SHADOW OF WHIMSY

by ANN HYMES

  The dog was settled in the back seat, as Theresa hugged Kevin and got behind the wheel, kissing him through the open window. “Thanks for doing all this packing, Kevin. The phone should be hooked up when I get there, and I’ll call you as soon as I arrive.”

  Theresa waved as she pulled out of the driveway. In the rear view mirror, she saw Kevin still standing in the street as she turned the corner at the end of the block. She wondered whether she would miss him or feel released. Some goodbyes linger after the words are finished, and some do not.

  Highway driving dulls the visual senses, but it does provide opportunity to assess the soul. Theresa headed north on Interstate 95, put the car on cruise control, and began to think about Kevin, her father, and her connection to coastal South Carolina. She was anxious to see how a house could be named Whimsy Towers. And how did her grandmother end up in Cape Cod?

  The hours flew by, with only occasional rest stops for both dog and driver; Theresa wanted to get there before dark. The air cooled as she reached Rhode Island, and she lowered the windows completely to feel the change in temperature. Gypsy, too, showed renewed interest in the trip, sitting up and lifting her nose to catch the unfamiliar breezes.

  Coming into Providence, Theresa saw the first signs for Cape Cod. She thought of her college friend Jennifer, who had transferred to the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence. She wondered whether Jenni was still living here making jewelry or had gone on to New York or San Francisco. “Life sometimes jolts us right out of our own footprints,” she mused aloud. Gypsy had no comment.

  The scenery changed rapidly as she skirted the city. Traffic thinned, and the road divided often. Large chunks of rock jutted at angles from the rolling landscape, some showing signs of massive cutting to allow the road to pass. She saw people working the soil in tidy garden plots with straight rows and wondered what the fresh furrows would hold. Spring would not wait for indecision.

  At one turn in a quiet area of fields and pasture, she noticed a small white church surrounded by huge trees. As if guarding nobility, the trees stood in perfectly spaced alignment around the sagging building. Black tar paper flapped across one side, and several windows were boarded up. Piles of bricks and stacks of new lumber covered with plastic blocked the front door. A large wooden sign was propped against a tree, facing the highway; its carefully hand-painted letters in bright green said:

  THANK YOU, FATHER

  WE ARE GROWING

  Theresa wanted to pull off and look at that little church, to feel the hope and gratitude expressed by the sign, but she needed to keep moving. A minute was a mile. She made a mental note of the message and continued on her way due east.

  Dusk was beginning to settle as Theresa finally arrived in Chatham, Massachusetts. The narrow main street was uncrowded and lined with small shops. Still-bare tree branches spread out overhead, creating an intricate black web across the darkening sky. Quaint clapboard storefronts displayed bathing suits and cotton tops, fine jewelry, and leather goods. Window boxes showed hints of bulbs reaching for spring.

  Farther up the street she saw a shop selling homemade candy and ice cream. Along the wide sidewalk, people strolled hand in hand, some shepherding children licking dripping cones and pointing at the windows. It was a leisurely and gracious scene, almost calm. Even the dogs were well behaved.

  Theresa’s directions to Whimsy Towers led her through the small downtown. The anticipation of seeing the ocean a few blocks ahead made her heart pound; and when she first glimpsed the broad and surprisingly blue water, her foot automatically hit the brake. A startled Gypsy slid onto the floor behind her, but Theresa didn’t notice. There it was, the Atlantic Ocean. Its vast chambers held her mother and would soon absorb the remaining link to her parents: the ashes she had brought.

  A lookout with parking spaces faced the ocean, and Theresa pulled in and turned off the car. Behind her a lighthouse cast long beams across the neighboring houses and far out toward the watery horizon. She stared at the waves breaking across the distant sand barrier, slowly making their way to shore. Why couldn’t her mother also have found her way to land?

  As she listened to the relentless repeating of the waves, she began to cry and then sob, barely noticing that the dog was trying to lick her cheek.

