THERESA CLOSED the window and walked back toward the dining room, not stopping to notice paintings or portraits or shelves loaded with trinkets. She wanted to see the rest of the house. There would be time, plenty of time, to retrace her steps; this house was hers now. As she passed the dining room table, she undid her watch and laid it on the cold, hard surface.
The next room was a surprise. Expecting to see a living room, she found long wooden tables with jars and tubes of paint and paintbrushes of various lengths in careful rows. Half a dozen easels stood throughout the room, several holding unfinished paintings and the others empty, like stiff and silent caretakers. In one corner was a low easel. Theresa walked slowly towards it. In childish lettering, with each letter a different bright color, the name Claude was spelled across the top.
Who was Claude? She had never heard her father say the name. She ran her fingers across the letters, as if hoping their mystery could be revealed through touch. The other easels had no names. They were turned in ways that would allow the artist to see out a window or toward a platform where a model might have posed.
Against one wall was the oversized chair she had seen in the dining room portrait. The blue and white pillows looked faded and limp, but Theresa sank into the chair and pulled them around her, feeling their softness. The dusty smell of old upholstered furniture and the clutter of paints and paintings around the room soothed her and let her thoughts slip off to sleep.
It was Gypsy that startled her back from dozing, and Theresa awoke with the momentary confusion of being in a strange place. She had been dreaming of Kevin. They were driving on an ice-layered road in Virginia. Trees bent and dipped with the impossible weight of snow, branches snapping and falling in the path of the car. She repeatedly called out to him to be careful, but he drove silently on, calmly avoiding every obstacle and remaining oblivious to the deafening crash of trees around him. As she frantically reached over to grab his arm, she realized he was wearing only a bathing suit! Tightening her grip, she felt the hairs on his arm between her fingers as she yelled, “Kevin, stop the car! Stop!”
Gypsy jumped and yelped as she pulled away from the chair, and Theresa’s hand fell from gripping the dog’s back. Tufts of blonde fur stuck between her fingers, and Gypsy’s coat was ruffled and pulled in odd directions toward her tail, as if a bird had foraged around to stir up the makings of a nest. The old dog moved several feet from the chair to lie down again, keeping her eyes fixed on Theresa.
The room was dark, chilly, and not yet separate from the dream of being with Kevin. Theresa’s body, still curled awkwardly in the large chair, felt stiff and tense. She blinked and stretched; pillows fell to the floor. The nap had slowed her tour of the house, and she pulled her reluctant thoughts from her icy dream to the present. The room seemed smaller than just an hour before. The easels cast long purple shadows on the floor, and curtains hung like ghosts at the windows. She remembered them from the portrait of her mother and grandmother. No longer billowy and fresh, they too had lost life.
She stood and walked to each window, carefully removing the once-white curtains. Gypsy didn’t follow her or even move until Theresa said aloud, “Guess we’re beginning to redecorate.” Her voice seemed to signal a return to normalcy for the dog. With brisk step, Theresa carried an armload of yesterday’s curtains to the kitchen, and her tousled companion followed with jaunty little steps of anticipation.
“Hungry?” she asked over her shoulder. “Let’s bring in some food; I’m starved.”
A slow-moving caravan of dark clouds had blotted out the earlier evening stars, and the moon lacked sufficient brilliance to pierce them. Theresa looked toward the ocean. She again saw a light in the direction of the boathouse. She couldn’t make out the surroundings in the dark and wondered whether the light had moved or whether her sense of direction was skewed. She listened for music but heard only the unfamiliar night sounds of owls and a loon.
The sky spread out above her like a frayed and porous canopy, arching over Whimsy Towers with a protective curl. Theresa watched the drifting somber clouds and shuddered. Part of her wished that Kevin were here to share this adventure, and part of her wanted to keep it safe and separate and sheltered from the life she had with him. He never saw faces in clouds or stopped to breathe in the air of new places. For him a house was a house, not a touchstone of the soul.
It took only a few minutes to unload the groceries. Gypsy bounded across the expanse of lawn, darting from the car to shadowy bushes and back again. Occasionally she did a run and roll, lingering with her legs in the air and squirming to scratch her back. With each trip to the house, Theresa called, “I’ll be right back,” as if reassuring a child in strange surroundings. But Gypsy showed no fear of the unknown. Exploration was her game, and her fenced yard in Virginia had just lost its boundaries.
