ch 1

If I were going to write a novel, it would begin like this.

I began my first venture into real estate — that is, into buying property myself — the way I began most things back then: haphazardly and with little thought, to quote my parents.

I’d been sent out east by The Family to “take care of things” after my great-aunt passed away. She was the only one of us who had ever really lived in the east — we were strong Texans with little desire to be associated with the rest of the nation more than casually — but someone needed to sort through her house and all of her possessions before we could have the estate sale.

I didn’t know much about estates and that sort of thing back then, but The Family was confident that my great-aunt’s very expensive estate lawyers were also very good. Left with no room for argument, and having no younger relatives to pass the job to, I flew east.

Ben Ferris was one of the very expensive, very good lawyers in charge of my great-aunt’s estate, and as the days passed he became something of a friend. My first orders of business almost all pertained to legality — going over forms, procedures, and the like — and so I spent most of my time in the firm’s office with Ben and Yvonne, who was either Ben’s assistant or a fellow lawyer, but I could not tell and could not think of a tactful way to ask.

Ben was married to Caroline, a girl from California who had come to New England for school and stayed on for love. Their son Trevor was two, loved toasters and trucks, and said all kinds of precocious things; their daughter Mariah was eight months, liked naps, and said very little in the way of actual words. I didn’t know any of that first-hand, though, because despite Ben’s numerous invitations to their place for dinner (I think he and Caroline feared I would get lonely in this new world), I never quite made it. I appreciated the invitations, though, appreciated the clarity he brought to the estate affairs and the immeasurable amount of help he rendered me.

Soon enough, the forms and documents were filed, the paperwork was on the right track, and it was time to actually go to my great-aunt’s house and begin putting things in order. I had stopped by a few times, but I had repeatedly postponed beginning any actual work there. It seemed to be an impossible and overwhelming task in every way, but The Family began asking incessantly about my progress, and I was running out of excuses for not making any.

One Saturday morning, a few days after I had begun working at my great-aunt’s, I got a voicemail from Ben.

“Hey, it’s Ben. Listen, Caroline and I were thinking: since it’s been so hard to get you over to our place, we’d like to bring lunch by to you today at the estate. The weather’s gorgeous, and we’d all love a change of scene. Also, it’d give us a chance to get to know you better.”

“Tell her I’m dying to meet her,” insisted a female voice in the background.

“Caroline’s dying to meet you,” Ben repeated, and then was interrupted by a shrill, “Me too, Daddy! I’m dine toomeeder too.” “And so is Trevor,” Ben laughed. “Anyway give us a call; we’re planning on it though, so it’ll be hard to back out now!” He ended with his characteristic laugh, mimicked immediately by Trevor.

It was the happiest voicemail message I’d gotten in over a week. Most of the calls I’d missed — deliberately or otherwise — were from my grandmother or my parents, and even their kinder messages weren’t what I can conscionably call happy. They wanted updates, they sent reminders, and they called every time they remembered any little detail that they felt might be useful to know. Ben’s message – with the charming interruptions from Caroline and Trevor – were just what I had needed that morning. I called them back almost immediately.

“I’d love to see you guys,” I said. “It’d be great to have you come. And the back garden is really pleasant in the afternoon sun.”

“Great! Caroline said she’d love to help you work, too, if you want; I’ve been assigned to babysitting duty if you need her.”

“Oh! No! Really, thank you – but it’ll be nice to take a break from the work.”

“Well, we’ll head down there about 1-ish; is that okay? Not too late?”

I glanced at my watch. It was just after 9:00. “Perfect. See you then.”

I finished my morning routine, and made my way over to the estate. The amount of work still remaining seemed less threatening already. Truth be told, though, it was an enormous amount of work. My great-aunt’s house was a crammed, settled old place, accented by an unthreatening sense of loss, and full of character and stories. But it was also full of stuff. There were trunks and wardrobes in every room, each packed with clothing or photographs and papers and moth balls; in rooms she had been too ill to maintain, the antique furniture was now upholstered in dust; and there was an army of relics of every size, shape and nature, camouflaged throughout the house. The house was, in it’s own quirky way, quite a story, but believe me when I say, there is only so much of that sort of thing a person can handle. (In memory of that summer, I have kept my own estate small, and when I pass on, no unfortunate relatives need spend their vacation pulling apart lint balls to discover taxidermy kittens.)

