House Wrecking Read online

  Mimi and Madeline, the two house cats twice replaced and bearing little resemblance to the original Mimi and Madeline, raced into the room and climbed on top of her. She stroked them with her free hand, harder and harder; at first eliciting loud purrs from Madeline - driving the cat away. No matter, she liked Mimi better. Mimi was black and white and reminded Sarah of her favorite blouse – black and white stripes with a beautiful white satin ribbon tied at the neck. Her father, Peter had brought it for her from Lord & Taylor on the ladies mile in New York City. It had come, wrapped in the beautiful white box, hidden beneath the fragile, white tissue paper. She’d put it right on and worn it over to Kate’s. Kate had said it was pretty, and Sarah remembered the jealousy in Kate’s eyes. She’d worn it on the day Charles had brought her here to this house in New Haven and married her. Where was that blouse? Mimi escaped her grasp and fled the room.

  “Mary, help me,” Sarah screeched again before zeroing in on the Adventures of Alice in Wonderland, wedged between the bottom stones of the fireplace. It was within her reach. She needed to pry it from between the stones. She wished she could get her right arm out from under her. With her weaker left arm, she reached up and grasped the volume between two fingers. She needed to wiggle it to wedge it loose. She lost her pincer grasp toward the end, sending the book crashing to the floor and dispersing its contents. The green shard of glass caught her eye first. She’d found it on a walk around the green with Peter. “Don’t touch that,” he’d said. “You’ll cut yourself.” But she’d slipped it into the pocket of her dress anyway.

  With the shard grasped firmly between her thumb and index finger, Sarah admired its sharp edges and brilliant color. The late afternoon sun had left the second floor bedroom, save for a triangle of light falling on the top of Sarah’s right foot. Her eyes rolled from the shard of glass to her foot and she wondered whether the sun would burn her skin. Never mind, she said, the sun wasn’t strong in the fall. Or was it summer?

  She must’ve nodded off. The sound of the door opening startled her and she began to scream again for help.

  “Help, help me,” Sarah yelled continually willing the sound of footsteps to come closer.

  The Truth

  Lauren and Beverly settled into their usual vinyl booth at the diner and gave the server identical orders for tuna sandwiches on toast and diet cokes. Lauren reached into her bag and withdrew the envelope with the photo Dorothy had given her. Part of Lauren hoped Beverly would stick it into her bag without looking at it, but Beverly had been asking for it and she thought this unlikely.

  Beverly removed the photo from the unsealed envelope. “I still can’t figure out why this woman with your grandmother looks so familiar to me.” She stared at the old photograph.

  Lauren took a deep breath. “She looks familiar to you, Mom, because she looks like a paler version of you.”

  “Looks like me? Why would she…?”

  Lauren nodded, allowing Beverly to absorb the information. Their sandwiches arrived, but Beverly’s remained untouched with her eyes glued on the photograph. For lack of anything else to do, Lauren started to eat. After a few bites, she broke the silence. “I think Grandma was trying to tell us something by giving us the photo.”

  “I don’t understand. Are you trying to say you think this woman, Emily is my birth mother? They told me my parents died in the war. If this Emily lady is my mother, she was alive this whole time.” Tears welled at the brim of Beverly’s eyes

  Lauren nodded and rested her hand over Beverly’s.

  The brimming tears began to run down Beverly’s cheeks. “She was living on the other side of town, in your house. I could’ve gotten to know her, and maybe my father. Why didn’t she tell me?”

  “I don’t know, Mom. I don’t know why grandma did what she did or the circumstances surrounding Emily giving you to Grandma. But, I know this; Emily and Grandma were friends and I believe she chose pretty wisely, giving you to Grandma to raise.”

  “If she were alive all these years, why couldn’t she raise me herself, why didn’t she come and get me, or at least try to get to know me?”

  “Mom, I don’t know, we may never know.”

  Beverly wiped away the tears. She gathered her bag and began to slide out of the booth. “Well, I’m going to find out. I’m driving right to the nursing home and demand my mother, or whoever she is, tells me the truth. After all these years, I deserve the truth, don’t I?”

