The House on Tradd Street

by Karen White

  “She’s beautiful,” I said, handing back the photo.

  “Yes, she was. Jack always said that her beauty didn’t matter to him, that Emily was the other half of his soul. When she left him, it broke something inside of him. I’m not sure if he’ll ever be able to open his heart again.”

  “She really loved him, you know. She still does,” I blurted before I could stop myself.

  Amelia went rigid. “How do you know this?”

  I bit my lip, wishing that I hadn’t said anything. Instead of answering her, I asked, “Where did you say that she went?”

  “Up north—to upstate New York.”

  “Rochester?” I asked, a thought forming in the back of my head.

  She nodded. “I believe that’s where her boss told me Emily moved. Why? What do you know?”

  “Nothing, really. Just a thought. Let me make a few phone calls and see what I can find out. If I find out anything, I’ll let you know.”

  Her clear blue eyes studied me. “Emily’s dead, isn’t she? You’ve seen her, haven’t you? Just like your mother used to see people who have passed on.”

  I looked back up at the house that I had once thought would be mine, and had a sudden flash of memory of a crowd of people hovering over my bed and then my mother reaching out for me, pulling me away from them. I thought I could still hear my screams.

  I looked back at Amelia Trenholm, at her understanding and calm eyes, and quietly said, “Yes. Yes, I have.”

  She nodded, then put her hand on my arm. “Don’t worry, Melanie. I won’t tell Jack. But please, please find out what happened to Emily. I don’t think Jack will really ever recover unless he knows that it had nothing to do with him.”

  I nodded, then looked back up at the house, where I thought I saw movement from an upstairs attic window. Out of habit, I looked away, pretending I hadn’t seen anything.

  “Before I forget,” said Amelia. “The reason I flagged you down today was because I was on my way to your house to give you the name of that master carpenter I was telling you about. He’s wonderful, and for all the wood-trim and furniture refurbishing you’re going to need, he’s the right man for the work. Truly a craftsman.” She handed me a business card. “Here’s his card. He’s in much demand, but tell him that you’re a friend of mine.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  She squeezed my hand, then surprised me by leaning forward and kissing me on the cheek. “No, Melanie. Thank you.”

  General Lee and I walked over to her car and watched as she got in. She stuck her head out the window. “One more thing. The grandfather clock in your drawing room? The Johnstone? I’m very familiar with his work, and I’m quite convinced that the clock face is a lot more recent than the rest of the clock. I wouldn’t know with any certainty unless I took it apart, but I’m pretty positive that the face is relatively new.”

  “Thanks, Amelia. Sophie thought the same thing. When I have a chance, I’ll have somebody look at it.”

  “No rush—the clock runs fine. Just in terms of assigning it a value for your records, we’d need to know for sure.”

  She waved to us, then pulled her car away. Thoughtfully fingering the business card in my pocket, I turned around and headed back to the house on Tradd Street.

  Mrs. Houlihan met us at the front door, her chin wobbling with agitation.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked as I climbed the steps to the piazza.

  “I thought everyone was out of the house, but I heard a thump and then some footsteps coming from your room. I thought I’d come out here and wait for you. Maybe you’d know if one of the workmen was still here.”

  I handed her the dog. “Either that or there’s still a lot of settling going on after all the construction work being done on the bathroom. I’ll go check it out.”

  I headed for the stairs with a straight back, trying to exude as much confidence as I wished I felt. When I reached the top of the stairs, I stopped and listened. Hearing nothing, I slowly approached my door and turned the knob.

  The room was empty, as I had suspected, but not undisturbed. The telephone, still unplugged from the wall, sat upside down in the middle of the floor, and Louisa’s albums lay scattered over the bed and floor like the discarded wardrobe choices of a fickle teenager. I’d been avoiding looking at the albums, since they seemed to drain all of the energy from me and hadn’t offered anything more about Louisa other than the fact that she had loved her husband and son. But it seemed that Louisa had done a good job of making sure I couldn’t avoid them anymore.

