Chapter Five #2
“What’s that thing?” I heard Flo ask as I inched my way through the furniture to examine the posts of the back porch. I pushed on them, wincing, half expecting the whole thing to come down on my head. But it seemed sturdy enough.
“What thing? Oh, that. It’s a wireless cabinet. A radio. I figure it’s from before the war.”
“What war?” Flo bounded over to examine the big walnut cupboard.
“The Second World War.” Jake watched her closely. “Pull open that front panel. Use the little brass tassel, that’s a handle,” Jake instructed. He stayed on the swing, swaying gently back and forth as he watched Flo open up the front of the cupboard.
“There’s a record player in here!” Flo was as delighted as she’d been with the mangle. “My dad has one of these. Only his is all flat and silver and I’m not supposed to touch it because once I did and I scratched a record. He said it was a collector’s item and couldn’t be replaced.”
Jake made a grumbling noise. “In my experience, most everything can be replaced. Except for people.”
The furniture stacked up on the porch was a mix of styles.
There were wicker chairs with faded green cushions that looked like they were from the 1960s or ’70s, and a big, overstuffed couch in motheaten velvet that looked much older; there were two pretty bentwood rocking chairs, their cane seats punctured, and a wooden cushioned sofa that looked like a church pew.
There was so much of it. Who needed this much furniture?
“What are all these knobs for?” Flo was playing with the dials on the old wireless radio. Distantly, I heard Jake trying to explain it to her as I ran my hand over a rolled-up rug, which sagged over a tapestry-upholstered armchair.
“Is the rest of the house like this too?” I blurted, cutting across their conversation.
Jake’s green-blue eyes met mine again. They were full of unsettled sympathy. And a dash of annoyance. Like he was irritated that I was putting him through this.
“Worse,” he told me bluntly. “Some rooms you can barely get in for all the culch.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. When he wrestled the back door open, we found the kitchen was as much of a junkyard as the laundry.
I felt like I’d stepped back in time by at least a century.
A wood-fired iron stove crouched on the far wall like a sleeping animal; there was no sign of a modern stovetop, or even a microwave.
The room itself ran the full width of the building, the size of the laundry and screened porch combined.
There was a big wooden kitchen table covered in clutter, and a chipped white sink with exposed pipes underneath.
A series of very pretty china plates hung on display on the walls, with teacups dangling from little brass hooks beneath them.
Large sash windows bracketed the fireplace, but they were shuttered.
It was a dim, sad kitchen, a relic from a time long fallen into ruin.
And yet… something about it gave me that twisty feeling, the same way those round porthole windows had given me a twisty feeling. It was like stepping into a story, but I couldn’t decide if it was a story about to begin, or one long concluded.
Gently, I touched a bouquet of wooden spoons sprouting from a clay jug.
If this kitchen had been uncluttered and clean and in order, it would be the kind of kitchen Marilla Cuthbert would keep in Anne of Green Gables.
The big black teapot would be boiling away on the stove, and the pretty china teacups would be set out for company.
And this scrubbed kitchen table would be the perfect place for Anne Shirley to sit, learning her lessons, chattering about bridal veils of cherry blossom…
“It’s a bit dark,” Jake said, cramming his hands in the pockets of his cut-off shorts and squinting up at two bare lightbulbs that hung from the ceiling.
“Used to be milk glass shades over those bulbs. They were mottled pink, really pretty. But they got broken a while ago. You could probably find replacements online.”
I let go of my breath. I hadn’t even realized I’d been holding it. For a moment my vision of the scrubbed and cozy Green Gables–style kitchen had been so strong that it stayed superimposed over the junk and the grimness of the room.
“People like everything new these days,” Jake continued. “No one wants those kinds of old light shades—they sell for cheap. But they suited the place—you could find something similar.”
“You seem to know a lot about this place.” I looked up at the bulbs on their dusty cords.
The light shades were the least of my problems with this room.
The wallpaper was so old it was difficult to tell what color it might have been; I could barely make out the floral print through the murky stains. “How come you’re so familiar with it?”
“It’s a small town.” He shrugged. “Everyone knows a lot about everyone. Light shades and all.”
“Who was the lady who lived here?” I touched my toe to the rag rug. Beneath it, the floor was peeling black-and-white-checked linoleum.
