House Wrecking Page 7

  The mother departed and Albert held up a letter for her. She snatched it from his hand without a word and dashed out the door. Racing home, she settled into the comfort of her window seat and opened the letter.

  Dear Sarah,

  I have found a house. A beautiful Queen Anne just like the one in your book of house plans. The previous owner abandoned it half-built and I have hired a number of men to finish the job. I also purchased a small grocery in the Westville village.

  The house will be complete soon and will contact you to make arrangements. I hope you remain well.

  Fondly,

  Charles

  Sarah re-read the letter. The vagueness of it puzzled her. Perhaps the covert nature of their relationship mandated this obscure approach? Why would he write about his plans if he were not planning to include her in such? Surely make arrangements meant plans to come collect her. He seemed excited about the house, but did this excitement include her? Of course, she must consider the signature line – fondly.

  Later that evening, with her return letter to Charles stowed in her desk, Sarah gazed at her face in the mirror. She realized that she’d forgotten the razor blade. She’d planned to cut a precise outline around her lips, figuring the incision would blend well and make them look plump and redder. Thus far, she’d confined her cutting to the space on her thighs between her legs. No one noticed these; even Peter didn’t touch her there. This was her special place. She could do there what she wished. But the temptation to reach beyond this private realm throbbed. Once she’d inflicted a wound, she’d discovered multiple methods to keep them open and seeping. The alcohol from Peter’s spirit cabinet increased the pain, but she could not take too much without being noticed. When she could, she’d sneak into his study and soak a cloth with enough of the brown, pungent liquid and press the cloth to the cuts on her legs, or squeeze a drop onto the most open area, enticing a special sting. Infected wounds also brought her great pleasure. She loved the red-rimmed cuts oozing whitish, yellow pus. She’d cover these with the clean cloths provided, but no longer needed for her menses. She often opened the cuts afresh and relished the smell they left in the rags. The alcohol prevented the infections from setting in further and she was frustrated over having to choose between the two pleasures. Without the razor, she opened her box and chose a piece of green glass. It was too dull for the precision her lips required. She dropped her knickers and used the glass to pick off the scabs on her thigh.

  At dinner Tuesday night Peter Prescott congratulated Sarah for coming to her senses and not attaching candles to the bare Christmas tree. But gaining no response from either his wife or daughter, he dropped the topic. Since her brother Andrew was visiting a friend through the school holiday from Yale, the three ate their evening meal in silence. She was too drained with anxiety to fake sleep or attempt to fight him off with choice words, and succumbed easily, returning to the place in her mind where she could release; a part of the routine on which they had both come to expect. He performed his act in the traditional missionary style and left, but Sarah didn’t sleep. Her mind alternated between whether Charles would return soon enough, and excitement that he soon might.

  New Haven Christmas

  On the night of the Christmas party, Lauren couldn’t wait to tour her guests through the four stories of the Painted Lady in her tight-fitting black satin evening dress, which accentuated her dark skin and hair and showed off her trim figure. With a glass of wine in hand, she circulated among the hundred guests making sure everyone had all they needed.

  The guests knew it was more than an average Christmas party. They crossed the parquet floors and admired the high ceilings, the detailed woodwork of the doors and moldings, the stone fireplaces. Would it have looked this way hundred years ago? They were taken in by the grandeur of the home, decorated in its Christmas finest. They wanted to dwell in and among it. Maybe parts of it could be captured for their own homes. What would it mean to live here day after day?

  Some of them had admired it for years. Friends from the neighborhood had walked their dogs past, wondering what would become of the house if Lauren and Jeff hadn’t bought it. Some of the older neighbors knew poor Emily Marvin, who’d died there as a sweet old woman. There were others, from Jeff or Lauren’s work who had never even driven by until the night of the party and asked questions about it. These were the ones most taken by it.

