The House on Seventh Street

by Karen Vorbeck Williams

  She looked up just as Kate came through the door. She looked like she’d just left the beauty parlor. Spotting Winna right away, she brightened and scurried through the line of people now waiting for tables.

  “Hi, Winna,” she called. “Always on time.”

  Winna gave her a hug and they sat down. Kate reached for Winna’s hand, patting it like the hand of a child. “You are a wonder. I’ve always wanted to ask why you’ve never done anything with your hair.”

  Winna assumed she meant why she had not colored away the gray. “I guess I like it. Have you colored yours?” she asked, giving Kate’s flawlessly even dark-brown hair a quick glance.

  “You bet.” Kate smiled and winked, fluffing her “do” with one hand. “I don’t have your courage.”

  Remembering Kate’s tendency to speak her mind, Winna laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “You should,” Kate said. “You know me better than anyone.”

  Winna had to admit she probably did. “We practically lived together for how many years?”

  “Well, I moved to Peach Tree Ridge when I was in eighth grade—I think you were a freshman. We were together almost every day—especially in summer.”

  “Sometimes I wonder if we had way too much freedom—riding off on our horses, swimming in the canal. When I think about the wild things we did—the trouble we could have gotten into—l’m amazed we’re still alive.”

  After ordering lunch, Winna confessed that she had always been jealous of Kate’s clothes. “You were so sweet to let me borrow them.”

  “I thought yours were better—believe me! If I hadn’t, I wouldn’t have traded with you so often. Remember how we used to call each other the night before school, plan what we were going to wear the next day, and meet under the pear trees to swap?”

  “Remember the ghost ranch? I was thinking about that the other day—what fun it was for us to pack up and ride all that way out to the foothills with our sleeping bags and something to cook for dinner and breakfast.”

  “These days people can’t let their kids have adventures like that—it’s a shame. We knew how to take care of ourselves, make a fire, cook something to eat, and sleep out under the stars.”

  To this day, Winna could not remember any other adventure from her youth that compared to riding off with Kate through the countryside to an abandoned farmstead in the shadow of the Book Cliffs several miles from home. Arriving late in the afternoon, they had unloaded their sleeping bags and rations near the house and let the horses go in the old pasture, certain that the ramshackle fence would fool them into thinking they could not escape. Searching for firewood, laying a fire—they were masters of the task at hand.

  Like a traveler coming home after a long journey, Winna had stepped onto the old porch full of anticipation. They knew nothing about the house’s former owners or why they had deserted the place, and would lie around the campfire at night making up love stories with tragic endings.

  “Every summer when we visited the house, it had changed—seemed more haunted,” Winna said. “One by one, the windows were shot out and the furniture stolen.”

  Kate’s face lit up. “Remember the night we tried to sleep indoors?”

  “Of course. I count that as my one and only encounter with ghosts. I’ll have to encourage Chloe with that story. She thinks I’m hopelessly skeptical about the unseen.”

  “What imaginations we had!”

  “After that one terrifying night, we never tried that again.”

  Winna remembered making camp outside—in back of the house—lighting the campfire, roasting wienies on a stick, and eating baked beans from the fire-warmed blackened can. The sun set over Pinyon Mesa, lighting the sky pink and violet, and more wood was thrown on the fire. Fully dressed except for boots, they had burrowed into their sleeping bags. The moon rose high and Winna could see the horses still grazing the dry pasture. When she turned her eyes up to the sky, it seemed that the stars were close enough to touch.

  The women turned the conversation to the present, catching up with recent events. Kate was busy golfing at the country club three mornings a week, playing tennis once a week with her husband and another couple. She and Jim also belonged to a folk dance group that met once a month for a hoedown.

  No wonder she’s so slim, Winna thought. Kate still had horses and invited her to ride. A standing invitation Winna planned to accept. When their lunch arrived, a cheeseburger for her and a salad for Kate, Winna told Kate all about Adolph Whitaker’s letters and the jumble of treasures and trash packed into the old house. Kate wanted to know about Winna’s plans for the future, especially what she was thinking about John.

