The House on Seventh Street

by Karen Vorbeck Williams

  Before the summer was over Juliana felt very grown-up, but she had worries. She was quite aware that her young lover was poor as a church mouse. Yes, he had a full scholarship to a fine university and a promising talent, but she knew that poets and teachers were not wealthy. She tried to think of suggestions for Dolph—how he might make his fortune. So far, she had not thought of anything—like a banker or industrialist—that he was eager to adopt as his life’s calling. She did not think about the ways she could be wealthy on her own. She knew that girls got married and with all her heart she wanted to marry Dolph. Then her nights would be filled with his kisses, but she most certainly did not want to be poor.

  Usually when Juliana helped her mother with the dishes, she would entertain herself by singing or reciting poetry. One afternoon, as her mother filled the dishpan with hot water, Juliana said, “Father grew up poor, but I think he’s well enough off now.” By Grand Junction standards, her father had done well. Juliana was quite aware that their house and her clothes were nicer than many of her friends’.

  “Right now, dear, your father is down in the market because of the—dare I say—damn trust busters.” The Standard Oil Company faced antitrust regulations and her husband had large holdings.

  “Are we going to be poor?” Juliana felt more petulant than fearful.

  Mrs. Smythe dipped a dinner plate into the rinse pan and handed it to her daughter. “No. You mustn’t worry.”

  “Is that why Millie only comes on Tuesdays and Thursdays now?” she said, wiping the plate dry with a linen tea towel.

  “Yes, dear, but your father has assured me that he is just going through a rough spot.”

  Juliana put the plate in the cupboard. “Are there any writers who are rich?”

  “I suppose so. Mark Twain was once a wealthy man, but I hear he frittered away much of his money. You know, he just passed away and his poor daughter may go wanting for an inheritance,” she said, passing her daughter another clean plate. “Famous as he was, he had trouble with bill collectors.”

  “I’d like a husband who is richer than Father,” Juliana said.

  “We must be thankful for all we have, child.”

  Juliana wondered who her mother was reminding to be grateful—herself or her daughter. “I am. Surely I am,” she said, furiously drying the plate with a linen towel. “But is it wrong to want more?”

  “That depends. You never want to benefit from ill-gotten gains. That is how a number of men get rich. Now, I know, I should not forget that your father’s interest in Standard Oil could be seen as ill-gotten gains, but he’s a relatively small holder. Dash it! I missed this glass,” she said, reaching for a tall drinking glass. “Now the wash water is ruined with grease.

  “That reminds me. How can your young man afford to bring me strawberries and those lovely scallions from yesterday? It is utterly charming of him, of course, but he should not be spending his money like that. Please tell him to be wise and save it for school.”

  “If he was rich you wouldn’t have to think like that,” Juliana said. “Aren’t wealthy men smarter and more powerful?”

  Juliana’s mother held the just rinsed glass up to the light for inspection. “That’s what one might think, but not all wealthy men are happy men.”

  Juliana did not believe that for a minute.

  On his prospects for wealth, Dolph had said that he expected to do well. Becoming a writer takes time, he had said. When they married, they would have to live on a teacher’s salary for a while. Juliana was determined to change his mind.

  5

  1999

  THE BACK PORCH, off the kitchen, looked over a spacious lawn to a bank of trees and shrubs forming a dense protective screen. The rustic Adirondack swing, its paint peeling, still hung at the end of the porch behind the lattice where the sky blue flowers Winna knew as morning glories—her grandmother called them “love in vain”—used to open on summer mornings. Under a small horseshoe hanging from a blacksmith’s nail, the old rocking chairs sat along the inside wall with the weather-beaten wicker loveseat and matching tables.

  Winna looked out across the lawn to the summerhouse where on summer afternoons she and Chloe used to draw and play with their paper dolls. It was a small one-room house with lattice work on either side of the door. Door-length windows looked out on the big house and gardens.

