The House on Primrose Pond

by Yona Zeldis McDonough

  “Jack, Cally!” she called. “Come and get it!” Susannah’s own farmhouse table and set of ladder-back chairs had been moved in and the room was beginning to assume her imprint.

  The note was now in an empty shoe box on the shelf of a closet, safe for the time being. She couldn’t just leave it there, though, with the mystery unsolved. She wished she could drop everything and go immediately back to those boxes in the attic. Maybe there were more notes—or other clues—inside them.

  Instead, while Jack and Cally cleaned up the kitchen, she drove to a nearby supermarket. Densely packed snow lined the sides of the road, and snow, mostly white but sometimes gray, covered the ground, trees, and roofs of the houses. Susannah wasn’t used to seeing such an accumulation; in New York, streets were plowed in a matter of hours, and snow was a vestigial, not dominant, feature of the winter landscape. She would have to get used to it.

  After driving fourteen miles—yes, she was counting—she parked in the nearly empty parking lot of a Hannaford market, got her cart, and began to cruise the aisles. Back in Brooklyn, Charlie had done the bulk of their grocery shopping; he actually enjoyed the task. Once in a while he made questionable choices, like the six outsized boxes of Lucky Charms he had brought home, gleefully explaining that they were on sale. “But the kids don’t even eat Lucky Charms,” she’d said.

  “These are for me,” he’d answered.

  Mostly he did a good job of it, though, and she was glad to be spared the crowded stores and long lines. But here in New Hampshire, the terrain was clearly different. The parking lot should have been the clue, because the aisles were nearly empty too, almost spookily so. Where was everyone? Also, the cart was so large, it was hard to maneuver, and as she moved from baked goods to frozen foods, she felt like she was battling with it. And when she crashed into a large display of stacked soup cans, sending tomato bisque and split pea rolling all over the aisles, she knew that the cart had won.

  “Are you all right?” The store manager, a young man with slicked-back hair and very ruddy cheeks, came hurrying over.

  “I’m so sorry.” Mortified, Susannah knelt and began gathering cans; the cans, like the cart, were thwarting her and began to roll toward the dairy case at the back of the store. God, but she wanted to get out of there and back to the familiar cramped aisles of Brooklyn!

  “Don’t even worry about it,” said the manager. He helped her up, and when he discovered that her cart’s wheels were malfunctioning, he brought over another cart and helped her transfer her groceries into it.

  • • •

  Back at the house, she got a pot of chili going for dinner. That had been one of Charlie’s favorite dishes and she had not made it since he died. With the voices of the kids floating down to the kitchen—Did you find a box marked ‘Sewing Stuff’? Where did Mom put all the towels?—she wept silently as she diced the celery and the onions.

  The loss had been brutal at first. She cried constantly, trying her best to hide it from the kids. That sharp, raw edge had softened, though, and she was able to get through first days, then weeks without crying. But the move had opened the wound; in leaving the old house, she was forced to say good-bye to Charlie all over again.

  Once the chili was simmering, she rinsed her face in the kitchen sink and blotted the mixture of tears and tap water with a paper towel. The voices upstairs had been replaced by the sound of music; Jack had clearly taken his clarinet out of its case and was practicing. He wasn’t the most technically proficient player, but he was certainly a passionate one. “He really feels the music,” his clarinet teacher back in Brooklyn had said. Jack had been happy to find out that his new middle school had a band and a jazz ensemble; he’d be able to try out for both.

  He was playing an arrangement of “Somewhere Over the Rainbow,” and the familiar tune traveled down to where Susannah stood. Even though the melody was simple and not quite confident, it seemed to contain a message just for her: You’ll get through this, warbled the plaintive notes. You’ll survive and they will too. She made her way up the stairs toward the music. Jack’s door was open, and she could see the concentration on his face, his hands carefully placed on the instrument, body inclined slightly back. If he saw her, he did not register it, and she moved by the room without saying anything.