  Lauren began to slide out of her seat too, ready to stop Beverly from making a mistake. The hostess’s head turned from the front desk to see what was happening. The few other customers at the diner also turned around to look at the agitated women. She rested her hand on Beverly’s arm. “Of course you do, Mom. But if Grandma wanted to tell you, she would’ve told you sometime over the past sixty years. I don’t think she wants to discuss it, or she would have. If you confront her like you are now, she’s going to get evasive again.”

  “Well, I deserve the truth,” Beverly repeated.

  “Yes, you do. But, you’re not going to get it - not like this. I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry to drag you into this and reveal what Grandma obviously tried to hide all these years. Let’s give it a few days to sink in. Then we can try to ask Grandma, what happened all those years ago, without upsetting her and shutting her down, OK?”

  Beverly remained poised, with one leg on the floor outside the booth. They stayed locked in place for another minute before relaxing back into the booth.

  “Fine, I’ll let sleeping dogs lie where they may, for the weekend. Next Monday, I am going to get the truth.”

  “Sounds like a plan. Now, can we eat our sandwiches?” Lauren took another big bite of hers and washed it down with a slurp of diet coke.

  Beverly pushed her plate away and picked up the photo of Emily and Dorothy standing arm in arm in front of Lauren’s house.

  Dying like You’re Supposed to

  Dreaming of ways Sarah might die had become Emily’s new hobby – something she might enjoy at night before bed, or during down times at the store. The way she figured it, Sarah had hung on so long past her expiration date; any manner of possible deaths appeared imminent. “Why wouldn’t she die like she was supposed to? Emily crossed the front hall of her house, past the door to Steven’s apartment to the second floor she shared with Sarah. Her hopes of finding her dead were dashed when she heard the cries from Sarah’s room at the top of the stairs.

  Emily calculated that since Sarah was 69 years old, and a white woman living in 1940 was expected to live 66 years, she should’ve died three years ago. Emily expected it any day, but nothing. Sarah lived on, defying all odds. Her best hope was a fatal head injury. Sarah sometimes forgot that she couldn’t walk and had fallen out of bed a few times. A good crack on the head during a fall would get the job done. While she didn’t actually plan to kill Sarah, but Emily had come close several times by dosing Sarah with enough Laudanum to ensure a peaceful and quiet night with Steven. Sarah always woke up again the next day.

  The new found urgency Emily felt for Sarah’s death stemmed from Mary’s recent passing, three months earlier. Mary simply went to bed one night and never woke up again. When she hadn’t turned up to prepare breakfast, Emily had gone to her room and found her dead. At 66, Mary died when she was supposed to. Mary, their beloved housekeeper for half a century, had always done everything exactly the way she was supposed to. While Emily missed Mary, the biggest problem resulting from Mary’s death was that no one was left to care for Sarah, except of course for Emily.

  The second reason Emily needed Sarah dead was because she was late – really late- maybe three months late. She’d always wanted a child. But an unwed mother – oh Sarah would be so disappointed for the shame Emily would bring upon her. Sarah wouldn’t have it, and Emily couldn’t leave Sarah.

  Before he’d gone off to war, Emily had made Steven a partner in the store and added his name. Under his management, the store expanded to include home goods and cleaning supplies;
anything one would need to set up and maintain a house. They still carried a few shelves of dry, jar and canned items and a cooler with milk, eggs and a few locally grown fruit and vegetables. But the competition for the sale of these items had expanded and they were more of a convenience for customers who had run out of these items between larger trips to the more modern self-service, supermarkets further down Whalley Avenue. The change had been good for the store; not great, but good enough to keep a roof over their heads and food on the table, until lately. The war had made it impossible to get anything to sell other than the local paper.

