The House on Seventh Street (2 page)

June 1999

WINNA JESSUP
PARKED
outside the old house on Seventh Street and slowly got out of the car. She turned to look past the circular drive to the lawns and how the house rested in what was left of the gardens. Wondering if there had ever been a time when the sight of her grandparents' house did not excite her, she stopped a moment to study the eighty-seven-year-old frame structure, its tall windows, its turret with the bell dome, and the carved garlands under the eaves. Except for the remaining curls of white paint, the trim lay nearly bare; the house's once gray-green paint had faded to chalk and was peeling. Winna thought it looked like Dickens' vision of Miss Havisham's moldy wedding cake.

She turned to the broad street and the sidewalk. Winna and her sister had played hopscotch and jacks on the neighborhood's smooth sidewalks. Now, more than fifty years later the pavement was cracked and heaved up by tree roots, a sight that made Winna feel old. Wondering if little girls still played sidewalk games, she thought back to her daughter's childhood. Had Emily? She couldn't remember.

Shaded by towering trees, Seventh Street was home to imposing old houses settled in like becalmed ships in a green sea of well-nourished lawns. Most of the houses, in random architectural styles, were built within the first twenty-five years of the twentieth century. Seventh Street had always been the right address.

First Winna wanted to look at the gardens where so many happy childhood memories took root. Stepping through ankle deep lawn, she approached her grandmother's rose garden, once the most formal part of the landscape. The ornate cast-iron birdbath still stood at the center of the cross-path. How strange, she thought, someone has recently edged the beds.

When she was a child, the garden's neat grass paths running along the mounded beds of roses had been her favorite place to play. Standing there in its ruins, Winna remembered how important that garden had been to her. With their dolls, she and her sister Chloe had pretended that the paths were rooms. She and Chloe had hidden behind fragrant rose walls during a game of hide and seek with neighborhood friends. Most days they played alone, spending all day in the garden. When their grandmother called, they would run to the summerhouse where lunch waited.

Winna's grandmother and the rose garden had declined together and after her death, it fell into ruin. Her father, Henry, who had lived in the house the last twenty years of his life, wasn't a gardener. All but the red rose still climbing over the summerhouse had long since disappeared.

The birdbath had not changed, held as it was by a slender lady whose iron arms cradled it at her waist. It was empty, the bowl encrusted with the dust of dried algae. A sudden breath of wind rustled the leaves in the trees across the lawn, bringing Winna a memory. Her grandmother had given her the job of keeping the birdbath filled with water.

Dropping her handbag on the lawn, she made her way to the hose coiled neatly by the house and returned to wash out the dirt. The water rose in the basin and the sun danced in its ripples, evoking her little sister's fingers splashing and stirring the water.

“Please let me do it,” Chloe said.

“No, you can't. Gramma said you can't because you left the hose running. You wasted water.” Even then, she knew that Chloe wished she was old enough to do all the more grownup things Winna could do.

Winna turned for a look at the old house again. Two summers ago, she had made her last visit to see her father. At the time, the house seemed to need a paint job, but now it appeared in terrible decline. She returned the hose to its coil and walked to the front of the house, looking toward the pillared verandah, up to the second story topped by a large attic with prominent dormer windows. In one, a shadow seemed to beckon. She smiled to herself and thought again of her grandmother Juliana.

Bordered by tall etched-glass panels, the grand front door loomed above the steps to the verandah.
How gloomy the old place looks. They are all gone.
Winna was stopped for a moment by the thought that her generation would be the next to die.

Digging into her handbag, she climbed the stairs, laid her hand on a long ornate key, and slipped it easily into the keyhole. The door gave way to a gentle push and Winna stepped into a narrow vestibule leading to the large reception hall.

The moment she opened the door, a blast of heat overcame her. The reception hall and the parlor looked lifeless and smelled of decay. Bracing herself, her face brushed by a spider's web. Faded walls seemed to sigh, exhaling dust as she hurried to open the windows. Harsh sunlight slanted in through the hall and parlor, casting shadows across the floors, igniting the dust particles she stirred as she moved through the overheated rooms. In that light, everything looked callously abandoned and lonely. What had once seemed opulent and antique now looked shabby, neglected. Winna fought tears as she struggled to throw open the windows, but they had been nailed shut. Again she thought of her father, wondering what had possessed him.

Her father had disappeared the previous fall. For six terrible months, she and Chloe had wondered what had happened to him. From New Hampshire, her frequent calls to her sister were fruitless. Chloe had no news. With the snowmelt had come the spring hikers, one of whom found Henry's body—food for mountain lions.

