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“I’m in no hurry. Dick Parsons said you’d probably want to look at the house?”
“It’ll help when we’re thinking about setting a price. If you want to make an appointment? Or I can drive out today—”
“Today is fine. I have to stop by Mr. Parsons’ office and pick up the keys, but you can come by later if you like.”
“If that’s all right.” He looked at his watch. “Around three?” Sure.
“I’m sorry about your grandmother, Miss Simmons. I handle a lot of those houses up the Post Road, so I had the occasion to meet her once or twice. She was a unique woman.”
Catherine smiled. “I don’t imagine she had much patience with real estate agents.”
“Not too damn much patience at all,” Doug Archer said.
Catherine picked up the keys, signed papers, said another round of thanks, then braced herself for the drive to Gram Peggy’s house.
The word “holiday,” in Catherine’s memory, was associated with this road. When she was little they would drive down from Bellingham in her father’s station wagon, circle through Belltower to the bottom of the Post Road hill, then up a long corridor of fragrant pines to the door of Gram Peggy’s house. Gram Peggy who cooked wonderful meals, who said wonderful and irreverent things, and whose presence imposed a magical truce between Catherine’s mother and father. At Gram Peggy’s house, nobody was allowed to smoke and nobody was allowed to fight. “Everything else is permitted. But I will not have the house stinking of tobacco smoke and I will not allow bickering—both of which poison the air. Isn’t that right, Catherine?”
The Post Road hadn’t changed much. It was still this green, dark, faintly magical corridor—the highway and the malls might have been a thousand miles away. Houses on the Post Road were barely more than outposts in the wilderness, Catherine thought, set in their little plots of landscape, some grand and many humble, but always overshadowed by the lush Douglas firs.
Gram Peggy’s house, at the crest of the hill, was the only one of these homes with a view. The house was an old and grandly Victorian wood frame structure, two stories high with a gabled attic above that. Gram Peggy had always been meticulous about having it painted and touched up; otherwise, she said, the weeds would think they had an open invitation. The house had been built by Gram Peggy’s father, a piano maker, whom Catherine had never met. The idea of selling the property—of never coming back here—felt like the worst kind of sacrilege. But of course she’d be lost in it herself.
She parked and unlocked the big front door. For now, she left her paints and supplies in the trunk of the Civic. If she stayed for the summer—the idea was steadily more attractive —she could set up a studio in the su
But for now it was still Gram Peggy’s house, left untidied at the end of what must have been a tiring day. Crumbs on the kitchen counter, the ficus wilting in a dry pot. Catherine wandered aimlessly through some of these rooms, then dropped into the overstuffed sofa in front of the TV set. Gram Peggy’s TV Guide was splayed open on the side table —a week out of date.
Of course I’ll be here all summer, Catherine thought; it would take that long to sort out Gram Peggy’s possessions and arrange to have them sold. None of this had occurred to her. She had assumed, by some wordless logic, that Gram Peggy’s things would have vanished like Gram Peggy herself, into the urn now resting by the front door. But maybe this was where the real mourning started: the disposition of these letters, clocks, clothes, dentures—a last, brutal intimacy.
Catherine slipped off her shoes, reclined on the sofa, and napped until Doug Archer knocked at the door.
Before he left, Doug Archer said a strange thing.
His visit went well, otherwise. He was friendly and his interest seemed genuine, more than just businesslike. He asked about her work. Catherine was shy about her painting even though she had begun to earn some money through a couple of small Seattle galleries. She’d taken fine arts courses at college, but the work she produced was mainly intuitive, personal, meticulous. She worked with acrylics and sometimes with montage. Her subjects were usually small—a leaf, a water drop, a ladybug—but her canvases were large, impressionistic, and layered with bright acrylic washes. After her last show a Seattle newspaper critic said she “seemed to coax light out of paint,” which had pleased her. But she didn’t tell Archer that; only that she painted and that she was thinking of doing some work here during the summer. He said he’d love to see some of her work sometime. Catherine said she was flattered but there was nothing to show right now.
He was thorough about the house. He inspected the basement, the water heater and the furnace, the fuseboard and the window casements. Upstairs, he made a note about the oak floors and moldings. Lastly, he went outside and gazed up at the eaves. Catherine told him Gram Peggy had had the roof inspected every year.
She walked him to his car. “I suppose we’ll have to put it on the market pretty soon. I don’t even know what that involves. I guess people come to see it?”
“We don’t have to hurry. You must be upset by all this.”
“Dazed. I think I’m dazed.”
“Take as long as you need. Call me when you’re ready to talk about it.”
“I appreciate that,” Catherine said.
Archer put his hand on the door of the car, then seemed to hesitate. “Do you mind if I ask you something?”
“Shoot.”
“Did your grandmother ever talk much about her neighbors?”
“Not that I remember. I did meet Mrs. Horton from around the corner. Apparently they used to drive to the mall together.”
“How about the house down the other direction—the man who lived there? She ever mention him? This would have been ten or more years ago.”
“I don’t remember anything like that. Why?”
“No real reason.” Something personal, she guessed. He was obviously embarrassed to have asked. “Will you do me one favor, Catherine? If you notice anything strange happening, will you give me a call? My number’s on the card. You can reach me pretty much anytime.”
“What do you mean, anything strange?”
“Odd occurrences,” Archer said unhappily.
“Like what? Ghosts, flying saucers, that kind of thing? Is there a lot of that around here?” She couldn’t help smiling.
“Nothing like that. No, look, forget I asked, okay? It’s nothing important. Just kind of a hobby with me.”
He thanked her, she thanked him, he drove away. How odd, Catherine thought as his car vanished into the tree shadows along the Post Road. What an unusual man. What a strange thing to ask.
She didn’t think more about it. A bank of clouds moved in and a steady, sullen rain fell without interruption for most of a week. Catherine stayed in the house and began to itemize some of Gram Peggy’s possessions, room by room. It was depressing weather and depressing work. She felt lost in this big old house, but the rhythms of it—the ticking of the mantel clock and the morning and evening light through the high dusty windows—were familiar and in their own way reassuring.
Still, she was glad when the sun came out. After a couple of warm days the ground had dried and she was able to move around the big back lawn and some distance down a trail into the woods. She remembered taking some of these walks with Gram Peggy and how intimidating the forest had seemed— still seemed, in fact. There was enough red cedar behind the house to make her feel very small, as if she’d shrunk, Alice-style, to the size of a caterpillar. The trail was narrow, probably a deer trail; the forest was cool and silent.