  Other drivers pulled in briefly for a look at the panoramic view. Some got out and stood in front of their cars, breathing deeply as if they wanted to fill themselves with the misty salt air. But most sat still, just looking, engines quiet. Theresa wondered what thoughts they brought to this place.

  There were no pictures of Whimsy Towers in her father’s belongings, but Theresa had a picture in her mind from her conversations with the bank trustees. Perhaps her father had destroyed photographs to prevent her from knowing about the house and its legacy of painful memories. Or perhaps he had assumed the happy years would go on forever, with plenty of time to record the moments. She had many photographs of herself as a baby, some at the ocean and some on a broad porch or inside a house, but none showed the outside. And none showed her with her mother or grandmother.

  Theresa felt as though an intricate family recipe had been handed down through the generations to her, with some of the ingredients left out. These omissions of the past might have resulted from fear of the future or from the random touch of destiny, but she wanted to bring history up to date, filling in the gaps, restoring the recipe. Her ancestors were getting a visitor! She laughed at her philosophical musings. Was she expecting too much from the gift of an old house?

  The narrow paved road from the lighthouse ended abruptly with a dip onto a gravel surface. An old wooden sign fastened between two posts read, “Proceed only if invited.” Sticking out of the top of the sign was a metal rod with a flat, wooden silhouette of a bird. Although faded from long exposure to the sun, its head and body were painted blue, with a small streak of black. Theresa checked her directions to be sure she was not trespassing.

  Weathered houses nestled in mulberry trees and hidden by clumps of pine had dotted the road up to this point. Ahead lay thick woods and gnarled underbrush, as if a green oasis had been dropped onto the landscape or risen like Atlantis from a sea of sand. She could hear the faint churning of the ocean, and the only road leading to it was the gravel path in front of her. She eased the car forward, carefully avoiding potholes and fallen branches.

  As the drive turned sharply, the trees began to thin, and Theresa glimpsed the side of a house in the distance. It seemed to have its back to her, as if enticing her to come forward and make acquaintance, teasing her to explore its other faces. The car moved ahead slowly, almost drawn on a prearranged course without help from Theresa. Her eyes were fixed on the strange lines of the house and the wood trim … which appeared to be painted bright pink!

  The siding was the familiar cedar shake that she had seen on many houses since her arrival in Cape Cod. Salty breezes and harsh winters had left a warm and rough gray texture, darkened with age in some areas but soft and welcoming. She parked the car and opened the door to get out. As Theresa stepped onto the ground, Gypsy jumped forward into the driver’s seat and was out the door right behind her, running full speed toward a cluster of blackbirds, but barking with only half-hearted seriousness. The birds stopped their persistent pecking and took off, easily avoiding her, and the dog squatted slightly to leave her mark.

  “Well, I guess you feel right at home, girl!” Theresa laughed.

  Her eyes followed the fluttering to the tall oak tree where the birds had fled. The tips of its branches bounced and swayed with dozens of black, feathery extensions.

  “Come on, let’s check this place out.”

  As she turned the corner toward the front of the house, she stopped and caught her breath. The dog kept exploring and sniffing, but Theresa stood still and stared at her grandmother’s house in the soft sunset of orange shadows. Like a warm embrace, the evening enveloped her. This house had co
nnections to her life that it could not reveal, and she yearned to understand, to step into the past that was held in this quiet place.

  It was a two-story house, with a long porch that ran across the entire front and wrapped around the far side. Large flower pots sat on the steps leading up to the porch, their dead plants still erect, but crisp and brown, as if painted for a ghoulish trick. The porch was white, a shiny white, but the house trim was definitely pink, cotton candy pink. The windows and doors were outlined with it, and the elaborate carving along the roofline was also pink.

  But the most arresting feature, incongruous yet appealing, were two tall towers, one at each end of the house. They rose a full story above the top of the roof and had windows and small balconies facing the water. The tower siding was the same cedar shingle as the rest of the house, but the bottom edges were curved at the corners, and they were painted. The tower on the left was green, and the one on the right was bright red. Even in the fading daylight, the colors looked bold and purposeful.

