The House on Seventh Street (17 page)

BEFORE THEY
REACHED
the house on Seventh Street, Isabelle had dissolved into tears and Emily was agitated. Wondering how a strapped-in mother—or grandmother—is supposed to come to the aid of an infant she cannot reach, Winna said, “We didn't have these contraptions when you were little—no seatbelts and no baby seat traps. How in hell are you supposed to get to a kid you can't even see?”

“You are supposed to pay attention to your driving,” Emily groaned.

“Honey, if you pull over I'll—”

Emily raised her voice a notch higher and stepped on the gas. “We're almost there.” She raced down Seventh Street. After several blocks, she turned on Chipeta, pulled into the drive, and brought her van to a stop by the kitchen door. Winna got out and gathered the weeping Isabelle into her arms. She did her best to nuzzle her into a smile as Emily headed for the door.

“Wait, honey, I locked it,” Winna called.

Emily had already turned the knob. The door opened. “You must have forgotten,” she said.

“What the hell,” Emily cried, stepping into the kitchen. “My God, there's glass all over the floor!” Someone had broken the window in the door, reached in, and turned the knob.

“Emily, get out of that house right now!” Winna yelled.

“No one's here,” she called from somewhere beyond the kitchen. “It's a huge mess.”

Wailing baby in arms, Winna stepped inside. Every drawer and cupboard in the kitchen had been emptied onto the floor. She could hear Emily calling to her from the front of the house.

“They've searched everything—what a disaster.”

Winna headed for the living room arriving in time to see her daughter disappear into the library. The room was a shambles. In the parlor, the sofa was turned upside down with its dust cloth ripped away, drawers had been emptied, and the old rug was thrown back at the corners. It looked like a cyclone had blown through the room.

THE POLICE, JOHN, and Chloe arrived soon after Winna called them. A tour of the whole house revealed that only one room upstairs had been searched—Winna's bedroom. Someone had tried to dig up the cellar floor. The police believed that Winna had not been gone long enough for all the damage to have taken place that morning. They surmised that the basement may have been dug up at any time. Winna hadn't been down there since John looked at the furnace for her, even before she had seen the light in the attic.

At first inventory, a number of things were missing from the house: a small diamond and pearl sunburst, a diamond lavaliere, and a pair of zircon earrings, all from Juliana's jewelry box. A small silk prayer rug was missing from the library, two large Chinese vases and several pieces of sculpture had been removed from the library and parlor. The police stayed for an hour, dusting for prints, making a list of the stolen property, asking questions.

“Mrs. Jessup?” The officer in charge wanted Winna's attention. “According to my information, this is the second break-in this week.”

“Yes. Someone searched the attic—when was it? Friday night, I think,” Winna admitted, quite aware that she had not told Emily or Chloe about the first break-in. By the looks on their faces, Winna knew that she would soon face their questions.

The officer made notes on his clipboard, then looked up at Winna. “Mrs. Jessup, this house is a magnet for trouble. I'd suggest you install a security system or at the very least deadbolts on all the doors.”

As Chloe, Emily, and John wandered around aimlessly in the parlor looking stunned as they tried to restore order, Winna left for the kitchen to get the pitcher of iced tea waiting in the refrigerator. She returned with the tea tray and glasses and put them on the coffee table.

“Let's turn the sofa over so we can sit down,” Winna said.

“So, Mom, when were you planning to tell me about the first break-in?” Emily asked, grabbing one leg of the sofa and lifting with John. Have you told John about your brake failure?”

“I didn't want to worry you. I didn't want to worry him.”

“What brake failure?” John asked.

“Oh, I had trouble with my brakes on the way home from your house last night.”

Chloe was the first to sit down, her expression grim. “You didn't tell me either, Winna.” Suddenly, she jumped up from her seat, excited. “I'll bet they're looking for the jewels.”

“Chloe, the jewels are a fiction—wish fulfillment for our romantic grandmother,” Winna said.

“Whether or not they are,” Emily said, “the burglar may think it's a true story.”

“No one knows about Gramma's story except the family and John,” Winna said, growing tired of all the guessing.