  Sarah had warned her against sex since the day she grew old enough to listen. “Don’t let men put their member inside you. Once they get in, they’ll spray you with their poison and make you good for nothing. That’s what happened to me and look at me now,” Sarah would say. She’d held Steven off for a while. Sure, they did other things together; lots of other things. But Emily would shut it down before he got inside her. After a while, Emily was pretty convinced the poison story wasn’t true and the danger of getting pregnant had passed. She’d let Steven into her body and nothing bad had happened. In fact good things had happened: really good things, amazing things – until now.

  She opened the door to find Sarah red faced and in tears, smelling of urine and feces, Emily had to stop to take a deep breath, encouraging herself forward to face the mess.

  “Oh mother, How long have you been like this?”

  “I don’t know what you expect, leaving me all day with no food, no water,” said Sarah.

  Emily’s face tightened.

  “Well, hurry up. Get me up and out of these wet things and for God sakes, make us supper. Where have you been?”

  “I was at work, Mother. I opened the store, then I had to be at Malley’s for my other job at ten. You remember Malley’s, right - the new Department store downtown? I work there now, too.”

  “Who would hire you at a Department store of all things? You can’t add, you can’t subtract, you can barely read and write. Your brother Thomas, he was the smart one – always knew his sums.”

  “Of course I can read and write. I went to school. I’ve been working at Malley’s for a few months now.”

  “Don’t you sass me. I’ll…”

  “Sorry Mother. Wrap your arms around my neck and I’ll get this bed cleaned up and make us sandwiches. That’ll be nice, won’t it?”

  With Sarah clean, fed and sufficiently dosed with Laudanum to ensure a good night’s sleep. Emily prepared a few additional toasted cheese sandwiches and poured herself a glass of milk. Emily had missed Mary’s fine cooking since she’d passed. She gathered the sandwiches, glasses, a bag of potato chips and a jar of pickles on a tray and quietly headed downstairs to eat alone in Steven’s apartment; a habit she’d taken on since he’d left a month ago. She would pretend he was in the bath ready to swoop around the corner any minute. She sat at the dining table considering her options when imaginary Steven came around the corner still drying his hair with a towel. After all these years, Emily still thought he was perfect.

  “Hello dear. How was your day? Steven pulled out a chair and sat down next to Emily.

  “Fine, thank you; and yours?”

  “Not too bad, not too bad. What kind cuisine have you prepared for us this evening?”

  “Sorry, toasted cheese. I wish I had learned to cook from Mary before she passed.”

  “That’s alright, we’ll make do.

  She continued their imaginary conversation for a few minutes longer until reality lured her back and filled her eyes with tears. She got up from the table and gathered the dinner items on the tray. She walked out Steven’s front door and up the stairs to her own room as she’d done many times before, Steven, was never allowed to follow.

  The next morning with Sarah still among the living, Emily opened the store for a couple of hours to allow her customers to get their papers and whatever items were still in stock. She did this three of four times a week to keep her customers coming and make a little bit of money. Her job at Malley’s didn’t pay much either. She locked up the store and walked over to Springside Avenue for her appointment with Mr. Richards, the Almshouse Director.

  She arrived at the plain clapboard one-story structure and stepped up onto the long, narrow concrete porch lining the front of the institution. Six inches above the road, with no balusters or banisters to make it decorative it, the space could barely be called a porch. She stood at the front door waiting for a response to her knock and watched a substantially-sized spider race through his web-making work across the window to the right of the front door. By the looks of it, the porch was a well-used haven for spiders, the remnants of several prior webs, lay beneath the active one littered with old dried insects and forgotten egg sacks. After a few minutes of waiting, she received no answer and tried the handle. Maybe that’s what one did in places like this, Emily assured herself. It opened freely and she cautiously stepped through the front door.

  The familiar smell of urine and feces hit her, but Emily remained undeterred. That’s why she was moving Sarah here. In the nursing home, Sarah could be cared for by people more skilled with such dysfunctions than she. Bowel and bladder accidents were a normal part of aging; of course this place would smell of them. Several old people sat hunched over in their wheelchairs lining the front room. None of them spoke to her or each other. She knocked on the door to the right of the room marked Director. From the inside of the office someone barked “what” loudly enough to be heard and irritated enough to accelerate Emily’s apprehension. She squared her shoulders and turned the knob.

