The House on Seventh Street

by Karen Vorbeck Williams

  “Oh, I don’t know,” Todd’s face softened. “Just nice folks down on the farm. My mom made the best fried chicken in two counties and baked apple pies that let you know there’s something right with the world. She kept a big garden in tomatoes and sold them by the roadside. I helped her with the canning.”

  Charmed, she asked, “And your dad?”

  Todd smiled. “He was a great dad. Made me a fishin’ pole, took me fishin’, taught me to shoot. We’d sit on the porch or by the fire and he’d read to me from the Bible.”

  “Are they still living?”

  “Dad is. Mom went to her maker some years back.”

  “See, Winna, some people have normal families,” Chloe jabbed.

  After the dishes were done, they went out on the porch to catch the night air and talked until late. Through watching Todd with Chloe and listening to his conversation, Winna began to think well of him. He seemed sweet and just as spacey as Chloe. After they left, Winna could not get Chloe off her mind.

  Before moving back to town after her divorce, Winna’s sister had lived in LA. Chloe had never gone long without a man to love her. She had followed her own brand of spirituality and her causes: the environment, animal welfare, and the support of local merchants under pressure from big-box stores run by huge corporations.

  Unlike me, Winna thought, Chloe has approached her life fearlessly, breaking the rules, making a big adventure out of it. She wondered if Chloe saw herself in that light. She knew how her sister thought of her—someone afraid to let go and have adventures, someone closed-minded and disapproving.

  Winna knew how different they were and wondered how that could be. They had been so close as children. She had watched over Chloe like a little mother. Then, Winna had loved her sister more than anyone else on earth and now she had to love her from a distance. Her father’s cruel denial of Chloe’s birthright came suddenly to mind and spun her into circles of anger, then tears. How could he—over something that happened twenty years ago? And me? He’s made me an object of envy and given me the appearance of greed. Winna knew that she could not let her father’s wishes stand and promised herself that tomorrow she would make an appointment with Reed Thompson, her father’s lawyer.

  19

  Late 1940s

  EVEN THOUGH YEARS had passed, Winna had not forgotten the day she first saw their new home in the country: a sprawling farmhouse with a big front porch. Almost everyone on Peach Tree Ridge had enough land to keep a horse, a milk cow, and a vegetable garden. Wild asparagus grew along the ditch banks, and nearby the Grand Valley Canal snaked past a cherry orchard, a small vineyard, and farms growing melons and hay.

  The first summer there, Winna explored the remains of old orchards growing in unexpected places: a row of pear trees along the lane, apricot trees beside the ditch bank, a wild pear thicket in the field to the west, and gnarled old apple trees in two spotty rows just below the rise of the hill. Even though no one pruned or sprayed the trees, there were plenty of only slightly wormy apples to eat—the apricots were spotless, perfect. In spring, the fruit trees blossomed pink and white all across the land and in summer the girls climbed them.

  When the apricots were sweet and juicy, the rosy color of the setting sun, Winna climbed one of the large trees growing over the irrigation ditch. Chloe followed, and like hungry birds, they rested high in the tree and ate their fill. From the treetop Winna could look over the tall privet hedge to the house and beyond to Pinyon Mesa bathed in red sunlight and blue shadows.

  Out of the corner of her eye, Winna saw Chloe slip, then fall, letting out a little yelp as her body crashed through leaves and branches. She landed face-up in the shallow ditch below. On her way into the water, she hit her head on the plank they used as a footbridge. From the top of the tree, Winna could see her lying under water, her eyes closed, her arms at her sides in the ditch as narrow as a coffin. Her blonde hair looked like seaweed as it floated with the current away from her peaceful face. Winna screamed for their mother to come.

  The tree rained apricots as she raced from limb to limb down to the ground. Reaching the ditch bank, Winna grabbed her sister by one arm, pulled her to a sitting position, and dragged her up through the weeds into her arms. She watched Chloe struggle to catch her breath and cough up water from her lungs. By the time Nora got down the hill, Chloe was crying and Winna had stopped shaking.

  Dr. Sloane drove out from town to examine Chloe. They had had a scare but Chloe would be fine. Winna felt proud that she had been swift and strong enough to pull her little sister out of the water in time.

