The Jack Finney Reader

by Jack Finney

  It didn't work. For half an hour, the Cluetts were contrite and industrious, searching through my books and magazines, pointing out to me and each other houses, rooms, windows, doors, roof styles, bathrooms, and gardens they liked or said they did. I sat at my table again, listening, but I knew their interest was synthetic and I added no more notes to the pad in my clip board. I had only one: Enormous master bdrm w. fireplace. But every client says that; I could have it printed on my note pads. And the Cluetts had nothing more to add, they really didn't care.

  Finally, Ellie put a book back on the shelf beside her, then stood up on the ladder and began scanning the top shelf boredly. She reminded me of a child reluctantly doing homework, ready to welcome any diversion, and now she found one. Pulling out a book, she dislodged a thick wadding of paper crammed onto the shelf beside it and caught it as it fell. She unfolded it, opening it up finally to half a dozen big sheets of linen drawing paper each the size of a newspaper page. When she saw what was on the top sheet she slowly sat down on the ladder top, staring and murmuring, For heaven's sake. After a moment she looked at me, saying, Harry! What in the world is this?

  Just what it looks like. I heard the tired irritation in my voice and forced it out before I continued. I wasn't going to take their job, but I liked the Cluetts just the same. Those are drawings for a house, architectural drawings, I said more pleasantly. That top sheet is a perspective showing what it would look like finished. The sheets underneath are the working drawings for building it. They've always been up there; belonged to my grandfather. Most of the stuff on that top shelf was his. He was an architect and so was my father.

  Sam was getting to his feet, pleased with the diversion, too, and Ellie quickly turned on the ladder, hurried down it, then dropped, kneeling, to the floor and smoothed the big top sheet flat on the rug. Look! she said excitedly.

  Sam and I went to stand beside her, staring. The edges of the paper were yellowed but the rest was bone-white still and I remembered that I'd once meant to frame this and hang it in my office downtown. It was an India-ink drawing, the lines thin, sharp, and black in the scribed and ruled precision architects once favored. It was an incredible sight — I'd almost forgotten — but there lay the clear sharp-etched architectural rendering for a house of the early 1880s just as its designer had conceived it in every gabled, turreted, dormered, bay-windowed and gingerbreaded detail.

  Imagine, Ellie murmured, her voice incredulous and delighted. Why, it never entered my head that these houses were actually built!

  What do you mean? Sam said.

  She turned to look up at him, eyes shining. Why, they've always been here — forever! Since long before any of us was born. They're old, shabby, half tumbling down. It simply never occurred to me that they could ever have been new! Or not even built yet, like this one! Quickly, she began spreading out the other sheets in a half circle.

  I knew what she meant and so did Sam, and he nodded. It was strange to see at our feet the actual floor by floor plans — the framing plans and sections, full-sized profiles, every last detail, all precisely dimensioned ready for construction — of what had to seem to our eyes like an old old house. And for some moments, then, silent and bemused, we looked at the careful old drawings thinking the wordless thoughts you often think looking at a relic of other earlier lives than your own.

  It seems to me that it's usually impossible to get hold of another time. You look at a pair of high-button shoes, the leather dry and cracked, buttons missing, the cloth uppers nearly drained of color by the years, and it just isn't possible to get into the mind of some long-gone woman who once saw them new. How could they ever have been new and shining, something a woman might actually covet?

  But these old drawings lying on the floor beside us weren't quite like any other relic of the past I'd ever before encountered. Because these were the house before it was built; old though they were, these were still the plans for a house-yet-to-be. And so at one and the same time they were quaint and old-fashioned, yet new and fresh, still untouched by the years. And it was possible to see in them, and feel, not merely quaintness but something of the fresh beauty the architect must have seen and felt the day he finished them a lifetime ago.

  Ellie was getting to her feet and I turned to look at her. Her jaw actually hung open a little and her eyes were wide and almost stunned in a kind of incredulous awe at what she'd just thought of. Sam! she said, and grabbed his forearm. Let's build it!