My progress was interrupted by another call from Ben an hour or two later. His brother had just driven into town from the city, and they wanted to know if they could bring him along. I tried to tell Ben that we could reschedule; I certainly didn’t want to interfere with a family visit, but Ben was unconcerned. Apparently, Devon often came into town for a visit, and he seemed happy with the prospect of a new activity. “Anything but another Bob the Builder video with Trevor,” Ben laughed.

They all came promptly at one, as promised, bearing picnic baskets with chicken salad, bread, cheeses, an assortment of fresh fruit, drinks, and a pie. Caroline claimed to have made the pie herself, but it was her first attempt ever, and I was to bear that in mind when eating it.

I liked Caroline at once; she was warm and friendly, introduced herself with grace, shifted the baby onto her other hip, and enclosed me in a hug. She chatted easily while removing something foreign from Trevor’s mouth, replacing it with a pacifier (“We’re still working on weaning him that from that,” she whispered apologetically), and kissing the top of his head. Her motions were seamless, as if choreographed, or at least practiced so frequently that they had become second nature. She brought a warmth out in Ben, who was always friendly, but still reserved, and the two of them left me feeling appreciated. They struck me as the kind of people who genuinely are interested in the people they meet, care about the things they say, and are thus immediately considered great friends. I felt as though I had known them my whole life.

And then there was Devon. He entered the house a few minutes behind Ben, Caroline and the children; they had driven the car up to the house to unload everyone, but it had to be parked a slight ways down, and he had offered to do as much. I must have been gawking when he approached me, because Caroline let out a bubbly laugh. She slapped him on the shoulder and turned to me, widening her eyes in mock wonder,

“Devilishly handsome, isn’t he?”

Devon rolled his eyes and smiled apologetically, and I shook the offered hand. But he was. Devilishly handsome, if such adjectives are still used. He and Ben looked alike – dark hair, dark eyes, the same proverbial chiseled jaw line — but Devon must have been the artist’s polished rendition. The final draft. The softness around Ben’s eyes and smile had been honed more angularly, in a statuesque way, in his brother. I was struck by all of this immediately, and within another instant, I realized there was something else familiar, and disquieting, in Devon’s face: it was oddly reminiscent of Patrick’s, my fiance back home.

Whereas Patrick was fair, Devon was dark; Devon was slender, and Patrick was broad; but there was something disturbingly similar in their faces. Patrick’s eyes were warmer than Devon’s, without a doubt — indeed, every so often I wondered if I had seen a flash of something harder, nearly unkind, in Devon’s eyes, but I dismissed the thought easily; it was a fleeting suspicion at best. Otherwise, the resemblance — though even calling it that would be a stretch – was uncanny, and left me feeling no small measure of discomfort as the day progressed.

There is something about excessive beauty that has always made me feel uneasy. Smiling at a passerby on the street, for example, is a matter of little consequence, unless he or she is incredibly attractive; then I feel as if I were somehow both being deceived and deceiving at the same time. I had the same feeling around Devon; he was charismatic and a pleasure to talk with — again, a more-polished version of Ben — but I dared once or twice to wonder if I was being charmed into some strange scam, and my own willingness to be so charmed and scammed left me feeling as much a culprit as a victim. Of course, Devon’s inexplicable, though faint, resemblance to Patrick made the situation no less uncomfortable.

After lunch, my adamant refusals to do any more work on the house, and especially to let Caroline or Devon help me, were met with blatant disregard. Caroline was determined and excited to help go through a room or two of an old house; Devon was as willing, if perhaps not quite as eager, to cooperate. “Like Ben said,” he reminded me, “anything beats another Bob the Builder episode.”

Ben took the kids down to the back lawn, and the rest of us rolled up our sleeves and went inside.

“We love this kind of thing,” Caroline explained with a happy shrug, sitting down next to a dusty trunk. “It’s like a snapshot of someone else’s life – it always makes me wonder what mine will look like one day.”

