Gina had been her mother once, both blessed by and chained to her body’s potential to conceive. That August, every day she didn’t bleed felt like her future burning down like a matchstick. Like her mother and Fran, she’d hidden the injury of a mistake to avoid shame, never telling Cassie or anyone else about Mark’s pressing her into Cassie’s bed. The day before she left for school, she awoke with her period. She sobbed and put on a sunny yellow halter top, as if to reclaim her imperiled girlhood. She imagined she was lucky—that her fear and pain had been carried away in her blood, and she never stopped to think what she’d have done if she’d been unlucky.
After Mark, there were more Marks—cocky, mysterious, unreliable men, never nice enough to remind her of her father’s passivity and weakness. Eventually, in Paul, she found the qualities her more mature self craved in a partner, and the passion, too. Perhaps she’d finally learned, or had just been lucky again.
But what if she’d been unlucky that summer and like her mother and Fran, hadn’t had the choice of ending her pregnancy? She couldn’t have lived in disgrace under her parents’ roof and couldn’t have stayed with Mark. Perhaps under the circumstances, she would’ve reconsidered the spark she didn’t feel with Kit, would’ve decided his passionate feelings for her and kindness were enough. Would they have built a family together only later to find out that Kit preferred “being on my own?” Or, would they both have discovered that family life was fulfilling, even without mutual passion?
Perhaps this was what Annie and Lester had been saying to Gina: that love had many faces and formulas and could be built even on an uncertain foundation; that although Cassie was unplanned, there was nothing accidental about the way Eleanor and Ron had raised their girls. Through hardship and mental illness, they’d nurtured their family—imperfectly, but with determination and pride. And love, albeit a love that was wrapped in thorns and stewed in tears.
When her parents dropped her off for her last year at Andrews, Gina got out of the car and her mother stared at her wistfully, as if taking her in for the first time, or the last, or as if presaging that Gina would never live at home again. Gina shut the car door gently so it wouldn’t feel like a slam. Still, as they drove off, she saw her mother hang her head.
How would it feel to have one door after another slammed in your face? Perhaps, after a while, if one were a fighter—and her mother surely was—one would punch at anything that looked potentially harmful. Even or maybe especially, the love of a good man or the voices of independent daughters.
Now, it was Gina who rested her head in her hands. Perhaps compassion, even when it came too late, was close enough to forgiveness.
Annie pushed through the screen door with two glasses of iced tea. She handed one to Gina and sat on the step next to her. “I wonder what Sid will do to the house,” she said. “All the things your mother always wanted to do, probably.”
This prospect was painful for Gina. “It should be a basic human right to change your living space as your life and family change. Mom and Dad never had that chance.”
“Yes,” Annie said. “They changed it in little ways. But your mother had such dreams for the house. ‘Our little piece of heaven,’ she called it. She would never have survived not living on the water. She and your dad wanted to buy it, you know.”
Surprised by how happy Annie’s words had made her, Gina asked, “Why didn’t they?”
Annie sighed. “Money. Your mother never gave up hope that they’d find the Washington letters here and then they’d be able to sell the house and everything in it. When she finally sold it to the Historical Society, there wasn’t enough money to buy your house and pay your school tuition, too. Ellie and Ron knew what their priorities were! Well, and they were able to buy that beautiful boat, Homeward.”
Annie stood and turned on the hose, directing it at her bare feet. “Ahh, this is just what I needed,” she said. She turned it off again, and the plumbing whined. Taking the shears from her pocket, she leaned to cut a bouquet of zinnias and handed them to Gina. “Happy birthday!”
“Annie!” Delighted, Gina stood and gave her a big hug. “How did you know?”
“A little birdie told me. Zinnias are your favorite, right? You used to come and pick them at our old house when you were very little—before you were even in school, I think.”
A gust of wind, like a stranger, entered the garden. Annie craned her neck to look at the sky. “I don’t know why I even bothered to water,” she said. “It smells like rain.”
