by White, Karen
He narrowed his eyes. “I thought your specialty was selling historic real estate.”
“It is,” I said, confused. Why would I be trying to dissuade a potential client? I wasn’t sure of the answer, but I was sure that it had something to do my recent renovation experiences. And how I couldn’t picture Marc Longo entrusted with an old Charleston home. Did I really just think that?
I continued, trying to recover my ground. “I’m sorry if you think I’m being a bit rough. It’s just that most people who love to look at old houses have very little idea of what it’s like to actually live in one. I like to lay it all out on the line at this juncture so that there aren’t any surprises later.”
He nodded. “I appreciate that—but my brother owns the old family Victorian on Montagu Street, so I’m no stranger to the upkeep required. And your honesty is probably why you have such a good reputation in your business.”
I felt myself blushing again and focused on the clean notepad in front of me. “Well, now that we’re both on the same page, why don’t you tell me what you’re looking for in terms of size, location, and price? There’s not a lot of inventory right now, but if I have a very specific idea of what you’re looking for, I can be on the lookout for when something hits the market—and sometimes before.”
He smiled. “That should be easy. I know exactly what I want.”
I held my pen poised above the blank page, and smiled brightly. “Go ahead, shoot.”
“Fifty-five Tradd Street.”
I started writing and had almost finished the address before I stopped. “Wait. Did you say Fifty-five Tradd?”
“Yes. I did.”
I stared at him for a moment before putting down my pen. “Mr. Longo. Marc. I’m sure you wouldn’t be here unless you were aware that I owned that house.”
He smiled and nodded slowly. “Of course. I read the paper just like everybody else. Lovely picture of you, by the way.” He glanced at my hair but refrained from commenting. “I must say I was initially intrigued by your story when I read who had owned the house before you. The Vanderhorsts and my family have an old connection.”
“I know.” I had the satisfaction of seeing the surprise in his face.
“Interesting,” he said. “I was under the impression that you’d only been inside the house once before you inherited it.”
“True. But I did have a nice conversation with Mr. Vanderhorst about the house’s past history, including the disappearance of his mother.”
“Ah, yes. Poor Mr. Vanderhorst.” He crossed an elegant foot across his knee and leaned back.
“Poor Mr. Vanderhorst? Why do you say that?”
Marc shrugged. “From what my father told me, Mr. Vanderhorst never quite believed that his mother could possibly have been attracted to someone like my grandfather.”
“And you have evidence to the contrary?” I felt the doughnuts I’d eaten for breakfast flipping over in a single lump. I wanted him to say no. I pictured Mr. Vanderhorst again, looking at the growth chart by the old clock, and realized that I would rather never know the truth of what had happened to Louisa than know for sure that she’d run off with Marc’s grandfather.
Marc shrugged again. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? What’s past is past. I’d rather focus on the present, and that would consist of purchasing your beautiful historical house on Tradd. I found it almost serendipitous that the house with a family connection might actually be available to purchase at the same time I decided to invest in the market.”
I thought of the ancient plumbing, warped wood floors, and falling plaster, and my leg started shaking up and down again, the prospect of not having to deal with any of it making me giddy. I pressed my palm against my knee, stilling it, hoping Marc hadn’t noticed. And then I remembered the terms of the will and how I couldn’t sell so much as a doorknob until a year had passed.
I frowned. “I’m sorry, Marc, to have wasted your time, but the house isn’t for sale. Not because I don’t want to sell it—believe me—but because I can’t. The terms are very specific. I’m to use funds to restore it, but I can’t sell it or its contents for a year. So, unless you want me to help you find another house, I’m afraid you’ll have to come back in a year.”
He thought for a moment, concentrating on his hands. “But if you don’t want the house, they can’t make you take it, right?”
“Legally, sure. I could walk away and abandon the property and let the law figure out who owns it. But that could take years.” And, I wanted to add, if I did that, I might never find out what happened to Mr. Vanderhorst’s mother. The sentimental thought surprised me. For me, the old houses in the historic district had always been about the money. It had never been about anything as sentimental as continuing a legacy or finding an answer for an old man.