  This was not the first time Chloe had taken a dangerous dive. After seeing Peter Pan, she must have thought she could fly. Without the benefit of pixie dust, she jumped off the second story porch and got the wind knocked out of her for a frightening few minutes. In time, Chloe learned to climb down the chimney at night and escape undetected. She showed Winna how to do it, but Winna wasn’t that brave.

  When she was six, Chloe wanted to be a boy. Her father’s and grandfather’s frequent mention of their bad luck—the absence of a male heir—must have inspired her. That summer she got hold of Nora’s sewing shears and chopped off her hair.

  Nora took one look at her nearly scalped child and dragged a stool outside on the lawn, draped a towel around Chloe’s neck, and with a lot of advice from Winna, recut her hair. When she had done her best to smooth out the rough spots, she stood back for a look.

  “It looks better,” she sighed.

  “Do I still look like a girl?” Chloe asked, squinting back the bright sunshine.

  Winna thought her sister was hopeless.

  Chloe’s favorite outfit was a pair of jeans, a white shirt, her fancy red cowboy boots, and a kid-sized Stetson. Before Nora took her daughters into town to shop or to the picture show, Winna bathed and slipped into a dress, but Chloe refused. Nora would give in and let her youngest daughter wear jeans on the streets of downtown Grand Junction.

  Winna was horrified. “I’m not going to walk anywhere near her in public.”

  That fall Chloe would enter first grade. But all summer long she went around shirtless like the boys, walking with a swagger, talking out of the side of her mouth like the toughs she’d imagined or seen in the movies. She would not answer to her name. Everyone had to call her Bill.

  “Do something about Chloe,” Winna begged, but her mother ignored her.

  On Labor Day weekend, Chloe showed up in the shallow end at Moyer swimming pool wearing boys’ swim trunks. Winna watched all the kids tease her.

  “Look at Chloe. She’s dressed like a boy!”

  “Your titties are showing! Your titties are showing!”

  She knew her little sister hated a teasing even more than she hated being a girl.

  Trying to save face, Chloe pulled up nose-to-nose to one of her tormentors and yelled, “I can swim and you can’t.”

  “Liar! You can’t swim!” he taunted.

  “Yes, I can,” she yelled. She had sounded so positive that she must have believed it herself. “I’ll show you,” she said, climbing out of the pool and marching herself down to the deep end.

  Winna ran after her. She knew her sister well enough to know that she had convinced herself that if she really wanted to swim, she could. Winna was too late. Chloe had jumped in and sunk to the bottom. When she came up flailing and gasping for air, the lifeguard dove in and saved her.

  Nora was ready to dry off her daughters and take them home. As the sisters climbed into the car, Chloe burst into tears. “I don’t like girls’ swimsuits.”

  It was easy for Winna to see her mother’s heartbreak. Sheltering her nonconformist daughter in her arms, she whispered, “Don’t cry, Chloe. Don’t cry.”

  Winna leaned over the back seat to pet her.

  “You don’t have to wear dresses unless you want to,” Nora said, kissing her on the forehead as Winna prepared to contradict.

  “Of course she has to wear dresses.”

  “At schoo
l,” Chloe cried, hanging her head in shame. “The kids will tease me if I don’t—I have to wear dresses to school—I do,” she sobbed.

  “Yes,” Winna said. “They won’t let you in.” Hoping to comfort and at the same time convert her, she said, “It’s not so bad. You look pretty in a dress, and Mother will buy you new dresses for school. Won’t you, Mother?”

  Chloe rubbed the tears off her cheeks. Though she looked defeated, she sat up straight and, with the shaky voice of a soldier accepting a dangerous mission, said, “Let’s go shopping for girls’ shoes.”

  WHILE CHLOE WAS trying to fly, Winna was busy building an altar in her room. She had been converted to Catholicism by the film The Bells of Saint Mary’s, starring Bing Crosby as a priest and Ingrid Bergman as a teaching nun.

