House Wrecking Read online

  Peter offered to take her to the shops and dinner, but she shook her head. They boarded a crowded train home. One seat remained in the car they entered and Sarah sat, while Peter stood in the aisle. The woman in the adjacent seat by the window seemed to examine Sarah from head to toe, then dismissed her and assumed her gaze out the window.

  For once, Sarah was grateful for the Peter’s enormousness. His wide girth blocked the rest of the passengers on the train from seeing her wedged in between him and the evil eyes of the woman at the window. If the other passengers could see her, they’d also see the bloody gaping hole left deep in her womb. They would be aghast at what had been removed from her and left to die in a metal pail on 23rd Street and 1st Avenue in New York City.

  Moving Day

  On moving day Lauren traced the sound of Jeff’s voice through the kitchen to the open door to the basement and took the stairs down. She groped for the rail, as the bare bulb at the bottom of the stairs shed little light on the dark, wooden staircase. She’d avoided the basement on the realtor’s advice during the open house and had left it to Jeff to tour with the inspector. She realized this was her first descent into the space she now owned. A strange sense of apprehension overtook her. She hesitated, and then shook it off.

  “Where are you?” she called.

  Jeff came out of the shadows. “Finally! I need your help to open this door to the outside. It will save the movers a ton of time if they can bring the file boxes directly down here instead of going through the first floor, but the door is stuck. I’m going to go outside and push while you pull. I’ll knock when I’m ready.”

  “You’re going to leave me down here alone?” The question even surprised her.

  “You’ll be ok. It’ll take a second for me to bust in from the other side.”

  Lauren’s eyes adjusted to the dim light of the basement and she focused on the room to her left thinking she saw outlines of a bar. She took a step in, but sounds from the other side of the door indicated Jeff was ready.

  “Are you there? Ok, I’m going to push on my end on the count of three. When I get to three, pull as hard as you can - one, two… three.” The heavy, wooden door flew open and flooded the dark space with light. Jeff fell into the room and landed on all fours in front of Lauren.

  Lauren laughed and offered her hand. “Are you alright?”

  Jeff nodded and grabbed her hand. The room now well illuminated, did indeed have a bar made from a heavy mahogany and a tarnished brass foot rail along the bottom. They wandered inside to a window seat under the far window. “This will be a great rec room for us and the kids once we get it cleaned up,” Lauren said.

  “I think it would make a better man cave,” Jeff said, putting his arm around her.

  “Hm, we’ll see about that.” She smiled.

  “Laur, are you down there?” her mother Beverly called out.

  “Yup, come down, this basement is unbelievable.”

  “Wow, this is great,” Beverly planted her hands on her hips and looked around. At 68, Beverly still looked like a young woman with only a few strands of gray mixed into her dark curls. The women wandered to the left of the staircase where Lauren had not yet explored. The shadows were deeper and they couldn’t find an electrical switch or pull-string, but their eyes soon adjusted to what looked like a full kitchen with a sink and old-fashioned wood and glass cabinets.

  Beverly whistled with appreciation. “These old houses had kitchens in the basement. The cook would prepare the food down here and send it up to the dining room in a dumbwaiter or with servants. We get these cabinets at auction occasionally. If they’re in good shape like these, they fetch a pretty penny.”

  “It’s nice to have a mom who is an antique dealer,” said Lauren.

  Jeff joined them. “I’m going to tell the movers to bring the file boxes down and stack them.”

  “By the way, I went to see Grandma Dorothy in the nursing home yesterday and told her about your new house. She thinks she knows someone who lived here once.”

  “Really, only one family owned it, so she must have known Emily. I owe Grandma a visit anyway, so I’ll ask her about it next time I go.”

  “Good idea and you’re needed upstairs,” Beverly said. “The movers left your bed in the living room.”

  Lauren laughed. At the top of the stairs, something made her turn and the eerie feeling from her initial descent into the basement greeted her again. She frowned, made sure the single light was on, and followed Beverly out.