  “We saw each other for dinner. We’re getting reacquainted. That’s all,” she said.

  Kate picked through her salad, avoiding the tomatoes and red onion. Winna guessed she wasn’t very hungry. “You remember he married Maggie?” Kate said.

  Winna nodded yes. “Did you see much of her after high school?”

  Kate looked thoughtful. “Now that you mention it, I’d say not. Why do you ask?”

  “I wrote her a couple of times and she never responded. I felt a little disappointed—hurt, actually.” Winna regretted the waver in her voice following that admission.

  “Once she got involved with John, she moved to Boulder and took a job of some kind there,” Kate said. “She may not have gotten your letters. He was in school. I think they got married there. I got the impression that it was all very hush-hush.”

  “Maybe she was pregnant?”

  “I don’t know. They never had children,” Kate seemed to drift for a second before she went on. “When they came back to town—before he went to Vietnam—I didn’t hear from her. Bumped into her here and there. She was friendly enough, but didn’t seem interested in resuming our relationship.”

  “Tell me about her death.” Even though John had recently told her what had happened, Winna wondered what Kate knew.

  Kate shook her head as if she still couldn’t believe it. “I was so shocked—she was a fine skier. John was with her when it happened. She ran into a tree and broke her neck.”

  “Did he see it happen?”

  “I think so. You know she was so good that he actually liked skiing with her. Jim won’t ski with me.”

  “Johnny never skied with me,” Winna admitted, “but Maggie would—and you. I think I was the poorest skier of the lot—a real gaper.”

  “No you weren’t. I remember having lots of fun with you—especially on trails. God, we had fun,” Kate reached for Winna’s hand.

  Winna smiled and opened her mouth to add her assent, but she wasn’t fast enough.

  “After the war, John came home lost and troubled—he was doing drugs. He and my Jim have always been best friends—like brothers, really. At one point Jim sat him down for a heart-to-heart. John was stealing money from his father to pay for drugs and gambling debts.”

  “Really? That’s hard to believe. He told Jim that?” Winna said, feeling stunned, troubled.

  “Yes—like a confession of sorts. He hated himself. Mr. Hodell was quite old then and had trusted his son to take over the business. John was devastated when he died and started going to Gamblers Anonymous. He wanted to pull himself and his father’s business back into shape and asked Jim to help him.”

  “How could Jim trust him? I mean, after stealing from his father?”

  “Jim loves him like a brother and believed in him—he still does. He didn’t go into business with him until John got his act together—then Jim became the financial brains.” Kate looked sure, as if she was confident that John had reformed.

  Thinking Kate’s husband might well be a saint, Winna asked, “How has that worked out?”

  “Very well. Jim is a good manager and John is a good contractor. They don’t get mixed up in each other’s territory and, if I may say so, they operate the leading firm in the area. Once John cleaned up his act, he stayed cleaned up. We are kind of proud of him f
or that.”

  Kate had told Winna more about John’s past than he had. Winna sipped a second cup of tea as they talked and laughed and told stories from the past. When she looked at her watch, it was nearly three o’clock. They had forgotten the time.

  “Oh, Lordy, it’s late,” Kate said as they prepared to go. “Promise that you’ll go riding with me soon.”

  They hugged, pecked each other’s cheeks, and said goodbye.

  That night, lying in bed in Juliana’s bedroom, Winna remembered Kate as a girl—her dark hair and snapping green eyes, her body straight as a stick. Winna’s body had developed sooner than Kate’s and her friend had teased her about having big boobs. Winna chuckled to herself. The night of the sweetheart formal she had helped Kate stuff her strapless bra with Kleenex. She wondered if Kate would remember that. The memory delighted her but she fell asleep thinking of beautiful Maggie, her eyes like a doll’s eyes, smiling blue, fringed with thick black lashes. And now she was dead.