  Theresa turned to face the ocean behind her and walked toward the sound of breaking waves. It was getting dark, but she could see the outline of a boathouse and pier, and geese flew low in staggered V-formation, honking with soothing rhythm.

  The water that lay before her looked not at all threatening or fierce, but almost playful. Waves curved gently in rolling patterns, and the brilliance of the half moon was enough to catch the curling tops with flashes of light. Theresa closed her eyes, trying to force her memory to acknowledge the sights and sounds of Whimsy Towers, but the effort was futile; she had been too young.

  As she started up the steps to the porch, she stopped, looking up to the door as if expecting someone to be there—or to open it for her. The screen door was not locked. She stepped onto the porch—pausing, anxious—wondering what was to come. Expectation breathes trust into the unknown. Like sitting in a hushed and darkened theater before the curtain rises, those who wait and watch relinquish their own reality. The scene comes into view, but the plot evolves slowly.

  Her key fit easily into the old lock on the main door. The top half of the door was a large panel of clear glass, surrounded with stained glass squares of deep red and cobalt blue. A design was etched in the center, but she could not make it out with only the moonlight over her shoulder. Theresa stepped inside and ran her fingers along the wall to find a light switch.

  As her eyes strained to discern the size or contents of the room, her hand felt several buttons sticking out from the wall, and she instinctively pushed them, one after the other. Almost simultaneously, the room lit up, and the porch behind her filled with light. She was standing in a kitchen, but the certainty of that assumption took a minute to form. It was not an ordinary kitchen, with appliances set in sensible relation to each other or counters defining workspaces.

  It was a huge room, perhaps thirty feet long. In one corner was a large fireplace built of irregular pieces of fieldstone, layered horizontally. Chunks of ceramics, colorful tiles, and small wrought-iron shapes stuck out at odd intervals. Two long sofas covered in bold floral print faced the fireplace, and tufted ottomans seemed pushed around at angles to accommodate stretched-out legs.

  Theresa looked slowly around the room. Two additional sofas and large stuffed chairs formed comfortable groupings in different places. Books and magazines were piled up on low wicker tables, and the wooden floors were covered with Oriental carpets of blue and red design. She finally saw a stove and built-in refrigerator—actually two separate refrigerators side by side—which made her feel certain this room was the kitchen.

  Numerous windows punctuated three walls, though she couldn’t see through the growing darkness what the views might be. And between the windows were paintings, lots of paintings—big ones and small ones, some with elaborate frames and some with no frames. Modern paintings with splashes of bright color and detailed landscapes hung next to each other, and occasionally a picture had been painted right onto the plain white wall. Signatures and poems were written all over one wall, and comments about some of the paintings were written under them or on the window trim. Theresa felt she had stumbled into the intimacy of a living diary and for a moment feared a tap on the shoulder and someone asking her to leave.

  As she looked up at the two massive chandeliers in the middle of the room, she noticed that the ceiling was painted dark blue, with swirling clouds and star formations. Angels in diaphanous gowns peered down as if watching the activity below. One held out a nautical life preserver ring that said “Too Late.” Another held a gorgeous cake with layers of white frosting decorated with yellow flowers and little people on top. Another cradled a baby wrapped snugly in pink blankets. Others were smiling or crying, sometimes holding hands or waving. The work was detailed and exquisite. The trompe l’oeil was done so brilliantly that Theresa thought she could reach up and receive the outstretched baby or run her finger across the cake to taste its flavor. Whimsy Towers was drawing her into its illusions of reality.

  Still craning her neck to observe the beautiful angels, she leaned against one of the two refrigerator doors and held onto the handle to balance herself. Slowly lowering her gaze, and wondering whether anything might still be inside, she pulled the door open. She gasped, letting out a startled sound. The open door did not reveal a refrigerator at all, but a solid wall decorated with photographs and crayon scribbles on colored paper. She quickly opened the other door and felt oddly relieved to see the bare metal shelves of a real refrigerator.