  What?

  Yes! I mean it! Let's build it! And I'll furnish it! In the style of those days! Why, good lord, she murmured, turning to stare at nothing, eyes shining with excitement, there's not a woman I know who won't envy me green.

  Sam is bright and used to making decisions, I suppose. His eyes narrowed and he stared at Ellie's face as though testing or absorbing her feelings through her eyes as she stared back at him, elated. Then he stepped forward abruptly and looked down at the drawings again for half a minute. He took a few paces around the room, then turned to me. Is it possible, Harry? Could that house be built today? Is it practical, I mean? Could we live in it and have it make any kind of sense? Suddenly he grinned, delighted at the notion.

  I shrugged and said, Sure. Why not? If you're willing to pay the cost. The plans are there and can be followed today as well as in the eighteen eighties. Both started to speak but I held up a hand, cutting them off. But to build even a contemporary house with that much floor space would be very expensive, Sam. And with this house, every foot of that space would cost twice as much, three times as much, maybe more. Who can say? You might not even get a bid on a job like that.

  Oh? Why not?

  I touched the plans with the toe of my shoe. Look at the lumber specifications. Half of it different from anything milled today — heavier, thicker, longer. You'd pay a fortune in special milling costs alone. Look at the fancy trim all over the house inside and out. When those plans were drawn I suppose it could be bought from stock. Today it doesn't exist. All of it would have to be special order, lathed and jigsawed out and by people not used to it. Lot of errors and spoilage. What's more, the entire construction method is different from today's. No contractor has had any experience at it, or his men, either. He might not even bid; you'd have to pay cost plus. And the final price? I shook my head. It would be fantastic, and if you ever wanted to sell you'd have the world's biggest white elephant on your hands, a brand-new antique that no bank in the world would ever lend you a dime …

  Sam shut me off with a hand on my arm, smiling. He said gently, Everything you're telling me, Harry, can be said in one word — money. Well, I've got the money and whatever it costs to build this house I guarantee you it'll be worth it. He saw I didn't know what he meant, and said, Harry, boats are sold just like anything else — in a variety of ways. And one of the best ways is publicity. Think of the talk this'll make! He grinned tensely. Every customer I bring into that house will go home full of it. Why, Sam Cluett's new place will be talked about at cocktail parties, in restaurants, on boat decks, and in living rooms all over the Eastern seaboard. And who is Sam Cluett? Why, he makes boats! Harry, I could blow the place up two years after it's finished and it'll have paid for itself three times over. He turned to Ellie, saying, Baby, you've picked yourself a house, then he swung back to me. You know the contractors here. Hire one, Harry, and follow through for me, will you? Don't even ask for a bid; just have him follow the plans and send me his bills as he gets them, adding — what? Twenty per cent? Work it out with him. Sam glanced at his watch. Now, let's get out of here and go look for a site!

  He was right about the talk. He and Ellie picked a building site that same afternoon, Sunday, and Monday morning I bought it for them — a three-and-a-half-acre plot over three hundred feet deep in the best residential section of town. It had been held for years in the hope of a fat price, and now Sam paid it. And less than seventy-two hours after Ellie Cluett dislodged the papers that were the forgotten plans for a forgotten house, its foundation was bei
ng laid — of brick, just as the old plans specified.

  At first the new house attracted no attention; the wood frame of one house looks just about like any other at the beginning. Then the roof framing began and before it was finished it was plain to everyone passing that these were remarkably steep and complex gables. They intersected in dozens of places; they were pierced by innumerable dormers; at corners, they rose into sharp, narrow peaks, and they projected over — it was suddenly obvious — what were going to become bay windows and an enormous porch. And now all day every day cars crept past and clusters stood on the sidewalk as people watched the steady, skeletal growth in fresh white pine of a brand-new Victorian mansion.