Theresa carried her suitcases and blankets into the house and whistled for Gypsy. With her familiar things strewn around the kitchen carpet and on the couches and tables, the blending of past and present had begun. The visitors were here to stay. At least for awhile. She opened her cooler and pulled out a ham and cheese sandwich, with mustard-covered tomato and sprouts oozing from the side.
“Not exactly tidy travel food!” She laughed, poking the runaway sprouts back between the bread. She handed Gypsy a large dog biscuit and settled down with her sandwich and an apple in front of the silent fireplace. She imagined a crackling fire, with marshmallows and chestnuts roasting. Her eyes focused on the bits of pottery and ceramic cemented in with the fieldstone. Colorful tiles had drawings of stick figures and simple flowers under glowing suns. Theresa stood up to read the letters in the corner of one tile. They spelled out Claude in irregular sizes and uneven spacing. The picture on the tile was a solitary boat; above it was a black cloud.
“Ready for the next level?” Theresa called to Gypsy, leaving the last bites of sandwich on a pile of magazines. “Let’s see what the sleeping arrangements are.”
The wide staircase turned sharply half way to the second floor, allowing the climber to suddenly see a broad open hall straight ahead. Each step brought more of the space into view. With only the backlight from the stairwell, she could see massive lattice arches and the tops of statuary. When she reached the floor, she saw a switch; and with a click, soft light filled the room from no discernable source. Above the door was a beautifully hand-painted sign that said “OUTDOORS INDOORS.”
Statues and garden furniture were placed around the room. Large urns filled with dirt stood prominently in the center, surrounding a dry fountain with plump cherubs holding water buckets. Small empty planters and pots of various shapes were scattered in clusters, but there was not a sign of a plant, even a dead one. At one window was a pedestal birdbath, and Theresa noticed that the window sill was scratched and pecked. Child-sized chairs mingled with elegant iron benches and a massive sundial that had the greenish look of submerged bronze.
In the center of the ceiling was a large skylight, covering most of the area of the room. Dozens of crystal stars on invisible string hung around the edges, catching the light and throwing it back. The room was a garden party waiting to happen. With a bold brush of lush greenery and a tray of lemonade, Theresa could imagine laughing and relaxing in the warmth of this sunny hideaway. Outdoors indoors. Perhaps Grandmother had discovered the answer to long Cape Cod winters.
From the deserted garden, several doors led to other rooms. The first one appeared to be the master bedroom. It was large, yellow, and chock-full of beautifully carved antique furniture. Walnut or cherry, wondered Theresa, as she rubbed her hand along the curved edges. She was not surprised to see paintings on all the walls. She was beginning to realize that paintings were more than decoration at Whimsy Towers; they were the heart of the place—and the bones.
Two other bedrooms were comfortably furnished, and Theresa was thinking about where she might like to sleep as she stepped into a small adjoining room. Her mouth fell open and her eyes widened. She could not move forward. Nursery rhyme characters and pudgy animals danced over the walls in colors still brilliant after thirty-four years. Flowers were painted on vines that climbed to the ceiling. Clowns held balloons and cupcakes. This was the first room of her childhood, the nursery that welcomed her home as a new baby, the room created by her mother and grandmother that her father had described—the room left behind when life began anew in Virginia.
A white crib and white furniture painted with rag dolls still stood ready. Theresa wondered why the room remained intact. The furniture looked a little nicked and tired, and she smiled to think that she must have been rough as a youngster, but she had no memory of it. She felt love in the room—the love given to a baby and the love of gratitude for the giving.
Theresa walked back to the master bedroom, stretched out on the large bed, and cried herself to sleep. She spent her first night at Whimsy Towers fully dressed, on her grandmother’s Double Wedding Ring quilt, her dog sleeping peacefully at the door. All the lights in the house were still on, lighting up the shadows of the past.
Theresa awoke to the sound of birds, not faint chirping, but bold, jungle sounds. Bright light filled the room as a new day caught the sun rising slowly from the ocean. She lay still, remembering her first impressions of Whimsy Towers. She wondered how many times she must have sat or played on this bed with her grandmother or parents. She felt the bumpy hand-stitching of the large, interlocking wedding rings on the quilt beneath her. Its colorful fabric was pieced together with delicate precision and order—each piece belonging to the overall pattern, each piece fitting perfectly into the balance of the design.
