The House on Seventh Street (12 page)

Words from Juliana's story came to mind, “Then another drawer, and yet another, yields up precious gems.”

She knew the first and second drawers were empty and that the third had held Adolph Whitaker's letters. She opened the fourth drawer and found nothing. There were three other drawers. Winna pulled them out and let them fall to the floor.

Could there be a hidden panel somewhere? She ran her hand over the back of the trunk. Nothing. Then she saw it on the very bottom, a hidden compartment. She opened it. But it too was empty.

After her foray into the attic, sleep did not come easily. She lay awake thinking about Juliana, convinced that the story she wrote was pure fiction. There were no jewels, but there was an affair. She had told Winna about it. Who
was
Juliana?

Winna thought of her granddaughter, little Isabelle. She will never know the child, the girl, the woman I've been or the truth about my life. I barely know myself. Some of the things I've done are a complete mystery to me.

Gramma told me that she had wanted to leave her husband and baby son and run away with Whitaker. She had been capable of that much, at least, but what about Charlotte Blackleash? There was no son in the story, she had needed respectability, stability, money—then the excitement of being with her lover, not the love of a little boy.

Winna rolled over and pulled a second pillow close against her body, aware that allowing her mind to race would not bring sleep. But she could not rest.

ON THE
WEEKEND
, Chloe and Todd came to dinner at the house. Realizing too late that she hadn't thought to serve a steak or something Todd might like to eat, Winna scooped chicken salad into avocado halves and placed them on a bed of field greens tossed with a fresh lemon and olive oil dressing. She sliced some French bread and, for dessert, served her quick raspberry charlotte. Todd seemed unfazed and accepted his beer in a glass. He called the plate “pretty” and appeared to enjoy the meal. Chloe, clad as if she had been invited to the White House for dinner, wore a strapless green silk dress with a gathered bodice that emphasized her lovely breasts. Chloe sipped white wine and nibbled while she talked.

“Back then—the seventies—I was in therapy and my shrink said I should write a letter to Daddy. She wanted me to vent—let him know what a lousy father he'd been. She wanted me to be specific—like the details—and express how I felt inside.”

Todd leaned back in his chair looking doubtful and said, “Did you write it?”

“Yes—I sure did,” she said, tossing her head of honeyed curls as if it had been her victory. “I knew at the time that Mercury was in retrograde, but I did it anyway.”

“But you didn't mail it, I hope,” Winna said.

Chloe downed the last of her drink and looked at Winna. “I did.”

“Wow!” was all Winna could say.

“Ruth read it too. I got a phone call. She didn't breathe a word about having read the letter but invited me to meet her for lunch downtown. She chose a public place for her scolding. I ‘crushed him,' she said. He was ‘hurt and angry.' She was angry too, and you know what she said? ‘Don't be surprised if he disinherits you.'”

“So you knew he disinherited you?”

“He wouldn't see me after that—not for a couple of years.”

“Really,” Winna said, “and I thought it had been a terrible surprise for you at the reading of the will.”

“I'm just figuring it out now, Winna. I didn't
know—I didn't think he would actually do it,” Chloe said. “It was a terrible surprise—and then to hear those words—one dollar.”

“It might have been a good idea to write the letter for therapy's sake and just file it away for safe keeping,” Winna said.

“No kidding. I should have made a ritual fire of it—sent it skyward as incense. Not having the sense to do that, I should have sued the shrink for—how much is my share of the estate—a couple of million dollars? By the way, nobody has ever given me that dollar.”

“Do you think Ruth suggested to Dad that he disinherit you?”

“Who knows. She was clever at manipulating him. When she walked out on him, she got a separation agreement that included alimony. Knowing he was usually drunk and not that attentive to his checkbook, she would call from California and claim that he hadn't sent a check.”

“Chloe, remember when you heard her voice message on the answering machine—all pitiful and hurt? ‘You didn't send my check, Henry.'” That bitter memory drove Winna to stand up in anger, then quickly sit down again. “But, Todd, when Chloe looked at Dad's checkbook, he had sent it.”

“Yeah, and she'd done that more than once. I found a couple of months where he sent her two checks.”

Winna brightened. “Remember the letter we wrote her?”

“How could I forget?” Chloe rolled her eyes. “Todd, we guessed that she wasn't reporting the support checks, so we wrote this letter to her threatening to reveal her trick to the IRS if she didn't give him a divorce.”

“And it worked. He'd been trying to get rid of her for three years at least,” Winna said. “We did good, sis.”

Todd had listened all evening without saying much. He went back and forth to the refrigerator for beer, offering little but facial expressions—frowns, a deep thoughtfulness to his eyes, and occasional disbelief. Winna figured that he was scandalized by the family dysfunction.

