Chapter Five #3
He didn’t reply to that, merely stepped aside and gestured us ahead.
The wooden arches led to two rooms of similar proportions, each with a fireplace of brick, ornamented with lush tiles of green and amber.
Those big porthole windows I’d seen from outside bracketed the fireplaces.
Golden light poured through, mellowed by the filter of dust. If I cleaned the dirt from the glass, that light would be clear and bright, perfect for someone sitting in the overstuffed armchair next to the fireplace to read by.
Something loosened in my chest as I imagined sitting there through the long cold Maine winters.
The parlor had the potential to be a beautiful room.
The vintage tiles in the fireplace, the hardwood floorboards I could see between the rug and the piles of junk—it all sang of heritage and elegance and a life of ease.
“A chandelier!” Flo exclaimed in delight, twirling underneath the light fixture. It was a modest egg-shaped net of crystals.
“I don’t know that it’s a chandelier,” Jake disagreed.
“It’s fancy,” Flo told him.
“Is it?” He squinted at it.
Flo rolled her eyes at his pickiness. “I think it’s fancy.” She was annoyed.
I let them argue—I was more interested in whether the overhead light worked. The switch was an aged toggle, but the light went on and off just fine. “How come the electricity is still connected?” I asked Jake. “If no one’s been living here.”
He shrugged. “The family thought they might need it to sort through all this culch.” He gave the room a rueful look. “But then it got too overwhelming.”
“They don’t want any of this stuff?”
“I guess not.”
I checked the ceiling for water damage and the cornices for cracks while I was craning my neck. There were small hairlines here and there, but nothing too ominous.
At least I didn’t think so.
I tried to look for electrical outlets, but there was too much junk to see the baseboards. I did my best to edge behind some of the garbage.
“Oh.” I stopped, startled, as I glimpsed colored glass.
There was a lamp tilting precariously on the corner of a big crate.
It was like something from an art gallery.
The base was brass, shaped like a sinewy tree trunk, leading to a stained-glass hood that was a detailed drip of tiny pink blossoms and green leaves.
I’d never seen anything so perfect. “Is that Tiffany glass?” I asked, awed. I was too scared to touch it.
“Maybe.” Jake shrugged. “Some of this stuff is worth a lot of money, and some of it’s just junk. There are bags of Happy Meal toys out there in the hall, but also tableware that could be actual silver.”
“It’s a treasure chest,” Flo said, looking around like she might find gold. “Like in The Goonies.”
“It’s more like a dumpster,” Jake warned her. “Whoever buys this place will essentially be dumpster diving, and for a good long while.”
“Is there a proto-pool out back by any chance?” Flo asked him as I moved the Tiffany lamp somewhere safer, where it wouldn’t be knocked over and smashed.
“A what?”
“You know, a pit that we could turn into a pool.”
“You don’t need a pit,” I told her, turning away from the stained-glass lamp. “If we move here, you’ll have the whole ocean.” I tapped her on the head as I picked my way to the sash windows. “Do these open?”
“Uh, yeah, they should.” Jake joined me and flipped the latches on the sashes. The cracked windows opened with a shudder and a squeal, and the ocean breeze gusted in, a relief after the mustiness of the house.
I inhaled deeply. The scent of salt and pine and the heady perfume of overgrown lilac was intoxicating.
“I can’t see any ocean; all I can see is more jungle.” Flo leaned through the window.
It was true. The view was obscured by the tangle of vines and bushes.
“Oh look, there’s a porch swing out here too!” Flo pointed at the wooden swing, which had flaked off most of its white paint.
“When the garden’s cut back, there’s a real nice view from that swing down to the bay,” Jake said, trying to tie back a heavy tasseled curtain that was sagging off its rail.
“How can you tell?” I leaned through the window too, trying to catch the glitter of the water through the tangle of greenery. “The agent said there was a glimpse of the ocean from upstairs, but she didn’t say anything about a view from down here.”
“I grew up on this street. I’ve seen it. Gail probably didn’t realize, because of, uh, the jungle.” Jake gave up on the curtain and it sagged back over the window. “We’d best get moving. The day’s getting on.” He shut the windows, and the mustiness closed back in on us.
We could barely get into the dining room for all the junk, but I could see it was a mirror image of the parlor, only there was also an old wooden serving hatch that opened to the kitchen.
Flo thought that was the best thing about the place.
“You can slide my cereal in here to me in the morning,” she told me, as she leaned through the hatch. “And I can talk to you while you cook.”
I ignored that.
“Are any of these valuable, do you think?” I eyed a stack of paintings near the fireplace.
Again, Jake shrugged. “My guess would be that some are and some aren’t. Some probably just had sentimental value.”
“Are there any precious gemstones in this place?” Flo asked curiously. “Gold coins or doubloons or anything?”
“I think I saw some costume jewelry and a penny collection upstairs,” said Jake. “And there’s a framed map of colonial Maine around somewhere—that’s kind of interesting.”
“Does it have a guide to buried treasure?”
“I’ve never looked.”
“You didn’t notice an X on it or anything?”
Jake humored Flo all the way up the staircase, grunting in acknowledgment as she chattered about pirates and secret stashes of buried treasure.
“But you know if you found pirate treasure it probably wouldn’t be what you expect,” she told him sagely. “It would be things like cocoa and spices and stuff. They used to be worth more than gold, you know.”
“How do you know so much about this stuff? Were you a pirate in a past life?”
“Maybe. But in this life, I know because I read books.”
There was another round leaded window at the head of the landing.
Light fell through it, ruddy with dust, down to the hall below.
I paused, trying to imagine the hall without the junk.
The boarded-up front door was framed by two thin windows to either side and a window above.
The house would swim in light with all these windows cleaned.
The hall ceiling soared up to the landing of the second story, so even though the space was small it felt expansive.
I felt a quivery feeling in my stomach as the hall swam before me, and I could see it as it once had been: the front door open to catch the flirtatious eddies of breeze, sun warming the wood floor, the walls bright with lovingly chosen wallpaper, the air scented with sea salt and garden flowers and the smell of something baking in the kitchen.
I could learn to bake. I imagined Flo and me in that kitchen, sifting flour and dancing along to her latest playlist.
My heart pinched at the thought.
Never in a million years did I think that I could live in a house like this, with sea views and gardens on every side.
That I could sit on my porch and watch the seasons pass in my garden and see the mood of the ocean shift with the scudding weather.
Flo could climb trees and swim in the ocean and do her homework while I read by the fire.
Disconcerted, I realized I was tearing up.
I swallowed and suppressed the visions. I was getting ahead of myself.