Annie left for the hospital at noon. Gina ate lunch and called Paul to tell him she was delaying her return by a day, but she couldn’t get through; she supposed he was already on his way to Point Reyes with the kids, and out of range. She stripped all the beds and put the sheets in the washing machine. Moving slowly in the heat, she did a thorough cleaning of the kitchen. Then, she drove Lester’s car to the big supermarket in Riversport to stock up on groceries.
When she returned to Lily House, Annie wasn’t yet home. She tried Paul again, but still no luck.
At last, she seemed to have a window of time to finish the drawings of her family’s house. She had a snack and went to the desk, where she laid out a sheet for the second-floor plan. From her measurements, she drew the four bedrooms and bathroom, then stood back to evaluate. Something looked not quite right. Usually when she made as-built drawings, there were a few conflicting measurements that required some head scratching or a second visit to a house, but she hadn’t expected this with a house she knew so well. She untaped the plan from the table, spread out the drawing of the first floor and aligned the second-floor plan over it. There was a knot of disagreeing lines in the area where the maid’s stair connecting Cassie’s room to the kitchen had been removed and the pantry added. She tried to recreate in her mind the inches of space that weren’t accounted for in her lines. Once, she remembered there had been a door to nowhere in Cassie’s room that she’d opened as a child to discover a slot of leftover space in front of the wall studs framing the bathroom. Now, she recalled the feeling of her hand stretching into that cavity, a question forming in that dark, hidden place.
She sprang from her chair. She would need a hammer! She searched the drawers in Annie and Lester’s kitchen, finding no tools. Remembering Annie’s gardening equipment, she ran out to the garage only to realize she’d locked the padlock on the door before going to the hospital with Lester. She wandered through the rooms of Lily House, finally spotting a brass fireplace poker—it would be awkward, but would no doubt do the trick. She stuffed her measuring tape and pad of paper into her bag and was headed out with the poker when a car door slammed outside.
It was once thought that the physical environment determined the character of life. When that view collapsed, the natural reaction was to insist that environment had no consequence whatever. But each view rests on the fallacy of the other. Organism and environment interact; environment is both social and physical. One cannot predict the nature of a man from the landscape he lives in, but neither can one foretell what he will do or feel without knowing the landscape.
Kevin Lynch, Site Planning
Chapter 14
Gina froze. She looked at her watch: six-thirty. Would the car be Annie, coming home for dinner? How would she slip unseen out of the house? She darted into the dining room to replace the poker, then peeked out the window at the driveway. There, wrinkled and sleepy, stumbling toward the porch from a rental car, was Ben. Gina dropped her bag, dashed outside and intercepted him on the porch.
“Happy birthday, Mom,” he croaked, throwing his arms around her waist. “We’re here! That’s your present!”
“You guys! I can’t believe it!” Gina cried, struggling to shift gears.
Esther trailed behind Ben, waiting for Gina to greet her. Gina gently extricated herself from Ben’s hug and wrapped her arms around her, taking in her bubble-gummy smell. How she’d missed her family’s touch, their voices! So much had happened; three days had felt like three we
eks.
“Happy birthday, Mom,” Esther said. “It’s so hot. Ouch! Be careful; you’re squeezing my bruise I got at Aikido.”
Gina’s eyes met Paul’s as he got out of the car grinning and holding a bouquet of white roses. He leaned over Esther and kissed Gina lightly on the lips. “Sorry you couldn’t get us on the phone,” he said, laughing. “Happy birthday.”
Gina’s mind buzzed with the mystery she’d just uncovered in the plans. But she didn’t want it to detract from this lovely surprise. She released Esther and hugged Paul tightly. “I’m so happy you guys came!”
Esther and Ben had never visited Lily House and once inside, they wandered from room to room. Gina pointed out a few important artifacts, identified family members in portraits, and told them that while a lot of places made the claim, George Washington had really slept in this house. They appeared spellbound by a genuine fascination that Gina had never felt as a child.