“Sorry, Todd, there's nothing worse than listening to people talk about their memories—memories you don't share. You look a bit shocked. What was your family like?”

“Oh, I don't know,” Todd's face softened. “Just nice folks down on the farm. My mom made the best fried chicken in two counties and baked apple pies that let you know there's something right with the world. She kept a big garden in tomatoes and sold them by the roadside. I helped her with the canning.”

Charmed, she asked, “And your dad?”

Todd smiled. “He was a great dad. Made me a fishin' pole, took me fishin', taught me to shoot. We'd sit on the porch or by the fire and he'd read to me from the Bible.”

“Are they still living?”

“Dad is. Mom went to her maker some years back.”

“See, Winna, some people have normal families,” Chloe jabbed.

After the dishes were done, they went out on the porch to catch the night air and talked until late. Through watching Todd with Chloe and listening to his conversation, Winna began to think well of him. He seemed sweet and just as spacey as Chloe. After they left, Winna could not get Chloe off her mind.

Before moving back to town after her divorce, Winna's sister had lived in LA. Chloe had never gone long without a man to love her. She had followed her own brand of spirituality and her causes: the environment, animal welfare, and the support of local merchants under pressure from big-box stores run by huge corporations.

Unlike me, Winna thought, Chloe has approached her life fearlessly, breaking the rules, making a big adventure out of it. She wondered if Chloe saw herself in that light. She knew how her sister thought of her—someone afraid to let go and have adventures, someone closed-minded and disapproving.

Winna knew how different they were and wondered how that could be. They had been so close as children. She had watched over Chloe like a little mother. Then, Winna had loved her sister more than anyone else on earth and now she had to love her from a distance. Her father's cruel denial of Chloe's birthright came suddenly to mind and spun her into circles of anger, then tears. How could he—over something that happened twenty years ago? And me? He's made me an object of envy and given me the appearance of greed. Winna knew that she could not let her father's wishes stand and promised herself that tomorrow she would make an appointment with Reed Thompson, her father's lawyer.

Late 1940s

EVEN THOUGH
YEARS
had passed, Winna had not forgotten the day she first saw their new home in the country: a sprawling farmhouse with a big front porch. Almost everyone on Peach Tree Ridge had enough land to keep a horse, a milk cow, and a vegetable garden. Wild asparagus grew along the ditch banks, and nearby the Grand Valley Canal snaked past a cherry orchard, a small vineyard, and farms growing melons and hay.

The first summer there, Winna explored the remains of old orchards growing in unexpected places: a row of pear trees along the lane, apricot trees beside the ditch bank, a wild pear thicket in the field to the west, and gnarled old apple trees in two spotty rows just below the rise of the hill. Even though no one pruned or sprayed the trees, there were plenty of only slightly wormy apples to eat—the apricots were spotless, perfect. In spring, the fruit trees blossomed pink and white all across the land and in summer the girls climbed them.

When the apricots were sweet and juicy, the rosy color of the setting sun, Winna climbed one of the large trees growing over the irrigation ditch. Chloe followed, and like hungry birds, they rested high in the tree and ate their fill. From the treetop Winna could look over the tall privet hedge to the house and beyond to Pinyon Mesa bathed in red sunlight and blue shadows.

Out of the corner of her eye, Winna saw Chloe slip, then fall, letting out a little yelp as her body crashed through leaves and branches. She landed face-up in the shallow ditch below. On her way into the water, she hit her head on the plank they used as a footbridge. From the top of the tree, Winna could see her lying under water, her eyes closed, her arms at her sides in the ditch as narrow as a coffin. Her blonde hair looked like seaweed as it floated with the current away from her peaceful face. Winna screamed for their mother to come.

The tree rained apricots as she raced from limb to limb down to the ground. Reaching the ditch bank, Winna grabbed her sister by one arm, pulled her to a sitting position, and dragged her up through the weeds into her arms. She watched Chloe struggle to catch her breath and cough up water from her lungs. By the time Nora got down the hill, Chloe was crying and Winna had stopped shaking.

Dr. Sloane drove out from town to examine Chloe. They had had a scare but Chloe would be fine. Winna felt proud that she had been swift and strong enough to pull her little sister out of the water in time.

This was not the first time Chloe had taken a dangerous dive. After seeing
Peter Pan
, she must have thought she could fly. Without the benefit of pixie dust, she jumped off the second story porch and got the wind knocked out of her for a frightening few minutes. In time, Chloe learned to climb down the chimney at night and escape undetected. She showed Winna how to do it, but Winna wasn't that brave.