  Later that night, Lauren tucked Brian into bed and after five minutes of back-rubs, his breathing became steady. She planted a light kiss on his dark curls, enjoying the smell of his freshly shampooed baby head and went to her new bedroom. She passed the closed bathroom door, meaning Jeff had been equally successful getting Claire to sleep. Once inside her new bedroom, she stopped short, not knowing what to do next in this foreign space. While the bed was made and her clothes unpacked into the drawers, the small comforts of her bedtime routine were missing. She needed her bedside drawer full of lotions and the notebook where she jotted down random thoughts and dreams that awakened her in the night. She needed her book and water bottle on her bedside table. She looked through the boxes stacked on the hearth of the fireplace. She’d never had a bedroom with a fireplace and thought this sounded like such a romantic idea. But romance was far from her mind as she rummaged through boxes. She found the right box, picked out her book and water bottle and positioned them on the bedside table. She opened the drawer of the table and dumped the remaining contents of the box inside.

  Feeling satisfied at this small but important settling in, Lauren went downstairs, poured herself a glass of wine and hunted around for her bedside table lamps. Tucking one lamp under each arm, she grabbed her glass of wine, backtracked to the refrigerator for a bottle of beer for Jeff and hustled upstairs where she distributed the beverages to their respective bedside tables. She wondered why Jeff still hadn’t returned from the bathroom.

  Lauren found an electrical outlet behind their king bed and plugged in the lamps. The room became surprisingly settled and comforting. Contentedly, she opened the drawer where she kept her pajamas. She could use a shower, but the thought of going down to the second floor seemed overwhelming. Against her hygienic judgment, she selected a short sleeved nightshirt with three pearl buttons, dressed and climbed into bed.

  She stretched against the pillows, enjoying the unexpected feeling of ease. She had not looked forward to this room; the bedrooms on the second floor had much more charm. But with two bedrooms on the second floor and three on the third, she chose one that was close to the kids. Her eyes caught something white between the bricks of the fireplace. She got out of bed, saw it was paper or a note and tried to dislodge it with the tips of her short fingernails. She retrieved a pair of tweezers from her bedside table and withdrew the folded paper out -- a newspaper clipping, brittle and yellowed with age. On the top of her dresser, she gently unfolded it flat and the crumbling edges left remnants on the polished surface.

  BOY STILL MISSING

  One week after hurricane cripples

  New Haven, boy remains unfound

  Jeff emerged from the bathroom with a towel around his waist using another to towel his wet hair. Lauren refolded the paper, tucked it in the drawer of her bedside table and took out her book. She wanted to keep this to herself.

  “Did you take a bath?”

  “Yeah - can you believe it? Claire fell right to sleep. You were still with Brian and I didn’t want to bother you to find out where all the stuff was for the downstairs bathroom. Everything was set up here, so I went for it. I must say, I may have been selling this bath-thing short over the last few years. That’s a cool tub.”

  Lauren laughed. “I told you. There’s nothing like soaking in a nice hot tub to melt away one’s worries. I can’t wait to try this one, but we’re going to need a shower up here. I’ll call Kevin tomorrow and see when he can come over.”

  “Yeah, t
here’s a leak under the sink in the office kitchen too. Let’s wait a couple of days to see what else needs to be fixed before we call the plumber.” He removed his towel and got into the bed. He took a gulp of beer and said, “Hey, thanks for this.”

  “I thought you could use it after the day we had. I’m exhausted.”

  Jeff took the unopened book from Lauren’s lap, set it on his bedside table and slipped a hand under the covers.

  Lauren hesitated. Normally she would say she had to get up early, which she probably did. But, she glanced at her clean-smelling husband naked in the bed and felt what she hoped was a glimmer of attraction. Before she changed her mind, she turned off her lamp, filling the room with an intimacy that danced in the shadows cast from the one remaining light.