After his funeral and burial in the family plot, Winna returned to her home in New Hampshire. It took several weeks to rearrange her schedule, pack up her car, and drive over two thousand miles back to Grand Junction to finalize his estate and put the Grumman family home on the market. Everyone said she should fly, but Winna was in no hurry. She had accepted a job photographing the Dakotas, a history piece in
American Roads
. A fine art photographer, she had not done photojournalism in a long time and jumped at the chance. Eager to return to her home and her work in the East, she planned to stay in Colorado only as long as it took to settle her father's affairs.

Winna was not prepared for what she found in the old house that day. In May, when she had flown in to arrange for her father's funeral, she had stayed with an old school friend. The overpowering smell and heat of long pent-up rooms, the specter of draped spiders' webs everywhere, the refrigerator now a morgue for leftovers, drove Winna out of doors, back to her car.

The house has been shut up for eight months. What on earth did I expect?

Exhausted and surprised by the sudden realization that she could not spend a single night in that house, Winna turned up the air-conditioning in her car and drove to a downtown motel. She picked up the phone in her room and called her daughter, Emily, to tell her she was in town. “I'll see you tomorrow,” she promised.

Right now, she needed a bath, a light dinner, and a bed.

Heading for the shower, she wondered why she suddenly felt afraid of what had always been her favorite house. Why, after looking forward to coming back to the town where she was born, did she want to go home? Yes, there was grueling work ahead, but something about the house unsettled her.

STOPPING WORK
FOR A MOMENT
, Emily turned from the jumbled closet for a look at the reception hall, its spacious alcove decorated with an ornate mosaic tile floor, the antique cast-iron fireplace set with painted tiles, and the window nook overlooking the rose garden. Here, the tall windows filled the room with light through a pattern of clear leaded-glass panels bordered with stained-glass medallions near the top. The whole effect was one of gentle opulence.

Wondering what it would cost to build a house like this today, Emily walked to the middle of the alcove where rose and green patterns of light filtering in through the stained glass washed over her. Quite aware that she felt like playing, dancing in the colored light like she had as a child, she laughed at herself and went to the window for a look. The rose garden's newly edged beds stood starkly defined against the unmown lawn. Someone had been working there.

“Mom,” she called, “come here.”

“Just a second.”

“Who's been working in the rose garden?”

Winna appeared at her side. “I don't know. I noticed that when I first arrived. With all the work that needs doing around here I guess I won't complain.”

With her mother's return to the house, Emily hoped that she might want to stay in Grand Junction. She had so many memories of the old house and her grandfather, not all of them pleasant. Almost every morning since her mother's arrival, she had driven into town from the foothills of Pinyon Mesa to help with the sorting, packing, cleaning—whatever was on the list. Her mother's open affection, and obvious delight in her six-month-old daughter, Isabelle, pleased her. Ever since her husband, Hugh, had accepted the managing editor's job at the
Daily Sentinel
and they had moved to Grand Junction, she had fantasized that her mother would come back to live in the town where she was born.

Following her arrival at the house on Seventh Street, Winna's first project had been working windows. Once that was accomplished, she had to face some major cleaning and the troubled feelings she had about the place. At first, she dreaded coming to the house and didn't understand why. It wasn't just the dirt and hard work, but an underlying feeling that something was terribly wrong—like some risk of danger waiting for her inside these walls. The house seemed haunted in a way she could not explain even to herself—no ghosts popping in for a visit, but a lingering feeling that someone watched. Sometimes she would look up from whatever she was doing, expecting to see someone enter the room. When no one did, she felt relieved but uneasy, like somebody was waiting on the other side of the wall. She comforted herself with the thought that as a child the house had been a charmed yet disturbing place for her. It was entirely natural that fragments of those impressions would remain.

For years, Winna had visited the house in her dreams. There, grandmother Juliana was still alive and disappointed with Winna for not visiting more often. There, Juliana would sit in the shade of her garden crying, saying how much she missed Edwina, asking where she had been and what she had been doing. From these encounters with Juliana's lonely ghost, Winna would wake shaken and guilt-ridden. She had to admit that her grandmother had been a strong influence on her and so had the house. When she thought about it in the light of day, she realized that her mother was also still alive in her dreams. She had not yet dreamed of her father, but in Winna's dream world, her mother and grandmother were still very much among the living.

Winna, with her daughter's help, had spent the last two weeks making piles off to the side of the main staircase, labeling them SALVATION ARMY, YARD SALE, KEEP, and EMILY'S. That morning, after sorting through the large reception hall closet and filling a tall barrel with trash, Winna noticed that Emily had come to the last box.

“Almost finished here,” Emily said, reaching into the box. She hesitated a moment. “Look what I found.”

Winna stopped sorting old coats and boots to come for a look at the framed studio portrait Emily held in her hands.

“Who was she?”

Winna looked at the picture and smiled. “That's Juliana—your great-grandmother—with your Poppa Henry.”

