Chapter Five #4
“The master bedroom is at the front of the house.” Jake’s voice pulled me back to the task at hand—and to the oppressive sight of all the junk choking the stairs.
I joined Jake and Flo on the modest landing, which was as cluttered as the stairs and hallway below.
“There’s a bathroom here on the left, and a linen cupboard on the right.
Then two attic bedrooms at the rear, overlooking the back garden. ” Jake pointed.
“Cool!” Flo climbed over plastic bags to get to the back rooms. “I call the best one of the attic rooms.”
I followed Flo. The attic rooms had steeply sloped roofs and dormer windows.
The shiplap walls might once have been white but were now grayish brown.
We opened the door to the room on the left first but couldn’t get past the threshold because there were clothes racks filling every inch of the room.
It was like trying to climb into an overstuffed wardrobe.
The clothes seemed to be from every era imaginable: mini dresses in lurid seventies colors, puffy skirts, peacoats and ratty fur stoles and cotton sundresses.
There was even a yellowing wedding dress hanging on the end of a rack, with a little cap and veil perched on the top.
“Can I have these to play dress-ups?” Flo asked, reaching for the veil.
“Not until we check for vermin.” I rethought that. “And no. Because if we keep it all, you’ll have nowhere to sleep.”
“I’ll sleep in the other room. Or is that one full of clothes too?”
Jake had stayed out on the landing, at the head of the stairs. He seemed like he needed to be close to an exit, as though he felt like the junk was closing in on him. He was holding on to the banister and looking tense.
“You’re really still thinking about taking the place?” he asked me quietly while Flo examined the second attic room, which was filled with books, toys, snow globes, and other random detritus. “Even now that you’ve seen it?”
It was a good question.
In most respects, the house was a total nightmare. And a money pit. The windows up here were weather damaged, and I thought I’d seen water stains on the ceilings; the walls needed repainting and the floorboards resurfacing…
None of it would be cheap. And how long would it take me to clear out the junk to even get to the real work? I’d be sorting bags and boxes and garbage for months.
And yet…
It would be a house of my very own. A place no one could take away from me.
I could wake up knowing I’d be here at the end of the day, the week, the year.
I felt my throat get tight at the thought.
To have a place that was ours, somewhere safe and sure, where Flo and I could live our lives without worrying about our home being taken away from us…
It made me shaky with feelings I couldn’t even name.
The little attic room Flo was poking around in looked directly into the branches of the oak tree, and the light was tinged a hushed green.
I could hear birdsong through the broken window and see the woods behind the wild backyard.
I tried to imagine the room without the junk.
It was small but cozy, an attic room that belonged to another age.
From here, Flo could see the fall leaves blaze and the winter snow swirl; she could sleep to the lullaby of the sea.
Maybe we could refurbish one of those brass bed frames in the laundry for her.
All this place required of me was courage and hard work.
A lot of hard work, I thought, as I took in the landing full of junk. Which I’d have to do while working full time and raising a kid. And then there was the issue of money. Could I actually afford to fix this place up?
But surely living in a place I owned that I couldn’t afford to fix up was better than paying exorbitant rent on a place that would never be mine.
“Mom!” Flo’s excited shriek rang through the small attic room. “Look!” She brandished an old magazine. “It’s that lady you like from the old movies. The one who was splashing about in the rain, singing.”
I took the old magazine from her. It was from summer 1952, the colors lurid bright and plasticky. “No, that was Debbie Reynolds. This is Jane Powell.”
“Huh.” Flo held up another magazine. “You know these people too?”
“Sure, that’s Doris Day and Rock Hudson.”
“How do you know?”
“We didn’t have cable when I was a kid. I watched a lot of old movies.” I opened the magazine she’d handed me. The fragrance of dusty newsprint wafted up.
“The people who lived here must have liked old movies too. There’s a whole stack of them.” Flo wrinkled her nose as she looked down at Doris and Rock. She hadn’t taken to musicals.
“You want to see more?” Jake grumbled impatiently. “Or do you want me to stand here watching you read magazines all day?”
“You need a snack,” Flo scolded him. “I think you’re hangry.” She handed me the other magazine and joined Jake on the landing, where he was still holding the banister and looking like he wanted out of here as fast as possible.
“I’m not… hangry, I just don’t want to stand in all this culch all day.”
“No one asked you to show us around,” I reminded him, tossing the magazines back into the attic room.