Amber House (4 page)

We slipped upstairs. I helped Sam find his pajamas, then headed for the bathroom with mine. I felt better in my old flannel PJs — not so chilled, wrapped in the familiar.

The light was off in my room —
my room
, I was already calling it — but a strange glow came from it. When I snuck to the door, I found Sam in there. In his Sammy way, he had found a switch on the bottom of the dollhouse and a compartment for the batteries from his flashlight. All the little lights in the dollhouse were lit. It was like something bewitched. I half expected the dolls to get up and start walking around.

“Cool, Samwise,” I said. But I flicked on the room’s overhead light.

Once I had Sammy settled in bed, I went back to my own room. I turned out my bedside lamp, and the darkness settled in again, complete. And the quiet was so quiet. Not like in the city, where there was always a radioactive glare and the hum of unceasing traffic coming through the window. In the silence, in the dark, my head was filled with a ringing that seemed like it should be too high-pitched to hear.

When I was younger, I’d refused to sleep without a light. It wasn’t that I was scared, so much as I was too aware of what the darkness did to my perception of things, how it affected my senses.
My hearing became too keen, my sense of touch too pronounced — if I thought about it, I would suddenly itch in a thousand places and hear the thuds of my own heart thumping in my chest.

Falling asleep in that room that night was like when I was little. But it wasn’t my ears or my skin that was suddenly attuned — it was some other part of me, some part that had no name. Some part that waited silently, there in the dark.

I woke from a dream that floated just beyond my grasp, of voices in the dark and a statue weeping diamond tears. It was full daylight; eight o’clock in Seattle, but eleven o’clock here. Late. I threw on the jeans and shirt I had stuffed in my night bag and got moving.

Rose stood at the foot of the stairs, winding a key in the face of the grandfather clock, her left arm full of the mirrors’ black drapes.

“Good morning,” I greeted her. “Need some help?”

“No, child,” she said. “I’m the only one who knows where these things belong.” Then she added as an afterthought, “But thank you.”

I was guessing that as far as Rose was concerned, I was in the same boat as my mother. Someone who hadn’t done her dear departed friend justice.

I gestured at the black cloths. “What was with the drapes, Rose?”

“Just a southern superstition,” she said absently as she moved the clock’s hands to the right time. “To help the departed’s soul cross over and not get trapped in the looking-glass world.”

“The looking-glass world?” I repeated. “Like Alice?”

“
I
didn’t invent the notion,” Rose answered irritably. “People used to believe you could see through to the other side in a mirror. To the place where souls go after death, before they move on to their final destination. If we could see them, they thought maybe the other side can see through to us too. And maybe those souls wouldn’t want to move on, but just keep hanging about
being as close as they could to the ones they loved.” She gave the pendulum a little push and set time into motion again. “It’s just custom,” she concluded. “Okay?”

I shrugged. “’S okay with me.”

Mom stuck her head out of the library door. “Are you available, Rose?” Then she ducked back inside again. Rose raised her eyebrows and snorted slightly, I presumed at my mother’s abruptness. But she headed through the door after her.

Sammy was sitting in the kitchen when I came in, with Heavy Bear slumped on the floor beside his chair. He was scarfing down pancakes, courtesy of Rose, I guessed.
Good thing she likes at least one member of the family.
I sat down next to him. “Any pancakes left?”

He stopped with his fork a half inch from his open mouth. “Nope.” He rerouted the fork toward me. I opened my mouth and accepted his last bite of pancake. It was good — light, buttery, soaked in real maple syrup.

“Yum,” I said.

“You’re welcome,” he said.

“Thank you,” I said. “Rose is a good cook.”

“Better than Mom.”

“
You’re
a better cook than Mom,” I told him. That cracked him up. “You tell anyone about our explorations, Sam?”

“Nope.”

“Good man.” He nodded again.

Rose came pushing through the swinging door. She went to the cabinet beneath the sink and came up with a box of black garbage bags. “Forgot to say: There’s a plate warming in the oven for you, if you want it.”

“Thanks,” I said, with a genuine rush of gratitude. “Sammy gave me a bite of his and it was delicious.”

“Just johnnycakes. Didn’t want to waste the batter. Use a pot holder and put a mat under that plate.”

“I will,” I promised. I decided I could live with the fact that Rose didn’t like me as long as I was included in the pancakes.

I was heading for the oven, but Sammy stopped me. “Can I show you something, Sarah?”