  I called down the stairs. “It’s all right to come inside, Mrs. Houlihan. A stack of books fell over in my room—that’s all.”

  Annoyed, I reached for the album that lay facedown in the middle of the bed to move it out of the way, realizing my mistake as soon as the shock bolted through my body. Pausing as if to listen to the first hesitant drops of rain, I could hear the soft mewling of a baby, and my own breasts felt heavy as if they were filled with mother’s milk. I sank onto the bed, where the album had been, and looked down at the open pages.

  The left-hand side of the album contained a photo of Louisa holding baby Nevin in a christening gown, the long lace shimmering and milky as it spilled over Louisa’s arms. Half hidden by the baby’s head was what appeared to be a necklace with a large stone dangling from Louisa’s elegant neck. But it wasn’t the photo I was becoming immersed in; it was the feelings emanating from the photo—something warm and whole and maternal that made me want to wrap myself in it, bury my face in it like a mother’s lap. I could almost feel my mother’s hand on my head just as I cupped the downy head of the baby in my arms. Again, the hard coldness of a pen pressed against the fingers of my right hand, a curious feeling because I had been left-handed since birth, and I watched as the pen scratched against the page.

  November 5, 1922

  Our son Nevin was christened today at St. Michael’ s. The old church was filled with flowers and friends, reminding me of my wedding day. But this was even more special: the culmination of our love for each other in the form of a beloved child. We are so blessed. Robert, the proud father, presented me with the most stunning diamond necklace I have ever seen. I scolded him for his extravagance, but he says it’ s appropriate for the occasion. The diamond is flawless, he explained, just like our love for each other and for our beautiful boy. I wore it for the photo in the newspaper and afterward wished that I hadn’ t. The day after the photo appeared in the paper, someone attempted to break into the house. Robert moved the necklace to the safe at our bank, and I’m not sure if I will wear it again.

  The opposite page held no photo, but stuffed in between the two pages were folded letters, the papers now fragile and yellow with age. Or at least they should have been, but as I opened them, the paper felt crisp and supple under my fingers, the ink bright and clear. The letters were well wishes from friends to the happy couple on the occasion of their firstborn’s christening. The last names were familiar to me: Gibbes, Prioleau, Pinckney, Drayton. The same names had probably appeared on the guest list to my own christening.

  A smaller note had remained wedged in the spine, and I pulled it out. It was made of ivory card stock, the sort of stationery a lawyer would have or perhaps a businessman with a lack of imagination. I pulled back at this last thought, quite convinced that it hadn’t been my own. I spread it open, noticing the creases from where it looked like the note had once been folded into a tiny square either to throw away or to tuck somewhere out of sight. The embossed monogram at the top had been done in bold capital letters and read JML. Joseph Longo?

  Folded inside the note was a newspaper clipping, the edges ragged as if it had been ripped rather than carefully cut from the newspaper. The clipping fluttered out of the note, landing upside down on the album. Flipping it over with a hand that no longer looked like my own, I saw the photograph of Louisa with Nevin, the necklace a bright spot in the reproduced black-and-white newspaper photo.

  I flipped the note ove
r, looking for some sort of writing, but found nothing. Just the yellowed face on brittle and yellowed newspaper print staring up at me. The album slid from my lap, and I found myself breathing heavily. I placed the note and clipping back in the book to show Jack later, then carefully avoided touching any of the other albums as I made my way to my new bathroom to begin getting dressed for my date.

  Marc and I went to Anson’s, where we sat in the front of the restaurant, facing Anson Street, and watched the horse-drawn carriages trotting outside. I’d enjoyed more than my fair share of a bottle of wine, in addition to their famous shrimp and grits, barbecued lamb, and decadent chocolate torte. Marc had watched me with unconcealed amusement as I’d eaten every last crumb of my dessert, even turning down my offer of a bite because he was too full. I was grateful that I’d been to the restaurant before and knew what to order beforehand, since I couldn’t read the menu without my glasses and I refused to put them on in front of him. It was one thing to admit to myself that my eyes weren’t what they used to be, but even at thirty-nine, I still clung to whatever vanity I still possessed.

