Page 16 of Upstate

“The Sprague boys?” You grinned. “Sounds like an Old West outlaw gang.”

“They are a bit wild, but they’re just the boys who live up Ridgetop Road. There’s four of them already. The oldest is a year ahead of Billy in school. The youngest, Joey, is going into first grade I think, and I hear Mrs. Sprague’s pregnant again.”

“I thought you were taking me someplace where we could be alone.”

“I am. You’ll see.”

Shivering, we got out of the water and reclaimed our clothes. Not far past the pond, the red barn appeared, its shape sharp against the blue sky.

“Well, isn’t that a pretty sight,” you said.

“It is, isn’t it? The house is up there, across the lawn.”

We pushed through nettles and cornflowers and grass grown tall as our knees. “You call this a lawn?”

“It would be worse if Daddy didn’t start up the tractor once in a while to mow it all down,” I said. “He doesn’t like to see the place so neglected.”

“Well,” you replied when the house was finally in front of us, “I’d say this is the very definition of neglected.”

I tried to see the old Greek Revival through your eyes. The cedar siding was weathered gray, its lead-white paint having flaked away long ago. There were plenty of broken panes in the six-over-six windows. The ground was littered with slates that had slid from the roof. Saplings reached through the rubblestone foundation like the spindly fingers of a basement-bound giant. All I could see, though, was the magical retreat I’d long pretended was my own.

“I love this place,” I said, my voice thick with feeling. “It’s like a museum inside. Come on, I’ll show you.”

You followed me around to the front of the house where the granite stoop and oversized front door retained a touch of elegance. The front windows, too, were tall and stately, though the shutters flanking them hung crooked from rusted hardware.

“Wait here,” I said. “I’ll be right back.”

I dashed around the side of the house, out of sight, and moved the dead branches and mossy bricks with which I’d camouflaged the cellar doors. I stepped down into the musty dark, guided by pinpricks of light shining through gaps in the foundation. Praying I wouldn’t walk into a spider’s web, I shuffled across the dirt floor until I found the stairs. Emerging from a coat closet into the foyer, I unlocked the front door and swung it open. “Ta-da!”

Ah, the amazed look on your face! “How did you do that, Hazel?”

“Magic,” I said.

“Hold still.” You reached out—to kiss me, I thought. Instead, you pinched a wriggling daddy longlegs between your fingers and tossed it onto the ground. I jumped back, frantically shaking out my hair. You picked up the basket and entered.

The foyer wasn’t grand, but the remnants of a Persian rug beneath our feet hinted at past prosperity. Overhead, drips of dried wax clung to the arms of a tarnished chandelier. I opened the closet under the stairs to show you how I got in.

“Is it haunted?” you whispered, peering into the basement.

“Only by me.” I touched your hand. “Come on, I’ll show you around.”

Soot had blown down the parlor chimney, leaving the marble mantel layered with grime, but the room’s proportions were pleasing. In the dining room, a kerosene lamp with a schoolhouse shade stood on a dusty harvest table. In the kitchen, I primed the pump until brown water splashed into the limestone sink. You asked if there were bathrooms. I told you there was an outhouse.

“This pump is the only plumbing this house has ever known,” I said. “Back in the day, people would bathe in a trough filled with well water heated over the kitchen fire.”

“It’s more like a time warp than a museum,” you said, not unkindly, as you crouched down to brush dried leaves from the bluestone hearth.

“I know. That’s why I love it so much. This house makes it easy to forget there’s a world out there with iron curtains and hydrogen bombs.” I took your hand. “Let’s go.”

We returned to the foyer and ascended the curved staircase that always put me in mind of a clock turning backward. The front bedroom was a mess back then, the mattress ruined by nesting racoons, the ceiling stained from bats roosting in the attic. Even so, you appreciated its tranquil symmetry, its proportions mirroring the parlor below. We walked through the long rectangle of the middle bedroom, its pine planks water-warped from a leak in the roof. Wallpaper peeled off damp plaster that had crumbled away in places to expose brown strips of lath.

“Watch yourself,” I warned, pointing to the hole in the floor where the back stairs dropped steeply down. We were over the kitchen now, the high ceilings of the front bedrooms giving way to a sloped roofline that made you duck. I paused at the door to the back bedroom, my hand on the latch. “This is the place I wanted to show you.”

I’d found my way into the old house after Daddy came home from the war with a head full of demons. Nine months later, Mother was bedbound from birthing Billy, the boy they’d conceived to replace my first little brother, the angelic fat-cheeked toddler whose death played a part, I’m sure, in Daddy’s decision to enlist. My grandmother came down from Buffalo for a while to help with the baby, so whenever Mother was resting and Daddy was at the tavern, I’d grab a book and take off through the woods. At first, I was content to sit on the house’s sunny side porch, but once I discovered the lock on the cellar door was broken, I endured the terrifying descent into darkness for the reward of emerging into a magical place of peace and quiet. I claimed the back bedroom, sweeping it clean and scrubbing the floors and painting the slanted ceiling sky blue. Over the years, I’d decorated it bit by bit until it was the one room in all the world that felt like my very own. Even after I went down to Albany for college, I made a point of returning a couple of times a year to tidy up.

“What a pretty room, Hazel.” You explored the bookshelves I’d cobbled together from milk crates, stuffed with dog-eared copies of favorite novels. You asked if I ever lit a fire in the Franklin stove whose flue bent back into the kitchen’s chimney. I told you I’d always wanted to but couldn’t risk giving away my hiding place. While you opened a window to gaze at the view of mountains across the valley, I spread a checkered tablecloth on the floor and unpacked our picnic.

You turned around, smiling at the lunch of sandwiches and peaches and pickles I’d put out. Instead of coming to eat, though, you pointed to the bed. “Do you sleep here?”