Devon opened his mouth as if to give an irreverent reply, but Caroline silenced him with a laugh. “Don’t even start,” she warned.

It was that afternoon, cleaning out the largest bedroom with Devon and Caroline, that led to my previously-mentioned foray into real estate. In the course of pulling boxes out of one of the wardrobes, I came across a few old newspaper clippings of property listings, one of which grabbed my attention. It was a faded shot of a tired, old mansion, and the only information my great-aunt had clipped with the picture was the name of the realtors selling the house. I was fascinated: the house seemed faintly familiar in a way that I could not immediately understand, and it both puzzled and excited me.

I took the clippings and sat down, pausing to soak in the withered details of the house.

“What did you find?” Devon asked, squatting down next to me. I handed him the clipping. Caroline also came over.

“There’s something about it,” I said, shaking my head. “I can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s like I know this house somehow.”

I expected that it had been sold long ago — the clipping was yellowed and brittle — but I had a funny notion that maybe I could at least find out where it was, drive by and just look at it. Devon seemed to think that was a brilliant idea, and, armed with his encouragement, I called the realtors. As it turned out, they had not sold the place. In fact, from what I gathered (though they wouldn’t say as much), they had all but given up hope on ever selling it; I made an appointment to see it a few hours later.

Caroline and Devon both wanted to come along — we were all intrigued — but Caroline had to take the kids home for naps. “But I want to hear every detail when you get back,” she begged. “I mean, I want to know everything. Devon, don’t let her forget to call me!”

Devon gave a scout’s honor sign, which elicited a chortle and snort from Caroline and a sheepish grin from Devon. Once Ben, Caroline, and the children were all packed up, Devon and I also packed up and drove to meet the realtors at the property.

The house sat on the banks of the Sound, on one of two identical peninsulas that lay quite a ways out from where we had been. It was a colossal affair by any standard, but in a wretched state. The realtors, eager and obsequious, assured me that it was a factual imitation of the Hôtel de Ville in Normandy, and they pointed out all its withered virtues: a tower on one side (exhausted and disinterested under a withered beard of what might once have been ivy), and a marble swimming pool (“It might need some work,” the realtors admitted reluctantly), and more than forty acres of lawn and garden. Garden was a stretch, of course, but something alive had been there once. The whole place was decrepit and abandoned now, but…

“There’s something almost enchanting about it,” I whispered to Devon.

“As if it was waiting to be much better than this,” he supplied.

“Yes!” I exclaimed, feeling that he had hit the point exactly. “I feel as though I know this house, as though I had seen it before, but in its better days.” Which was ridiculous, of course, because I wasn’t from that part of the country, and “it’s better days” had probably been before I was born.

“It’s just in such bad shape,” I sighed, surveying the place again.

“But just imagine it,” Devon prodded. He began to describe the house in all its glory. I could never remember what words he used, or even much of what he specifically described, but his imagination was contagious and ignited mine in an instant. Perhaps he suggested a new coat of paint and fresh siding, the woodwork refinished, the marble statues replaced, the garden alive again, and twinkle lights strung across reborn trees. Whatever it was, I felt as though he had read my mind, and we had stumbled upon the raw materials to build a dream. In an instant, standing there, absorbing the scene, I realized this was my dream; this was my house.

Well, it wasn’t quite yet, but it would be. Prompted by Devon’s encouragement, and promises to help me restore it, I made an offer that afternoon.

* * *

Perhaps it goes without saying, but The Family was not as pleased with my purchase as I was. I had expected and feared exactly that sort of reaction, and in the end, it took me several weeks before I forced myself to break the news to them. We had some money in those days, and the price had been almost too good to be true; no one faulted me for that much, at least. But there were larger investments involved, time and energy namely, and I was not known in my younger days for my tenacity or diligence. “And you don’t even know anything about restoring property,” my mother added. As if, even if I could summon the work ethic to redeem my purchase, I still was ill-equipped for the job. I tried to correct her, to remind her that I had single-handedly sanded and stained all the banisters in my grandmother’s house when I was fifteen, but it sounded pathetic, and I left the feat unclaimed.