  We talked about the houses I’d shown him so far or, rather, why the houses weren’t a good fit for him, then quickly moved on to other subjects, both of us avoiding talking about our families. Curious, and feeling emboldened by the wine, I leaned across the table. “Have you or any member of your family tried to figure out what happened to your grandfather?”

  His eyes didn’t register more than a flicker of interest. “Years ago my father hired a private investigator. Never turned up anything. It’s a cold trail by now.”

  “So he didn’t leave behind any correspondence—no letters or journals?”

  Marc took a thoughtful sip of his after-dinner cognac. “I don’t believe so. My father was the one who handled the estate, and he never said anything to me. I guess it’s just one of those mysteries that will remain unsolved.” He smiled and leaned forward, his fingers touching mine. “Besides, I’m a progressive man—I’m all about the future. To be honest, I don’t seem to have much time or patience for the past.”

  I looked into his warm brown eyes and took another sip of wine, trying to wet my suddenly dry mouth. “That’s very admirable,” I said, feeling his fingertips. “But surely you must have felt some curiosity.”

  “Maybe when I was a kid. But now that I’m grown and I’ve made my own life, what’s come before seems to have less and less significance to my life.”

  I couldn’t see the flaw in his reasoning, and probably would have to admit that at some point in my life, I’d felt the same way. But if I agreed with him, it would seem like some sort of betrayal to Mr. Vanderhorst, so I said nothing.

  Still, whether it was the food, the wine, the ambience, or the company, I found myself relaxing and simply enjoying myself for the first time in a long while. It was against my nature to relax, but Marc’s company lent itself to quiet, comfortable conversation, the lulls more for peaceful reflection rather than for uncomfortable silences.

  I found my mind drifting back to earlier in the day, when I was standing on Legare Street, looking at my grandmother’s house, and recalling the picture of Jack that Amelia had showed me. I hadn’t been able to identify what I had felt when I’d seen it until now, and it made me take another sip of my wine and settle deeper into my chair. It hadn’t been jealousy—how could I be jealous of a dead woman? It had been more like disenchantment—a held-in breath full of hope that had suddenly slipped from my mouth unnoticed.

  Maybe it was this unexpected feeling, or the bright stars in a clear Charleston sky, that caused me to ask Marc to leave the car in the lot and take me for a walk in the early-fall evening. Marc surprised me by placing his jacket around my shoulders and taking my hand. I smiled up at him, relaxing into his warmth and enjoying the male scent of his clothing.

  We paused outside the gates of St. Philip’s cemetery, gazing into the dark shadows at white obelisks punctuating the night. Marc’s face was very close to mine as we peered through the gate, and I smelled his cologne as he spoke next to my ear. “Lots of famous people are buried here, you know. John C. Calhoun. Edward Rutledge—signer of the Declaration of Independence. DuBose Heyward.” He narrowed his eyes pensively. “I’ve always found it odd that people who have given so much to the world end up just the same as us ordinary people. Dust in the ground.” He smiled, softening his words. “I’ve always wanted to ask one of them if there’s a class system in heaven, too, where the great architects and poets and inventors and all those who’ve given so much to the world are maybe put in a special place, higher than the rest of us.”

  I tried to read his eyes, but they were hidden in shadows. “I think they would tell us that God loves us all equally. And that you should feel lucky to have made it to heaven in the first place.”

  He laughed and put his hand on the small of my back and I liked it there. “You sound like my mother. Always reminding my brothers and me that our earthly successes aren’t what’s important. I’m sure every mother says that, though.”

  “I wouldn’t know,” I said quietly. We began to walk toward Meeting Street and the Circular Church, pausing outside the churchyard. I saw a woman in a long white gown flitting between dimly lit tomb-stones. She stopped when she saw me, but I looked away, hoping she’d leave me alone. Cemeteries were normally places I avoided, but if I concentrated really hard on something else, I could ignore the activity that seemed to spring up in my wake like water behind a speedboat.

