Page 2 of Dream House
Pen arches an elegant brow. I know the lashes she bats at me are false, but the effect of her stare is no less commanding. Whether this is magic or simply the Power of Pen, as I often tease, it’s hard not to feel chastened.
“Stella Jane Mouton.” She crosses her arms over her chest. “Do you mean to tell me that you’d rather stay in your two-bedroom apartment with Tyler and Maisy for the rest of your lives?”
“No, no, and no.” My best friend knows this, but she also knows I have a plan. “No matter what, it wouldn’t be the rest of our lives.”
“The Plan. I know.” Pen gives me a long face like I’m slow to solve a simple puzzle. “But look around you, Stella. You could put that plan into action right here.” She opens her arms and seems to hold up the sky with her upturned hands.
“Open a salon in here.” I speak the words aloud.
I can’t pretend I haven’t already thought about it. That it didn’t cross my mind just minutes after hearing what Nanna’s lawyer had to say.
Yeah, I can picture turning this room—this massive dining room—with its oak table that seats ten, its rosewood china cabinet, and the pearl-inlaid buffet—into a commercial space. I could fit three stylist stations in here. Two hair-washing sinks along the wall that joins with the kitchen, and at least one hooded dryer chair.
This room has a southwestern exposure. The front wall is lined by windows. I couldn’t ask for better light.
Yeah, I’ve thought about it.
“But it needs so much work. The roof alone…” I shake my head, unwilling to estimate the cost of replacing it.
Since the house has been essentially empty for over a year, no one was here to notice the leak all the way up on the third floor. That space is essentially attic anyway, so even if Nanna had been home, it might have been a while before it was detected. But now a new roof is in order and new sheetrock for a second floor bedroom ceiling. The fact that we’ve had a dry winter, and the house is built of cypress, kept the damage from being a lot worse.
But this house might as well have been an extension of my grandmother. I can’t help but feel that if Nanna would have been home, she would have sensed it. Known something was wrong in her home. Her realm. This old house is like the Ship of Theseus, added onto, passed down, repainted, run down, but essentially, an extension of her.
Everyone in my family—except me—wanted to put Nanna in the nursing home after her second heart attack. I wanted her to have a live-in nurse so she could stay here, right where she belonged. My dad and his brothers said that it was too expensive. It would burn through her life savings.
What they really meant was it would burn through their inheritance.
When I suggested that they set up a reverse mortgage instead, you’d think I’d confessed myself as a communist kitten killer who dealt cocaine to preschoolers.
I’m sure it galls them that it’s up to me to decide what happens now. And I wonder what she expected me to do.
Did she want me to keep it? The three-story Edwardian came to her from her father, who, according to Nanna, was the best man she ever knew.
I can’t count how many times I heard her speak of him that way. It didn’t make me sad until I grew up and realized she’d had a husband, raised three sons, and watched five grandsons grow into manhood.
Her own father died when she was twenty. When Nanna died last week, she was eighty-two. Sixty-two years is a long time to go without meeting a man who impressed you more than your father.
I hope I have better luck, but the way things are going, it doesn’t look great.
But Nanna weathered all of those disappointments right here. From the sanctuary of her childhood home. Nobody could take that from her. Not even when my grandfather walked out on her and her boys.
When my parents split up when I was five, Mom, Tyler, and I lived here for a little while. I didn’t think of it at the time, but Nanna made a choice back then. She chose her daughter-in-law and grandchildren, not her son. She made it her mission to help us get back on our feet.
“Did you know I lived here once?” I blurt to Pen.
She nods. “The first time we spent the night here, in tenth grade, I think,” the corners of her mouth turn up at the memory, “you told me the room we were staying in had been your room once. I asked you if it was haunted, and you said no, and when I was bummed, you said we could go check out the cemetery.”
The memory surfaces like a Jack-in-the-Box. “And I meantduring the day.”
Pen screws up her features. “What’s the point of exploring a cemetery in the middle of the day? Nothing paranormal is going to happen then.”
“Exactly.”My adamant tone sets off her laugh.
Pen has always fascinated me with her witchy ways. Sometimes that fascination has bordered on terror—case in point, the midnight adventure through St. John Cemetery in tenth grade—and other times it has led to life-altering insights. Like when she read my tea leaves after I told her I was pregnant, and she said that I would raise Maisy—yes, she actually saidMaisy—on my own, and it would be the greatest joy of my life.
So I tease her about her spells and her amulets and her rituals, but I sure as hell don’t dismiss them.
“What are your spidey senses telling you about the house?”
