by Jim Kraus
George’s voice had gone to a whisper, a confessional whisper. He pushed the one image in his mind further back, further and further, where even he couldn’t see it anymore. Lewis butted his head against George’s chest. He put his hand on the dog’s head and held it there.
“I’m happier now, Lewis. I am. It’s the truth. Can I leave it there?”
Lewis leaned back.
“Maybe it’s because I’m thinking about the cemetery again. It’s our ultimate destination, Lewis. Why is it so wrong to be more in control of our departure date?”
Lewis butted against him again, and this time a little harder.
“Okay, Lewis. I’ll think about it.”
Lewis did not move.
“I will. Honest. I’ll think about it.”
Lewis backed off and slowly lowered his front paws back to the ground.
But my mind is still made up. There is no sin in knowing the end of days. I simply want to be in charge of my own destiny. What harm is there? No one will miss us. And it needs to happen this way. It does. After what I did. After what I asked for. After what God did.
40
When George pulled up to the house, he checked his handwritten note again—rather, Irene’s handwritten note—and compared the address on the house to the one written down.
All George could do was whistle.
Lewis was busy sniffing. The house . . . more suitably, a mansion, faced the battery, or the Charleston Harbor, the morning sun glistening off the water, the reflections dancing against the three-story, cream-colored structure. Two curved balconies graced the second and third floors, each with a picket of curved balustrades, perhaps done in carved marble, plus a third set of fencing on the roof.
“You must be able to see the ocean from up there,” George said as he unbuckled Lewis’s seat belt. “It’s got to be ten thousand square feet inside if it’s an inch.”
Next to the curved balconies was a three-story, square entryway, with four two-story pillars holding up a square counterpart to the curved section of the house. Underneath the two-story columns stood the main entrance—double doors, of course, probably mahogany, or ironwood, with wrought iron hinges and a brass lock rail running the width of both doors, with a polished brass strike plate on each door, each the size of a large hardback book.
The metal looked polished, and the wood gleamed as well.
In fact, George surmised the entire house must have been recently painted, the thick, creamy luster of the paint looking like a thin coat of vanilla ice cream.
The plinth block above the doors was engraved with a date: 1856.
“Ye gads,” George whispered to himself, “and I know no one says ye gads anymore, but this place is spectacular, isn’t it, Lewis?”
Lewis did not appear thoroughly impressed. Instead, he intently sniffed his way along the public sidewalk in front of the house, as if he were a detective searching for overlooked clues.
Then Lewis heard it and lifted his head, his ears peaked.
A small dog, from the sound of the shrillness of the bark, had taken notice of Lewis and did not sound overly hospitable.
“Might be from inside, Lewis. Be prepared. And be on your best behavior, okay?”
Lewis appeared not to hear, or at least, not to pay attention.
George drew back on the leash and turned Lewis around, knelt down, and put his face only a few inches from Lewis’s own.
“You are on notice, Lewis. Be good!”
Lewis’s eyes tried to peer sideways and over his own shoulder, but George had a hand on his jaw and kept him staring straight ahead.
“I mean it, Lewis. They might have a dog. I didn’t ask. But I am sure Irene mentioned you to these people. After all, you’re hard to overlook. So behave.”
Lewis tried his best not to fidget.
“Understand?”
Lewis relaxed some and offered a weak, and not entirely convincing, wuff of agreement, like a small child saying he would behave in the toy store—this time.
“Okay, then. As long as we’re clear on your behavior.”
George felt like a poseur coming to the door of such a grand residence, in his worn khakis and somewhat wrinkled white shirt. But it was what he was wearing and there was no place to change or alter himself into someone more sophisticated, cultured . . . and moneyed.
He lifted the massive doorknocker and let it fall, only halfway.
“Could use this as a battering ram if we had to.”
The bang sounded loud to George, and it seemed to echo throughout the massive home.
He debated whether or not to lift the heavy pineapple-shaped doorknocker again.
“It’s probably a couple of hundred years old as well, Lewis. What if I break it? Or knock the door over?”
Instead, he took a breath and waited.
“If I knock again and the door falls over, we make a run for it, okay, Lewis?”
Lewis looked up, grinned, and wuffed.
“I swear you understand every word I say, Lewis. In spite of being a dog.”
He wuffed again.
He heard footfalls from inside, then he heard Irene’s voice, loud and a little shrill. “Takes somebody forever to get to the door in this place. It’s why they had servants. It’s why you should still have servants.”
The door swung open. Irene stood there, almost breathless, and grinned. Behind her was an entryway filled with antebellum opulence: mirrors, mahogany, carvings, marble, and brass.
“Welcome to the humble abode of Douglas and Eleanor Parker. You can get a map or a GPS system from the butler’s table on the way in.”
She laughed and her laugh was clear and full-voiced, without any hesitation or reluctance.
“You said museum quality—and you were right,” George said. “This place, at least from the outside, is magnificent.”
Irene leaned close to him.
“And you ain’t seen nothing yet, George. Just wait.”
She then bent down to Lewis and gave him a long hug. He enjoyed it yet all the while kept looking over her shoulder. The barking had come from somewhere.