  14

  1954

  WINNA WAS ALLOWED to read movie magazines and Seventeen, but she kept the romance magazines she had borrowed from Kate—who had borrowed them from Maggie—a secret from her mother by smuggling them in and out of the house inside her coat and hiding them under her mattress. She believed the stories in True Story were written by young women just about her age, that these romantic confessions, which included “going all the way” and always ended in disaster and remorse, were real. In every plot, young girls were abandoned by the young men they had loved and trusted, or if they got pregnant, were disowned and banished from their families. The moral of these tales was that girls had sex at their own peril, but they did it anyway because it was impossible to resist.

  At a slumber party one night, Winna and her friends washed and rinsed color into their hair. Winna hennaed her brown hair to look like Rhonda Fleming. Blonde Maggie became raven-haired Linda Darnell. The house filled up with ecstatic redheads and dark-haired sirens giggling, twirling pin curls, anxious to see themselves transformed by morning. At another party, Maggie brought makeup and the girls made each other up to look like movie stars. They curled their eyelashes, piled on the mascara, plucked each other’s eyebrows, and painted their lips ruby red. Into the wee hours, Winna and her friends swooned to songs on the radio where hearts cried, sighed, and died for them.

  By eighth grade, Maggie Hart had taken over Winna’s world. She lived downtown not far from the junior high school and sometimes Winna’s mother allowed her to walk home with Maggie after school. Sometimes on weekends, Maggie came for a visit to the country. Maggie was a good student and popular at school—a favorite of all the girls. At sleepovers they listened to “The Night Owl” on radio KEXO. The disc jockey played songs all night long, reading dedications from mailed-in postcards. Side by side in Maggie’s double bed, they listened for hours. Under her hot pink chenille bedspread, the soft glow of her frilly white lampshade overhead, the disc jockey’s low voice saturated the dusky room. The drums would beat or the violins would swell and their hearts responded, but Maggie and Winna didn’t move, or else the bobby pins would fall out of their pin curls.

  His voice low, seductive, the disc jockey said, “Tommy’s got a message for Maggie.”

  “That’s you!” Winna cried as they both popped straight up in bed. “That’s gotta be you!”

  The girls hugged, then Mario Lanza’s voice crooned, Be my love...

  How romantic, Winna swooned—wishing, hoping, longing someday to have a boyfriend like Tommy, a football player, who stood strong and muscular behind his little boy smile. She had a boyfriend, but she didn’t love him like Maggie loved Tommy. Someday, she thought deep into the night, finally falling asleep to Guy Mitchell’s tuneful sobs.

  During the summer between eighth and ninth grades, Maggie and Winna spent hours practicing for the day they would be allowed to go out on their first date. With a portable radio as their constant companion, they danced on Mrs. Hart’s big old kitchen floor. First Maggie would lead and Winna would follow, then they would switch parts. They held each other close, pretending that they danced in the arms of a boy.

  That fall, Maggie and Winna had a sleepover in the Harts’ attic. As strong moonlight poured in through the bare window, the girls sat on the old mattress they had made up into a bed. Brushing their hair, they talked about how they couldn’t wait to have boyfriends with cars.

  “Only one more month to Tommy’s birthday,” Maggie sighed, a thought so divine that her hairbrush slipped dreamily from her hand. “His father already lets him drive around out back in the vacant lot. When he’s sixteen we can go everywhere together.”

  On her way to pinning three rows of curls that would transform her already curly hair into a fluffy golden halo, Maggie used her front teeth to open a bobby pin.

  “Are you going to park with him?” Winna asked, pinning her last curl into place.

  “Jeez, I guess so. Yes,” she said, twirling her fingers around a free lock.

  Winna settled carefully on her pillow. “Are you going to let him pet?” She was trying to be funny.

  “No!” Maggie protested, flopping on her back. “I’d be all shy. I wouldn’t want him to see me,” she said, unbuttoning her pajama top. “Look at them, do you think my boobs look all right?”

  Maggie lay flat on her back in moonlight streaming through the window, her breasts small hills, her eyes closed.

  “They’re pretty,” Winna said.