  No one was frightened by the dark corridors, which led them from room to candlelit room. They barely noticed, just continued on, not knowing what each floor would bring – a wine and cheese table on one, a carving station on two, a room full of kids eating hot dogs with a sitter on three. Best of all was the juke box playing Bare Naked Ladies, and the bartender in the basement, where they remained until three o’clock in the morning. There was no need for more light; they could see well enough for their needs and the sounds and smells led them through. Or was it something else? The next day they discussed it with their wives or husbands, neighbors or friends, but couldn’t be sure.

  ***

  The morning after the Christmas party, Lauren was woken by the doorbell. She looked at the clock – nine fifteen. She hadn’t slept this late in years of course. She hadn’t gone to sleep at three o’clock in the morning in years either. She got out of bed and plodded heavily toward the ringing bell, pausing to grab a robe and take a much-needed drink of water. She moved down the two flights of stairs, wondering who it could be this early on a Sunday morning and assuming a partygoer had forgotten something from last night or wanted to thank her for the great event. She peered out the glass of the foyer, but did not recognize the tall stranger who stood there. This was not an uncommon experience since Jeff had moved his office into the house. His clients didn’t always know where to go, and often rang the bell to the second floor. But it was a Sunday and Jeff hadn’t mentioned expecting any clients. She opened the door and said to the middle-aged man on the porch, “Can I help you?”

  “Sorry to bother you on a Sunday morning, Ma’am, but I’m looking for Dr. Jeffrey Serra. Is he here? ”

  Lauren stumbled for the words. She didn’t like to lie, but Jeff wouldn’t want to be bothered by this man, whatever business he had with him. “I don’t think he’s expecting anyone, do you have an appointment?”

  “No Ma’am – no appointment. I have something I need to give him. The man stated in an official tone.

  “Oh, well, I’m his wife. You can give it to me, and I’ll make sure he gets it.”

  “Unfortunately Ma’am, I need to give it to him directly.

  Lauren took this news like a punch in the stomach. What should she do? She could tell him that Jeff wasn’t home, but delaying would only postpone the inevitable. Resigned, she invited the man in out of the cold. She left him standing in the foyer, knowing this moment would change their life forever. She mounted the stairs to get Jeff, trying to calm her pounding heart. How many more times would she climb these stairs before Baxter’s parents got this house, their cars and everything else they had worked so hard to acquire?

  Charles

  The night before Charles was to return to Colebrook to retrieve Sarah, he picked up his old sketch book and flipped through his drawings. He pulled out an early sketch of Sarah as a school girl in braids with a wide grin that he’d finished shortly after his mother died and he’d moved to Colebrook to live with Aunt Rosemary. Later sketches of Sarah featured the long hair down her back and then twisted in a fashionable chignon. He noticed how her smile seemed to flatten in his sketches of her over the years. The one he had drawn after her visit to the store seemed to feature almost a smirk. He picked up his charcoal and started to draw her mouth as he’d seen it most recently. As the flame of his candle faded, he threw the charcoal across the room – not because he couldn’t draw the expression on Sarah’s face, but because he’d captured it perfectly. The gray pattern the charcoal left on the wall seemed to take on new life as the morning light began to fill the room and Charles finally drifted off to sl
eep.

  He slept poorly and woke exhausted. Three hours into his journey to New Haven, the Dew Drop Inn appeared perched feet from a dirt road heading uphill to nowhere. Relieved to find a well-attended feeding and watering trough outside the hotel, he unharnessed his old horse Dawn and her sister Donna from the wagon, covered it for the night and led them through to the stall in the back of the inn.

  The entry room to the inn reminded him of his Aunt Rosemary’s farmhouse. The floor was covered with red and blue carpets, some overlaying others. The walls featured cabbage rose-flowered wallpaper making the room cozy and close. At a low desk beyond a wide oak staircase sat an aging man, his head bald save for a half-ring of dark hair extending from ear to ear. Behind him sat a plain young girl in a brown muslin dress. Her straight brown hair hung in two braids in front of her ears, framing brown eyes.

  “Looks to me like you’ve seen better days?” the man said.

  The young girl looked up from the book on her lap. Charles couldn’t see the title. He smiled at the warmth of the strangers who were indeed a sight for his sore eyes. “I suppose you could say that. Can you spare a room for the night?”