  Out of the corner of her eye, she saw movement like the last traces of a figure in flight. Ever since she’d been working in the house she’d experienced these fleeting encounters with her imagination: a shadow hurrying off at the end of the upstairs hall, the sound of footsteps on the attic stairs. Was it her imagination or had she come upon a lost memory trying to surface? She dismissed it as foolishness and forced herself to get back to work—making decisions about the old porch furniture. She gave the whole lot a second look and decided to put it in the yard sale. It was still serviceable.

  A local jeweler had identified the ring they had found among the marbles as a four-carat yellow diamond—like nothing he’d ever seen in Grand Junction. He suggested she get it appraised in Denver. That left her with yet another unsettled feeling. Why on earth would a valuable ring be left with a collection of children’s marbles? It didn’t make sense. Was that someone’s idea of a clever hiding place? Winna had never seen the ring before. She would have remembered such a thing had it been in her grandmother’s jewelry box. Had it belonged to her wicked stepmother Ruth? Was Ruth playing marbles and the ring interfered with her game? That guess made Winna laugh. The logical guess was that it had somehow belonged to Juliana.

  The weekend had come and gone with no sign of Chloe. Winna sat down with her father’s heap of unopened mail. At the kitchen table, she sorted the letters into categories. Most envelopes contained things for the wastebasket, but there were unpaid bills, some of them past due when Henry was still alive. Finally she came to an unopened envelope addressed by a familiar hand—hers. She looked at the postmark. She’d sent the card on his last birthday.

  Realizing what she held in her hand, Winna felt a sharp stab to her heart. He hadn’t even opened it. She decided she would. The card featured a drawing of a father holding his little girl above his head. They were playing, lovingly delighted with one another. Printed at the bottom it read, “To the BEST DAD in the whole world.” Winna was stunned. She didn’t remember the card or what had possessed her to send those words—she hoped it wasn’t sarcasm. She opened it to see what she had written:

  Wishing you a Happy Birthday, Daddy. Hope your day is special. All is well here at my little house by the sea—wish you would come for a visit and see for yourself. Still adjusting to the single life. Any tips? Business is good. Lots of love, Winna

  Winna began to sob. Her whole body shook. Her hands trembled so wildly that she could not hold the card in her hand. He hadn’t remembered her birthday in forty years, but even worse, she hadn’t expected he would. He didn’t care. Winna let the tears flow.

  When calm, she looked around her. An overwhelming feeling of neglect filled the house. It was apparent that her father had been neglected too. The housekeeper was a joke and his daughters had all but deserted him. She hadn’t known, she told herself. She lived thousands of miles away. What’s more, he never called, was never in when she called, never answered her letters. Worst of all he didn’t care. He didn’t care. As far as Winna could tell, he didn’t even notice. It was as if his job was over. He had fed, clothed, and educated his daughter, got her married off, and sent her on her way.

  Both he and the house seemed just fine when she’d visited two summers ago. She had to admit that she had not looked through cupboards and drawers. On that last visit she stayed with her friend Kate. Winna never felt lonelier than when she was with her father. As a remedy, she spent as much time as she could with friends. Now, missing her friend, she promised herself to get back in touch when Kate got home. She was in Denver helping her daughter, who had just had another baby.

  There was a reason for her negle
ct. She reminded herself of his drinking days. One of the times she had flown in for a visit, the two had sat together in silence in the old parlor after dinner one night. Trying to erase the uncomfortable feeling of that silence, she had struck up a conversation she no longer remembered. I probably told him about my child, my husband, my work—my life. In midsentence—hers—Henry had thrown back his head and let out a long high-pitched howl like a lonely wolf baying at the moon.

  At the end of that horrifying howl he cried, “I am so bored!”

  She hadn’t known what to do, what to say, but she wanted to cry. She told herself that he was drunk, that she should not take his outburst personally. She picked up something to read. She couldn’t concentrate and, feigning her own end-of-the-day tiredness, went off to the guest room, to cry herself to sleep.