Inside the tarnished gold frame, Juliana sat three-quarter view holding the child close in her lap, her left cheek obscured by little Henry's bald head, her full lips parted slightly. Henry's big dark eyes were open and bright, two of his fingers thrust into a grinning mouth.

“She looks very sweet,” Emily said.

Winna chuckled. “Sweet? That's not a word I would use to describe your great-grandmother.”

Winna watched her daughter move into the light from a window. She had already lost most of the weight she had gained during her pregnancy and looked trim and long-legged in khaki shorts and a white tee. From toddlerhood onward, Emily had been contented, cheerful, and perceptive, a delight to her mother. Winna liked to joke that she had learned more from her daughter than she had taught her. She wasn't a bit surprised when she won a scholarship to study environmental science at Boston University. Now she wrote a popular weekly newspaper column on sustainable desert living with tips on gardening, home building, and maintenance.

Fixed on the photograph, Emily walked to the sofa and sat down. “I need a break.”

Winna joined her. “Gramma was smart—the smartest person in the family. When she was ‘sweet' it was because she wanted something.”

“What year was this?”

Winna thought a moment. “It had to have been 1916—the year Daddy was born. Gramma died in the mid-sixties—when you were a baby.”

“I don't know why I'm so drawn to this,” Emily said. “Maybe because the more I look at her eyes the more sadness I see. I wonder why. It's not the face you'd expect from a proud new mom.”

“I'm sure Gramma wasn't your everyday new mom,” Winna said, rolling her eyes. She took the frame and looked again, realizing she had never known her grandmother as pictured there—young and fragile, sweetly silent. She had never seen the pale luxuriant curls that ringed Juliana's disarming face, or her large dark eyes shining with sadness. The grandmother she knew had short-cropped gray hair and dressed in well-tailored afternoon dresses and business suits. Yet here the finely woven pale lace of the pictured bodice draped her small frame gracefully as she held her child against her breast. In contrast with his mother's somber expression, baby Henry's face radiated an exuberant smile and bright dark eyes. It looked to Winna that at six months he was eager to begin his exciting life.

“I'd like to offer an educated guess. This was shot at a studio by a professional, but the picture isn't what I'd expect from the period. It's interesting that Juliana picked this one out of all the proofs. It captures something very intimate. Maybe that's why you are drawn to it. It's an outstanding portrait—one I would be proud to say I shot myself.”

Winna thought back to her grandmother's last illness. “She died months after a massive brain hemorrhage. The last time I saw her she was lying in the nursing home—emaciated and demented—I didn't recognize her and I know she didn't recognize me. She was only in her mid-seventies.” Having stepped two years into her seventh decade, Winna no longer thought seventy was so very old.

“I have to laugh every time I think of the last word she said before she died. Dad was there and he told me she'd looked around the dreary room she shared with several other dying patients and said, ‘Ridiculous!' I can hear that voice. Having to die like an ordinary human being was probably out of the question.”

Emily smiled and looked at the portrait again. “Look at Poppa Henry's face. Mom, we'll never know for sure how he died.”

“It's hard for me to look at that joyful little face and know his end.” Winna kissed her finger and touched it to her father's baby face. With the back of her hand, she wiped the sweat from her forehead again.

“Is it hotter than hell or is it just me?” Before they began work in the house that morning, Winna had opened all the windows, but even under the shade of old trees the heat had crept in.

“It's hotter than hell,” Emily said, “unless I'm having hot flashes too.”

“Just you wait.” Winna stood up and walked to the hall closet, now empty except for a familiar wooden cigar box. She picked it up and opened the lid. “Look, Emily, our marbles.”

With her daughter at her side, Winna hurried the box into the light, sitting down in the middle of the parlor rug. “Here's my big fat agate—and my favorite flint.”

Emily reached for the marbles in Winna's hand. “Come on, Mom, let's play. Now that you're over the hill I bet I can beat you.”

“I'm sure you can.” Winna ran her hands through the brightly colored glass, snagging something that was neither round nor smooth. She lifted what appeared to be a vintage ring into the light. “It looks like a yellow diamond.”

Emily took it from her hand. “It's huge. It can't be real. I've never seen a stone this large. I
want
it!”

“How about if I let you try it on?”

Emily smiled at her mother as she tried slipping it onto her ring finger. It didn't fit there but slid easily onto her pinky where it looked too large, almost comical. She handed it back. “You'd better take that to the jewelry store and see what they think it is.”

“It's probably nothing or it wouldn't be hanging out with the marbles.” Winna looked at it again. “Sure looks real,” she said, slipping the ring into her pocket as she stood up. She took two steps forward into a bright shaft of light and stopped, retrieving the ring for another look. Dazzlingly beautiful, it looked very real to Winna. Why was it with the marbles?