  “A room and a good meal is what you need and I got’ em both,” the bald man said. He shoved over the ledger on the counter for Charles to sign, and reached above the head of the girl to remove a key from open-fronted boxes. Charles noted that the remaining four boxes retained their keys. “Ethel will show you your room and bring you fresh water. You go ahead and clean yourself up and come down for a bite of supper.”

  “Thank you, I will,” Charles said.

  Ethel showed Charles to a pleasant room, featuring a wallpaper pattern dominated by blue flowers. A thin braided rug lay beneath a four-poster bed covered with a white chenille bedspread. A stool stood next to the bed to help him climb up into it. The sheer, white cotton curtains on the single window were drawn, blocking the darkening sky. Charles took a deep breath. The man at the desk had been right; this was what he needed. He took the key from the silent Ethel. She seemed older than she had appeared behind the desk – eighteen perhaps, like him.

  She flashed a shy smile, pausing to pick up the white pitcher sitting inside the basin on the dressing table. She returned moments later with the filled pitcher.

  “I’ve prepared a beef stew. I hope you’ll like it,” she said.

  “I’m sure I will. Thank you.” He wished he could find a way to keep her in the room.

  He washed and paced the room, taking in the meaty smells that soon filled it. He didn’t want to appear too eager, but couldn’t stay in the room much longer. He left to check on the horses. Satisfied with the food and water provided by the innkeeper, he gave them a good rub down and went back inside. Remembering the words of Aunt Rosemary, he returned to the nearby well and washed his hands before re-entering the inn.

  Charles followed the stewy smell through the front parlor to the dining room. The room was simple and empty compared to the rest of the inn. Four plain square wooden tables and chairs were its only furnishings. The only signs of grandeur were the crystal chandelier that stood poised high in the center of the ceiling and a busy wallpaper pattern of people dressed in their Sunday finery. He sat at one of the tables. Within a few moments, Ethel appeared carrying a steaming bowl, which she set in front of him on checkered red oilcloth, along with a loaf of bread and a cold glass of beer. Charles’s eyes lingered on her thin, shapeless figure in the brown muslin dress.

  Despite the heat rising from the bowl, Charles dove in and finished the meal more hastily than intended, using the brown bread to sop up the rest of the stew. He slugged down the last of beer and waited for Ethel to return. He wanted to see her again, but wasn’t sure if he should wait any longer for fear of appearing foolish. He went outside to slip the horses a few pieces of the bread he’d saved and returned once again to the dining room. Finding no Ethel, Charles mounted the stairs to the second floor, disrobed and got into bed. Hearing again the voice of Aunt Rosemary in his head, he got out of bed and washed his hands and face in the refreshed water.

  His usual thoughts of Sarah entered Charles’s mind as soon as he got into bed, but were supplanted quickly with his memory of her from the previous night. With his penis in his hands, his thoughts returned to Ethel. He mentally undressed her, leaving the brown muslin dress on the floor before she climbed onto the bed and laid her thin body beside him. Where he usually imagined Sarah’s thick bosom filling the palms of his hands, he tweaked at Ethel’s pale pink nipples, causing his penis to harden. Where he’d previously stirred for the feel of Sarah’s strong hips and curvaceous buttocks, he cherished the protruding ribs and angles of Ethel’s pelvis and bony bottom. Where Charles had imagined the smell of Sarah’s earthy perfume on his fingers, he replaced this with the smell of roasted meat and vegetables that he now associated with Ethel. His suppressed urges, grief and heartbreak released themselves with a fiery force inside Ethel, and then he slept without getting up again to wash his hands.

  The next morning, as Charles removed clean undergarments from his traveling sack, the book of house plans that Sarah had ordered fell out. They’d arrived amidst the theft and deceit. He lingered over the cover image depicting a beautiful Queen Anne design, New Artistic Dwellings - Over Sixty Designs from which to choose. He lingered on the word choose, before he shoved the catalog back in his sack. Leaving the lodging fee on the desk, he harnessed Dawn and Donna and headed to Colebrook.