“And the president sat right here,” Gina told them, stroking the mahogany arm of the lolling chair.
Ben was dying to sit in the chair; Gina told him she was sorry he couldn’t because it was a national treasure.
“Look!” Esther said, pointing to a collection of framed photographs of Bantons who’d lived in Lily House for generations. “I think I’ve seen this picture of Gran before. She was standing right over there on the stairs, right?”
“Right,” Gina said. She’d overlooked the photograph her father had taken of her mother on the day they met, and now she filled with pleasure knowing her mother would always have a presence here, in her beloved Lily House.
So,” Gina said, turning to Paul, “Annie must’ve known you were coming?”
Paul nodded. “It’s not our style to spring major surprises. But, I was pretty sure you would’ve told us not to come if I’d asked, and we all really wanted to. I hope it’s okay?”
The truth was, Gina was so distracted thinking about how she would get back to the house with the fireplace poker, she wasn’t sure. “Yes!” she said. “I just have to . . . Maybe we should get a room at the Marriot. I’m concerned about the extra confusion here.”
“I know. I thought about that on the way out. So Esther had this idea. We brought the camping gear—I’ve reserved a campsite for us starting tomorrow night at Hermit Island. I figured since you and I had originally planned to be away for the week . . .” he looked at Gina hopefully.
Gina had only been half listening, “Oh! Oh yes! That works, camping’s a great idea,” she finally said. “But I don’t think I should leave Whit’s Point until Lester comes home.”
“That’s fine; we’ll go to the campground and you can take the bus up the next day or whatever. But tonight, Esther was hoping we could camp at the old house. What do you think?”
For a moment, Gina had serious doubts. “We’d be trespassing,” she said. Then she realized that one way or the other, she was going to the house and the sooner the better. “But it’s not a problem if no one knows.”
Paul smiled. “You don’t think Sid would be okay with your spending one night there—for old times’ sake?”
“I’d have to ask him, which I’m not going to do. I’ve managed to get this far without having to deal with him.”
Paul shrugged. “Okay. I just thought you might sleep better if you did.” He smiled slyly, and she narrowed her eyes at him.
Gina made quesadillas and drummed her fingers on the table as Ben and Esther dawdled over the food. They were too hot, they complained, so she bribed them with the promise for a swim in the cove.
“Night swimming!” Ben exclaimed, hopping on one foot.
While Paul washed the dishes, she went to get the poker from the dining room and shut it in the trunk of the rental car.
By the time they left Lily House the light was nearly gone from the sky. They pulled the car around the back of the old house, out of sight from the road. When Paul opened the trunk to get the camping gear, Gina reached in for the poker.
“What’s that for?” Paul asked. “Expecting the bogeyman?”
“You’ll see.”
Inside, they dumped their bags in the hall and the four of them shuffled through the rooms, brightening patches of wall with their flashlights. Gina moved from window to window, flinging them open. Breathe! she thought. Let all remaining ch’i flow away—it’s too late now.
Upstairs, Gina and Paul spread two tarps out on the floors of her parents’ and her old bedrooms.
“It’s even dirtier than a campsite,” Esther grumbled.
“Hey, nature girl, where’s your sense of adventure?” Paul teased. “You’re the one who wanted to camp out here.”
Gina could see that Esther was in no mood for Paul’s teasing; she looked inconsolably sad. It was too much to be here, feeling her grandparents gone, and Gina had the impulse to whisk her away.
But when they got to Cassie’s room, her heart thrummed. She couldn’t wait. She ran downstairs and returned with the fireplace poker, careful not to check her family’s expressions. “I think there’s something here. Something I need to get to,” she said. “Stand out in the hall, okay?”
“Gina?” Paul said. “What in the world are you doing? I thought you were afraid of trespassing.”
“You’ll see. I have to do this, okay? Just step out there with the kids,” she said, giving him a gentle push. “You can see from there.”
