“I’d offer you coffee to go with the pie, but it’s not unpacked,” I said. Who would want coffee on a hot summer night? Something told me these people would.
“I’ll take another beer,” said Barnaby.
“I’m good,” I said.
“I’m fine. None for me,” said Priscilla. She was delicately licking her fork tines like a cat. It was inappropriate, yet oddly fancy. I didn’t like that the time it would take to drink another beer had been added on to our entertaining.
Barnaby and Tom cracked open their beers. After taking a swig, Barnaby shifted in his seat a little and asked, “Would you be up for giving us a tour?” He nodded toward our front door.
Tom shrugged and nodded.
“If you don’t mind a mess,” I said. “We’re not settled in at all, of course.” At least now I could get away from the pie. And we’d be one step closer to going to bed if we were inside the house instead of out here.
“A tour! We thought you’d never ask,” said Priscilla. She and Barnaby stood up before Tom and I even had a chance to.
“We were curious about this place, but it wasn’t for sale when we were looking,” said Barnaby. “Do you know much about its history?”
“Well,” I said, “I guess it was always in the same family. It’s been vacant for… How long? Do you remember?” I looked at Tom.
“Three or four years,” he said. “Maybe longer. They put it up for sale just two days before we came to town to look at houses. We hadn’t even seen its picture in the MLS.”
Priscilla’s eyebrows went up and her face got big and moony. “Three or four years, Tom? That’s quite a while to stand empty. There could be mice.”
“I think that’s to be expected with an old house,” Tom said.
“We don’t have mice in our house,” she said. “Knock on wood,” she added, leaning over and knocking on the porch railing.
“Well,” Tom said—why was he using his flirty voice?—“if you’re not too scared, I’ll take you on a tour.”
I looked at Barnaby to see if he was picking up on the fact that our spouses seemed to be having a conversation just with one another. Not that I wanted to be his co-conspirator. But he was cleaning his glasses again, oblivious.
“Of course I want a tour,” Priscilla said to Tom. My Tom. “The outside is gorgeous, but I’ll bet it’s even better once you get inside. I imagine it’s going to be sublime.”
313 Hawthorne Avenue, Main Floor
313 Hawthorne Avenue, Second Floor
Chapter 2
Tom opened the old wooden screen door and led us inside. We went through the small tile-floored vestibule into the large, open front hall. In the daytime, light poured in from the second story window, over the balcony above, but at night just sconces lit this huge room. There were boxes everywhere. “Don’t trip,” said Tom.
“Ooh, I like your purse,” Priscilla said to me, picking up my vintage handbag and admiring its tiny brass feet.
“That’s a great staircase,” said Barnaby. “Is there just one?”
“There’s a back set of stairs, too, heading up from the kitchen,” said Tom. “Let’s go this way first.” He led us to the right, to the parlor.
“You gonna keep this wallpaper?” asked Barnaby, pointing his bottle of beer at the faded flowers.
“That’s up to Courtney,” said Tom.
“I kind of think it’s nice,” I said. “For now, I guess we’ll keep it.”
“I like it,” Priscilla declared. “Our house doesn’t have any. It was redone before we bought it. You’re lucky that you get to make your house whatever you want it to be.”
“There’s a bedroom back here,” said Tom, showing them a room off the parlor.
“Are you going to use it for your bedroom?” asked Barnaby.
Tom and I looked at each other. “I guess we haven’t gotten far enough along to figure that out,” I said. “For right now, we might, but we’ll get settled upstairs soon.” We hadn’t even blown up our air mattress. Before they’d shown up, our plan had been to have a quick break on the porch before calling it a day.
We went back out of the parlor to the front hall where Tom showed them a walk-in closet and a bathroom. Next was the music room, the library with its own screened-in porch, and a small closet under the front stairs. Then we went to the dining room. It was attached to a sunroom, which led out to a large wraparound back porch. We took the porch around to the kitchen and came back inside.
“Oh my goodness,” said Priscilla. “They’ve never updated a thing, have they?” She began opening the squeaky, nearly nonfunctional drawers in the butler’s pantry. I was embarrassed at the mouse droppings I saw inside. She quickly closed the drawer and pretended she hadn’t noticed.
“What’s down there?” Barnaby asked, pointing to a small hallway.
“A little room. Maybe it was for the cook to sleep in? Or maybe it was another pantry,” said Tom. “We’ll probably just use it for storage or something.”
Barnaby stuck his head in. “This was a bedroom for the cook,” he decided with firm conviction. “Mind if we go upstairs?”
“Sure,” said Tom, making his way up the back staircase. Barnaby and Priscilla followed, but I had the strong, sudden inclination to stay behind. It was as if an invisible wall had suddenly come down, separating me from them. I felt cemented in place.
“Are you coming?” Priscilla asked me, as she began to round the tight corner of the servants’ stairs and glanced back to find me still hesitating in the doorway below.
