The Renovation

by Terri Kraus

Then came a muffled curse—or what sounded like a muffled curse—and the crash of a glass or a dish before the phone was abruptly hung up.

  The tape whirred forward to the fourth and last message. It began with a loud sigh. “Hi. That was me that just called. I dropped my coffee cup over my notebook and ruined my second-best chance at a Pulitzer.”

  Then the voice bubbled into a low, knowing laugh. “This is Cameron Dane. From The Derrick. I talked to you at the ball game today. I want to do a story on your work at the old Carter place.”

  Her voice sounds different over the phone … deeper … softer.

  There was a loud sigh and a pause. “I hate answering machines. I always sound like I’m ready for a fight … or something.”

  I would never have said that about the voice, Ethan thought.

  Then another pause followed.

  “Listen. I would start over again, but then you would really think I’m a lunatic. I mentioned this idea to Paige Drake. She said she knows you, and she thought it would be a wonderful story. And she’s the boss and you don’t want to get me fired by saying no, do you?”

  There was a sound like her open palm had smacked her own forehead.

  “Don’t I sound like some insane, freelance reporter for the Senaca Heights Shopper? Doesn’t this message make you want to say yes to this story? Good grief, how pathetic can I get?”

  Another long pause.

  “Okay. This is it. My last and final attempt at sounding normal. I’m Cameron Dane. From The Derrick. We met today. I would really and truly appreciate it if I could do a story on your work at the Carter place. I love historic architecture and I adore old houses. I grew up in a Victorian house in Philadelphia. I could show you pictures.”

  She sighed again, loudly, and Ethan thought for effect.

  “So … will you do it? And I’m sorry for calling you a Bob Vila. I bet you hated that. I dislike him too. Pretentious and unskilled, am I right? Right? Okay … I’ll call you. Please say yes.”

  There was a long pause and then a resigned sigh, followed by the click of the phone being hung up. Ethan thought it was a most gentle sound.

  Without really thinking about it, he hit the replay button and listened to both of her messages a second time. He would have listened to them a third time but felt a sudden wave of self-consciousness.

  So should I talk to her?

  Eleven o’clock had come and gone, and still Ethan couldn’t fall asleep. He stared at the dark sky out his bedroom window for a long time. It was the quiet emptiness of the night that he found hardest to bear. With Chase gone, the silence felt louder than the roar of an angry river.

  So should I talk to her? Might be good for business. I could really use the publicity.

  He rolled over and plumped his pillow.

  Probably get me the wrong kind of business.

  The clock ticked over to 11:30.

  And she is … I don’t know … very attractive, I guess. My dad would have said she had gumption.

  He sighed deeply.

  Whatever gumption is.

  11:45.

  So … should I talk to her or not?

  By the time he fell asleep, he still had not decided.

  Ethan heard the squeals of wood being torn from its moorings. The harsh squawk of nails, having spent decades in one place, and now disrupted and displaced, was unmistakable. His crew worked on the third floor, ripping down walls that had been erected in the 1940s, when sleeping rooms were added in the spacious attic.

  He traced his fingers down a copy of the original blueprints for the house. The plans for large, expensive old houses were often kept in the official records of small towns such as Franklin. Not every blueprint was saved, and not every substantial home was represented, but the Old Carter Mansion was one of the fortunate ones. The dark, almost vibrant blue paper with white lines showed its age, but the drawings were still intact.

  That made life easy for Ethan’s crew.

  We’ll tear it down to the original walls, he thought.

  Ethan unrolled the old floor plans and then the newly drafted version for Mrs. Moretti’s project. Work on the third floor would be simple. When first built, the upper floor was one large room—a typically enormous Victorian attic with a large turret that was served by a winding, enclosed wooden staircase. The majority of the space had been used as a ballroom, with a full-height ceiling and inlaid-wood dance floor; the rest served as a large storage area. Basements of the era, usually constructed of stone blocks, were low-ceilinged, cramped, and often damp and moldy. For storage, attics, even though hot in the summer and cold in the winter, would be more ideal to hold whatever was seasonal or unwanted.

