you from around here?”
“No. New York.” I didn’t mention that I used to be from around here, that I used to live in this house. For now, I wanted to keep my memories to myself. It had been so long since I let them in.
“Let’s start the tour over here.” Jan led the way to the right, past open pocket doors and into the library.
The inlaid mahogany bookshelves were still in place, as were the Tiffany lamps, permanently installed at the top of each shelf. At the end of the room was a huge pink marble fireplace that my dad used to call the “bordello fireplace.” It was so tall that I used to be able to walk directly into it without ducking. As I walked toward it now, I realized that I was a long way from that little girl. At five foot six, I could easily reach the mantel.
I took in the whole room, vaguely aware of Jan’s talk about how the house had been completed for the Marker family in 1905, how craftsmen had needed the previous six years to complete it. Like the entryway, the library appeared much darker than I remembered, probably because it was now adorned with period furnishings from the early 1900s to make it look as it did back then—heavy red velvet drapes, brass candelabras, uncomfortable-looking high-back chairs. But I saw it as my mother had decorated it—with soft, stuffed chairs and ottomans, vases of fresh flowers, and the corner that was saved just for me, complete with a small child’s chair, the replica of the larger ones, and my own miniature bookcases.
“How do you like it?” I heard Jan ask.
“Oh, it’s lovely. I was just imagining what it would have been like to live here.”
“Well, when the Markers were here, they had a full staff of servants to carry out their every whim, and they entertained often. The Markers were famous for their balls and their travels.”
And what about the Sutter family? I wanted to ask. What were they famous for? Does anyone remember them?
Next, Jan led me to a large drawing room on the other side of the hallway. I listened to her speech about the oil paintings and the marble sculptures, because the room held few memories for me. I couldn’t recall my family spending much time there.
But no, that wasn’t quite right. A recollection came to me of my brother, Dan, seventeen years old when I was only seven, hunched over a scarred octagonal table, his straight blond hair falling over his forehead, writing furiously in his notebook, filling it with his stories. He’d used the room as an escape from the rest of the family, his teenage years making him crave privacy.
“Let’s go upstairs now,” Jan said.
I followed her back through the lobby and up the wide, dark wood stairway that was covered with a wine-colored carpet runner.
“You’ll notice the tapestry on the landing here,” Jan said, pausing, one hand resting on a carved wood globe that formed the top of the banister. Her other hand pointed to a silk wall-hanging in colors of gray and salmon. She described how the tapestry had been hand-woven in Italy, how the artist had visited the Markers. But I had quit listening.
I had returned to a moment that had lain buried until now. I saw my mother standing at the bottom of those stairs, dressed in a powder-blue suit, her feet in high heels I’d never seen before. She moved to the front door and opened it. She spoke to someone, their voices hushed, one voice much deeper than the other. A hand was on her blue shoulder. A large man’s hand. A ring on his finger. The soft sounds of crying. Then my mother swayed, nearly fell.
I had watched this scene, I realized, from the landing where I now stood. I’d been dressed in my favorite pair of jeans and the shirt with the sunflower on the front, my face peering around the post at the top of the landing.
“Are you all right?”
I focused on Jan’s face, her eyes wary. “Sure, sure. I’m fine.” I looked back down the staircase again, but the vision was gone.
“Well, come on up this way. I’ll show you the bedrooms.”
I followed Jan again, surprised at the sudden, vivid flash of my mother. It had been ages since I’d really remembered her in any detail. There were the vague recollections, like how she ran every night, even if it was raining, sometimes coming in the house with her long hair dripping in sheets, her chest heaving as if she’d been chased and not out for a leisurely jog, and later the feel of that hair sweeping my cheek as she leaned over me, kissing me good-night, the smell of lavender on her skin.
“This bedroom belonged to Catherine, the Markers’ only daughter,” Jan said, leading me to the first bedroom at the top of the stairs.
I remembered it well. It used to be mine.
The walls were still painted peach, the fireplace still white, and a canopy bed still stood in the corner. The bed, though, which was made of dark wood, its canopy designed with heavy velvet, was different from the one I loved so much. Mine was white with an eyelet covering. Seeing the bed and the room brought back another flood of memories: myself in the bed, quilt up to my neck, reading until my mother insisted that the lights be turned off; my friend, Patsy, and I playing in front of the fireplace that was never lit; Caroline helping me with my homework at the desk against the wall.
How odd, I thought, that so few of those memories included my dad. But maybe it wasn’t so strange, since he’d spent most of his weekdays working in Chicago and most of the weeknights at his apartment there. And yet, my memories after Woodland Dunes are exclusively of my father and me. No one else.
Jan showed me through three other bedrooms, two of which had been occupied twenty years ago by my siblings. She stopped in the hallway before the master bedroom and pointed out an intercom system that had been installed by the Markers in order to talk to their servants.
“The intercom hasn’t worked in a long time,” Jan said. “At least not since the cultural center moved in here.”
“And when was that?”
“The early eighties.”
“Really?” The early eighties were when my family moved away from Woodland Dunes. “Why did the town want this specific house?”
“Well, I don’t know that they actually wanted this particular home, but from what I heard, they got it at a great price. The people who’d lived here before couldn’t sell it.”
“Why was that?”
Jan made a show of looking around, even though there was no one else near us. “We’re not supposed to talk about this,” she said in a conspiratorial whisper, “but a lady died here.”
I was quiet. I felt as if I was holding my breath and didn’t know how to let it out. I’d never known where my mom was when she died or exactly how it had happened. I was only seven at the time, and I didn’t remember anything—nothing at all—which had always troubled me. And yet my father and I rarely talked about the subject. When we did, or I should say when I did, it was too painful for him. She became ill, he would say, tapping his head as if to indicate some injury or disease in the brain. His eyes would cloud over, making me fearful he might cry. I knew I looked like her in some ways—my slim build, my wide shoulders, my long sandy hair. I always assumed that resemblance, combined with the horrible memories, made it too painful for him to talk about her death. And so I never stayed on the topic for long. What difference did it make, really? Eventually, I managed to ignore the issue altogether. But that letter had let loose the wonderings again.