  When they finished, Jeff fell asleep, but Lauren lay awake fighting off the emptiness that always followed. She had hoped to leave this feeling behind in their old house. She tucked the emptiness away and directed her attention to the newspaper clipping. She remembered Carol saying that there was a brother who was never found and fell asleep wondering what could have happened to Thomas Marvin all those years ago.

  Taste Test

  The bell above the door of the Colebrook General Store tinkled admitting Sarah, Kate and Abby. Sarah flashed her perfect white teeth between pink lips and her dark gray skirt, full to the ground, settled around her. The rounded collar of her maroon and white-striped satin blouse came together at the neck with a wide, white ribbon, leaving a few inches of skin. Charles tugged at the stained collar of the white shirt Aunt Rosemary had bought from the Sears catalog, and the girls came to the counter. He rearranged a few strands of oily hair over the boil on his forehead as the girls approached the counter.

  “We’ve come to taste the root beer.” Sarah produced the Hires trade card Charles had dropped off at her house a few days earlier.

  Charles leapt off his stool, knocking it over in his haste and startling Aunt Rosemary.

  “Good lord, my boy. If you don’t stop doing that, you’re going to scare me into an early grave.” Rosemary deposited another wad of chewing tobacco between her gum and cheek.

  Charles blushed and took down three small glasses from the shelf. He filled each one, giving a glass to Kate and Abby first, leaving the best for last. He might have touched Sarah’s hand as he passed her the glass.

  Smiling at Charles, Sarah said, “Miss Bacon misses you at school these days.”

  Kate and Abby exchanged a look and Aunt Rosemary’s face twisted into a scowl. The incident that had caused Charles’s dismissal from school still remained fresh in all their minds. The game had been Sarah’s idea, although she had never confessed to it, and he had not told on her. She’d passed a note throughout the class asking everyone to guess how many holes were in Miss Bacon’s knickers. She’d promised to give a kiss to the boy who got it right. Charles had tried every manner of science to guess the number and came upon five - two each in the front and back for yanking them on and off, an extra one for wear and tear where it should be. He could still conjure the feel of Sarah’s moist, pink lips planted on his right cheek in victory. He was caught with the note, but it was worth it.

  Charles’s hand rose to pick at the boil on his forehead and his cheeks flamed anew.

  “Delicious,” Sarah said, sipping root beer.

  “Indeed,” said Kate.

  Abby nodded, finished the drink too quickly and wiped her hand with her mouth. She let out a tiny belch and covered her mouth, giggling.

  The girls reached into their purses for nickel coins, but Charles waved them away. “First drink’s on the house,” he said, announcing a policy he’d developed on their behalf.

  Rosemary expunged the wad of chewing tobacco into the spit jar and wiped her mouth on a handkerchief. When the girls turned to leave she arranged a perfect scowl onto her pale face, blotched and freckled from years in the sun and directed it toward Charles.

  A Strange Discovery

  Lauren’s project for the day was to clean the basement. The rest of the house had come along to her satisfaction. Over the past several months, she’d unpacked all the boxes and seen to the necessary renovations in the upstairs bathroom. They’d added a shower and upgraded the tile and vanity to meet the needs of modern-day living. They replaced the windows and installed a wall-to-wall beige Berber leading from the second floor stairs throughout the remodeled servants quarters, and added a built-in work and entertainment center. They’d made fewer renovations on the second floor. The hardwood floors had been stripped and restored to their former shine and glory. Lauren had found an old man, a retired wallpaper hanger, who’d helped her strip the peeling wallpaper from the grand entry, front stairway and second floor hall and hung new paper correct for the period.

  To avoid running into Rachel, Jeff’s re-employed receptionist whom she couldn't seem to warm to, Lauren decided to bypass his home office and access the basement by a door at the bottom of the first floor stairs. She’d never opened this door before, but had peeked inside from an outside window. She couldn’t see beyond the dust and stone steps, but it appeared to be a dry access to the basement. She tried the handle to the door, but it was locked, so she raced up the stairs and dumped the drawer of old keys she’d found into a bowl.