  Her father had been a stranger who seemed not to notice she was alive. She had never really known him and he had never made the effort to know her. Does that give a daughter the right to neglect her aging father? She couldn’t think about that—not now—not after what had happened to him.

  Though Chloe had moved back to Grand Junction seven years before their father’s death, she saw very little of Henry. Winna remembered complaining phone calls from her sister, who told her about their encounters, and his politics. The big Ross Perot sign stuck in the front lawn through two election cycles embarrassed Chloe. Henry had tried his best to keep Bill Clinton out of the White House. He hated the president, but Chloe supported him. She had even tried to explain to her father why the President’s affair with Monica Lewinsky had come about. Why there was almost nothing wrong with it. The only thing Chloe disapproved of was that they’d never actually had “sexual relations.” According to Chloe, poor Monica had done all the work and had none of the pleasure.

  Then there were her father’s old-fashioned ideas on women’s roles and race. When Chloe told her about their political arguments, Winna shook her head and said, “At least he talks to you.”

  She wanted to feel justified in her neglect, but she couldn’t. She had regrets, and she found it cruel and ironic that his death had made her sympathetic toward him in a way that made her feel guilty. She was never going to have a relationship with her father. It was too late.

  A cup of tea in hand, she decided to take a moment to rest and sat down on the porch swing. I am going to do my best to remember something pleasant, something tangible that passed between Dad and me. She wanted some happy memory, a moment when she knew he loved her. Her eyes fell on the horseshoe hanging over the rocking chairs. She smiled and wondered if her father had tacked it there. Had it belonged to Peaches?

  WINNA AND CHLOE were still in grade school when a traveling carnival came to town for just one night—a school night. It wasn’t Winna’s first carnival, but it was Chloe’s. The carnies had set up on a vacant lot somewhere on the outskirts of town. By the time the Grummans arrived, a large crowd had gathered and there were lines waiting for the merry-go-round. They passed through the midway where human freaks waited inside a large tent. They stopped to look at large colorful posters, cartoons of the fat lady and the thin man, the bearded woman, the Siamese twins, and the man whose skin was covered in tattoos. Winna begged to go inside, but Henry had said it was not kind or polite to stare at people with deformities.

  Hawkers inside colorful booths cried out for them to take a chance, win a prize, shoot at ducks, throw darts at balloons. Winna watched hopefully as Henry did his best to win prizes for both of them. Having failed, he bought them cotton candy and they headed off to the Ferris wheel.

  For the first time, Winna was disappointed by the carnival. She could see how poor and broken down the carnies looked, the shabbiness of the tents, the chipped paint on the Ferris wheel. Worst of all, she suddenly felt ashamed that she had asked her father if she could go in to see the freaks. She thought of how sad they must be and wondered why they would sit there and let themselves be embarrassed.

  Still, this was Winna’s special night out with her father. She and Chloe had been allowed to go to the carnival on a school night. They’d had cotton candy and rides on the Ferris wheel. They’d lined up with the crowd around a pen where a pretty red roan pony was up for raffle. After they had jumped up and down, and tugged on his sleeve begging, their father had agreed to buy a raffle ticket.

  Late that night, after everyone had gone to sleep, Winna heard the telephone ring. Her father answered it. She fell back to sleep before he hung up, but in the morning there was a surprise waiting for them—a glossy roan pony with soulful brown eyes staring at them from the middle of the living room floor. Luckily, a remodeling project was underway and the rugs and furniture had been removed.

  Her mother suggested that Henry take his delirious children and the pony outside on the lawn for a ride while she fixed breakfast. Before the girls left for school, their father showed them how to saddle and bridle him. They took turns riding him around the back lawn.

  “Isn’t he a peach?” Her father stroked the pony’s sleek rump. “He’s just perfect for you girls to ride,” he said, lifting Chloe onto his back.