Marc returned to steepling his fingers. “I see. Well, then, I guess you need to start showing me other houses.”
I studied him carefully. “Marc, before we go any further, I really have to ask—why me? I know of your reputation in real estate development. Surely you have Realtors on staff who know your needs better than I would.”
He didn’t blink. “Sure. But they don’t know Charleston or its historic districts and homes like you do. You’re known in the industry as an expert, and if I’ve learned anything in my years in the business world, it’s to always go to the best when you need something done.”
I felt myself warming to his praise. “Well, thank you. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed with what I can offer you.” I sat up, pleased to hear that I hadn’t lost a prospect after all. “Now, I’m sure we can find something with as much history as the Vanderhorst house—but hopefully with less work involved.” I pulled my pad closer and poised my pen above it again. “All right. For starters, why don’t you tell me the square footage you’re interested in and how many bedrooms and baths?”
Glancing at his watch, he said, “Actually, I have another appointment I need to get to. Why don’t we continue this discussion later?” He smiled. “Perhaps over dinner tomorrow night?”
I realized my mouth was open and made a point to close it. I was pretty sure he was asking me for a date, but he was sitting in front of my desk, so I couldn’t pretend to consult my empty evening schedule. “I . . . ah . . . yes, I’m available tomorrow evening.”
He stood and reached over to shake my hand, covering mine with both of his. “I’ll pick you up at seven o’clock then. Do you like Magnolia’s?”
I smiled, relieved he hadn’t said Blackbeard’s. “It’s one of my favorites. I’ll see you at seven, then. You know the address.”
“I’ll see myself out. It was a pleasure meeting you, Melanie. I’ll look forward to seeing you again later.”
I watched him leave, already thinking about what I would wear. And as I sat back down, I thought about all the turmoil the house had brought into my life, but how it had also managed to bring about the first two dates I’d had in almost as many years.
The house was empty by the time I returned home at around nine o’clock in the evening. Mrs. Houlihan had left dinner on the stove for me on a foil-wrapped rose china plate, and I noticed drop cloths taped into place beneath the curving staircase. Paper face masks, like the kind dentists wore, and sandpaper lay stacked on the bottom step. Apparently somebody was paying attention to my spreadsheet, because I could see that the first spindle had been stripped to its original wood. I glanced up the banister and counted. That left about 106 more to do. By hand. I sigh, tired at the thought of all the work. And that was only the inside.
My footsteps echoed as I stepped into the foyer and considered the exterior work that Sophie had told me would need to be taken care of. Apparently, I wasn’t allowed to do anything to the outside of the house—including replacing the roof—until I’d received the go-ahead from the infamous Charleston Board of Architectural Review. Lucky for me, Sophie said she’d handle the three-part application process while I simply sat and stewed about my leaking roof and pi
ctured a nice convenience store or gas station on the lot where the house now stood. So maybe it was a good idea that Sophie dealt with the BAR instead of me.
What remained of the chandelier was propped against the wall in the foyer, the painstaking task of picking up shattered crystal having lasted most of the previous night. Yet still, when I walked across the scuffed marble floor, I felt my feet crunching on minuscule particles like little reminders of last night’s catastrophe and of the specter of a woman who had disappeared almost at the same moment as she appeared.
I ate my dinner cold, not able to find the energy to actually reheat it in the oven. Apparently, Mr. Vanderhorst hadn’t discovered the joys of microwaving, and his kitchen and his appliances had become stranded somewhere in the 1970s, finding kindred spirits with the heating and air systems as well as the plumbing.
I made sure the front door was locked, then set the alarm before dragging myself upstairs. I fought with the taps on the tub to avoid scalding myself and managed to take a warm bath and brush my teeth without injury.