I sighed. “What is it, Sam?”

He picked up Heavy Bear in one hand, took mine with the other, and towed me through the swinging door into the hall and on toward the living room. He stopped in front of the small side window. “Lookit.”

A huge oak stood in solitary splendor on the lawn. Its branches held a tree fort, built on a couple different levels, with little wooden benches and a partial roof in one corner.

“Way cool, Sam,” I said. “We’ll check it out later.”

“Who’s that?” Sammy asked, now pointing at some bushes near the foot of the tree.

I squinted. The play of light on the moving leaves made it look almost as if someone was crouched there in the darker shadows. But the limbs of the bushes danced again in the breeze, showing it was just an illusion.

“It’s no one.”

“No one?” Sammy repeated.

“Right. No one’s there. Can I eat now?”

I had to hunt for the pot holders I’d promised Rose I’d use. Third drawer down in the stack next to the oven, I came across a box filled with the broken remnants of some piece of china. I wondered why anyone would keep all those fragments, even though it had been a pretty little thing — lavender on the inside, blue on the outside, with three-dimensional cherry blossoms speckling the background. Looked like maybe it had been a pitcher. I picked up its handle, shaped and painted to look like a tree limb.

And I could picture it, exactly, in my mind’s eye, sitting on the kitchen table. Cheerful. Full of juice. Then some young hand bumped into it, knocking it off the edge. I imagined it falling, turning as it fell. Smacking against the floor and fracturing instantly with a low chord of notes into all its many pieces. Juice spraying out around it, red, like bleeding. I could practically hear my grandmother’s voice, “Oh, Anne.” I could practically
see
my mother’s younger face: defiant, the smallest bit satisfied.

I shook my head.

That was — strange.

I mean, I have a pretty good imagination, but all those vivid pictures in my mind — a little strange.

I set the handle carefully back in the box, but my finger brushed up against another piece. A drop of blood welled up.
Brilliant.
Finger in my mouth, I finally found the pot holders next drawer down.

Sam had followed me back to the kitchen and was sitting at the table, staring wistfully at my pancakes. Made me smile. I slathered on the butter and syrup, and paid Sammy back his bite, plus interest. He took off for the outer door, still chewing, with Heavy Bear in tow.

“Hey,” I called to him. He turned back, his eyebrows lifted.
“You’re welcome,”
I said, the way he always said it to me.

He grinned a pancake-filled smile.

“Stay away from the river and that tree house till I can come with you. Promise?”

“I promise, Sarah.” He slipped out.

I was down to my last bite when my mother came in, carrying a near-empty coffee mug. That was her breakfast — a couple cups of coffee, black. She stared at my plate. “You didn’t eat that whole stack of pancakes, did you?”

In answer, I stabbed the bite and swirled it around in the pooled syrup and melted butter, then looked her in the eye and
stuck it in my mouth. My mother never called me fat, which would have been ludicrous, since I was almost too skinny. And I was used to her being abrupt and critical — I could deal. But, I thought to myself as I chewed and swallowed, deliberately and slowly, maybe being in this house was making her a little worse than usual.

She frowned and cleared her throat. “We have to go into Baltimore tomorrow. Your dad wants to show you Johns Hopkins. I expect you to get Sammy to cooperate. Okay?”

“Sure, Mom. Sammy and I both want to see it.”

“Any funny noises last night?”

I shrugged with my face. “Slept like a rock.”

She looked at me as if gauging my sincerity. “Well, maybe we’ll just stay here another day or two. You know how I hate hotels.”

Indeed I did. “Fine by me and Sam,” I said. “Um, Mom?” She looked at me expectantly. I hesitated before I asked. “Did you ever break a little blue china pitcher?”

Her face shifted rapidly into an expression of anger and disgust. “She couldn’t even throw away the
broken pieces
? Like every little thing in this house is a piece of a shrine? You toss them in the trash for me, honey, okay?”

“Sure,” I said, lying.

“I have an enormous amount of work to do over the next couple days. Papers to go through, inventories, getting everything ready for sale. I want you to keep an eye on Sammy, make sure he doesn’t get into trouble.”

“Yeah. Of course.”

“Where is Sammy now?”

“Just outside.”

We both went to the window to check. Sammy was there, playing hide-and-seek in the bushes. It was faint, but I could hear him chattering cheerfully.