“Lewis, you’ll see him soon enough.”
She stood, took George’s hand, and led him inside.
“I’ll introduce you to our host. His lovely wife is out at a charity function. He has been so eager to meet you.”
* * *
Irene led them up a curved flight of stairs winding around an open central core. If one looked up, one could see the whole way to the domed roof, complete with some sort of scene painted on it, but it was too far away for George to discern the subject. The railings and balustrades were done in white marble. The rug on the steps must have been handwoven and had to have been made especially for this house because it followed the curve of the stairway.
Irene saw him looking.
“Turkish. 1860-ish. Handmade. Hand-knotted. Just the rug is worth more than you and me put together, George.”
On the third floor, she led them down a wide, sunny hallway—more like a salon, as the French would label it—and through two, full-length French doors, into a huge circular room.
“Welcome to the solarium, George. Come meet our host, Douglas Parker.”
In the far side of the room, bathed in the early morning sunshine, was a small man in a large wheelchair. Over his knees was a tartan blanket.
Probably an authentic Scottish pattern, too, George thought to himself.
Douglas was rail thin, balding, with piercing blue eyes. He slowly raised his right hand—very slowly, as if it took a great effort to do so. His smile was broad and appeared genuine.
“Welcome, George. And Lewis.”
Lewis walked carefully to the wheelchair, sniffing and smiling and wuffing, offering his caregiver’s wuff this time, a solicitous wuff, as if he were trying to ask how the patient felt.
Douglas lowered his hand to Lewis, and Lewis accepted it with grace.
From behind them came a ratcheting sound of nails on a marble f
loor, scrabbling to gain traction, a sliding, raspy, clattery noise.
At the same time, George and Irene turned to look.
Into the room flew a small gray and white blur, sliding first to the left and then to the right, barking, almost squealing, as he made his grand, excited entrance.
Lewis spun about, quick for a dog his size, and the grey and black blur screeched to a sliding halt, several yards distant.
“This is Burby . . . a good Scottish name . . . for a bad Scottish dog.”
Burby’s eyes grew wide, taking in the vast enormity of Lewis. Lewis wuffed hopefully and lowered his head and spread his front paws in a playful posture.
Burby was frozen to the spot where he’d stopped.
“Burby’s never seen a dog this large,” Douglas said slowly, drawing in breath halfway through. “And he’s not much of a fighter.”
Lewis wuffed and wagged his rump back and forth.
“In fact,” Douglas added, “he’s intimidated by most anything larger than a wren. Not a Scottish warrior, in any fashion.”
Burby must have decided discretion is the better part of valor. He turned and ran out of the room, his nails scrabbling to gain purchase on the slick floor, turning his head to look over his shoulder, making sure the behemoth was not giving chase.
Lewis looked up at Douglas with a most puzzled look.
“Lewis, he will be back. In time.”
Douglas pressed on the control of the wheelchair, and it turned slightly, an electric whirr loud in the quiet of the large room.
“Come in. Sit down. I will call for coffee.”
He motored over to a grouping of a coffee table, settee, and chairs, all bathed in the sun from the curved window George had seen from the street. Even from the third floor, he could make out the shimmer of the ocean beyond the harbor.
“This is a most magnificent house,” George said as he took a seat.
“Thank you,” Douglas rasped in reply. “Helps if one has filthy rich great-grandparents. Amassed a fortune. Early in life, according to family history. Spent most of the rest of their lives spending it.”
Douglas waved his arm carefully in the air.
“On this, mostly.”
“Well, it is truly spectacular. I can’t say I’ve been inside any place this grand.”
Douglas offered a wan smile.
“Yet Irene said you were scheduled to visit Falling Water. Did you?”
“I did.”
“And is it not more grand than this?”
The coffee arrived, and George accepted a cup of coffee in a delicate bone china cup.
“Perhaps more dramatic. Not more grand. Not at all. It was obvious to me Wright didn’t like people much. Nothing seemed comfortable. Dramatic does not mean homey.”
Douglas coughed some.
“It is a complaint I have heard. Pity I can’t make the trip.”
“I could show you the drawings I made. As an engineer, you might appreciate them.”
Douglas smiled broadly.
“It would be wonderful. But not this morning. I leave for therapy in a few minutes. Perhaps after dinner.”
“I would love to.”
And then, a young man in a white coat arrived and stood behind the wheelchair.
“Ready, Mr. Parker?”
“No, I am not. But it won’t stop you, will it?”
“No. Not today, sir. Just like it hasn’t stopped me all the other days.”
“Such is the life of an invalid,” Douglas said. “Then I shall see you both anon.”
George watched as the young man lifted Douglas out of the chair and carried him down the steps.
“He has a chair on every floor. He claims the house would be ruined with the addition of an elevator,” Irene said in a whisper. “Instead of an elevator, he simply hires burly young men to be his legs up and down the stairs.”
Lewis walked with him to the stairs and watched him being carried. Then he turned back to George with a puzzled look on his face and wuffed softly, as if asking for an explanation.
“Lewis, there are some questions I cannot answer.”