“I told Juno and she said the jewels exist—they are real, Winna.”

“What!” Emily shrieked, looking as if she could strangle her aunt.

“No.” Chloe said, swift in her attempt to erase a wrong impression. “I didn't mean to imply that Juno told anyone or had anything to do with this. She wouldn't do that—this,” she said, indicating the mess.

“I can't believe you told her, Chloe. I know you trust her, but I can't say I do,” Winna said.

“Believe it or not, Winna, when I talk to Juno it's like talking to a priest.”

John looked at her through narrowing eyes. “What are you talking about?”

“Just that Juno says the jewels aren't in the house anymore.”

Long ago, Winna had learned to suspend her judgments when Chloe's sentences began with ‘Juno says,' but John looked at Chloe with growing alarm. “Who is Juno?” he asked.

“She's Chloe's astrologer.”

“She's psychic too,” Chloe added. “She says Dad hid the jewels in Unaweep Canyon—that's why he went there. She says the canyon is both a cursed and blessed place for our family—that we'll find the answer to our spiritual longing there—and we'll find the jewels.”

“Have you ever been to Unaweep Canyon?” Winna asked.

“No, but the Stream of Life is gathering there next month, and I'm going,” she said in a small voice, kicking off her sandals, tucking her bare feet underneath her.

“Wait till you see it. It's huge. We may find something spiritual there, but we'll never find something as small as jewelry.”

Chloe lifted her blonde mane off her neck and looked hard at Winna. “Juno says they belong to us and finding them will break the curse that's been on this family.”

“I don't think there's a curse on the family,” Winna said. “What makes Juno think our family is cursed?” Winna's anger was obvious. She wanted an answer.

“Anyone with any sensitivity or spiritual awareness would come to that conclusion. Look at how stunted they all were. Dad was a momma's boy, his father was a wimp—his mother was a controlling witch. None of them knew how to love.”

“The family wasn't any screwier than anyone else's family,” Winna said as a powerful hot flash almost flattened her.

“Of course it was,” Chloe insisted.

“Chloe, I suppose you think the last of the screwy people died with your father's generation,” Emily jabbed.

“Well, Winna is a bit of an eccentric,” Chloe said, trying to make light of it.

“Just Winna?”

Chloe looked like she knew she was in over her head. “We're getting nowhere here. Juno says the curse goes way back to—” She threw up her hands, jumped up from the sofa, and began to pace.

“You don't want to know the truth, Winna, so I'll save it. Juno says we should look under an ancient juniper tree. The jewels were buried under a pile of seven stones—probably very near the place where Dad died. She said we would find them in the last light of the setting sun.”

“Facing west,” Emily said. “What a pretty story. So all we have to do is comb around every juniper in the last light of the setting sun—near the place where Poppa died?”

Looking self-conscious, Chloe said, “It would take time.” She paused, her face colored as she looked her niece in the eye. “I'm feeling very judged by all of you right now. Emily, a closed mind is a very dangerous thing in someone so young. You are just like your mother.”

“The trouble with your open mind, auntie dear, is that Juno insists on putting
her
thoughts there,” Emily said.

John had been quiet throughout the whole conversation. “Listen,” he said. “You all have enough problems without making new ones for yourselves. I'd suggest you put away the pistols.”

“Right,” Winna said. “Now, how about we all agree that it's okay to disagree and still be friends.”

Everyone looked at her like she was a dreamer. Winna left the room.

AFTER CHLOE SAID she felt outnumbered and left, John repaired the broken window. He and Emily insisted that Winna should not stay in the house alone and Winna insisted she should.

“I won't be driven out by some jerk,” she said.

John found an iron bolt in the basement and put it on her bedroom door. Everyone seemed satisfied with that. John left and Emily drove her mother to pick up the car. All the way there, Winna fumed about Chloe.

“It upset me that she told Juno about Juliana's story,” Emily said.

“Me too, but I should have known because Chloe tells Juno everything. It was her remark about a curse on our family and my closed mind that really angered me. I'm sick of hearing her say that—she's been telling me that since before she was old enough to know what a closed mind is. This business about a family curse—what rubbish. Why is she so eager to believe everything Juno tells her?”