By ten o’clock I was in bed with the lights out, listening to the silence around me and feeling very much as if I weren’t alone. I tossed and turned, listening as the clock struck every quarter hour, reminding me that I needed to ask Jack what he’d discovered from his pictures. When the clock struck eleven, I sat up abruptly, a pressing thought on the edge of my consciousness and carrying with it the distinct impression that the thought hadn’t come from me. The photo album. I sat on the edge of the bed and strained my ears, trying to hear the voice I was sure had spoken the first time. I recalled that when I was a child, before I’d learned to ignore such things, if I were paying very close attention, I could hear the murmur of very low voices all the time as if someone had left a radio on in a distant room. But tonight all I heard was silence, and the pressing thought inside my skull. The photo album.
I put on my robe and slippers and headed toward the guest bedroom, turning on every light as I went. Regardless of how many times I saw them, it was always easier to see dead people when the lights were on.
I pushed the door open slowly, sliding my hand around the doorframe to flip on the light before actually stepping inside. The old ceiling fixture popped, then spluttered out, as if telling me that the room preferred it dark. A triangle of light from the hallway acted like a spotlight for the bed, highlighting the dark arms of the canopy and, in the middle of the lumpy mattress, Louisa’s photo album.
Tentatively, I stepped inside, breathing in deeply, and relieved I smelled neither the noxious odor of decay nor of roses. However, as I stepped nearer the bed, I picked up the peculiar odor of fresh-cut grass, and from far away, I thought I could hear a baby crying, and I wished for the first time in a long time that my mother was near. It was an odd thought, considering, but back when I was small, she had always been the buffer between me and things that I couldn’t understand.
I looked at my pale fingers, splayed above the closed album, and recalled how my mother had always worn gloves. It had become part of her elegant persona, but I had always known the truth: they were a filter to defuse the strength of whatever she might encounter by inadvertently touching an object or someone’s hand. Now, even in cold weather, I couldn’t bear the thought of wearing gloves.
With a deep breath, I picked up the album, my senses suddenly overloaded with emotions and smells that had nothing to do with me, or the guest bedroom at the end of the hall or even this moment in time. I flipped the album open to the first page with the wedding photograph of Louisa and Robert, and tears flooded my eyes. These were Louisa’s memories, contained in this book as precisely as a black-and-white photo, and as I sank down on the floor with the album in my lap, I thought I could feel the press of corset stays against my back and see a man with a large straw hat pushing a manual mower in the back garden. Even as I shuddered to a sitting position on the floor, leaning against the bed, I could feel the hardness of a fountain pen in my hand, the thick paper of the album sliding beneath my palm as I wrote words onto the now-blank album page.
June 5, 1921—Our wedding day—Robert Nevin Vanderhorst and Louisa Chisholm Gibbes. Even though this album was given to me more than a year since the day of my wedding on the occasion of our son’ s birth, I wanted to start this story of our lives with the picture that really is the beginning of our lives together. For both of us, it was the happiest day of our lives thus far. I never imagined being in love could be like this, being so satiated that the thought of food or drink is superfluous. We said our vows at St. Michael’ s, and the ceremony was followed by a garden reception at Robert’ s house on Tradd Street—now my home, of course. He surprised me by transplanting one of the bushes of my Louisa roses from my parents’ house to his, and it was truly a homecoming to me. He knows my every wish and desire before I even express it, and it will be my goal to do the same for him. We are of one accord, Robert and I , and I see us living happily ever after in this beautiful house until we are old and gray. Even with those things beyond our control which might conspire to mar our happiness, I know we will persevere.
I saw hands that weren’t mine turning the page to a photograph of the house taken from the side. The rose garden was there, the blooms heavy and ripe like fruit, the sepia-toned drops of blood on the photograph. But the fountain was missing, presumably not built yet, and I heard the voice again telling me to notice the garden, to see the roses. To stick my hands in the rich earth. I stared closely, smelling the roses along with the fresh-mown grass and moist dirt, and saw the place where the fountain now stood, the grass brown beneath the shade of the giant oak tree. Look, I heard the voice again, and I pulled back to see the whole picture of the house that still looked old ninety years before. But there was no sagging porches or missing roof tiles, and no weeds littered the garden. Sprays of forsythia and fat gardenia blossoms clung to the shrubs at the side of the house. But it was Louisa’s roses that stood out in the black-and-white photo as I imagined they had in living color when they were still new to the house. Look, I heard again.