  I was just as fascinated. I had plenty of work. Specifying, ordering, and checking up on all the special milling were a job in themselves and I had much more to do. But still I spent more time at the new house than I really had to. Even at night, as though I were the actual architect, I'd sometimes drive over and prowl around and through it. One night I found Ellie standing on the walk, the big collar of her camel's-hair coat turned up, hands deep in her pockets, looking at the half-finished house.

  The house was set far back from the street, and from the sidewalk the eye could take it all in. There was a three-quarter moon; we could see clearly. The new wood looked pale against the night sky and the door and window openings were narrow black rectangles, for the house was no longer skeletal. Most of the exterior sheathing was on, and the external shape of the house was complete. For the first time we could see, rising from the bare wood-littered earth, the beginning reality of what had been only architectural drawings.

  Ellie murmured, Isn't it astonishing?

  Yeah. I was enjoying the almost ghostly sight of this strange unfinished house in the moonlight and I began fooling, playing with words. We're looking at a vanished sight. This is a commonplace sight of a world long gone and we've reached back and brought it to life again. Maybe we should have let it alone.

  Ellie smiled. I don't think so. I feel good about it.

  The work went fast; the men liked this job. Several had grown mustaches or sideburns in styles they thought appropriate to the house. One of the carpenters had just finished a year in New Jersey doing nothing but hanging doors in over nine hundred identical tract houses. He told me this job was the first time carpentering actually was what, as a boy, he'd imagined it to be. Now the siding was on, and the big veranda was complete. All windows were in. Everything was finished outside, in fact, except the eave ornamentation, not yet delivered, and some special-patterned shingle work on the gable ends.

  Inside the hammering was constant — inlaid hardwood floors going down on the third floor, interior trim on the first and second. Plastering was finished, complete with old-style wood lathing, and on the first floor, doors were being hung — inches wider, two feet taller, and far heavier and more solid than any ordinarily made today. Their surfaces were beautifully paneled with fine moldings, and they, too, were new-minted and freshsanded, not even drilled yet for lock sets. Walking through the house, I'd stop when no one could see me, close my eyes, and sniff the familiar damp-plaster, new-wood fragrance of a just-finished house. Then I'd open my eyes and wonder at the magnificent brand-new old mansion in which, incredibly, I stood.

  Sam wanted speed, and got it. When the completed house was still wet with paint, new grass was showing on the landscaped grounds, and transplanted bushes almost surrounded it. He'd had a dozen fir trees trucked to and planted on the grounds at whatever enormous cost — full-grown trees taller than the roof. And five stone masons, all I'd been able to round up, were building a wall clear around the grounds using old gray stone from a dismantled church. And now, the activity of building over and the house painted — entirely white — it lost its visual novelty and took its place in the town. People pausing on the walk dwindled to an occasional one or two.

  The day Ellie finished furnishing it she stopped at my office downtown and invited me to see it. We drove in her car, and when we reached the house the great wrought-iron gates stood open in the wall and we swung through them onto a snow-white gravel driveway that curved up to the shaded veranda.

  Ellie stopped halfway, giving me a chance to look around. All trace of raw newness was gone; the grounds were lush. This was June and the immense lawns were a flawless, fresh-mowed, brilliant summer green. The hedges were perfectly trimmed and flower beds stood in full bloom.

  The house itself was immaculate; it sparkled. It stood there in the splendor of its grounds like a new-cut jewel in a just-finished setting — solid and vigorous, in the very prime of its youth — the living and finished reality of drawings that had lain dustily on my shelves for years.

  I had only an impression of the interior when we'd finished — of large-patterned wallpaper suggesting the nineteenth century but colorful, gay, wonderfully cheerful; of last-century furniture intricately but beautifully carved, ornately but gracefully curved, finished to perfection and upholstered in tufted velvets of emerald green, canary yellow, scarlet, coral, and sky blue. I remember a little dressing room carpeted in pink. All doors were dull white, with polished brass hardware. The house sang.

  I was out of town on a job the night of the Cluetts' big party a week later, the housewarming. But I drove back late in the evening and, while I wasn't dressed to go inside, I stopped my car by the big iron gates and what I saw was the most haunting sight I've ever seen.