  Winna had seen nuns on the streets of Grand Junction, sweeping down sidewalks in black habits, their faces washed clean of make-up. She had stared in fascination. Then came the questions. No, they don’t get married. Yes, they shave their heads. Some said that they were stern, even mean to children. But Bergman floated in her long black habit, the white of her headdress framing her beautiful face, her eyes glowing with love. Her saintly character lived in service to the children of the convent school.

  After seeing the movie, Winna decided she wanted to be a nun. She cleaned up her room and moved the furniture. She added an altar—a large box lovingly draped with one of her mother’s bridge cloths—and adorned it with a candle and flowers. She cut the oval picture of the Good Shepherd Christ from a Congregational Sunday school certificate, and placed him at the center, leaning against the vase.

  Alone in her room, she would light the candle and kneel. Breathing in the scent of the match, the burning wick, and wax, she pressed her hands flat against one another under her chin, just like Ingrid Bergman. She closed her eyes and prayed, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…,” just like Ingrid Bergman.

  Winna was convinced that God liked her so much better that way—like the nun in the movie. After she said “Amen,” she gazed at the picture of the Gentle Shepherd and he gazed lovingly back at her. His peaceful blue eyes filled her with a longing she did not understand. She wished she could crawl into his arms and rest her head on his shoulder.

  20

  1999

  WINNA PULLED UP in front of Chloe’s little bungalow on Teller Avenue. The house was a fairly recent purchase, a work in progress. A ladder leaned against the screened-in porch. The front had just been repainted a soft putty color. The porch, trimmed in plum, glowed with a fresh coat of rose. The blue-green gate in the picket fence swung easily as Winna lifted the latch. Rose, teal, and plum were the colors Chloe wore.

  Chloe’s garden, growing on either side of the walk, welcomed her with a chorus of wind chimes in the globe willows. Beyond two small patches of lawn, gone dormant from lack of water, flowerbeds burst with sunflowers, pink coreopsis, rosy yarrow, and magenta love-lies-bleeding. Behind the tangle of flowers stood a nearly life-sized wooden goddess dressed in flowing green robes emblazoned with gilt planets and moons, her gaze heavenward. Startled birds rushed from the feeder and pedestal bath as Winna approached.

  Instead of a doorbell, Chloe had installed a triangle. Knowing her visit would be a surprise, Winna created just enough racket to wake the dead and waited for Chloe to come to the door.

  Dressed in a flowing robe similar to the one adorning her garden goddess, Chloe looked as if she had just gotten up.

  “Winna, what a surprise.” She appeared pleased. “Come in—I just made coffee.”

  “Is Todd at work?” Winna hoped he was. “I’m sorry to come by so early.”

  “He left about seven—I slept late.”

  She led her sister through the front room, stunning in deep plum, with long blue-green curtains dragging on the hardwood floor around two large light-filled windows. She had hung two of Nora’s abstract paintings, one over the sofa and the other just above a green table. Winna enjoyed seeing them again.

  “Mother’s paintings never looked at home in my New England house,” she said. “Here, they’re perfectly wonderful.”

  The sofa, a nearly white, deeply tufted leather sectional, was strewn with colorful pillows. Several had toppled to the floor. The large round glass-top coffee table held two wine glasses, a couple of empty wine bottles, an ashtray overflowing with butts, and a dozen candle holders with candle stubs dripping wax.

  “Sorry for the mess,” she said, steering Winna toward the kitchen.

  “I like what you’ve done. The garden is lovely.”

  “Thanks—I wish it wasn’t so dry.”

  Chloe pointed to one of the yellow vinyl and chrome dinette chairs that surrounded the matching kitchen table. “Have a seat.”

  Winna obeyed and sat down. “Chloe, yesterday I went to see Reed,” Winna said, revealing the reason for her visit.

  “Oh,” she said. “How’s Reed?”

  Winna accepted a bright pink mug from her sister’s hand. “I told him I want you reinherited, so to speak.”

  Chloe seemed to stop breathing. She sat down and gazed into her cup.

  “Unfortunately, in gifting you, the taxes would be horrendous—about half of everything to the government. It appears that Dad’s estate is over four million, not counting the house and its contents.”

  Suddenly, Chloe stood and walked to the kitchen sink. “How much will I get?” she asked with her back to her sister.