  It was dusk when Charles arrived on the outskirts of the sleepy and dusty town of Colebrook. He fed and watered the horses and settled down under a tree to rest. Charles woke stiff and chilled to a black sky and bitter cold. He had no idea how long he’d been asleep and jumped onto the wagon to urge the horses into town.

  A single candle glowed through the window – Sarah’s signal she’d described to mean that her father was away on business as they’d planned and it was safe to come. Charles urged the horses up the long hill to the rear of Sarah’s house. The faster they went, the louder the horse hooves sounded. He kept a tight handle on the bridle to slow them down. Sarah emerged from the back door, bundled in a heavy coat, hat and gloves. He glanced over at the rear door of the house, but she hadn’t been followed. He jumped off the wagon anxious to greet Sarah and feel a little warmth.

  “I thought you’d never get here. Hurry, my things are upstairs. Mother is asleep, but we have to be quiet.” She led him toward the house.

  He followed her through the house and up the stairs. Her single candle illuminated two trunks hidden under her high bed and a third lying behind a chair in the corner. “Take these first.” She indicated the trunks under the bed.

  Charles stood paralyzed, as if the sight of the trunks alone had already begun to crush him. “Sarah, I won’t be able to lift these by myself.”

  Her eyes widened and she tucked her chin into her collarbone. Then, she seemed to reconsider. “Very well, I’ll help you. Let’s be quick.”

  Charles reached under the bed to drag the first trunk out and lifted one side. It was heavier than imagined and he questioned whether he could take the first step. He thought of telling Sarah that he couldn’t do it – couldn’t do any of this. Then Sarah took the other side of the trunk and pointed them down the wide hallway toward the narrow servant’s stairs. Charles could smell the remnants of the Prescott dinner – lamb perhaps? His stomach growled as he twisted the trunk onto its side to negotiate the door. They bumped the trunk repeatedly against the walls of the narrow rear staircase, generating bangs and clunks that echoed off the uncarpeted floors and bare walls. They descended slowly, needing to stop every few steps for Sarah to get a better grip. At the bottom of the stairs, they walked outside and dropped the trunk in the wagon. Back at the top of the stairs, they almost collided with Alice in her nightdress, her ghostly face illuminated by candlelight, as if she were a spirit returned from the dead. “Are you leaving?” she asked.

  Sarah squared her shoulders. “Yes, Mother. Charles and I are marryi
ng and moving to New Haven.”

  A pause followed. Alice opened her mouth to speak, and then shut it again. The three stood amidst the dark winter light. Charles concentrated on the tick of the grandfather clock he could hear from the downstairs hallway and began to count in rhythm with the passing seconds – ten, eleven, twelve.

  Alice stepped toward Sarah, laid a hand on her arm, and nodded. “Perhaps that would be best.” She walked to her bedroom and closed the door.

  Charles followed Sarah to her room and they managed the remaining trunks, no longer bothering to be quiet. With the trunks in the wagon, he helped Sarah in and urged the horses into action.

  They rode southeast out of Colebrook toward New Haven. He and Sarah sat side by side on the rough plank seat, a green wool blanket across their legs. They weren’t close enough to touch, but Charles felt Sarah’s warmth next to him. The slow crunch of wagon wheels and the rhythmic clomp of horse hooves filled the silence between them. Charles saw the sun rising behind Sarah’s back. He first thought she looked like an angel from heaven, then noticed her tear-filled eyes and moistened cheeks. He dug a monogrammed handkerchief out of his pocket. It had been embroidered by his late mother and he was proud to share it with Sarah. She took it from him, but held it clasped in the gloved hands on her lap, allowing the tears to fall uninterrupted down her cheeks. He touched a hand on her arm to comfort her, but she stiffened. Charles forced his earlier doubts from the wagon during the miles that accumulated between Colebrook and New Haven - there was no room for them now. Hours later, they rolled into New Haven as the late winter sun rose full in the sky.