Dream House (35 page)

“Happy birthday, Mom,” Esther said. “It's so hot. Ouch! Be careful; you're squeezing my bruise I got at Aikido.”

Gina's eyes met Paul's as he got out of the car grinning and holding a bouquet of white roses. He leaned over Esther and kissed Gina lightly on the lips. “Sorry you couldn't get us on the phone,” he said, laughing. “Happy birthday.”

Gina's mind buzzed with the mystery she'd just uncovered in the plans. But she didn't want it to detract from this lovely surprise. She released Esther and hugged Paul tightly. “I'm so happy you guys came!”

Esther and Ben had never visited Lily House and once inside, they wandered from room to room. Gina pointed out a few important artifacts, identified family members in portraits, and told them that while a lot of places made the claim, George Washington had really slept in this house. They appeared spellbound by a genuine fascination that Gina had never felt as a child.

“And the president sat right here,” Gina told them, stroking the mahogany arm of the lolling chair.

Ben was dying to sit in the chair; Gina told him she was sorry he couldn't because it was a national treasure.

“Look!” Esther said, pointing to a collection of framed photographs of Bantons who'd lived in Lily House for generations. “I think I've seen this picture of Gran before. She was standing right over there on the stairs, right?”

“Right,” Gina said. She'd overlooked the photograph her father had taken of her mother on the day they met, and now she filled with pleasure knowing her mother would always have a presence here, in her beloved Lily House.

So,” Gina said, turning to Paul, “Annie must've known you were coming?”

Paul nodded. “It's not our style to spring major surprises. But, I was pretty sure you would've told us not to come if I'd asked, and we all really wanted to. I hope it's okay?”

The truth was, Gina was so distracted thinking about how she would get back to the house with the fireplace poker, she wasn't sure. “Yes!” she said. “I just have to . . . Maybe we should get a room at the Marriot. I'm concerned about the extra confusion here.”

“I know. I thought about that on the way out. So Esther had this idea. We brought the camping gear—I've reserved a campsite for us starting tomorrow night at Hermit Island. I figured since you and I had originally planned to be away for the week . . .” he looked at Gina hopefully.

Gina had only been half listening, “Oh! Oh yes! That works, camping's a great idea,” she finally said. “But I don't think I should leave Whit's Point until Lester comes home.”

“That's fine; we'll go to the campground and you can take the bus up the next day or whatever. But tonight, Esther was hoping we could camp at the old house. What do you think?”

For a moment, Gina had serious doubts. “We'd be trespassing,” she said. Then she realized that one way or the other, she was going to the house and the sooner the better. “But it's not a problem if no one knows.”

Paul smiled. “You don't think Sid would be okay with your spending one night there—for old times' sake?”

“I'd have to ask him, which I'm not going to do. I've managed to get this far without having to deal with him.”

Paul shrugged. “Okay. I just thought you might sleep better if you did.” He smiled slyly, and she narrowed her eyes at him.

Gina made quesadillas and drummed her fingers on the table as Ben and Esther dawdled over the food. They were too hot, they
complained, so she bribed them with the promise for a swim in the cove.

“Night swimming!” Ben exclaimed, hopping on one foot.

While Paul washed the dishes, she went to get the poker from the dining room and shut it in the trunk of the rental car.

By the time they left Lily House the light was nearly gone from the sky. They pulled the car around the back of the old house, out of sight from the road. When Paul opened the trunk to get the camping gear, Gina reached in for the poker.

“What's that for?” Paul asked. “Expecting the bogeyman?”

“You'll see.”

Inside, they dumped their bags in the hall and the four of them shuffled through the rooms, brightening patches of wall with their flashlights. Gina moved from window to window, flinging them open. Breathe! she thought. Let all remaining ch'i flow away—it's too late now.

Upstairs, Gina and Paul spread two tarps out on the floors of her parents' and her old bedrooms.

“It's even dirtier than a campsite,” Esther grumbled.

“Hey, nature girl, where's your sense of adventure?” Paul teased. “You're the one who wanted to camp out here.”

Gina could see that Esther was in no mood for Paul's teasing; she looked inconsolably sad. It was too much to be here, feeling her grandparents gone, and Gina had the impulse to whisk her away.

But when they got to Cassie's room, her heart thrummed. She couldn't wait. She ran downstairs and returned with the fireplace poker, careful not to check her family's expressions. “I think there's something here. Something I need to get to,” she said. “Stand out in the hall, okay?”

“Gina?” Paul said. “What in the world are you doing? I thought you were afraid of trespassing.”

“You'll see. I have to do this, okay? Just step out there with the kids,” she said, giving him a gentle push. “You can see from there.”

Obediently, Paul shifted out of the room and stood in the doorway with Esther and Ben. Gina's mission caught fire inside her. She positioned the flashlight on the floor and planted herself in front of the shallow shelves her parents had built into the wall when they'd removed the old door. Bending low, she drew back the poker and thrust it at the wall below the shelves.

“Mom!” Esther shrieked. “What're you doing!”

“Esther, Don't yell!” Ben cried. “You guys are scaring me!”

Gina noted Paul's silence and was grateful he didn't try to stop her. The sheet rock had punctured easily, requiring disappointingly little force. But the narrow poker made too neat a hole—it would take an hour to open the wall! She flipped the poker around, held it like a bat and, aiming its fat, heavy handle, took a swing. This time, the handle struck the wall hard, breaking through with a satisfying crunch. She lost her grip on the narrow poker and dropped it.

“Gina, are you looking for something?” Paul said with an unnatural calm, as if he were trying to talk a person off a ledge. “Because there are less destructive ways to . . .”

