The House on Seventh Street

by Karen Vorbeck Williams

  She knew he was right. Chances were no one would marry her. That was the fear expressed by every bad girl in every True Story magazine story she had ever read. To save face, she would not dissolve into tears. That was what he wanted—her all soft and begging for mercy. Instead, she struggled to remove his class ring from the chain around her neck.

  “I hate your guts!” she yelled, throwing the ring in his face. It stung him hard as it bounced off his forehead and hit the dashboard. She knew what to say next, the worst thing she could possibly say to him.

  “I never want to see you again.” She hoped her words would cut his heart out. “Take me home.”

  “Get out and walk,” he said.

  She got out of the car. He turned the car around and headed back to First Street.

  Feeling utterly alone, she walked beside the canal as it drifted lazily past reeds and cattails. Dragonflies flitted by. A horsefly buzzed around her head, landed on her arm, and bit her. Rubbing out the pain, she ran past a cornfield and a farmhouse huddled in the shade of a cottonwood grove. She wondered if she should jump in the canal and drown herself. But after years of swimming in the canal, she didn’t think she knew how to drown there. She needed a flash flood to sweep her away, a mire of quicksand to swallow her. Tears came. Johnny was right about everything.

  By the time she saw his car driving back along on the canal road, she believed he was right; she was lucky that he dated her. She felt grateful to him for coming back.

  “Come on,” he said, opening the passenger door as the car rolled slowly along beside her. “Get in. I’ll take you home.”

  Marching alongside the open door in silence, not looking at him, not speaking, she wanted to look like she still had some pride.

  Johnny began to chuckle. “You look pretty damn silly stomping down the road in tears,” he said as if they had not had a horrible fight—as if he had never even thought all those terrible things. “Ah, come on, Winna. Get in. Let’s not fight.”

  “I’m not crying,” she said, hoping for some dignity. She climbed into the passenger seat and sat close to the door. He turned the car around and headed toward First Street once more. She wanted to crawl into his arms and hear him say that he loved her.

  By the time they stopped in front of her house, Johnny had apologized to her. He assured her that he had not meant a word he’d said, that he had just been upset because on Saturday she went shopping with Kate and had not helped him wash his car.

  That night, she could not sleep. She lay there promising herself that tomorrow she would break up with him for good. To be true to herself, she must make the break. But by morning, things did not seem so bad. She told herself that she could not live without him. He was all she had. She went on her first diet, cutting back at every meal and going hungry in between. Then she discovered the buttermilk and banana diet and ate nothing else until she was thin.

  FOR WEEKS, WINNA worried that she was pregnant. When she finally told Johnny, he knew what to do. He had a married friend who was willing to take her urine specimen to his wife’s doctor. Winna was to pee in a bottle and he would see to all the rest. After a few torturous days, Johnny informed her that the rabbit had died—she was pregnant. Winna thought the world had come to an end, but he seemed strong. Suddenly thoughtful and concerned, he said he would marry her. Neither of them breathed a word to anyone.

  All day long at school, Winna had nothing else on her mind. At night, she could not sleep. She lay awake looking out the window at the moon through the cottonwood tree, whispering a prayer.

  “Oh, God, help me. Make it not happen. Make it go away. If you make me not pregnant, I’ll never have sex again—I’ll never even let myself want to have sex again.” She held her breath for a long time, dissolving into the sheets, trying to make her heart stop. If I want to, she thought, I can will myself to die. She lay there, asking life to drift out of her body, dizzy from the desire to be no more. The last thing I’ll see is the moon. The moon doesn’t care what happens to me.

  The day came when Winna had to talk to her mother. She walked downtown after school and climbed the stairs to her studio. Nora had set herself up in an empty office on the top floor at Grumman’s. She’d had the carpets pulled up, the drapes pulled down, and the windows exposed to the light. The studio gave off the familiar smell of oil paint, turpentine, and mineral spirits. Canvases cluttered the walls in no apparent order. Framed pictures leaned against the walls in corners. Two easels were set up in front of the window. The moment she entered the room, Winna fell into the only easy chair. Before her mother could properly greet her, she gave up a sob and began to cry.

  “I’m pregnant, Mother,” she said, terrified.

  Nora appeared strangely calm. “Oh—I see. How do you know?” Her clothes covered with a paint-smeared smock, she came to sit on the arm of Winna’s chair and placed a hand on her daughter’s shoulder.

  “There was a urine test—the doctor said so.”

  “I’ve worried—you know—with you and Johnny being together so much.” She stood and pulled Winna up and into her arms. “My poor girl,” she whispered.

  EXCEPT FOR THAT day, Nora did not mention Winna’s problem again. Instead, an uncomfortable silence came between them. Winna couldn’t talk to Kate or Maggie and was afraid to ask questions, to even think about what was happening to her body.