41
By the by,” Irene said after they had nearly finished their coffee, “Douglas asked me if you would mind parking the RV behind the house. They have a large garage and parking area away from the street.”
“Sure,” George replied.
“Douglas wouldn’t mind where you park, but he claims all his neighbors are real estate OCD impaired.”
“Moving the RV is not a problem. It’s not.”
Irene stood and looked down at the street below, watching Douglas being taken in a van to a special rehabilitation center on the west side of town.
“Douglas has said, on occasion, his neighbors wouldn’t mind having him replaced, if they could, because of his handicap. He says they would prefer someone young, a bon vivant. Someone who could host the right sort of lavish parties a house like this deserves, he said.”
George could not tell if Irene was joking, so he smiled, just a little.
“I say he is simply being paranoid,” Irene said.
“Is he?”
She shrugged.
“Maybe a little. But not without reason, I guess. He says they used to have company all the time. Now, only a few people stop by. Myself, for one. Now you and Lewis. I think we might be the first real guests in several months.”
Lewis circled the large room, sniffing slowly and quite carefully, wuffing to himself as he made the circuit.
“I don’t want to assume, but Douglas . . . what does he have?It must be relatively recent, since you said things have changed since . . .”
“ALS.”
“I thought so,” George said. Lewis came over and pushed his head against his thigh. “My wife . . .”
Irene’s faced showed a marked difference; a cloud of sympathy passed over her expression, but at the same time, a reluctance to let herself wallow in the moment by providing unnecessary or, worse, unwanted pity.
“Sorry to hear it. Terrible condition.”
George just nodded.
“And Douglas wanted me to tell you . . . and Lewis, of course . . . you have complete freedom to come and go while you’re here. His wife will be back this afternoon. You’ll like her.”
“Good. I think Lewis needs to go outside. And I’ll move the RV, if you show me where. And then I’d like to take a walk around the neighborhood.”
“Follow me downstairs, you two. If you want, I can show you around the historic district a little. Been here often enough to know some of the tour guide spiel.”
Lewis wuffed in agreement.
“Well, sign us up, then.”
* * *
Mid-afternoon found George and Lewis in what was obviously the library, a huge room with a massive stone fireplace, lined with what George surmised were mahogany bookcases, floor to ceiling, filled with what George surmised were rare first editions.
He carefully set his bag down on a chair—the chair looked old, but not museum old, George hoped. Even Lewis seemed cowed by the scope and grandeur and understated history of the room.
Lewis sniffed and snorted.
“I know. It smells like a library, doesn’t it?”
Lewis turned to look at him.
“I guess you’ve never been in a library before, have you, Lewis? But trust me, this is what it smells like. Good books have a particular aroma about them. Leather and ink and ideas.”
He slid one volume off the shelf.
It was a biography of Benjamin Wright, the “father of American civil engineering.” George thumbed through a few pages. Apparently Wright engineered both the Erie Canal and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal.
The book, leather-bound and large, looked to be a first edition. George carefully replaced it in the exact spot. He noticed not a single speck of dust on the shelves.
“Good afternoon. You must be George Gibson.”
Lewis spun around and wuffed.
“And Lewis, of
course. I am Eleanor Parker, Douglas’s wife.”
Eleanor, a tall woman, with elegant features, straight dark hair and dark eyes, stood in the library entrance, a double string of pearls around her neck, resting on what must have been a cashmere sweater, with a matching skirt.
George seldom noticed what a woman wore, but Eleanor’s outfit just seemed to fit exactly the tone and the scent and the ambiance of this house. It appeared as if everything inside, including her clothing, was carefully and masterfully coordinated just perfectly.
“I am,” George replied. “It is so nice to meet you. And to be able to thank you for inviting me as a guest. And Lewis.”
Eleanor walked into the room, or perhaps strode into the room, the way a confident person enters, with grace and precision and not a wasted, unnecessary movement of leg or arm or head.
“It is our pleasure, Mr. Gibson.”
“George.”
Eleanor smiled, demurely.
“Mr. Gibson, I was raised in a most traditional home in the Deep South. Mississippi. On a soon-to-be-derelict plantation. But what we did not have in material things, we had in the richness of tradition and heritage. From the time we could talk and curtsey, we were firmly instructed to greet and converse with anyone older than ourselves using the titles Mister and Sir and Missus and Ma’am, if we weren’t sure. It is an ingrained habit and not one I wish to break. So you must please forgive me if I call you Mr. Gibson.”
George shrugged and immediately wished he had some other gesture not as classless and inadequate. “It will be fine, Mrs. Parker.”
“But I shall call Lewis, Lewis. I think any other name would confuse him.”
“You might be surprised, Mrs. Parker.”
She bent down and looked into Lewis’s face.
“Well, I might be, Mr. Gibson.”
She stood up.
“Shall I call for tea? Would you like tea? Or coffee.”
George did not answer for a moment.
“I can tell you want coffee, Mr. Gibson, by your hesitation. You do not want to upset your hostess, but you don’t like tea, and you’re wondering if by asking for coffee you will somehow expose yourself as being ungrateful.”
George held his hands open, palms out.
“You would be a good detective, Mrs. Parker.”