“I think that's obvious,” Emily said.

“Not to me. Am I in some kind of denial? Younger generations always find the older odd. Chloe doesn't know how odd she is—jewels hidden in the canyon.”

“Someday I hope to be able to take Chloe's side,” Emily said, “but not today.” She pulled up in front of J & B Auto Repair.

Winna got out. “Thanks, honey, I don't know what I'd do without you.”

Emily blew her a kiss. “See you Wednesday morning.”

Exhausted, worried, angry, and in a mood to strangle her sister, Winna walked to the auto shop office. After her conversation with Emily that morning and the second break-in at the house, she had questions for the mechanic who had fixed her car.

The young man at the desk greeted her, “Good afternoon, Miss.”

Winna bristled at being called “miss” and wished she had the courage to point at her gray hair and say, “Please call me Ma'am.” Instead, she said, “I'd like to speak to the mechanic who fixed my brakes this morning.”

“What's your name?”

“Edwina Jessup—Mrs. Jessup.”

“No problemo, Miss.” He looked through some invoices, stepped to the door connected to the garage, and yelled, “Charlie. Front desk.”

Obviously finished for the day, Charlie, a man about Winna's age, arrived in his greasy work clothes with a bottle of beer in hand. He was shown the invoice and asked if he remembered the car.

“Yes, Ma'am,” he said. “There was a crack in the brake fluid reservoir and the fluid was gone. We replaced the reservoir.”

“What caused the crack in the reservoir? Does that happen very often?”

“No—almost never.”

Winna assumed the posture of a woman getting down to business. “Could someone have made the crack? What I'm asking is, if someone had wanted my brakes to fail, might they have done it that way?”

The two men looked at one another with raised eyebrows.

Charlie said, “Sure, they could. Look, Mrs. Jessup, if I was you, I'd talk to the police.”

SLOWLY, WINNA
DROVE HOME
, cautious at stop signs and the red light on North Avenue. The sun disappeared in roiling black and blue clouds. It looked like a storm was moving in from the northwest. Suddenly, the interior of her car looked shabby: the cracked leather seats, the worn windshield, the dashboard with pale Colorado dust burrowed deep into every crevice. The car had been a gift from Walt one Christmas morning before he began to fade away from her. She felt as if she had just woken up from a dream. Here she was in Colorado, sitting at the wheel of the car she now regarded as an old friend who had betrayed her. She was glad to pull into the drive and park alongside the kitchen door.

Winna unlocked the door and went inside, hurrying past the mess her thief had left behind in the kitchen. Moving quickly down the center hall, she realized that she had no idea where she was headed. She did not want to stay on the first floor. Did she want a bath? To change and go out to dinner? She couldn't cook in that kitchen. It didn't matter, she wasn't hungry.

Frightened, Winna stopped in her tracks. Her eyes moved to all the dark corners of the reception hall. Was she alone? Her feet glued to the floor, she looked past the hall through a wide archway toward the parlor feeling like she had crossed over the threshold into a different world. Scattered streams of sunlight coming through the storm clouds emanated from the old windows, etching everything with an eerie glow. Uncertain about exactly what was happening to her, Winna ran up the front stairs and into her room. She bolted the door and stood in the middle of the floor panting with terror.

WINNA WOKE TO early morning sun coming in through the windows like a spotlight on her face. She turned her head away and opened her eyes to tall windows filled with blue sky. Through the open door down the hall, she heard Isabelle babbling to herself in her crib. Winna knew that soon enough she'd have to get up with the family, but for now she would close her eyes again and try not to think about last night, her flight from the house on Seventh Street, her drive through a violent storm to Emily's house.

Mother and daughter sat up late with a bottle of wine and made plans for Winna's course of action. She would ask Seth to install a new kitchen door—one without a window. First, she'd have to shop for the door, then she was to call a locksmith and have the locks on all the doors changed again. She wasn't to give keys to anyone but Emily—not that she had anyway.