  Mr. Richards wiped back the thinning gray hair off his oversized forehead. “Yes,” he asked?

  “I’m here about my mother. We had an appointment.” Emily said.

  “Yes, of course. Mrs. Charles…. What’s her name? It’s here somewhere,” he said, shuffling piles of papers around on his cluttered desk.

  “Marvin. Mrs. Charles Marvin.”

  “Oh yes, here it is. Fill these out and return them when you’re done. We’ll need bank documents and character references of course before we can add her to the list.” Mr. Richards ordered, handing Emily a stack of documents.

  “List?” Emily asked, clearly confused.

  “Yes. We’ve a two and a half year waiting list. Sometimes it goes faster. They don’t last long once they’re here.” He said, a creepy smile descending over his lips and revealing brown uneven teeth.

  “I see,” Emily tried to conceal her disappointment. “Well, could you show me around? I’m not quite sure if this is the right place for my mother.”

  “Aww Miss – what did you say your name was?”

  “Emily”

  “Miss Emily, it’s best to complete the forms for now. Some things are best left unseen.”

  Dorothy

  Lauren was awakened by the phone ringing abnormally early in the morning. It was Beverly, who had received a call from the nursing home a few minutes earlier. Dorothy had passed away peacefully in her sleep. They’d found her this way during early morning toileting rounds. She’d been failing, they said. She lived a good long life, surpassing everyone’s expectations. She was sharp up until the end; when she wanted to be of course. This time Lauren propped herself up on the pillows and cried alone in her bed before she fell back to sleep hours later amidst the rising sun.

  The telephone awoke her again hours later, but she was in too deep asleep at the time to answer it. She thought she could make out the sound of Ben’s voice leaving a message on the answering machine before it clicked off. The clock on the bedside table read 10:51 AM. Oh my, she said to herself, enjoying the brief return to teenagedom that allowed for such irresponsible behavior. She laid in bed, stretching her long—disused muscles and remembered the great discoveries of yesterday, both the treasure in the basement and Ben. The she remembered the early morning phone call and her eyes again filled with tears over the loss of Dorothy. She got out of bed remembering that Beve
rly was picking her up at noon to go to the funeral home.

  Everything had already been arranged of course. Dorothy had expected to die over twenty years before she actually had. There was a plot next to her grandpa with a stone already ready to go, save for the year of death. There weren’t many people left to grieve the loss of Dorothy. Out of Lauren’s original four aunts and uncles, only the aunts were left with their spouses. Her cousins would be there with their own children.

  After all the final arrangements were made, Beverly asked Lauren if she wouldn’t mind taking a final ride to the nursing home to collect Dorothy’s things. With the children still with Jeff for another twenty four hours, Lauren welcomed the distraction and happily accompanied Beverly. The tidy- one level expanse of the nursing home felt untouched by Dorothy’s recent death and Lauren was annoyed that business went on as usual. The stripped bare bed revealed a pea green plastic mattress - an unnecessary reminder of her loss. Beverly and Lauren had brought a few garbage bags and hastily gathered Dorothy’s few items of clothing, books, and mementos from the closet and dresser in the room. When Lauren opened the top drawer, revealing the box of pictures Dorothy kept, she was reminded of her last time in this room and the startling tale Dorothy had begun; a tale never fully told, not to them anyway.

  When they were almost finished, Enid, the young Cuban nurse quietly entered the room.

  “I’m glad I caught up with you both. I wanted to tell you how sorry I am about your loss. Your mother and grandmother was one of my favorite residents and I will miss her greatly,” Enid said

  “Thank you.” Lauren and Beverly murmured in unison.

  “There is one other thing… Miss Dorothy told me something a few weeks ago. I believe it was after your last visit,” Enid said, looking at Lauren. “It happened in the past and she was ashamed of what she’d done. I encouraged her to talk to you, but she said she couldn’t. A few days before she died, I asked her if she would like me to share her story with you and she agreed, but asked me to wait until she was gone.