  The second floor—well, that would be a different matter. Ethan liked the old Victorian manner of dividing large spaces into many rooms—smaller spaces that were intimate, personal. The new owner did not share the Victorians’—nor Ethan’s—sensibilities. Mrs. Moretti’s architect had erased original walls, deleting so many that Ethan grew uncomfortable just considering the dashed lines on the new plan indicating the places where walls had once existed.

  We’ll need to talk about this. If we take down all those walls, we’ll be forced to add a lot of spanning supports with headers. I don’t like doing that. Mrs. Moretti needs to be sensitive to what this house was and still should be. There is no reason why anyone should throw out all the past. Those rooms are what make this house unique. She needs to understand that.

  He flipped the page. The first floor had been completely reconfigured. Most Victorian homes had large front rooms with side parlors, small family spaces in the rear, and most often, tiny kitchens. The Carter Mansion was no exception. The new owner wanted it all renovated, with an office/library to one side of the entry, and a formal dining room on the other side. New walls, French doors, and transoms between the rooms were to be added. A large, open kitchen, all state-of-the-art, and a large adjoining space called the “great room” were to be at the back. She wanted another fireplace there as well, to add to the ten already existing in the house, which included an elaborate marble fireplace in the entry.

  Ethan ran his finger over some of the newly designed areas on the first floor.

  At least we won’t get there for a couple of months.

  He rolled up both prints.

  It’ll give me plenty of time to change her mind.

  Bonnie Hewitt, Elliot’s mom, honked the horn as she pulled into the driveway and leaned out her window.

  “He’s probably hungry.” She laughed. “Hasn’t eaten for at least twenty minutes.”

  Ethan laughed and waved back. “Hollow leg, right?”

  “Thank goodness for that new warehouse club. We’d be broke without it.”

  Chase bounded up the brick steps and slid under his father’s arm, which was holding the front door open.

  “Thanks again,” Ethan shouted.

  Elliot’s mom, and all of the six Hewitt children, waved and drove off, the tailpipe of her scruffy blue minivan sparking on high spots of the asphalt.

  “So, champ—how was the sleepover?”

  Chase leaned into the refrigerator, as if looking for some manner of loose, chilled food source that might be lurking behind the milk container. “Fine.”

  Ethan poured himself a third cup of coffee. “What did you do?”

  Chase pulled back, holding a yogurt. “Stuff,” he said with a shrug.

  Ethan glanced at the clock over the sink. He didn’t really have time or energy to pry information from his son this morning. Elliot’s mom had been smiling when she pulled up. The weekend must have gone well enough.

  “Stuff?”

  Chase slumped into a kitchen chair.

  “Stuff. You know. Stuff. Me and Elliot sort of stuff.”

  “Did you remember to t
hank Mrs. Hewitt for letting you stay the weekend?”

  Chase rolled his eyes. “Yes, Dad, I thanked her. And once more from the porch, remember?”

  Ethan drank half the cup in one swallow. “Just checking.” He poured the rest of the coffee down the sink. He would have several more cups before the morning was half over, and he didn’t need the extra caffeine.

  “You okay here this morning by yourself? Mrs. Whiting doesn’t come today.”

  Summers were hard. Chase had been out of school for just a week. The school district had a short one-day spring mini-break, opting instead to end the school year before Memorial Day. But now Ethan had to work, and Chase would be home alone. Mildred Whiting, an elderly woman from down the street, came in three afternoons a week to do cleaning.

  With just the two of them, Ethan knew there wasn’t that much to clean in the house, but Mildred was the classic version of what a grandmother should be. She’d been close to the family before Ethan’s wife, Lynne, died and had been the godly “mother” in the young woman’s life. Lynne’s death hit her hard. Mrs. Whiting had taken Ethan and Chase under her wing and often came over more days than Ethan actually paid for, often checking in on the boy. She was there to fill in some of the gaps in a home without a woman—gently encouraging, softly guiding, and providing a loving touch when needed. She made sure Chase remembered some of the things his mother had taught him—to say his prayers, count his blessings, be a “good boy.”