After breakfast outside on the deck with Isabelle and Emily, Winna said goodbye to the view and kissed her daughter and granddaughter. Hugh had left for work and she soon followed him down the mountain.

At Home Depot, she looked for a new door. It was hard. She was picky, but needed to take action. She didn't like the idea of no windows and compromised between a solid wall of door and a paneled door with a narrow light at the top. She would call Seth and have him pick it up. The door wouldn't match the rest of the woodwork. Winna would have to paint the kitchen—no big deal. She wanted to paint it anyway.

On her way back to the house, Winna pulled into the coffee shop where she and Emily had stopped the day before. She sat down in the same booth to collect her thoughts. Ordering coffee, she wondered if it was really only the day before yesterday that she had felt safe and relatively untroubled. The coffee came and she doctored it with cream and sugar. Sipping slowly, she made herself relax. Things looked much better by morning light.

All of a sudden, she felt a hand on her shoulder. Startled, she turned and looked up into Todd's smiling face. “Oh, my goodness,” she said. “Where did you come from?”

“The men's room,” he said, sliding into the booth.

“What a nice surprise. Have you just come in? Do you want coffee?” Trying to appear welcoming, Winna felt a bit shy, disappointed to have her solitude interrupted. She had never been alone with Todd before. Her sister had always been a buffer between them. Not that she needed a buffer.

Todd smiled again. “The answer is ‘yes' and ‘you betcha.'”

He ordered, and while his coffee and sweet roll were on their way, he opened the conversation. “Chloe told me about what happened over at the house yesterday. That must have been pretty damn awful—walking into the house and seeing all that. She was really upset last night.”

Winna took a sip of coffee and looked into Todd's sympathetic face. “We all were. I spent last night up at Emily's. Today I bought a new door—one without a window to smash.”

“Good idea,” he said.

“After someone had been in the attic, I was foolish to have that kind installed. All he had to do was break the window, reach in, and turn the damn button.”

Todd shook his head, almost as if he was going to scold her. “You should've told me 'bout it. What's a brother for?” He gave her a reassuring smile. “That's what I do—fix things—know what kind of door to put where.”

“Thanks, brother,” she said, patting the big hand resting on the table. “I've never had a brother before.”

“Well, Winnie girl, you got one now.”

Todd signaled the server for more coffee. It looked like he wanted to chat some more.

“Look here, big sis, I'm worried about Chloe. She thinks you and the family don't approve of her.”

“That's funny.” Winna tossed off a laugh. “I think she doesn't approve of me.”

“Sure she does,” he said. “She looks up to you.”

“She sure has a funny way of doing it.” Winna leaned back in her seat and sighed. “We are very different and we do appear odd to one another.”

“That don't mean you can't be best friends.”

“You know, Todd. That's exactly what I would like to happen. We were, once, and I miss that.”

AT HOME, WINNA called Seth. He said he would pick up the door and be over around noon. Seth had become one of her favorite people. He came to work almost every day. Lately, he had trimmed the hedges, pruned dead branches from the trees, and cleaned the garage. His truck made dozens of trips to the dump or the Salvation Army, and under her supervision, he had even begun to organize a yard sale.

Though she had not yet admitted it to anyone, she was beginning to make a case for keeping the house, doing things no one would do if they were planning to sell. Just last week she had handed Seth a jar of oil soap and asked him to clean the bookshelves in the library. With reasoning she had since forgotten, she dusted off the books Chloe had already packed into boxes and put them back where they belonged. Then, she called to have the furnace replaced.

Seth talked very little about himself, but through very carefully disguised cross-examination, Winna had learned something about her right-hand man. As it turned out, he was an ex-hippie. The two had laughed about their parallel experiences of protesting the Vietnam War and the civil rights marches they had helped populate. He had fled to Canada to avoid the draft and admitted he had not changed. He said he could tell Winna had turned a bit too conservative for his taste.

He had even opened up to Winna about his first wife—how they and their two children had lived on a commune in Canada. Winna could tell he was not eager to talk about why that marriage had failed, or the fact that he did not see his children. She was surprised to learn that his second marriage to Holly Gordon—a girl Winna had known in high school—had also ended in divorce.