“In a second,” I said. “I’m just taking it all in. I still can’t believe I live here.”
“More wallpaper, even up here in the servants’ area,” Barnaby observed loudly, having reached the landing at the top of the stairs.
“I really don’t mind it,” I called after them, determinedly cheerful, just as loudly. Then I pushed through whatever barrier I’d imagined had been holding me back, and joined them.
Up here the hallway was a green, velvet leaf and floral print that I had thought was breathtaking, but now found myself reevaluating with an irritating sliver of doubt. The paper was in perfect condition even though it was probably over a hundred years old.
“You’ve got a lot of work ahead of you,” Barnaby said, attempting to pick at a seam.
Tom ignored him. “We’ve got two little bedrooms over here,” he said, flicking on the lights and allowing our guests a moment to look around.
“Tom’s going to turn one of them into a laundry room for me,” I interjected.
“And,” he continued, without commenting on that, “they share a bathroom. I guess you can see, this area is kind of on its own, but you can get to the main hallway through this door.” We all followed after him. Back here, it was as narrow as it had been in the servants’ hallway and we were all uncomfortably close together. I could smell Priscilla’s faint scent of lavender and banana breath. Tom continued on, picking up steam, enjoying his role as tour guide: “There’s this bedroom back here, and three larger bedrooms in the front of the house. That one there has a little room off it. A nursery or an office, I guess.”
This was the room that, once we got settled in, would be ours. I’d already decided it was the perfect master bedroom. It had a beautiful fireplace in it and it was closest to the bathroom. But the main reason I loved it was because of that sweet little nursery. I didn’t interject again though. I had no desire to share this dreamy tidbit with the McGhees.
We all took a look at it and then found ourselves in the large open hall by the top of the main stairs. For a moment, standing there by the railing, looking down at the staircase and hall below, we were all quiet. Reverent, it seemed.
I can still recall this night perfectly. The humid, trippy feel of it. My first impressions of the McGhees. How foreign the house was to me. Everything I was looking forward to learning to love about it. The brittle newsprint that lined the pantry drawers. The dim, flickery lights. It’s musty old smell.
“Over here,” said Tom, breaking the spell, “is another bathroom. There are three in all. Not bad for an old house. And right here is another room. It’s a bit of an attic, I guess. It’s not insulated very well, so we’ll probably just use it for more storage.”
“This could be your media room, once you get some insulation put in,” Barnaby said, nodding knowingly.
“Maybe when all the other projects are done,” said Tom, closing the room back up. Then we all stood by the railing again, looking down to the front hallway below.
“Beautiful,” said Priscilla.
“So, there you have it,” said Tom. He clinked his empty beer bottle against the railing. “Have you seen enough?”
“But wait. Isn’t there a third floor?” asked Barnaby. He frowned, a ridiculously baffled expression taking over his face.
“There’s an attic, but it’s nothing remarkable,” I said, just as the grandfather clock that had come with the house began chiming. We waited it out, all twelve chimes.
When it finished, Tom said, “Yeah. We’re going to have to do something about that clock. That’s going to wake us up all night long.”
“If you hadn’t wound it, today, I don’t think it would chime,” I told him.
“Where was it? I missed it on our tour,” said Priscilla.
“It’s in the library,” I said. “It came with the house. Same for the armoire in the bedroom off the parlor. I guess they left the two things that were too big and heavy to move.”
“As I was saying, that’s funny that your third floor’s just an attic,” said Barnaby. “From the outside this house looks like it would be three stories. Three finished stories, I mean. You’ve got all those dormer windows in the attic. Those aren’t bedrooms? Our house has third floor bedrooms.”
“Maybe our third floor bedrooms were added at a later time, Deuce,” said Priscilla.
“No, Prissy.” Barnaby shook his head. “They’re original. You can tell. All the doors and woodwork match. And there are radiators up there. They’re definitely original.”
“Well, we just have an attic,” said Tom.
“How do you get to it?” asked Barnaby.
“Deuce…” said Priscilla. Tom and I exchanged a glance, which Priscilla noticed. “Barnaby is a junior,” she explained. “His dad is Barnaby the first. Deuce is Barn’s nickname.”
“This must be it,” said Barnaby, going back to the servant area and opening a tall, skinny door in the hallway. “I figured your attic stairs would go right over your kitchen stairs. I should have known it was an attic and not another finished story, or there would have been an open staircase. Mind if I have at it?”
“Go right ahead,” said Tom.
“Deuce is a self-taught old house detective,” said Priscilla.
“This is much better than what I was picturing,” said Barnaby, once we were all up there. “You made it sound like it was going to be a real bare bones situation. I was picturing only rafters and maybe not even floorboards. This is good, though. The possibilities are endless. It’s just going to take a little hard work. Here’s a thought: You could turn it into one of those upstairs family rooms.”
“I don’t know,” said Tom. “There are chimneys running everywhere. I think we’ve got enough to handle on the first floors.”