  The house was equipped with two lighting systems. One, which I designed, was electric with concealed outlets and almost unnoticeable flush ceiling lights. The other was gas, the lines following the original plans and with ornate fixtures which Ellie had searched out and bought, in all the principal rooms. Tonight as I sat looking in through the big gates, only the gas system was in use. And on all three floors of the big, rambling house, every window — tall and arched at the tops, looking like rows of great slender candles — glowed against the blue summer night with the yellowy, wonderfully warm light electricity has never equaled.

  Dancing couples moved across those rectangles of light and music from a live orchestra moved out through the open windows across the lawns into the darkness. Sam had bought a horse and carriage to meet his New York guests at the railroad station. Tonight he'd hired three more and now they all stood on the white gravel of the curved driveway. Any guest who'd come by car had parked in the street. This was one of the last June nights and the air was balmy and alive with the drone of insects, the very sound of summer; and the lawns, strung with candlelit Japanese lanterns, flickered with fireflies. From the veranda I could hear laughter and the murmur of voices softened by distance and people stood outlined on the glowing candle shapes of the windows. Over and enclosing it all, the backdrop for everything, stood the great dark silhouette of the turreted, dormered, many-gabled house. It was a scene lost to the world, a glimpse of another time and manner of living, and I sat there for a long time before I drove home.

  You lose touch with clients fairly quickly once a house is finished. For a time you're in each other's company and minds every day, more intimate than friends. Then suddenly you're busy with someone else. I didn't see the Cluetts again till well after Labor Day. Then one afternoon on impulse, I stopped in, not sure if they were still there. But they were. Sam met me on the porch in shirt sleeves — it was warm yet — calling to Ellie that I was there. He led me to the end of the veranda. There was a wooden porch swing, and we sat down, lifting our feet to the porch railing.

  I said, No work today, Sam?

  He smiled. No. Lately I've been taking more time off than I used to.

  From the window behind me, I heard steps in the kitchen, and the sound of glassware. Then Ellie appeared in the doorway.

  I stared in open astonishment. Ellie — smiling mischievously as she bent forward to set a tray on a little wicker table — was wearing a dress that began high at the neck and snug around it and ended well below her ankles, brushing the porch floor. It was a soft leaf green and the long
sleeves ended at the wrists in lace cuffs. The upper arms weren't actually puffed but they were full, peaking up a little at the shoulders. It was a dress of the last century and as Ellie sat down I saw that her hair was long now. It was parted in the center and braided and coiled at the back into a flat disk covering the nape of her neck.

  Sam was grinning. He said, You wouldn't want us to be the only things in the house that weren't appropriate, would you, Harry? Ellie and I decided we ought to be dressed for the place. With his fingers he flicked one of his creamcolored pants legs and I saw that they were patterned with a light-blue stripe, a kind of trousers last worn decades ago. Then I realized that his hair wasn't just overdue for cutting; he was wearing it in a style outmoded when my father was born.

  I grinned, too, then. Ellie was pouring from a brown stoneware pitcher beaded with tight little drops, the ice clinking as it slid into the glasses. I said, You look wonderful, both of you; absolutely right for this house. Your guests must get a kick out of it.

  Well, as a matter of fact, Sam said, we've pretty well quit entertaining my customers here. Not many of them really appreciated the place.

  Ellie handed me a filled glass, and I tasted the drink; it was fresh-squeezed lemonade, and delicious. I said, You must like the house for its own sake, then.

  I can't tell you how much, Ellie said softly. We've moved here permanently, you know. We don't go to New York any more.

  For half an hour, then, we talked about the house. Ellie told me she even sewed here in a little room at the top of a turret. It was something she'd never before had patience for but she'd actually made the dress she was wearing. She said the pattern for it and even the exact shade just came drifting into her mind one day and she wanted to have it and made it herself.

  Presently she said, I always assumed that the plans for this house had never been used, didn't you, Harry? I nodded, and she said, But it's just as possible that they were used, isn't it?