  Chase didn’t need a babysitter at his age, but Ethan did not relish the idea of him being on his own and alone so much. He was grateful for Mrs. Whiting.

  “That’s okay, Dad. I’ll wash my dirty clothes this morning. Maybe I’ll go to the park to see who’s there. Or go fishing.”

  Ethan nodded. Franklin was still a small town. He knew it was not absolutely safe, but safer than most anyplace else that he could imagine.

  “Okay. I’ll be home early—by four. I have a couple of estimates to work on. We’ll have dinner, okay?”

  “Sure, Dad.”

  And with that Chase turned to the sports page of the local paper and bent to the box scores, no longer paying attention to his father, who slipped from the room and headed for his truck parked in the driveway.

  Ethan loved the sounds of carpentry—the gnashing whir of a power saw; the tight, clicking hiss of a nail gun; the bang of a real hammer against a nail; the thick clatter of stacks of lumber. He stood on the first floor, in the foyer of the Old Carter Mansion, and listened with a smile. Most of their work for the next few months would be confined to the upper floors, so it was like listening to a symphony through closed doors.

  The Old Carter Mansion had been called the Old Carter Mansion as long as Ethan could remember. He wondered if it had been called the Old Carter Mansion immediately after its completion.

  The year was 1868. At eighteen years of age, Henry Carter—the illegitimate son of a Philadelphia barber—showed up in Franklin. Within a dozen years, he had declared himself the town’s wealthiest lumber baron. He diversified into oil and cement and, at the age of forty, began work on his palatial abode.

  He bought a piece of riverfront property up on a lovely ridge of land overlooking the water and the town—the most scenic view around.

  Construction had taken two years.

  The town’s library housed a handful of pictures of the actual construction within its yellowed-newsprint archives. Before bidding on the current project, Ethan had spent a day in the archives, poring over the old photos and plans, attempting to discern what was now hidden behind plaster and wainscoting.

  Carter’s fortunes had not survived the dawn of the new millennium though. Overextended, he had not anticipated a glut of wood from Canada inundating the local lumber market, and at the end of his life, Carter’s assets had been reduced to a mere few thousand dollars and his mansion—substantial for the times, but he was no longer a rich man.

  His heirs had tried to maintain the house for a few years. Servants became expensive. None of his sons had inherited his business acumen or panache. By the end of World War I, his sons had sold the house to the owner of the Venango Coal Mine, who had added walls and bathrooms, turning it into a rooming house for his workers.

  Now, well over a century after it was built, a great-granddaughter of Henry Carter, Mrs. Cecily Moretti, after making a substantial fortune in software design, had returned home to her ancestral roots, most recently residing in San Francisco, and had purchased the house with a desire to make this her summer home.

  Her return to the area seemed odd. Franklin did have a smattering of summer homes, but the town was far from the cultured merriment of San Francisco. Local gossips worked overtime trying to decipher Mrs. Moretti’s motives.

  The original shingled house was a classic example of the Queen Anne Victorian style of architecture, with a round turret, a steeply pitched roof of irregular shape, and an imposing front-facing gable. A one-story wrap-around porch ran along the full width of the front of the house and along the sides. Its weather-worn, delicately turned porch posts still stood, but most of the ornamental gingerbread spindles and lacy brackets were rotted and broken. Most of the original clear glass of the home’s many bay windows was either cracked or missing, but many of the beautiful stained-glass decorative panes remained intact.