“Did she die here too?” Flo interrupted eagerly, looking up from an old flour sifter she was playing with. “Is she one of the ghosts?”
Jake flinched.
“Flo! You’re talking about his neighbor.”
“Oh.” She was chagrined. “That’s right. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“There are decent floorboards under the linoleum too,” Jake said.
“And the walls are fine under all that paper. You could make it real nice.” He cleared his throat and shot me and Flo a darting glance.
“Maybe she does haunt this place a little.” He glanced around.
“She certainly hated to leave all her things.”
The stuff in that kitchen was suffocating.
Everything from plastic milk crates of tableware to jugs crammed full of random utensils to a pyramid of empty vases.
There were pots and pans of every era—old cast-iron frying pans and 1970s beige saucepans with brown flowers splattered on their sides.
There were at least four old blenders and two coffeemakers.
There was also a stack of newspapers in one corner, all yellowed with age.
I wouldn’t have been surprised to pick one up and find news of the Civil War.
Then there was the non-kitchen stuff: paintbrushes, a big sewing basket with patchwork quilt squares spilling out, and, randomly, a wine bottle stuffed with a Kewpie doll on a stick, the kind of doll that you buy at local carnivals.
It was a complete assault on the senses.
Flo found a big frilled-edge glass candy dish full of colored buttons. She was running her hands through them, and they made a cascading clatter as they fell back into the dish. Somehow the same things that I found overwhelming filled her with joy.
“How old is this place?” I realized I should probably have asked the real estate agent this question. The shingled frontage hinted at age, and age meant problems.
“It was built in the 1870s, I think.” Jake cocked his head. “Maybe it was the 1880s. But it’s old. You could ask Elton next door—he’d probably know, given his is the same vintage.”
“Awesome!” Flo held up an octagonal crystal button. “We get to live in history.” Then she flinched, as though something had just occurred to her. “Wait. Does this place have wi-fi?”
“Not yet,” Jake replied.
“Mom,” Flo’s tone was dire. “We can’t live without wi-fi. You’d better put that at the top of the to-do list.”
Forget wi-fi, how was I going to cook on a stove that looked straight out of Downton Abbey? I had no interest in mangling our washing every week either.
“I’m sure Elton would let you tap into his wi-fi next door until you get yours set up,” Jake told us, running a hand through his hair. He looked as overwhelmed as I felt, and he wasn’t even the one buying the place.
“How did anyone live here without internet?” Flo was bewildered.
“It was mostly a summer holiday place, from before the internet was even an idea.”
“Shame. I bet she would have loved eBay,” Flo said cheerfully.
“Is there heating?” I looked around for radiators. The thick old walls kept the place cool, even on a sticky-hot summer’s day. I could only imagine how cold it would get in the winter.
“There’s a furnace in the basement—I’ll show you down there before we finish up.”
I breathed out. Okay. So at least it had heat.
“There’s no cooling, but it’s designed for all the windows to be thrown open in the summer to catch the coastal breezes.”
I doubted we could even find enough windows to open, given all this trash.
“Seen enough?” Jake asked, giving me a knowing look.
I didn’t want to give him the satisfaction, even though my dreams were crumbling in the face of all the junk.
“Are you kidding?” Flo exclaimed. “We haven’t even seen my attic room yet!”
Jake’s blue-green eyes held mine. “You sure you want to keep going? It gets worse.”
Worse? How could it get worse? I swallowed. “We want to see it all,” I insisted, tearing my gaze away, so he wouldn’t be able to see how freaked out I was.
“Fine.” He sighed. Jake edged his way through the clutter and opened the door to the hall. Or rather to another wall of clutter.
I had to step around an old telephone table, which held a small cut glass vase of fake plastic flowers and an old rotary phone.
There was a notepad with a pencil attached by a little gold chain, for taking messages.
It was an odd little oasis of order in a hallway that was littered with plastic bags and washing baskets and even a beheaded garden gnome.
It’s in good condition, the real estate agent had assured me over and over again, it just needs a clean-out.
“There are two rooms down the front here, a parlor and a dining room.” Jake pointed to the open archways.
“You really know your way around the place,” I said dryly, watching as he picked his way through the field of debris.
“I used to help her out,” he said.
“What did you do, clean?” Flo sounded amused. “Because I wouldn’t quit your day job.”