Obediently, Paul shifted out of the room and stood in the doorway with Esther and Ben. Gina’s mission caught fire inside her. She positioned the flashlight on the floor and planted herself in front of the shallow shelves her parents had built into the wall when they’d removed the old door. Bending low, she drew back the poker and thrust it at the wall below the shelves.
“Mom!” Esther shrieked. “What’re you doing!”
“Esther, Don’t yell!” Ben cried. “You guys are scaring me!”
Gina noted Paul’s silence and was grateful he didn’t try to stop her. The sheet rock had punctured easily, requiring disappointingly little force. But the narrow poker made too neat a hole—it would take an hour to open the wall! She flipped the poker around, held it like a bat and, aiming its fat, heavy handle, took a swing. This time, the handle struck the wall hard, breaking through with a satisfying crunch. She lost her grip on the narrow poker and dropped it.
“Gina, are you looking for something?” Paul said with an unnatural calm, as if he were trying to talk a person off a ledge. “Because there are less destructive ways to . . .”
She felt crazed, but she knew exactly what she was doing. “I have to! Wait, you’ll see!” She turned to Paul, her eyes pleading with him to show Esther and Ben that he trusted her. He nodded. She wiped her sweaty, plaster-coated hands on her shorts and raised the poker again, tightening her grasp.
“Daddy,” she heard Esther murmur. “What’s wrong with her? She’s scaring me again.”
“Shh, its okay. Let’s wait and see.”
Gina held her breath and hit the wall again and again. She could hear Ben whimper, but she kept going. Dust filled the air. Her hands throbbed. But her energy rose with every arc she swung, each blow settling a score with the walls of this house. For trapping. For not sheltering. For nights of trembling. For harboring demons and secrets. For fostering blame and guilt. For remaining standing, impassively, after her parents had died.
When her shoulder began to burn, she stopped. She kneeled in front of the hole she’d made and snaking her hand through the gash, touched the wood studs. There were about six inches of dead space between them and the inside of Cassie’s wall; the slot extended the length of the bathroom and accounted for the missing inches on her plan. As a first and second grader, she’d been intrigued with this secret place and had hidden her Halloween candy just inside. Now, her heart quickened as she stretched as far as she could to reach along the floor behind the wall. She felt the paper first, then the shape. She folded her hand around her prize and drew it out.
In the beam of her flashl
ight was a gift, still wrapped in green and red holly paper and bearing a tag that said “For Eleanor.” An innocent little package, hidden by Gina herself when she was ten in a rush of confusing emotion, on a day she’d tried without success to forget. She rippled with anticipation of what she held. At last, she turned the flashlight on her family. Ben and Esther were glued to Paul’s sides, Ben with his thumb in his mouth.
“I found it!” she said. She jumped up and the three of them silently followed her into her parents’ bedroom. “Sit down here, and I’ll show you. But first, I need to wash my hands.” After she’d scrubbed off the dirt with some shampoo Paul had fished from his bag, Gina kneeled on the tarp.
Paul and the children huddled around her, and she handed the flashlight to Esther. “Be my light,” she said. She blew the dust from the package and pulled the end of a ribbon whose thirty-five-year-old knot easily released. Peeling the paper away, the lines of sepia ink took shape before her: “G. Washington.”
Instantly, memories scrambled to arrange themselves. Gina recalled Fran’s furtive look and shaking hand as she slipped the package into her game bag. Glancing up at Sid’s flushed face. Her disappointment when she got home to discover the gift was for her mother, not her. Now, the significance of her aunt’s attempt to give the Washington letters to her mother struck her: Fran had told Sid who his father was, had made sure the letters were put in the right hands. She’d been putting her affairs in order before her suicide.
It was not the flying knives at Lily House that day that had killed Fran; she had planned it all.
Like Annie and Lester’s revelations, the discovery of the letters had exposed the foundation of secrets, lies, and misunderstandings on which Gina’s family had built up their fortress walls. She’d built her own wall-of-forgetting to keep out things she didn’t understand; now, she felt that wall coming down. In its place she would construct a new understanding that could be built on truth.
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