  A rabbit’s warren of small rooms made up the second and third floors. Closets, if they existed at all, were the size of coffins. Added bathrooms were of World War II vintage. Due to inept remodeling attempts over the years, a number of shaky staircases led to nowhere. Layer upon layer of lead-based paint covered the woodwork. Major rooms had fireplaces; however, many were no longer in working order. Their mantels and hearths were badly in need of refinishing and repair. But, overall, the house was in remarkably good shape after all the life that had lived in it.

  “The bones are solid,” is how Ethan assessed the house.

  The new Mrs. Carter—Cecily Carter Moretti—wanted her mansion taken down to the bare studs—and then some—and brought up to thoroughly modern standards.

  The first time Ethan had walked through the house, he’d marveled at the grace and craftsmanship still showing through after all the degradations of the past. Even poorly built walls and partitions that had been added over the years could not spoil the perfect and pleasing lines of the architect’s intent.

  Ethan found it easy to tell the difference between what was original and what was not. When the mansion was built, Mr. Carter must have had his best quality lumber cut and milled to his specifications—the two-by-four lumber in the house measured a full two inches by four inches. That was normal, given the age of the house, since standardization of sizes didn’t start until the 1920s. Every stud smaller than an actual two inches by four inches could safely be removed.

  Once the needed demolition was done and the house was brought back to its original spaces, Ethan was sure Mrs. Moretti would see the value in keeping most things as they were. Then she would stop her foolish dickering about what should be saved and what should be, in her words, “augmented.”

  “Mrs. Moretti,” Ethan said in his defense of maintaining the home’s original layout, “you have to realize that the architect had a vision, and the builder knew what he was doing. This is all the work of skilled craftsmen.” Ethan tapped on a bare stud wall as if emphasizing his point. “You can’t just come in and dismantle what has stood for 125-plus years. It would be wrong.”

  “First of all, you have to stop this Mrs. Moretti business,” Mrs. Moretti said, smiling. “It’s CeCe. Remember? I answer to CeCe.”

  “Okay then … CeCe,” Ethan replied.

  “And secondly, I don’t want a Victorian museum. Other than the exterior of this old place, I don’t particularly like the Victorian style. Everything is too ornate, too awkward, too much like a funeral parlor. The outsides of these Queen Annes are wonderful.
But not the insides, the spaces. They need updating to work for me.”

  “But the inside has to match the outside,” Ethan countered. He had had this sort of discussion with other clients in the past, often to the detriment of his business. “You have to respect the past. You can’t just use the building as a shell.”

  They were both standing in the turreted room above the third floor. From the expansive bay window that followed its round shape, one could see both French Creek and the Allegheny River—almost an aerial perspective of all of Franklin.

  “But you can,” CeCe countered. “I can, at least.”

  Ethan knew who was the client and who paid the bills but felt that he had to defend the original intent of the architect.

  “Take that staircase there,” CeCe said, pointing at the wooden spiral staircase, a continuation of the house’s back staircase, which led from the third floor up to the turret room. “That’s original, right?”

  Ethan nodded. “Best use of space. A traditional staircase would use up almost an entire room on the third floor. It’s what is needed here.”

  “But isn’t there space for … like a hundred rooms on the third floor? It doesn’t matter if one gets used for a staircase. All I know is that I don’t like spiral staircases. They make me dizzy. What if I were wearing high heels? I would kill myself on those ridiculously thin steps. I don’t wear high heels anymore, but if I did …”

  “But Mrs. … CeCe … it’s going to be really expensive to tear that well-built stairway out. And the way it is—well, that’s the best use of space. The design works just fine.”

  She walked to the edge of the stairway and peered down. “I understand what you’re saying … I think. But I don’t care about what it’s supposed to look like. I don’t want the spiral staircase. Not at all. It has to go. It gives me the creeps. And you have to recognize that I don’t want this house restored. I’m not a purist like you.”

  Ethan tried not to look shocked … or offended. He knew what was coming.

  “I am renovating this house,” CeCe continued. “I don’t want what was here in the past. I want modern and nice and convenient and usable and safe. I want open. I want what I want.”