“What’s your cellar like?” asked Barnaby.
“Scary,” I said.
“So is ours,” said Priscilla. “I think all these old mansions have scary basements.”
“Part of it has a dirt floor. I hate it,” I added. I was looking for some reassurance that this was normal. That it was how they did things in this part of the world, and not a sign that we’d picked the wrong house.
“Dirt floor?” Priscilla asked, fanning her face with her hand. “Heavens!”
“Let’s check it out,” said Barnaby.
“Deuce, honey, it’s after midnight. Let’s leave our new neighbors alone,” said Priscilla.
“They don’t mind showing us the cellar, Prissy. Do you, Tom?” asked Barnaby.
“Well…” I smiled at Tom. “We are pretty exhausted, right?”
“It’s been a long day,” said Tom, mercifully accepting my cues. “I hope you understand.”
“Of course we do,” said Priscilla.
“Why don’t we show it to you another time?” asked Tom. He began turning off lights and led us back down to the main floor.
“Where are you going to sleep?” asked Priscilla when we were once again standing in our front hall, surrounded by boxes, rolled up rugs, and haphazardly strewn furniture. “Where’s your bed? Do you need us to help you get it set up?”
“We’re going to sleep on an air mattress tonight and tomorrow we’re going bed shopping,” said Tom.
“Why don’t you have a bed?” asked Barnaby, aghast. Again with the bug eyes.
“We had one, but it wasn’t that nice, so we decided we’d get a new one for ourselves once we moved,” I said.
“Come and stay in one of our guest rooms,” said Priscilla.
“No, we couldn’t,” I said. And, compressed by the weight of two and a half hours of mind-numbing chitchat piled on top of a full day’s work, I meant it. “That’s really generous of you, but we’re looking forward to staying here.”
“You’ll have the rest of your lives to stay here,” said Barnaby. “We insist you stay at our house. I mean, really, we have three guest rooms to choose from.”
“We don’t want to put you out,” said Tom.
“We insist,” Priscilla said again. “Wouldn’t you like to sleep in a nice bed after all the work you did today? Just come with us.”
At this point I thought that we would argue a little more and eventually they would leave. They’d take their glass pie pan with its leftovers and their fancy forks and we’d be alone, discussing them, rolling our tired eyes in commiserative amusement as we inflated our air mattress. It never occurred to me that we would sleep in the bed of these people we’d just met. Until Tom said, “Fine. You twisted my arm.”
Noooooo cried the voice in my head.
“I knew I could,” said Priscilla.
“But, what about our stuff?” I asked. The house’s locks were the kind that any skeleton key could open. A locksmith was coming the next day to install deadbolts.
“What do you mean?” asked Priscilla.
“We don’t have real locks on our doors yet.”
“This is Starling Falls. You don’t have to worry about anything,” she said.
“We’ll put you in a room that overlooks your house,” said Barnaby. “If anyone tries to rob you, you’ll see them.”
“How could we when we’ll be all the way over at your house, sleeping?” I asked, then added a little laugh to lighten the edge of what I’d just said. Tom was already throwing some things in a duffle bag.
“Courtney, do you need help finding anything?” Priscilla asked, scanning the room. “Of course, you can always borrow whatever you need from us if you can’t find pajamas or a toothbrush.”
“I g
rabbed an extra t-shirt for you,” Tom said to me. “That’s all she sleeps in anyway,” he explained to the McGhees. “Looks like we’re all set.”
So, with Priscilla and Barnaby McGhee a few steps ahead of us, we made our way to 308 Hawthorne Avenue.
Chapter 3
The walk from our house to theirs was too short to undo it from happening. Once we closed our front door behind us and took the first step in that direction, it was done.
I remember our long shadows bouncing on the pavement beneath the streetlamps, my shadow ponytail looking disloyally flouncy, Tom’s shadow duffle bag filling the space between us, lurching along like a gimpy pet. While our shadows looked like an amicable pair, the flesh-and-blood Tom kept his face forward, avoiding my dirty looks.
The McGhees’ house loomed in front of us. Priscilla kept looking back, smiling. The four of us weren’t chatting with each other, I suppose because it was so late that we felt we needed to be quiet to avoid waking the neighborhood. Barnaby and Priscilla may have exchanged a few words with one another, but Tom and I were silent. I remember the smell of citronella in the air and the faint lingering pungency of a smoke bomb. In just a minute or two we were on their porch looking back at our own house. It looked different from this angle. Grand. Intimidating. Beyond anything I’d imagined for myself.
“Come on in!” said Priscilla. Of course the door was unlocked. We walked into a two-story room with a huge, winding staircase. A chandelier hung down, casting silver sparkles of light across the room. There was a clean, white, airiness to their home. An orchestrated, intentional certainty in the placement of each and every single piece of furniture and décor and art. It was like everything our house would never be. The pristine perfection of their home was at a level I’d never even considered aspiring to.
Souvenirs of Starling Falls Page 2