  The door to Cally’s room was closed. Susannah stood in front of it. She wanted to go up to the attic; she’d been itching to do it all day. And it now occurred to her that she even had a pretext: the box of fabric and the sewing machine, both of which she wanted to show Cally. Jack was lost in his music; if Cally showed an interest in the fabric, Susannah would have a little time to do some more poking around. “Cally?” Susannah knocked tentatively on the door.

  “What is it?” She sounded guarded, but not antagonistic.

  “There’s something I want to show you. Something that you’ll like.”

  A silence, and then the door opened. Cally had shot up recently, was now taller than her mother. Charlie’s genes. She was slender like her father too, and had his wide-set green eyes, his red hair, and the smattering of freckles he’d had as a boy. Today Cally wore cut-off overalls on top of a boldly striped sweater and patterned tights; on her feet were red Keds high-tops, not too practical a choice for snowy, icy Eastwood. Susannah added Boots for Cally to her mental to-do list.

  “Tell me what it is.”

  “It’s better if I show you.” Susannah gestured for Cally to follow her. “Look,” she said when they had entered the attic room. “I found this sewing machine.” Cally immediately went over to inspect. Susannah watched as she ran her hands over the machine’s graceful black lines and touched the gold lettering.

  “It’s beautiful,” Cally said at last. “But I didn’t know Grandma sewed.”

  “Neither did I,” Susannah said. “In fact, I’m not even sure it was hers.”

  “Well, I don’t care who it belonged to—I’m just glad it’s here, because I love it.”

  Just hearing the word “love” emanate from Cally’s mouth made Susannah inordinately happy. “Wait,” she said. “There’s more.” And she brought Cally over to the box, where, as she had hoped, Cally began eagerly pulling things out. “Look at this paisley!” she said, clutching it to her chest. “And these brocades—Vivienne Tam uses fabric like this.” She looked up at her mother. “Can I have it, Mom? Can I, please?”

  “Of course,” Susannah said. “It’s all for you.” She and Cally made several trips to bring all the fabric, trimming, and the sewing machine to Cally’s room. Jack was still playing the clarinet now but had switched to something jazzier; maybe a swing tune? The chili, which Susannah could smell, had another hour to go. “I’m going back up to the attic,” said Susannah. She waited, almost expecting to be challenged.

  “Sure,” said Cally. “Whatever.”

  And with that, Susannah turned and tried not to bolt up the stairs. The winter afternoon was quickly fading and she pulled the chain for the light. There was the box with her father’s books; she would start there. She began taking them out, methodically flipping through the pages, and stacking them neatly on the floor near the window. When the stack grew too high, she began another. It was not likely her mother would have left a personal note in a treatise on economics, but at the moment these boxes, and their contents, were the only source of information she had.

  When the first box was emptied of books, Susannah saw something wadded up at the bottom. More fabric? She pulled it out and gave it a shake. It was a two-piece dress with a black-and-white tweed skirt, and an ivory satin bodice and black velvet collar. The matching cropped jacket was black velvet with tweed cuffs. Badly wrinkled, it held a whiff of mildew. Susannah had never seen it before. Had it belonged to her mother and, if so, how and why did it end up with these books?

  She shook the dress out and laid it on the bed, unsure of what she wanted to do with it. The sky outside the window had gro
wn dark and it was time to go downstairs; the chili would be almost ready by now. Not one of the books had yielded anything else. But she had not gone through the entire volume of Yeats, which was on the bed next to the dress. Susannah picked it up and began flipping through it. Were there more poems her mother had marked?

  “What are you doing?”

  Startled, Susannah looked up to see Jack standing there. She’d been so absorbed, she had not heard him on the stairs. “Nothing really.” Why did she feel so guilty? She couldn’t be accused of snooping—her parents were dead.

  “So then what are you looking at?” He came closer.

  “A book. It belonged to your grandmother.”

  “Can I see?”