He told her that his mother had died when he was a child. His father had owned a hardware store downtown that Winna vaguely remembered, but the store fell on hard times when Home Depot came to town and, within a very few years, they had to close.

At about noon Winna heard a knock on the door. She peeked through the lace and Seth gave her a wave. She opened the door and let him into the kitchen.

“Hi Seth, have you had lunch?”

He smiled, rubbing the invisible stubble that seemed to make his square jaw itch. “I haven't had breakfast.”

“That means you'd like two eggs sunny-side-up and bacon.”

“Right on,” he said, folding himself onto a kitchen chair. He looked at the empty drawers and cupboards and the debris all over the floor. “Holy shit, this place was trashed.”

“That and the door are your assignments for today.” Winna peeled off strips of cold bacon. “Some jerk paid me a visit.”

“What's missing?” He flipped the chair around and straddled its back between two long jean-clad legs. “Looks like they went through everything.”

“We can't be sure.” She headed toward the coffee pot. “Would you like some coffee?”

“Sure,” he said, dragging himself out of his chair. “I'll make it.”

“I hope they got what they were looking for.” Winna licked the spot where a piece of bacon spat hot grease on the back of her hand.

“What were they looking for?”

Cautious with her reply, she said, “Actually, we may never know because I haven't made an inventory yet.”

“Shouldn't you do that? I'll help you. What does John think about this?”

“John?”

“Your boyfriend,” he said, smiling, reaching into the cupboard.

“So now he's my boyfriend?”

Seth laughed. “He's an old flame still flickering—the lucky shit,” he said, pouring two cups of coffee.

“Why, Seth Armstrong Taylor, is that a compliment?”

“You know, Winna,” he said, changing the subject, “I've been thinking about some of the things I'd like to see you do around here. This place could be restored—back to its heyday.”

“Maybe that's a job for the person who buys it,” she said, lifting crisp bacon out of the frying pan and patting it dry between paper towels. “This morning I think I hate this place.” She poured off the grease and wiped the iron skillet. “What's on your mind? You have no shortage of good taste.”

He had returned to his chair and sipped thoughtfully from his cup. Winna knew he wanted a cigarette, but she didn't allow smoking in the house.

“Are there any old plans for the rose garden?”

“I don't know,” she said, breaking three eggs into melted butter. “To tell the truth, I don't know half of what's in this house. The whole thing has overwhelmed me—I've moved so god-awful slowly and now this.” She pointed the butter knife at the littered floor. “I've been stopped dead in my tracks.”

Seth looked at her and nodded, but said nothing.

Trying to pull herself into a better mood, she heaved a sigh. “But I remember the rose garden,” she said, buttering his toast. “I spent lots of time there as a child and remember the layout.”

“Bet you don't remember which roses your grandma grew.”

“No, but I wouldn't put it past her to have saved all the sales slips.” She handed him his plate. “That woman kept everything.”

“I hope so,” Seth said, digging in. “We could recreate it—that would be cool. We should set up an office—for planning—with enough space to organize papers into files.”

Winna sat down beside him. “Sounds efficient—none of the papers are organized under any system from what I can make out. As for the rose garden, we could replant using hybrids developed before 1960—I don't think Gramma did much gardening at the end of her life.”

He wiped his toast through spilled yolk. “The house is Victorian—so you could use the Victorians' favorite roses.”

“It's Edwardian, really,” she said. “You know what I really need is a darkroom—a place to work. I've been thinking about turning the old servants' quarters upstairs into an office and darkroom. I'm not ready to go completely digital yet—may never be.”

“I was up there poking around the other day,” he said. “Those are great rooms. We could block off the window in that large bathroom. You need water in a darkroom, don't you?”

Winna sighed. “But none of that matters unless I decide to stay.”

He looked deflated. “Hell, there's lots of folks who hope you'll stay, Winna.”

“That's a nice thing to say, Seth.” She got up from the table. “I'm just going to ignore these dishes for now. Would you like to see the work our burglar left for you?”