“Is he talking to himself?” My mother sounded concerned and accusatory. She was always looking for odd behaviors in Sammy, just like she was always looking for cellulite in me.

“He’s only playing pretend. Talking out loud. Little kids do that.”

“Yeah,” she said. “So do schizophrenics.”

I just had time to think to myself,
Nice
, when we heard a sharp rapping — the knocker on the front door.

“Lord,” she said. “Who could that be? Do I look all right?”

“You look great, Mom.” My mother never looked anything but great, her makeup flawless, her clothes crisply casual. No cellulite on that woman.

She headed to the front door. I heard her open it. “Good heavens!” she squealed, as clear as if she were in the room. “Robert, how great to see you!” she said in the same high voice.

Robert spoke in a saner tone. I couldn’t hear what he said.

“What has it been?” Mom went on, full-volume soprano. “Twenty years? This must be your son. He looks just like you. I saw you two yesterday from a distance. Was sorry you couldn’t stay. I’m so glad you came back, so we could actually talk. My lord, he’s so tall and handsome, Robert. Can you believe we have kids this old?”

I did not catch what Robert believed. My mother kept going. “You have to meet my Sarah. She’s back in the kitchen.”

Oh, my God.
She was bringing them back here. Me in a wrinkled T-shirt and jeans, and syrup the only thing on my face. I practically threw my pancake plate in the sink, then I bent over, pulled my uncombed hair back as tight as I could, and snapped the hair tie on my wrist around it.

“Sarah, honey —”

This strange woman who looked something like my mother walked through the door, her eyes bright, her cheeks flushed. Then I saw why. Robert, who I recognized as the father half of
the black-suited pair from Gramma’s funeral, followed her in. All six foot four of him, baked to a golden brown, teeth white and even. He was in his mid-forties, but even I was dazzled.

“— I want you to meet an old friend of mine,
Senator
Robert Hathaway.”

He flashed me a brilliant smile. I gripped the hand he extended as strongly as I could. Didn’t make a dent. “Pleased to meet you, Senator Hathaway.”

“And this” — my mother gestured to someone in the rear — “is Robert’s son, Richard.”

Richard — the other half of the pair — stepped into frame, a smile on his face. And I thought,
Thanks, Mom. Thank you ever so much. Why don’t I just shoot myself?
The father was beautiful; the son was beautiful
and
seventeen. “Hey,” I said lamely.

“Hey,” he returned, still smiling.

“Sarah looks so much like you, Anne.” That was the senator, being gracious.

“Thank you,” I said automatically, surprised to hear myself echoed in unison by my mother. She put an arm around my shoulders and added, “I’m always flattered to have someone say there’s a resemblance.”

Okay
, I thought,
someone come fetch this pod person. I want my real mother back.

“I’ve never been to Amber House before, Mrs. Parsons,” Richard was saying. “I’d love to look around.”

My mom and the senator looked at me expectantly. Inwardly, I sighed and wished for a breath mint. Outwardly, I smiled, hoping there wasn’t any pancake stuck in my teeth. “Sure. I haven’t seen much of it myself. We can explore together.”

“Great,” he said.

We wound our way through the library and the living room, with me making such stunning observations as, “This is the library,” and, “This is the living room.”

When we got to the front hall, he jumped in: “This is the entry.” He laughed at me, but not in a mean way. I laughed at myself and relaxed a little.

“Sorry. Not much of a tour guide. Why’d you want to look around, anyway?” I asked.

“Are you kidding? Everyone in this part of Maryland would love a chance to wander around Amber House.”

“Yeah?” I said. “Anyone under the age of thirty?”

He smiled and shrugged. “Mother was a big antiques collector. She always wanted to see the inside of this place. I guess she got me hooked.”

“Was?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said, pausing. “She — passed away a few years ago.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“Dad and I are doing okay.” He changed the subject. He gestured to the old portraits I’d noticed the day before: “These are from the seventeenth century, so they must be Sorcha and Liam O’Malley, the founders of Amber House. That clock,” he said of the grandfather, as we started walking again, “is eighteenth century and looks like it has its original paint.” He turned up the stairs, pointing out the bible paintings. “These are reputed to be by Edward Hicks.”

I was a little flabbergasted. “Okay,” I said. “You’re just making all this stuff up, right?”

“Almost.” He grinned. “I just used up the sum total of my antiques expertise. But it sounded impressive, didn’t it?”

“Uh-huh,” I said. “You should be a politician.”