“You could have just kept your great-aunt’s place if you wanted to live out there so badly.” My father was the most offended. Not because I had bought property without consulting him, not because said property was (of course) a bad piece of property to buy, and not because I lacked enough perseverance to turn the venture into a good one, but because I was going to leave home, leave The Family; it was nearly too much to be borne.

But I was resolute. I have mentioned that I was considered to be rather haphazard and thoughtless, but generally the bad decisions that issued from those traits were pardoned because I was easily set back on the right path given the right amount of persuasion. The Family was particularly adept at exploiting this weakness of mine, and when they found themselves unable to change my mind this time, I think a general sense of confusion trumped any defeat or anxiety they may have felt.

After all of their predictions of failure and ruin – such things as must inevitably befall those who do not heed sagacious and unending advice – my grandmother turned the attention to the practical side of things. If I had such a big house in the east, and my great-aunt’s house was also in the east, it only made sense that any items they did not wish to sell with the estate would be stored in my new house.

In theory, I was amenable to such a plan. The fact was, however, that I had gotten completely side-tracked by my house. Since the day I had bought it, I had all but stopped working at my great-aunt’s, and there were countless things still to be done. I had no idea about which items should be kept or sold, if certain items that The Family recalled were among the possessions, the estimated value of things, and so forth. I was scheduled to remain in the east for the remainder of the summer, though, and after speaking with The Family, I resolved to do my duty better and put my dreams for my own property on hold until my great-aunt’s had been cared for properly.

At first, I managed to dutifully spend most of my time at my great-aunt’s, but my mind was elsewhere, utterly enchanted by the mansion I had bought. Gradually, I found myself more and more drawn away by the dreams and plans I had for my own place.  I suppose I have always been something of a dreamer, and the house drew every fantasy out of me. It was my fairy-land, and when I imagined it, I never saw its condition: I always saw it as it had been and how it would be again. It was so big and so empty, with so much potential, and Devon’s descriptions of it haunted me. He had returned to the city, with promises to visit again to help begin repairs and renovations, and in the meantime, I revised idea after idea for the house’s rebirth.

There was a rickety old dock that waded timidly from the shore into the water, and facing out from the dock you could see other homes on the opposite peninsula and their docks and gardens, but I spent most of my time there facing in, facing the house itself. I liked to sit at the edge of the dock, gazing at the house from just enough of a distance to see it all at once; or I would walk around and around the whole place, dreaming in panorama.

The veranda was particularly magnificent, or rather, it must have been once. I envisioned it incessantly, restored to its former glory, decked in twinkle lights and Japanese lanterns, bubbling over with sparkling people, their laughter, and light music. I dreamed of the room that must once have been the library, high-ceilinged in a Gothic way, panelled once again in rich oak, lined with every book a person could want to read and a rolling ladder that slid along the walls from ceiling to floor. I could almost feel the plushness of the furniture that must be in the center of the room, warmed by a cozy fire in the stone fireplace. The marble entryway, shined and buffed, the walls painted in rich tones with various pieces of art – Ansel Adams, perhaps, or Whistler – greeting visitors as they arrived. And the bedrooms – boudoirs and dressing rooms and an entire closet just for shoes – they were painted in every color: some in rich masculine tones, others in sweet pastels or bright, living hues. The marble stairs and salon were lined with rugs in winter, but uncovered in the summer, cool against the bare feet of a hundred dancing guests.

No matter how early in the day I arrived at my house, it was always twilight before I could tear myself away. Even then, I would have liked to stay longer, basking in the seductive ambiance, but there were no lights in or around the house yet, and the place was transformed by the dark. Once, I had stayed past sunset, entranced, and found myself brought back to earth by an unsettling, abstract fear. There was something frightening about the vacancy, the shadows, and the echoes and lights from across the Sound — green dock lights staring apathetically, and garden lights bobbing carelessly in the night wind; it was haunting, striking in the same odd, familiar way that I had noticed when I first saw the clipped picture of the house.

continue to chapter 2

(c) 2008. anothernicole.