  “Let me finish explaining,” Winna said, wondering why Chloe seemed so jumpy. “Reed suggests I set up a discretionary trust for you, in my name. The trust will revert to you upon my death when you or your heirs will become the successor trustees. As I understand it, during my lifetime there will be a third-party trustee for you to deal with—you won’t have to come to me. A percentage of the earnings will be yours and you and that third party will decide what other disbursements are fitting. We aren’t sure of the amount yet, but the earnings will be considerable—a comfortable living. I know, Chloe, that this is a lot to take in and, if you want, Reed could explain it to you in more detail.”

  Chloe turned to face her sister. Tears flooded her eyes and she began to tremble so violently that hot coffee splashed down the front of her robe. “Oh, shit,” she cried in pain. “I’m such a goddamn fool.” Furiously, she rubbed the spill with a kitchen towel. “Why do I feel guilty? Like I don’t deserve this.”

  “It’s not about deserving,” Winna said, wishing she felt free to embrace her. “I don’t deserve it either—it’s just our birthright. Remember, the fortune was built by three generations and added to by Gramma’s inheritance. Dad grew the fortune and maintained it after her death. For all his invisibility, Daddy was a great manager and business man.”

  Chloe sighed. “I was born into wealth but never felt wealthy, not even as a kid. It’s like real financial abundance has eluded me all my life—Juno says there is abundance in my chart, but I’ve been in a long cycle—I know you don’t care about this—but this past year, by transit, when Saturn came forward and opposed the Sun…” Chloe trailed off and slumped into a kitchen chair. “I won’t go on except to say that it hasn’t been easy, Winna.”

  “None of this has been easy. Dad’s awful death and that awful will. We can’t expect major tragedy to be easy,” she said. “Notwithstanding the position of the stars, life gets thorny.” Winna stopped. Her words lit no sign of affirmation in Chloe’s eyes. She didn’t know how to talk to her anymore.

  “I just couldn’t let the will stand. It was so unfair and I couldn’t enjoy having wealth, knowing you were left out.”

  Chloe rushed into Winna’s arms. “Thank you. Now I’m the happiest I’ve been in a long time. Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. I’m just sorry you had to go through that.”

  “I’m happy,” she said. “I’m actually happy.” She beamed at Winna and hugged herself. “I’ve finally learned that I won’t find all-encompassing happiness through a man.” Chloe sto
od, clutching the back of her chair. “Neptune has a square, hard ninety-degree angle to Venus in my chart. This makes me yearn for the ideal. It’s different now, because I’m wise to it, but in the past when I met a man, my eagerness made me project the ideal onto him. Then there always came that moment of betrayal when I realized that the man I had married was just ordinary, or worse. Of course, I blamed him.”

  “I did the same with Walt. I think the expression goes, ‘The honeymoon’s over.’”

  “No, it’s not that simple, Winna. It’s deeper than that old cliché.” Chloe was pacing, her voice rising with excitement. “If you live long enough, you learn. Really learn! Now I know that happiness is found only inside one’s self—the transcendence that comes from inside, from one’s own creativity.”

  “I’m glad you’re happy,” Winna said, biting her tongue. She did not want to say what she thought. To her, transcendence meant moving beyond the self toward God.

  “And this money is great, Winna. It’ll free me up to garden, paint, and do my real work,” Chloe said, refilling her cup. “I want to make an impact on the environment—the way this stupid country does business.” She paused, her face suddenly troubled. “Explain why I can’t just have half the money?”

  Winna took a deep breath. Readjusting to her sister’s sudden change of tone, she said, “The taxes. Dad’s estate is much larger than anyone expected, and once we sell the house and antiques, it will be more. If I simply hand over half to you, we’d have to pay tons of gift taxes.”

  “That’s okay,” she said, bouncing into the chair. “How much is there?”

  “We aren’t sure yet, but Reed thinks that with the sale of the house and its contents, it will top five million—maybe more.”

  “Really? Money has never been that important to me, but it would be fun to have a big chunk all at once. I’ve never had that.”

  “You have two sons. What about your boys?” Winna said. “You’d have nothing to leave them if you had ‘fun’ with a million or two. Think of the fun they’d miss.”