  Susannah hesitated. What if he found something else, something even more revealing or incriminating, that she had not yet seen? But to deny him would make it seem as if she was hiding something. She handed him the book, hoping her trepidation did not show.

  “Just some poems.” He flipped through the pages. “She liked these?”

  “She must have. It’s practically falling apart. And she made all kinds of notes inside.”

  “And what’s that?” He pointed to the dress.

  “I think that was hers too.”

  “What do you mean, ‘She must have’ and ‘I think’?” Jack handed her back the book. “Don’t you know?”

  “Not exactly.” She paused. “No.”

  “But she was your mom. How could you not know what she liked? Or what she wore?”

  Because right now I’m not sure I even know who she was. But all she said was, “I’m getting hungry. How about you?”

  “I’m starved.”

  “Let’s go downstairs.” Relieved that the direction of the conversation had shifted, Susannah got up and moved toward the stairs.

  “You’re making chili,” Jack said as they descended. It sounded like a challenge.

  “You like my chili.”

  “So did Dad,” he muttered.

  “I know, sweetheart. I know.” They had reached the landing and she extended her arm to draw him close. He remained there briefly, head pressed against her shoulder before he pulled away. Then he was off, paces ahead of her and down the next flight of stairs in a clatter. She followed more slowly. The book and the dress were still up in the attic; she would go up later to retrieve them. But when she did, she would be more careful. If she didn’t understand the connection between the clues she was amassing, how in the world was she going to explain it to her kids?

  FIVE

  “Can you please stand over there?” Cally said. “I don’t want anyone to see you.” It was seven forty-five the next morning, and she and Jack were waiting for the school bus; Susannah had walked down the snow-packed road to wait with them.

  “No one will see me,” Susannah said. “You don’t have to worry.”

  “I don’t understand why you even need to be here.”

  “Your brother asked me to come.”

  “Big baby,” Cally muttered, and moved another two steps away.

  Susannah put her hand on Jack’s shoulder, but he did not respond to the taunt. “It’s the first day of the new semester; it’s not too likely anyone is going to be paying attention to me.”

  “Whatever.” Cally shifted her weight a couple of times and shoved her hands deeper into her pockets.

  “Are you cold?” Susannah had to ask.

  “No, Mom. I’m not cold.” Cally still would not look her way. “Just like I wasn’t cold the last time you asked, and the time before that.”

  Susannah was hurt. Also worried that Cally’s feet, in the thin canvas sneakers, were in fact freezing. Susannah had shown her the L.L.Bean boots, but her daughter had rejected them, asking instead if she could order a pair of purple Doc Martens sporting a sheen as lustrous and dark as an eggplant.

  “No one at school will be wearing boots like that,” Susannah had pointed out.

  “Exactly.”

  Susannah knew better than to argue. Did she really care about which boots Cally chose? She did not. But what she did care about was her daughter fitting in and making friends in her new school, and in her mind the boots posed an impediment to that goal.

  “My new boots are great,” Jack volunteered, looking down at his feet. “Super warm.”

  “I’m glad.” Susannah touched his cheek, knowing that not only would he allow it, he would welcome it. He had always been a cuddly kid; Cally never had.

  The bus finally chugged up the road, larger than life and twice as yellow.

  “It’s here!” Jack sounded excited and clambered up the stairs, clarinet case bumping against his thigh. Cally followed more slowly and Susannah hung back, trying to stay out of sight. Then the door wheezed shut and the bus lumbered on. There was a momentary sense of deflation as they left; the empty house faced her, along with numerous still unpacked boxes. The gray sky overhead didn’t improve her mood. Nor did the cold—it was probably ten degrees.

  The last time she had settled in somewhere, it had been with Charlie. They’d bought their brownstone during a market downturn, but it was still a serious fixer-upper, and Susannah had felt daunted by the enormity of the work they faced: the broken linoleum that covered every room except, inexplicably, the kitchen; the woodwork calcified by layers of paint; the decades of neglect that shrouded the house like a fog. But Charlie had been relentlessly upbeat about it all, and kept going on about the “great bones” and “untapped potential.”