  By the time they ran off to catch the school bus, they had named their new pony “Peaches.”

  That evening during dinner, Henry told them the whole story, beginning with the phone call. He described it in detail—being jarred awake, stumbling in the dark to the phone on the hall table, the strange voice coming over the line. The girls laughed at his impression of the man on the phone.

  “Mr. Grumman, y’all won that there pony. If y’all want ’im, you better come git ’im rat now.”

  Half asleep, Henry drove his car to the vacant lot where carnival workers packed up under the lights. He bridled the pony and put the fancy black-and-silver-studded saddle into the trunk of his car. With help from two other men, he stuffed the pony into the back seat and drove all the way out to Peach Tree Ridge with the pony’s head over his shoulder.

  “When I got home I realized I had a big problem—where to put a pony for the night. It was too dark to see my way to the pasture—besides, there’s a break in the fence. The little shed was full of rusty milk cans and I couldn’t keep a confused pony in the car overnight and hope to have a back seat by morning. There was nothing to do but bring him into the house. The rugs had been taken up and I figured your mother wouldn’t be mad at me. So I put a knot in the bridle’s end, and closed a living room window on the strap to secure it.”

  The next day Henry took the day off from work. Winna watched him fix the fence. She helped him clean out the old shed just off the pasture. It was the perfect size for a pony. They let Peaches loose in the pasture where an irrigation ditch ran down a gentle slope toward neighboring fields. All that green grass and running water would provide a good home for Peaches.

  Daddy loved animals, Winna reminded herself. He could relate to them. Then she remembered Garfie, the dog, and the story her mother had told her.

  The way she told it, Nora had been distraught over the death of film star John Garfield. She took it pretty hard. She’d seen every one of his movies and regarded him as one of the greats. When Winna asked why, she had said it was because he knew how to play the common man with honesty and dignity. Just a year earlier, he had stood up to the House Un-American Activities Committee, denying that he was a communist and refusing to name others. Winna remembered how much her mother hated Joseph McCarthy and how she had explained his “witch-hunt.” It was the first time Winna had heard that expression.

  “I heard about his death—at thirty-nine from a heart attack—on the radio that morning,” Nora said. “And for the first time I learned that he was not John Garfield, after all. He was born Jacob Julius Garfinkle, a Jew.”

  Alone with the housework and feeling sad, Nora had grabbed her grocery list and headed for the car. Just outside the kitchen door, she found a strange dog standing there, a scruffy, whining wretch, with round brown eyes peering out from under a mop of curly white and red-spotted hair. The dog stood knee-hi
gh with a long fringed tail carried between his legs. She said she had never seen another dog like him.

  Nora gave him a bowl of water. He gulped it down thirstily and she gave him another. While the poor wretch waited beside the kitchen door, she hopped into the car and drove to the store. Just in case the dog was still there when she got home, she bought some dog food.

  The dog had waited for her to return. Nora was glad. She fed him and after he had wolfed down the whole can, she invited him in.

  When the girls came home from school they begged their mother to let them keep him.

  “You’d have to help feed him.”

  “We will!”

  “It would be your job to keep his water bowl full. If you promise me you’ll help—we can give him a home.”

  She seemed already attached herself, and insisted on naming him Garfinkle. Winna liked the name because it sounded funny.

  The rest of the afternoon, they fussed over Garfinkle, making a bed for him and showing him around the house. They bathed him and combed the tangles out of his coat. Garfinkle looked at them with big brown eyes full of sad stories he could not tell and seemed to feel right at home.

  The moment their father walked through the door, Garfinkle got in a terrible panic. He ran and hid under the kitchen table, cowering and whining with his face to the wall, terrified of Henry.

  Nora figured that where he’d come from, a male in the household had been cruel to him, had probably dumped him off in the country. That’s why he was afraid.

  Henry got down on his haunches to talk to Garfinkle.