I felt the pen in the hand that wasn’t mine as it began to write the caption under the photo of the house.
55 Tradd Street—Our home. I choose this photograph as the second one in my album because this is where our lives together began. I love this house as if it has always been mine. Robert tells me the stories of the Vanderhorst women who have lived in this house for generations and how I inherited their legacy when I married him. It is a legacy I hold to my heart, and as a newlywed I looked forward to putting my stamp on this house so the next generations will remember me. When I moved in, Robert’s mother had been gone nearly ten years, and I’m afraid the house had the air of a bachelor’s home. Even the gardens, while well-maintained, show the lack of a woman’ s touch. I decided right after our marriage that I would begin my transformation in the garden. Because a garden is the heart of a house, where love is the seed and the dark earth like a mother who nurtures her saplings until they bloom, and then waits for them with furrowed arms to return. It is the story told again and again from my garden: from dust we begin, and to dust we will return again. Perhaps that is why the garden is my favorite place of all in my new house—perhaps because when I sink my hands in the moist earth, I feel that I’m already home.
I let go of the album and raised my empty hands to my face, smelling dirt and becoming gradually aware of the room around me, of the four-poster bed and the Hepplewhite writing desk on the far wall. And of the sound of footsteps in the foyer below. Quietly, I slipped the album off my lap, and stood, my head spinning as if I’d just been awakened from a sound sleep. Seeing on the dressing table what looked like a Staffordshire figurine that might be used for a weapon, I grabbed it and quietly made my way to the door before opening it.
And then I remembered that I had set the alarm and figured that whoever or whatever the footsteps belonged to, they probably wouldn’t be fended off by a small china statue. Still, I crept silently into the brightly lit upstairs
hallway and peered over the railing into the foyer below. “Who’s there?” I shouted, my voice sounding a lot more confident then I felt. “I have a weapon and I’ve already called nine-one-one.” I wondered if I should run back to my room to pick up the phone but found I didn’t want to turn my back on whatever was lurking downstairs. I looked at the figurine closely and saw he was a young shepherd complete with baby lamb and stuck it under the lapel of my robe so that it might resemble an actual weapon.
I heard the footsteps again, sounding as if they might be coming from the downstairs drawing room, and stopped, the thought running through my head that this intruder might actually be real. But I remembered setting the alarm. I leaned over the banister and peered through the darkened foyer to where I could see the front door and the system’s panel next to it. The green READY button glowed in the dark, indicating that the system was off.
I straightened quickly, feeling as if my heart had migrated up to my head, where I could hear it thrumming wildly.
“Hello?” I said again. “I have a weapon and I’m not afraid to use it. Show yourself now and nobody will get hurt.” It didn’t cross my mind to consider if the intruder would actually call my bluff and appear. I must have rationalized that I could hold him off with my figurine-loaded bathrobe until I could call the police.
A dark figure darted out from the drawing room and across the foyer in front of me, causing me to reel back in surprise and drop the figurine at the same time I heard the front door slam. I leapt down the final four steps, the smashed china crunching under my slippers, and raced to the front door. I reached for the doorknob, my fingers barely brushing the brass knob before something hard and unyielding blocked my progress, the force of my impeded forward motion knocking me backward onto the floor.
The air left my lungs with a surprised whoosh, and I lay on the floor, trying to catch my breath, while frantically searching around the dim foyer for whatever it was that had knocked me off my feet. It was then that I noticed the rancid smell, so potent and fetid that I began to retch as I struggled to sit up. My heels searched for purchase on the slick marble floor but I couldn’t move. It was if I were being held down by two very strong, yet completely invisible hands.