by Gail Godwin
On the porch I snapped the front of the cottage with its gaping windows and door. I used the flash since the east side was still in shadow. “I’ve never gone inside,” I said. “But with you here I think it would be a shame not to.”
“I haven’t been inside for a good long while … but for Pete’s sake, test every board before you put any weight on it. Lachicotte would have my … well, on a platter if you were to get hurt.”
I paused to snap some close-ups of the doorless doorway. These were for me in the future more than for anybody else. In my future, when I came across these photos, they would bring it all back: When I was eleven I saw a boy standing in that space—his hands were braced against the sides—I saw the ridges of his knuckles and his eyes like dark raisins—he looked straight at me—this really did happen.
As I wound the film forward, I asked Charlie Coggins why they hadn’t replaced the door. “Wouldn’t it help keep people out?”
“Not when everybody’s already been in and removed everything of value. The last door we put in was, let’s see, ten years ago … fifteen? I’d have to check. Time gets cagey as you proceed in life. The other day my doc asked me could I recall offhand when my last colonoscopy was and I said five years ago. When he looked it up in my file it was eleven.”
“What did they remove of value?”
“Faucet fixtures, copper pipes, all the old cypress wood paneling, the wooden latches and the original iron hardware, a toilet…”
“A toilet?”
“Not everyone can afford a new toilet. They took the sink, too. Mind you, this wasn’t all done in one trip. Just covert truckloads on moonless nights over the years.”
“Couldn’t you have locked the house?”
“We did. They stole the locks. Before we gave up on doors we must have installed at least half a dozen. Pop was still alive when we put in the last one—whoa, that makes it over twenty years ago. Like I said, time can get cagey. Pop said, ‘Might as well let in the clean ocean breeze. See what it can accomplish. The whole thing might fall down sooner, quicker, and cleaner.’ Of course the Historical Society was still making big noises about fund drives and restoration. But the money just wasn’t there. So Pop said put the high wire fence around it with threatening legal signs and let nature have its way. With beachfront values rising we were sure someone would come along and snap up those prime lots and take care of the demolition themselves. Only they didn’t and then it was the nineties and then the millennium—and here we are.”
We were actually inside. At last I had crossed the threshold. But if I had expected any thrill from Grief Cottage, it didn’t come. The room was about as unhaunted as any room could get. It was as though by entering with another person I had canceled its ghost-aura. Sand intermixed with debris had piled high into the room’s corners, and cobwebs swagged from its timbers and walls. Droppings from animals speckled the bare floor. A spotlight of sun penetrated a broken place in the roof and revealed the almost transparent skin of a snake. The only other snakeskin I had ever seen had been hooked on a bush in Wheezer’s grandmother’s backyard. “Look, you can even see where its jaw was!” he cried. “It probably rubbed against that bush to start the process and finally crawled out of its own mouth!”
I rotated in a slow circle, snapping flash exposures. In the middle of the room was a boarded-up fireplace whose mantelpiece had been ripped out. “Yeah,” said Charlie Coggins, “that was a lovely mantel, a local carpenter’s pride. Wonder where it’s living now? Oh, see the blue paint on the facing of the doorway we just came through? I’ll tell you a little story about that blue paint. Has anyone told you about Ole Plat-eye? No? Ole Plat-eye is a spirit the Gullahs are absolutely terrified of. Some of them still paint the inside of their doors with this sky-blue color to keep him out. Only it’s not always a him, it can be part dog or cow or woman with extra limbs and a big eye hanging down from the center of its forehead. It’s one of those completely malevolent and unredeemable spirits.”
“Why is it unredeemable?”
“To be honest I don’t know. Maybe it’s got some unfinished business of the kind that can never be finished. You’d have to ask a Gullah.”
“I don’t know what a Gullah is.”
“Gullahs are the descendants of the slaves who worked in the rice fields down here. They still keep up the old African traditions.”
“Did any of them ever live in this cottage?”