  What had appeared to be two identical refrigerators was also a visual trick, and Theresa marveled at how convincing it was. A refrigerator door securely hinged to a wall! She opened the first door again and suddenly realized she was literally looking into her past, into her grandmother’s heart, into a vault of memories. She had opened the door to the history she craved. Directly in front of her was a photograph of a laughing, smiling woman about her age, holding a dark-haired baby up close to her face. The woman looked exactly like Theresa.

  Her knees weakened, but her body stayed still, held in place by her eyes’ fixed stare. Both woman and baby were wearing bathing suits, and they sat on the steps to Whimsy Towers, next to the large pots then filled with blossoming bushes and life. The baby’s legs were covered with sand, as if she’d been dipped in honey and rolled in fine oats. Mother and child. Emily and Theresa. Other snapshots tacked to the wall showed Theresa sleeping or playing in her mother’s lap and reading books on the porch swing with both her parents. Her father was young and happy and clearly in love.

  Theresa’s father would tell her about those days with a faraway look in his eyes that troubled her and kept his emotions at a distance. Loneliness crept in like a silent companion, reminding him of loss and filling him with emptiness. She knew he had been given only a limited time with the woman he loved, and the promise of it all had been taken from him.

  Theresa’s parents had met in college on a blind date and had married secretly just before graduation. Summer after college can be a time of blind optimism, time to exhale, to revel in accomplishments and dream new dreams, and the newlyweds moved into Whimsy Towers with Emily’s mother. Love kept all the world at bay, and discouragement did not knock, admitting the reality of limited options. An easy routine developed, with long days spent walking the beach, berry picking, biking sand trails, and reading books of no consequence. Emily was an expert sailor.

  By the end of that first September, as the days cooled and shook loose the carefree summer, Emily realized she was pregnant. It was a well-received surprise, and Theresa was born on a blustery, cold morning of early Cape spring—April first. Her grandmother Theodosia emptied the small local shops of every item necessary for a new baby. Her mother wanted to call her April, but her father told her he’d insisted he would not make it so easy for anyone to call his child “April Fool.”

  Weeks rolled into months, with Theresa’s first steps in a grown-up world. Her father worked for
an advertising agency in the next town, and her mother and grandmother painted frolicking nursery rhyme characters all over the walls and ceiling of Theresa’s room. Her father had smiled at the recollection of how he’d come home from work in an office to these artist women in his life. No one could know that they would soon be separated.

  It was an accident. A boating accident was all Theresa’s father had ever said about her mother’s death, before his final letter was discovered in the metal box. He could not even say the words without tears filling his eyes, and she could not bear to cause him the pain of remembering. He had packed up his little daughter, not yet two years old, and moved to northern Virginia; but a new life could not cover the mystery of the past forever. Theresa had come to Whimsy Towers for answers, and she was beginning to blame her father for the years of silence and denial. He did not have the right to hide the past. Omissions are lies dressed up to deflect the truth.

  These photographs showed that her mother was built much like Theresa—slim and agile, with dark hair that was longer and less curly. Theresa’s curls had come from her father, but the color was definitely her mother’s dusty coal. And their noses had the same straight angle, with just a hint of lift at the end.

  On the inside of the door that formed the cover of this refrigerator family album, Theresa saw boxes of crayons and little stuffed animals lined up on the shelf racks. As she reached for a small teddy bear, she heard muffled whining from the porch and realized she had left the dog outside. She automatically closed the refrigerator door as if to trap the cold air inside after she’d retrieved a gallon of milk. The latch caught with a thump, leaving the photo images imprinted on memory and sealed again from view.

  “Oh, Gypsy, I’m sorry, girl. Do you wonder what’s going on here? Come on in.”

  The dog went straight into the kitchen and began to sniff the carpets as if expecting to find recent crumbs or spills. Her tail wagged in rhythm with her step, and she sniffed the floor in purposeful pursuit. She stopped occasionally for a tentative lick or to sneeze a low-lying cobweb off her nose.