  Marc hooked one hand on the gate and faced me. “Did you know that this is the city’s oldest burying ground? It’s designed in the Richardsonian Romanesque style, which you can tell by the shape of the windows with the curved tops. It’s my favorite building because it’s so different from anything else in the city.”

  I laughed at his meticulous historical spiel. “Let me guess. You used to give tours of the city when you were younger.”

  He smiled broadly, his teeth white in the shadow of his face. “No. I simply love Charleston. Anybody who just sees me as a real estate developer would certainly disagree, but I don’t think I could do what I do without appreciating this city for what it is.”

  I stopped, then turned to face him. “Which is what?”

  He was silent for a moment. “A beautiful, old city full of rich history and character and architecturally significant buildings—but whose inhabitants are sometimes blind to the ideas of progress.” He drew a deep breath, then took my hand as we continued walking down Meeting past the Palladian-style Gibbes Museum of Art. “As much as I respect the desire of the city’s preservationists to protect what is part of our heritage, I can’t help but lose patience with their passion for saving crumbling bits of ruin regardless of their condition or worth simply because they’re old.”

  I nodded, completely in harmony with what he was saying. But I thought again of my mother’s house and the history it held within its walls, and my own house on Tradd Street. My house? Despite my prickly relationship with it, the thought of it being razed for condos or a parking lot made the chocolate torte in my stomach turn. And not just because I had put so much of my own sweat equity in it; it had more to do with the old cross-stitch found behind the fireplace and the growth chart sketched on the wall in the drawing room. I remembered Nevin Vanderhorst and his belief that his house was like the child he had never had, and I thought for the first time that maybe the old man might have been telling the truth. Not that I really wanted to get up close and personal with small children or an old house, but the sentiment did make the space around my heart a little tighter.

  We turned onto Archdale Street, and I noticed that our arms were swinging between us as if we were teenagers. We stopped at the corner of Archdale and Market, and Marc placed his hands on my shoulders and turned me so that I was facing east, over to Market Hall, giving me a view I’d never paused long enough to appreciate. The lights of the Holy City blazed from old streetlamps and building windows, illuminating church steeples and ancient fa
cades like halos.

  “It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” ask Marc, his low voice in my ear.

  I nodded, too entranced by the view to speak.

  “When the Saks Fifth Avenue building was constructed, it was built out to the street to provide a solid street wall to frame the vista of Market Street. It’s what the city’s preservationists now call an example of good urban design, but at the time it was built, they called it a lot of less flattering names.” He took a deep breath and its warmth brushed my neck, making me shiver.

  I turned to face him. “So why do you want to own an old house? You’re a real estate developer living in an old city that prefers its antiques to anything resembling modern. It doesn’t make sense.”

  He didn’t speak at first, and I thought that maybe he wasn’t sure what the answer was. Or perhaps he simply didn’t want to tell me. “Maybe as a person grows older, he finds the need to get back to his roots, to his family. To his ancestors. Maybe that’s the appeal of this city that you and I have been missing.”

  I opened my mouth to agree, then closed it. Because that would be a lie. I had been born knowing it. It was just that childhood wounds were permanent and the people we grew into couldn’t be expected to forget them. Instead, I simply answered, “Maybe.”

  The wine or the night or his warmth made me sway forward, and he cupped my face in his hands, his eyes unreadable. My blood swished a little faster, and I closed my eyes, surprised to find Jack’s face there behind my lids instead of Marc’s. Confused, my eyes fluttered open, and I saw that Marc hadn’t moved any closer.

  “You’re a very special woman, Melanie. You’re smart, successful, funny.” His cheek twitched. “And you have the appetite of a long-shoreman but the body of a goddess.” He paused, his voice serious again. “You deserve only the best.”

  So why aren’t you kissing me? I swayed closer to him.

  I heard him sigh, a sound between resignation and desire, and then his lips were on mine. He tasted of wine and night air, and I thought of how warm and comfortable I felt in his arms. I didn’t stop to think that it was comfort I felt more than passion, but simply that it felt good and it had been a very long time since I’d been held like that.