  One day, shortly after they had moved in, she thought she couldn’t stand being in that dilapidated old house one second longer and went out for a walk. When she came back, she found bunches of tulips stuffed into large plastic drinking cups set all throughout the rooms.

  “What’s the occasion?” she asked.

  “I wanted to cheer you up.” He looked at her hopefully, and Susannah melted; she knew that he wanted her to see what he saw, feel what he felt.

  “It worked.” She held out her arms.

  Today there would be no Charlie when she got back to the house on the pond, and the work of turning it into a home would fall almost entirely to her.

  She was just thinking about baking cookies—that would be a nice treat for the kids this afternoon—when she spied the horse. Its head was sticking way out of its stall, and it seemed to be stretching the thick column of its neck in her direction. The barn that housed this animal was in a meadow adjacent to the pale green house with the shutters. A fence surrounded both land and building, but the gate was wide open. Surely that was a mistake.

  Susannah stopped, intending simply to close the gate and continue on her way. But the horse uttered a low, insistent neigh, almost as if he was calling to her, and so she crunched across the snow-covered meadow to get closer. Once she reached him, she extended her hand, palm flat and upturned; Cally, who had ridden for a few years, had taught her to do this. Immediately, the horse nuzzled her open palm, looking for a treat. His coat was a glossy chestnut brown; his long face was dappled with white markings. She rooted around her pocket, not thinking she would find anything.

  But wait—there was a peppermint candy cane, left over from some Christmastime offering at a store or the bank. Susannah vaguely recalled that horses liked peppermints and she offered it to him. The horse peeled back his upper lip, revealing his large stained teeth; the candy cane was gone in one decisive crunch. Then he turned his head to fix her with his steady black stare.

  She wished she had another candy cane, but since she didn’t she stroked the horse’s face. The upper part of his head felt taut and solid, but the area around his nostrils—which were nearly as big as her fists—was plush and covered with tiny, tickly hairs. She stretched her arms way up so she could scratch the spot between his ears; he bobbed his head, almost as if nodding. She gave him a final pat before plodding back across the meadow and closing the
gate on her way out.

  Her encounter with the horse had cheered her a bit, and once back inside she worked efficiently and quickly at the unpacking. Around two o’clock, she stopped to bake the cookies; along with butter, eggs, sugar, and flour, she’d tossed a bag of chocolate chips into her cart the day before. By the time the kids walked in, the cookies were just cooling on the table.

  “Smells good,” said Jack, who took one in each hand as Susannah went to the fridge for milk.

  But Cally bypassed her offering and went straight up to her room. “How was your day?” Susannah called after her.

  “Fine.” There was a pause and then the sound of the door closing, quietly but with a pointed emphasis.

  Susannah knew better than to press. To counter her disappointment, she sat down at the table with Jack, who had eaten both the cookies and was now working on a third. “How about you?” she asked.

  “It was good, Mom! The kids were really friendly. They wanted to hear all about what it was like to live in New York City. There’s this gigantic field where we’ll get to play volleyball and stuff in the spring. I’m going to try out for the school band on Friday and I met this really nice girl named Gilda Mooney on the bus—she lives in a house right across the pond and she invited me to a party . . .”

  “Sounds like a good day.” Susannah let his enthusiasm soften the rough edge of her hurt about Cally.

  “It was, Mom. It really was.” He took a long drink of milk. “I didn’t want to tell you, but I was kind of worried about it. Now I’m not.”

  She got up from the table, deposited a kiss on his rather shaggy head—he really needed a haircut; where would they find a barber around here?—and returned to her unpacking. The living room was looking pretty good—furniture in place, a rug covering the floor. But over in a corner of the living room were several framed posters; they were leaning against the wall, not hanging on it.