marbles. Can you beat that?”

“Are you are just trying to entice me into giving you a hand?”

Winna laughed. “I should have thought of that weeks ago.”

Spotting the satin wrapped package Winna had dropped on the table, Chloe seemed thankful for a distraction. “What's this?”

“I'm not sure. I just found it in the attic. I'd guess there are letters inside,” she said, dressing the salad and dividing it between two plates. “Open it.”

Chloe untied the cord and carefully folded back the cloth that covered a stack of yellowed letters, bound by yet another tarnished gold cord.

“The letters are addressed to Miss Juliana Smythe, Gunnison Avenue, Grand Junction—this one is from Providence, Rhode Island. It's postmarked September 5, 1910.” She quickly flipped through the whole stack, “They're all from the same person. And according to the postmarks, it looks like Gramma kept them in chronological order.”

Winna handed Chloe a plate and took the first letter from Chloe's hand. The return address on the envelope read “A.G. Whitaker, 472 Benefit Street, Providence, Rhode Island.” She slipped the folded letter out of the envelope and, as if it had been read a million times before, it fell open in her hands. It was dated August 24. She read it aloud.

My Dear Juliana,

You know my heart. I don't have to tell you how hard it was for me to say goodbye to you today. I write this as the train speeds through De Beque Canyon. I can see its shadow in the still reaches of the river, a long dark train moving east, trailing a plume of smoke. Sometimes I see your tear-streaked face reflected in the window glass. Now you are a phantom. No longer flesh and blood, begging me not to leave you.

I hate to bring pain into your life, my darling, but I must follow my destiny. I cannot count the times you have said that you want success for me, for me to take my place among the great writers both living and dead. We've talked about how I cannot thrive in Grand Junction. I should wither there. The only bright light in my place of birth is you, Juliana.

You are my inspiration. Do not begrudge me the four years it will take to graduate from college. You have another year of high school and college to look forward to. In the end, we will be together as man and wife. This we have promised.

Until then, I remain your faithful kindred spirit,

Dolph

“Wow,” Chloe said, smiling broadly. “So formal yet so mushy. I love it.”

“This must be the lover Gramma told me about,” Winna said, laying the letter aside and opening another.

“She had a lover?”

“I've told you the story—the guy who died on the train—of a broken heart.”

“Oh, yeah,” Chloe said, leaning back in her chair. “She was so plain and so mean. How could any man have died for the love of her?”

“Look at the pictures of her when she was young—she looked like the girl next door,” Winna said, in defense of Juliana. “You remember her when she was an unhappy old lady.”

Chloe suddenly jumped in her seat, then fanned herself with one hand. “There's someone standing outside the kitchen door.”

Alarmed by Chloe's apparent fear, Winna went tentatively to the door, pulling aside the lace panel that covered the window. With a hint of a smile on his lips, Seth stood on the steps.

Surprised to see him, she opened the door. “Come in, Seth. I didn't expect you.”

“You told me to stop back when I was free. Is this a bad time?” He seemed hesitant.

“No. No. Help never comes at a bad time,” she said, inviting him in.

She turned toward her sister. “Seth, this is Chloe, my sister.”

“How-de-do, Seth.”

Winna could not believe that Chloe actually batted her eyes at him. He grinned and returned her greeting.

“Seth is my new discovery,” Winna said. “He works around the house for me.”

Gesturing toward the kitchen carpet, she asked, “Would you like to rip up the carpet in this room and haul it to the dump? Then we'll talk about whether or not the floor underneath needs repair.”

“Sounds fun,” he said with a trace of good-natured sarcasm. “I'll get my tools.”

Seth headed back to his truck as the sisters escaped from the kitchen with their salads and the stack of letters. They settled into the old furniture on the porch overlooking the lawn where they could eat in peace and read Adolph Whitaker's love letters.