When she was six, Chloe wanted to be a boy. Her father's and grandfather's frequent mention of their bad luck—the absence of a male heir—must have inspired her. That summer she got hold of Nora's sewing shears and chopped off her hair.

Nora took one look at her nearly scalped child and dragged a stool outside on the lawn, draped a towel around Chloe's neck, and with a lot of advice from Winna, recut her hair. When she had done her best to smooth out the rough spots, she stood back for a look.

“It looks better,” she sighed.

“Do I still look like a girl?” Chloe asked, squinting back the bright sunshine.

Winna thought her sister was hopeless.

Chloe's favorite outfit was a pair of jeans, a white shirt, her fancy red cowboy boots, and a kid-sized Stetson. Before Nora took her daughters into town to shop or to the picture show, Winna bathed and slipped into a dress, but Chloe refused. Nora would give in and let her youngest daughter wear jeans on the streets of downtown Grand Junction.

Winna was horrified. “I'm not going to walk anywhere near her in public.”

That fall Chloe would enter first grade. But all summer long she went around shirtless like the boys, walking with a swagger, talking out of the side of her mouth like the toughs she'd imagined or seen in the movies. She would not answer to her name. Everyone had to call her Bill.

“Do something about Chloe,” Winna begged, but her mother ignored her.

On Labor Day weekend, Chloe showed up in the shallow end at Moyer swimming pool wearing boys' swim trunks. Winna watched all the kids tease her.

“Look at Chloe. She's dressed like a boy!”

“Your titties are showing! Your titties are showing!”

She knew her little sister hated a teasing even more than she hated being a girl.

Trying to save face, Chloe pulled up nose-to-nose to one of her tormentors and yelled, “I can swim and you can't.”

“Liar! You can't swim!” he taunted.

“Yes, I can,” she yelled. She had sounded so positive that she must have believed it herself. “I'll show you,” she said, climbing out of the pool and marching herself down to the deep end.

Winna ran after her. She knew her sister well enough to know that she had convinced herself that if she really wanted to swim, she could. Winna was too late. Chloe had jumped in and sunk to the bottom. When she came up flailing and gasping for air, the lifeguard dove in and saved her.

Nora was ready to dry off her daughters and take them home. As the sisters climbed into the car, Chloe burst into tears. “I don't like girls' swimsuits.”

It was easy for Winna to see her mother's heartbreak. Sheltering her nonconformist daughter in her arms, she whispered, “Don't cry, Chloe. Don't cry.”

Winna leaned over the back seat to pet her.

“You don't have to wear dresses unless you want to,” Nora said, kissing her on the forehead as Winna prepared to contradict.

“Of course she has to wear dresses.”

“At school,” Chloe cried, hanging her head in shame. “The kids will tease me if I don't—I have to wear dresses to school—I do,” she sobbed.

“Yes,” Winna said. “They won't let you in.” Hoping to comfort and at the same time convert her, she said, “It's not so bad. You look pretty in a dress, and Mother will buy you new dresses for school. Won't you, Mother?”

Chloe rubbed the tears off her cheeks. Though she looked defeated, she sat up straight and, with the shaky voice of a soldier accepting a dangerous mission, said, “Let's go shopping for girls' shoes.”

WHILE CHLOE WAS trying to fly, Winna was busy building an altar in her room. She had been converted to Catholicism by the film
The Bells of Saint Mary's
, starring Bing Crosby as a priest and Ingrid Bergman as a teaching nun.

Winna had seen nuns on the streets of Grand Junction, sweeping down sidewalks in black habits, their faces washed clean of make-up. She had stared in fascination. Then came the questions. No, they don't get married. Yes, they shave their heads. Some said that they were stern, even mean to children. But Bergman floated in her long black habit, the white of her headdress framing her beautiful face, her eyes glowing with love. Her saintly character lived in service to the children of the convent school.

After seeing the movie, Winna decided she wanted to be a nun. She cleaned up her room and moved the furniture. She added an altar—a large box lovingly draped with one of her mother's bridge cloths—and adorned it with a candle and flowers. She cut the oval picture of the Good Shepherd Christ from a Congregational Sunday school certificate, and placed him at the center, leaning against the vase.

Alone in her room, she would light the candle and kneel. Breathing in the scent of the match, the burning wick, and wax, she pressed her hands flat against one another under her chin, just like Ingrid Bergman. She closed her eyes and prayed, “Our Father, who art in heaven, hallowed be thy name…,” just like Ingrid Bergman.

Winna was convinced that God liked her so much better that way—like the nun in the movie. After she said “Amen,” she gazed at the picture of the Gentle Shepherd and he gazed lovingly back at her. His peaceful blue eyes filled her with a longing she did not understand. She wished she could crawl into his arms and rest her head on his shoulder.