  Maggie shone white in the moonlight, like she’d been carved from marble, her breasts smooth and round as a pearl. Knowing how it felt to touch her own, Winna reached out with one finger and slowly, lightly traced smaller and smaller circles around Maggie’s breast, stopping to rest at its peak. The dark attic seemed to vibrate with a blurry light, as Maggie caught her breath and turned to face Winna.

  Winna stopped breathing. Embarrassed, she tucked her hand under the covers.

  Maggie looked away as if she had just seen something move across the room and closed her pajama top over her breasts.

  “I have a guardian angel,” she murmured. “He protects me—watches over me,” she sighed. Her drowsy blue eyes, half hidden under the lids, fixed on the moon in the window.

  “How do you know?” Winna wondered if Maggie had ever seen him and if he spoke to her.

  “He’s over there,” she whispered, languidly nodding her head, indicating that Winna should look behind her toward the foot of the mattress. “He’s watching us now.”

  Frightened by the possibility that Maggie was right, that they weren’t alone in the attic, she looked anxiously in that direction.

  “Don’t be afraid, he’ll keep us safe,” Maggie yawned, rolling onto her stomach.

  A tall, shimmering, El Greco-lean figure stood in the shadows, just outside the range of the moonlight. Instead of white, the color of angels, it radiated violet and blue, but looked exactly like an angel to Winna. It gave her just a tiny glimpse of itself before it vanished—just enough to leave Winna wondering if she had really seen it.

  “I think I saw him,” she said, unafraid and suddenly very sleepy. She yawned, and as if angels had the power to put spells on young girls, closed her eyes. “Why don’t I have a guardian angel?”

  “You do—everybody does. Watch for him,” Maggie mumbled, her voice trailing off to sleep.

  15

  1955

  BY THE TIME she was a sophomore in high school, Winna was already interested in photography. She had grown up drawing and painting alongside her mother and sister, but the camera fascinated her. She liked the discipline and following the rules. The camera would yield only as much as Winna’s mastery would allow. Then there were the happy accidents and trying to understand them. She received great pleasure from working with a machine, manipulating it for effect as she tried to make sense of it. Winna volunteered her services as a photographer to the school newspaper.

  She was a good student in every subject but biology and would have been better if
she had not been as pretty, not so busy dreaming about what she was going to wear to the weekend dances and parties.

  School dances, held in the high school gym, sometimes had live music in the form of a small student band called the Starlighters. At the first dance that fall, a disc jockey played records—songs from the hit parade past and present. The kids danced to Frankie Laine, Bill Haley and his Comets, Patti Page, and Frank Sinatra among others. They were not immune to the great dance music of the forties and jitterbugged to Benny Goodman, Glen Miller, Count Basie, and Tommy Dorsey.

  Winna had gone to the dance with Greg. They had been dating for about two weeks, since the night of Maggie’s birthday party where they had noticed each other for the first time.

  As music poured out of the big speakers, Greg asked her to dance. After their second dance, Winna was worried. She had tried her best to follow, but Greg liked to talk. Every time the conversation got going, he would forget his feet and just stand there and sway. Once, he stopped all motion except for the gestures he made with his hands while trying to explain how he had fixed his little sister’s bicycle. When he was silent and the music took over, he tried his best to dance, but more often than not, his indecision led him to change direction midstep. His apologetic sighs confirmed her belief that dancing was not his gift. Looking miserable, Greg asked if they could stand out the next dance and they wandered off to chat with one of Greg’s friends and his date.

  Johnny Hodell must have spotted Winna on the sidelines looking left out, her eyes focused enviously on the dance floor. Greg had turned away to talk to a group of boys. The piano beat out the first slow strains of “Unforgettable” as Nat King Cole’s voice made her dizzy with longing.

  A big smile on his face, Johnny approached in time to the music. He took her hand and swung her out on the dance floor, then pulled her close. They floated together like two feathers on a millpond. By the time the violins swelled, Winna was in love and they had not said a word.