“No, they had their own cabins near the owners’ cottages. When Pop was selling off the last of those slave cabins in the seventies, I used to see these same blue door facings when we went inside. I painted that blue for the best Halloween party that ever got thrown on this island. Right here in this cottage. Nineteen sixty-eight. Sundown to sunup. The mantel was still here and the toilet and most of the fixtures. We had a band, I was on drums. The girls made a wicked punch. One showoff actually came as Old Plat-eye, with three legs and a disgusting eyeball on a string Scotch-taped to his forehead but we made him take off his costume before he was allowed to pass through the door. Honoring the spirit of the night, my blue paint and all. After the paint had dried, I rubbed it down with steel wool to make it look old, like in the slave cabins. A lot of people still remember that party.”
“Can we go up those stairs?”
“I’d rather you didn’t. Well, if you’re super careful. Last time I went up it was already hazardous, but you’re a light fellow. But test every stair before you put any weight on it and hold on to the wall. You be the canary in the mine and I’ll creep along in your footsteps. You’ll find a mess up there. When they were boarding up the south wall after that porch fire, a lot of junk got stashed upstairs and nobody ever took it to the dump.”
“You mean the porch fire during Hurricane Hazel?”
“Oh right, you’re interested in that family that got swept away. But after the hurricane and the fire, the Barbours sold the cottage and the new owners were going to rebuild it and use it as a vacation home, but then they decided not to and put it back on the market. The next buyers didn’t even pretend they wanted to live in it. They were looking for a quick flip. You know, strip it down, clean it out, and resell at a profit. They got as far as bulldozing and leveling the ground where the burnt porch had been and boarding up the south wall. Then they ran out of money and Pop bought it back as an investment. I had to get all this information from Pop’s files, seeing as I was only two years old when Hazel hit.”
“But didn’t they think it was a cigarette that started the fire?”
“Maybe it was a cigarette, maybe not. Folks can’t tolerate loose ends—they’ve got to tie up a story. Pop said the fire could just as well have started after the hurricane had passed, because who was paying attention? Everybody was busy picking up the pieces of their own properties.”
“It’s too bad those flipping people didn’t do a better job closing off the south side. Those shingles without any windows in them make it look so blind and sad.”
“They ran out of money, like I said. The shingles you see now were a cosmetic afterthought, courtesy of Coggins Realty. I put them up myself. The flipping people, as you call them, had just tacked up sheets of tar paper any old how on the south side of the house before they went belly up. We couldn’t leave it like that, it’d put off any buyer, so I found some weathered cypress shingles that would fit in with the rest of the old houses and nailed them up tastefully. I was still in high school, just learning the business—Hey, hey, hey! Watch that step!”
He had gripped my arm so hard it hurt. “Look at that! The riser has cracked down the middle. A heavier person could have fallen right through. Son, I’m not sure this is a good idea.”
“I’m fine. We’ll just be extra careful.” We were halfway up now. I was determined to see the upstairs.
He was right. It was a mess. There was nothing you wanted to waste a photo on. It revived unhappy memories of some of the places Mom and I had looked at when we were apartment-hunting in Jewel. “They haven’t
even cleaned up after the last tenant,” Mom would say. “It amazes me how inconsiderate people can be.” Nevertheless, I snapped a few pictures so I could finish off the roll and start on the second camera.
“None of these rooms have doors,” I said.
“Well, they did when the last people slept in them. Doors are very easy to make off with, all you need is a flat-blade screwdriver. There are places that sell old doors and windows exclusively for fancy prices. The whole layout of this cottage has been compromised. It’s more noticeable up here where things went truly awry. Of course I wouldn’t point this out to a potential buyer.”
“How has it been compromised?”
“For a start, the stairs would have made way more sense on the north side.”
“Why didn’t the builders think of that?”