She felt crazed, but she knew exactly what she was doing. “I have to! Wait, you'll see!” She turned to Paul, her eyes pleading with him to show Esther and Ben that he trusted her. He nodded. She wiped her sweaty, plaster-coated hands on her shorts and raised the poker again, tightening her grasp.

“Daddy,” she heard Esther murmur. “What's
wrong
with her? She's scaring me again.”

“Shh, its okay. Let's wait and see.”

Gina held her breath and hit the wall again and again. She could hear Ben whimper, but she kept going. Dust filled the air. Her hands
throbbed. But her energy rose with every arc she swung, each blow settling a score with the walls of this house.
For trapping. For not sheltering. For nights of trembling. For harboring demons and secrets. For fostering blame and guilt. For remaining standing, impassively, after her parents had died.

When her shoulder began to burn, she stopped. She kneeled in front of the hole she'd made and snaking her hand through the gash, touched the wood studs. There were about six inches of dead space between them and the inside of Cassie's wall; the slot extended the length of the bathroom and accounted for the missing inches on her plan. As a first and second grader, she'd been intrigued with this secret place and had hidden her Halloween candy just inside. Now, her heart quickened as she stretched as far as she could to reach along the floor behind the wall. She felt the paper first, then the shape. She folded her hand around her prize and drew it out.

In the beam of her flashlight was a gift, still wrapped in green and red holly paper and bearing a tag that said “For Eleanor.” An innocent little package, hidden by Gina herself when she was ten in a rush of confusing emotion, on a day she'd tried without success to forget. She rippled with anticipation of what she held. At last, she turned the flashlight on her family. Ben and Esther were glued to Paul's sides, Ben with his thumb in his mouth.

“I found it!” she said. She jumped up and the three of them silently followed her into her parents' bedroom. “Sit down here, and I'll show you. But first, I need to wash my hands.” After she'd scrubbed off the dirt with some shampoo Paul had fished from his bag, Gina kneeled on the tarp.

Paul and the children huddled around her, and she handed the flashlight to Esther. “Be my light,” she said. She blew the dust from the package and pulled the end of a ribbon whose thirty-five-year-old
knot easily released. Peeling the paper away, the lines of sepia ink took shape before her: “G. Washington.”

Instantly, memories scrambled to arrange themselves. Gina recalled Fran's furtive look and shaking hand as she slipped the package into her game bag. Glancing up at Sid's flushed face. Her disappointment when she got home to discover the gift was for her mother, not her. Now, the significance of her aunt's attempt to give the Washington letters to her mother struck her: Fran had told Sid who his father was, had made sure the letters were put in the right hands. She'd been putting her affairs in order before her suicide.

It was not the flying knives at Lily House that day that had killed Fran; she had planned it all.

Like Annie and Lester's revelations, the discovery of the letters had exposed the foundation of secrets, lies, and misunderstandings on which Gina's family had built up their fortress walls. She'd built her own wall-of-forgetting to keep out things she didn't understand; now, she felt that wall coming down. In its place she would construct a new understanding that could be built on truth.

Esther and Ben huddled closer as Gina unwrapped the bundle and laid out six letters on the floor. Esther was the first to register what they were looking at. “Mom!” she gasped, her fingers dancing above the pages. “It says ‘Thomas Jefferson' on this one! And this one . . . ‘G. Washington'!”

Ben pushed his face closer to the pages. “It's hard to read.”

“Don't touch it!” Esther scolded, yanking his hand off one of the letters.

“It's okay, Estie, you can touch. We'll be some of the last people who have the chance to. But don't pick them up because they're very fragile.”

Gina looked up at Paul, beaming. “Wow!” he said. “I'm speechless.”

For several minutes, the four of them squatted silently over the
letters, taking them in.

“But Mom, who put them in the wall?” Esther asked.

“I did. When I was your age.” Gina explained why she'd hidden the gift, how she'd forgotten about it, and how her parents had closed it in when they remodeled the house. “People in our family have been trying to find them for a long time.”

“Is someone going to get mad at you?” Ben asked.

Gina laughed. “No, I don't think so,” she said. But there
was
Sid, whom she wouldn't let herself think about yet.

“Then can we go swimming now? It's so hot.”

Gina stood and looked out the window where heavy clouds covered the moon and the cove was a large dark void in the landscape. Crickets rioted; mosquitoes whined at the screen. She was covered with dirt and dust and craving the cove water more than she had all week. “Yes, let's go swimming!” she sang.

Ben, Gina, and Paul quickly slipped into their suits.

“I don't really want to swim,” Esther said.

Usually, Gina was the one to coax the kids into a plan, but Paul beat her to it this time.

“Aw, Estie, the cool water will feel good. And Mom really wants us to swim with her. It's her special place, and it's her birthday. Besides, remember how much you liked swimming all the way across the cove last summer?”

Gina noted Esther's hesitation. Finally, perhaps remembering last summer or considering the alternative of sitting by herself in the dark house, Esther put on her suit. Paul grabbed the flashlight, and the four of them ran outside and down the hill to the rickety dock. The tide was so high the water skimmed the dock boards.

“It's warm! It's warm!” Ben squealed, hopping from foot to foot.

They stood for a few moments watching shadows shift as the moon ducked in and out of the clouds. Soon, mosquitoes found them, and
they had to wriggle to keep them from landing. Gina stepped to the edge of the dock, leaned forward, and sliced through the water with a shallow dive.

She came to the surface just as Paul said, “C'mon, guys!” and dove from the dock.

Esther jumped, and Ben splashed in next to her. Wild giggling erupted.

“Don't touch the bottom, Esther,” Ben warned. “There's crabs!”

“They're more afraid of you than you are of them!” Esther said with authority.