The windows in the room were tall and had no curtains. Grandmother must not have felt the need for privacy or sleeping late in a darkened room. Birds signaled the call to rise; the day began with nature’s clock. The tops of oak trees brushed against the window panes, with small branches squeaking across the surface. Theresa watched the gentle motion of new leaves. The rhythm of the swaying branches stirred memories of her childhood tree house in Virginia.
“Be careful up there,” her father had called when he saw her leaning too far off the unfinished platform. “Stay back from the edge until I have the walls up.”
She liked standing at the edge, feeling close to the tree’s enormous limbs and looking down with the same view as the birds. No walls separated her from the sensation of living in the branches, and she dared herself to look down without holding on.
Theresa knew she had been too reckless as a child. She had wanted the tree house to be higher in the old oak. She loved to climb its gnarled branches and hide in the thick clusters of leaves, above the safety of the tree house. When strong northern winds blew, she crawled toward the narrowing end of the branches and held on with the fearless determination of a bronco rider. The wind whipped through her hair until it almost stood on end, and she gripped the coarse bark so tightly it left marks on her fingers.
Still swaying in her thought, Theresa absently watched a gaggle of blackbirds fly out of sight from the tree at the window. Unconsciously, she’d wrapped her fingers tightly around the soft folds of the quilt, pulling it up snugly on both sides of her. Her hands ached from the strain. She relaxed her grip and thought how the blackbirds might return to their tree, but others who had sung their songs here were gone, with no return. Rising from her grandmother’s bed, Theresa instinctively smoothed the covers and then stretched out her fingers, rubbing her hands together to loosen the tension.
“Breakfast?” she called to Gypsy, who was standing ready at the door.
They emerged from the bedroom into the garden room, and Theresa stopped to notice how light filtered down through the skylight, resting on statues and casting gentle shadows through the lattice. Plants would love this space, she thought; and she wondered how foolish it would be to buy plants for just the short time she would be staying.
Gypsy hurried down the stairs ahead, and Theresa followed her without stopping as she retraced her steps from the night before. When they got to the kitchen, Theresa turned off the lights and headed for the porch. As she opened the door to go outside, she bumped something that fell off to the side. She looked down and saw a corncob, partly chewed at one end. Kernels of corn and circles of cut carrots were scattered on the steps and in the dirt.
As Gypsy sniffed eagerly around the scene, Theresa picked up the moist corncob. “Looks like someone wants to share dinner with us. Or breakfast.”
She could understand how a stray corncob might end up at her door with a squirrel or raccoon, but the precisely cut carrot pieces were troubling. Theresa looked around her, as if the answer would become suddenly apparent. Instead, what greeted her was the incredible beauty of nature’s wonder and welcome.
A carefully mowed green carpet of lawn stretched toward the water. Only a few small trees stood on this side of the house, providing an unobstructed, broad view. A slight inlet or cove served as a buffer for the land from the ocean, and the strip of ground that protected the inlet was fortified with huge rocks in irregular clumps. As she walked across the grass, Theresa saw wooden steps leading to the boathouse she had glimpsed at dusk. It sat on sturdy pilings and had a small window facing the main house.
Far behind the weathered building were lingering bits of orange and pink clouds, laced with yellow, that hung on the morning horizon. She watched the changing colors as she found her way to the door on the side and opened it cautiously. Inside was one large room. Several life preservers were piled in the corner, and a collection of oars and paddles leaned against the rough wooden wall. There was no other evidence of boats or boating.
A bed with rumpled sheets and blankets looked as though it had been recently used. Next to the bed was a low table with a large portable radio and tape player. Cassette tapes were lined up in careful piles, each facing the same direction in order to display the titles. Except for the bed, the room looked orderly and clean.
A large round oak table with four straight chairs stood in the middle. On it were old sports magazines and books of poetry by Carl Sandburg and Robert Frost. An apple, two carrots, and a knife lay on a plate. Theresa froze. Carrots. She turned to face the door and heard quickening steps on the wooden planks outside. Before she could react or decide where to hide, Gypsy appeared in the open doorway, wagging her tail.
“Oh, Gypsy!” she gasped. “You scared me half to death!”
As she turned to leave, Theresa passed a large, stuffed chair that faced a window looking out on the water. Next to it was an upside-down crate used as an end table, with several unopened cans of soda and bags of chips. She stooped down to read the expiration date on the bags. It was then she realized she was not alone at Whimsy Towers.