“The original builders had a simple, pure plan. Four rooms on one floor with an oceanside porch. H-shaped chimney in the center of the house. It had to warm all four rooms because the rice planters’ families stayed into November. Kitchen was to the back, separated from the house by a breezeway. The kitchen had its own chimney. Then came the makeovers of the successive owners. ‘Let’s build another porch and add a bedroom. Let’s add two bedrooms. Let’s incorporate the kitchen into the main house. Let’s convert the outhouse with its breezeway into an indoor bathroom at the end of a hall. Let’s put in an upper floor. Oh, dear, the previous owners have used up the north side with those added-on ground floor bedrooms, so we’ll have to break through the roof on the south side and put the staircase there.’ This may be the earliest cottage still standing on the island, but its vernacular lines have been completely compromised.”
He had recounted the compromises so vividly that you could see them piling up, mistake upon mistake, until all that was left was the present ruin we were standing in.
“Are there any cottages left that haven’t been compromised?”
“Oh, yes. One’s even got a National Register marker—it’s been kept up beautifully and added to responsibly. It still serves as a rental house, though the owners are very particular. We are honored to have it on our books. And there’s your neighbor’s house, which has stayed in the same family since it was built. But the late Mr. Upchurch committed an atrocity, hiding those indigenous brick footing columns behind a painted trellis. And then the old lady had that unsightly ramp built—not that it’s her fault she’s in a wheelchair. But it can be ripped out easily enough when the time comes. She’s a real piece of work. You met her yet?”
“We’re friends.”
“Ah. Well, then, give her my best regards.”
He undoubtedly would have said more about Coral Upchurch if I had said less.
“You can take a picture of the oceanfront room, but you’re not going in there. Before the fire, was there a nice dormer window on the south wall, but it was so damaged they sheared it off when they were taking off the burnt porch. Okay, take a photo, but do not step into that room. I want to get you out of here without falling through any floors. As you can see, the other upstairs rooms are so piled with trash they’re not worth a photo. I hadn’t realized how far gone these floors are. Let’s see if we can make it downstairs without any broken limbs and we’ll finish our cottage crawl with a look at the kitchen. Happily, none of the owners covered over its lovely brick floors, from the days when people still cooked in their fireplaces, and so far no thief has come up with the right tools to dig out those bricks. You won’t find any more bricks like those unless you visit the brick collection at the Charleston Museum.”
XXXI.
“What’s a colonoscopy?”
“Something you won’t need for a while. Who’s having one?” Balanced on her right foot, Aunt Charlotte was extracting a container of yogurt from the refrigerator with her left hand, which already had a banana in it.
“Charlie Coggins, the realtor, was using it to explain how time plays tricks on you when you get older. He thought he’d had one five years ago but it turned out it was eleven.”
“Where did you run into him?”
“I went up to Grief Cottage to take some photos for you. He was there, and we went on a tour inside the house. He called it our cottage crawl.”
“You went inside?”
“Yeah, the upstairs is pretty bad. I pretty near fell through a stair when we were going up.”
“Marcus!”
“No, it was fine. He was right there to grab me. I took two rolls for you on those disposable cameras. I can pick up the prints tomorrow. You’ll have them when you go back to painting your best sellers.”
“If I ever regain my full range of motion.”
She must have been on the laptop again, trawling for dire wrist stories.
“You will.”
She met my optimism with a sour look. “But here you are, just in time to peel my banana and uncork a bottle of wine. Oh, my bed linens are already in the washing machine—they can wait until there’s a full load. I’ve already put fresh sheets on.”
“You managed alone?”
“One-armed people have to learn to make their beds.”
“How is your… private project coming?”
“I’m either onto something or deluding myself because I can’t do real work. A colonoscopy is when they insert a tiny camera into your rectum and send it up through your intestines to look for polyps—or worse things. I’ve had one. If you want, you can watch the procedure on a TV screen while they’re doing it.”
“Did you watch?”
“Naturally. I’m the visual type. It looked like the inside of a soft, pink tunnel, going up and up, with little craters and bumps along the way. No alarming bumps in my case. If you’ll uncork that bottle of wine for me, Marcus, I’ll be off to my obsession or delusion—or whatever it is.”