  After finding the right key, Lauren pushed open the stiff door, releasing the dry, stale air into the open stairway. She peered into the darkened space lit only by the dirty window in the upper right corner. The first stone step crumbled beneath and she reached for a rail, but found none. She descended the remaining stairs, bracing herself on the stone wall to the right and wooden wall on her left. With a solid shove, she opened the door at the bottom of the stairs and stumbled into the basement.

  The same, strange feeling from her first visit to the basement caught her off guard again. What was it about the basement? She tried to toss it off, but thoughts of the lost boy from the newspaper clipping continued to lay on the edges of consciousness. The basement had a persona that seemed to evaluate her for provisional passage. She plugged in all available lamps and turned on the three overhead lights. She noticed the smell right away - sweetly human, yet thicker, with an edge of some vice she couldn’t identify. It paralyzed her, turning the steady whine of the wet-dry vacuum into the scream of the lost boy. She turned off the vacuum, and the sound disappeared.

  She vacuumed the rafters, wondering whether the spiders, gathering in the canister, could multiply inside the vacuum and invade the house at a later date. She dismissed this as unlikely, but decided she would store the vacuum in the garage. Even Jeff, with his doubtful psychiatric skills, would consider that crazy. She worked the vacuum away from the rafters down the wood-paneled walls, generating yet another cloud of dust and releasing more of the familiar smell. Lauren closed her eyes to blink back the allergy tears and shut off the vacuum.

  Once finished with the basement, Lauren worked her cleaning instruments over the crumbling stone staircase. On the bottom step, the dust and crumbled stone kept coming, seemingly digging a hole into the step with each sweep. She abandoned the broom against the basement wall and picked up the dust brush, brushing away as much of the stone as she could. She directed the nozzle of the vacuum into the cavity of the stone, sucking out the crumbled stone and dust until the crater was clear. She peered inside and found a rusty iron contraption connected to a short chain fixed to the nearest wall.

  Lauren ran upstairs for a flashlight to examine the cavity more closely. Jeff was on the phone.

  “We’ll be right there,” Lauren heard him say before hanging up. “That Celentano bastard pushed Claire off the swing and now she can’t move her arm. We’ve got to pick her up at school and take her for x-rays,” he said.

  “I’ll get my coat.”

  Getting to Yes-Sarah Style

  Sarah rang for Jane to assist her into her corset and a light yellow dress with short white lace sleeves, another recent gift from Peter. She brushed and arranged her chestnut hair into a f
ashionable twist at the back of her head and added a few curls around her forehead in the new style she’d seen in the Ladies Home Journal . As she rose from her dressing table for breakfast. The familiar instability in her stomach returned. It’s nothing; she’d tried to assure herself. But fuller breasts and tender nipples told a different story.

  The putrid smell of bacon almost prevented her from entering the wood-paneled and crystal-chandeliered dining room where Alice and Peter were already seated with their backs to her. She knew Alice no longer liked to come to the dining room for meals, but Peter insisted that they gather there twice a day; for breakfast and supper.

  Sarah overhead Peter say, “He’ll inherit the entire estate now. It doesn’t look like much, but the woman was shrewd. There’s more there than meets the eye.” They glanced up from their plates of eggs and bacon when she entered.

  “Who will inherit the entire estate?” Sarah asked.

  “The idiot boy Charles, who worked at the general store with his Aunt a few years ago. He returned yesterday to sort it out.”

  Sarah remembered her days around Charles with fondness. He sat behind her in school and played with the ends of her braids. She let him do it – it tickled. After he left school, he’d hung around at his Aunt’s store for a few months before returning to his father’s place in New Haven. She’d heard he’d gone to work in a factory.

  “Are you going to see him?”

  “Why?” Peter said.

  “I thought I might come along and bring my condolences. I believe that’s what people do when a close family member dies,” Sarah said.