Walking next door to the “compromised” Upchurch house to get Roberta’s list for my ride to the island store, I debated whether those old brick footing columns would look better “uncompromised,” without the white latticework in front of them. But I decided the latticework made the house look more solid and neat.
“No list today, Marcus. We’re going to Myrtle Beach this afternoon to get her hair and nails done, so I’ll do my shopping at the Piggly Wiggly,” Roberta said.
“Is there some special occasion?”
“Tomorrow is around the time Mr. Billy arrives.”
“But—how—?”
“How we going to handle it? Like the inchworm does.” Roberta made a spritely humping movement with the back of her hand. “One inch at a time. She’s no fool, she’s just taking it slow. She knows he’s not coming, but she wants to reverence the occasion in her own way. She hopes you’ll be visiting tomorrow at the usual time.”
“But, how should I act?”
“The way you always act. She’ll do the rest.”
Biking to the island market, I racked my brain for tempting meals I might make for Aunt Charlotte. As I considered the options within my range, I was aware that the real problem hovered above me like a sneering gremlin, biding his time for a pounce.
Aunt Charlotte didn’t care about eating. Since I had come to live with her, neither did I. We had more interesting matters to attend to. That weird unlit morning when the ghost-boy had showed himself to me in the doorway of Grief Cottage, I had breakfasted on a fistful of dry cereal before I hurried north on the spellbound beach.
Mom and I had enjoyed our meals. Supper was usually our only one together, and though she was worn out from work, that was our time for conversation: conversation meaning the kind of talk when people tell their day, complain, and make plans for the future. Aunt Charlotte and I didn’t really have conversations. Our exchanges were more like brief Q & A’s (“Where did you run into him?” “How’s your project coming?”), or requests for things (mostly her requests since her accident—like haircuts and peeling bananas and opening bottles…).
“At last!” shrieked the gremlin, nose-diving through space to sink his claws into my back. �
��You finally said bottle!”
Eight cases were delivered to our door at intervals. I carried them in, made a stack in the pantry, and unpacked each case as the necessity arose. Ninety-six bottles allows you three a day for thirty-two days. If you ran out before then, you ordered the next eight cases. There were never more than eight cases, but since I had arrived in mid-May, the deliveries had become more frequent. She ordered mostly Bordeauxs and Burgundies and always chatted, more than usual for Aunt Charlotte, with whoever was on the other end of the line at the Myrtle Beach wine store. She could make it sound like she was having regular guests, who knew the difference between Bordeauxs and Burgundies and why, if you did order Beaujolais, it had to be from a good year.
I had been telling myself that when she got her casts removed she’d taper off. But, now that I thought about it further, she’d always had an open bottle in reach. She always drank when she was painting, which was almost all the days I had lived with her. The only time she had stopped cold had been for a few days after the second surgery when she was afraid to mix painkillers with alcohol. So, what was the problem? She had been doing this for years and turning out paintings and enjoying her solitary life. Why should she stop now?
Maybe it was just my problem. It was all about me. I was afraid if she started drinking more bottles a day, stumbling and falling on a regular basis, maybe really damaging herself, she would be declared an unfit guardian and back I would go into the system.
Yet I shrank from the thought of confronting her: “Aunt Charlotte, do you think maybe you ought to slow down a little with the wine?” I knew her sour look, which I had received as recently as today. “Marcus, just open it,” she would say. And I would open it. She could also kick me out of her house for being a pain. (“He was a nice boy, but he became judgmental. Like Lachicotte. My life was no longer my own.”)
The “monthly stipend” would of course be taken from her, but she had lived without it all these years, and there would be family court and lawyers and maybe the court would appoint a trustee to manage the funds—I didn’t know all the legal details, and also I was in another state now where they had their own rules. I would be sent to another house, not a relative’s since there were no more relatives—or, if there weren’t any vacancies, an institution.