  Without a word about her problem, her mother arranged for their annual shopping trip to Denver. On the train, as they passed through high canyon walls above the Colorado River, Nora told Winna the truth about their trip.

  “Dr. Sloane found a doctor for you. When you come back to Grand Junction, you won’t be pregnant anymore,” she said, taking her daughter’s hand.

  Winna did not ask questions, she understood. She squeezed her mother’s hand, then put her head on her shoulder. “I love you, Mother,” she whispered.

  They arrived in Denver that afternoon and checked into the Brown Palace Hotel. At nine o’clock that night, they took a taxi to a modest residential neighborhood where Nora had been instructed to get out of the taxi at the corner of Walker Street and Geronimo Way. After they paid the taxi and it was well out of sight, they walked to an address two blocks down on Geronimo. Nora rang the bell of a large Victorian house in need of fresh paint.

  A woman answered the door. Nora gave her four hundred dollars in cash, and was asked to wait in the front room. She sat down and Winna was ushered through a door into a room that looked like it had once been a kitchen.

  NORA SAT ALONE in the dimly lit room across from a lumpy gray davenport, her feet on a Navajo rug. She thought of her poor frightened child on the other side of the wall, of her uninformed husband waiting for them at home. For Winna’s sake, Nora was glad that she was not like her mother. It had been less than a year since her mother’s death. She had been a kind woman, very loving to her child, but she was strict and judgmental about moral failure. Glad that she could help her daughter, Nora tried to imagine herself being in Winna’s place. Her mother would have berated and judged her, then sent her away to hide until the baby was born. Suddenly, her eyes ran with tears and her mind opened to the thought that she could be wrong. She’d hidden everything, never confided in that dear woman, never gave her mother the chance Winna had given her.

  It wasn’t long before the doctor reappeared at the door. He told Nora to take Winna back to the hotel and put her to bed. If she complained of pain, Nora was not to give her aspirin. A hot water bottle on her back would help. She would need bed rest until at least noon tomorrow.

  “My wife called a taxi for you,” he said as he ushered her into the kitchen.

  Nora saw her daughter sitting quietly across the small room, head bent, hands folded in her lap, her eyes glued to the floor. She looked like she was trying not to cry. She could feel her child’s loneliness and was eager to take her away. She wanted to hold her, to rock her like a baby.

  “The taxi is waiting for you in the alley,” the doctor said.

 
On the drive downtown to the hotel, Nora held Winna’s hand. She kept silent for a while, watching the house and car lights flicker past in the dark. “Everything is going to be all right now,” Nora heard herself say. She put her arm around Winna’s shoulders and pulled her close, letting her rest her head on her breast.

  THE DAY FOLLOWING their return to Grand Junction, Winna told Johnny that he didn’t have to marry her. “I’m not pregnant anymore,” she said.

  He wanted to know what had happened and she told him the truth: the trip to Denver, the doctor in the kitchen, her fear. He looked at her in stunned silence. Winna was glad there were no tears in his eyes. “Everything is all right now,” she said. “You can go off to school. I haven’t ruined your life.”

  He was silent a moment. “I wanted to marry you.” Winna had never seen him look so sad.

  “It wouldn’t have worked. We don’t know how to be married, Johnny.”

  He put his arms around her and held her. “We could have made it work,” he whispered. “Someday…” He hesitated, pulling back for a look at her face. “Promise me that someday, no matter where we are or who we marry, you’ll let me find you again.”

  Winna slipped his class ring off the chain around her neck and put it in his hand. “I promise,” she said.

  23

  1999

  THE FULL MOON seemed to follow Winna down the mountain as she drove her trusty old Lincoln Town Car on the winding road back to Grand Junction. Walt had purchased the car in 1993. She had driven it a hundred and two thousand miles, and still made it all the way from New Castle to Grand Junction. She had always wanted to make that trip—a vagabond, free as a bird, traveling across the country with her camera—even though she ended up being on assignment for American Roads, she felt the freedom she had longed for. It was fun being a photojournalist for a change.

  At a sharp curve on a steep decline, she shifted into second to slow her speed. Thinking happily about her evening with Emily and Hugh, she felt certain that her daughter had made a good marriage and was happy with her husband and child. There were no other cars on the mountain road. Winna kept her headlights on high-beam. In the moonlight, nothing in the landscape looked familiar, but her headlights flashed on a mailbox with “J. L. HODELL” neatly painted in white letters. For an instant, she thought of stopping, but the house was dark. It didn’t look like John was home.

  John Hodell had been on her mind since she last saw him. She had invited him to dinner, offering to cook the trout he’d caught on a weekend fishing trip. As he watched her pan-sear the fish, she felt something happen between them. She couldn’t exactly name it, but his eyes were lit with pleasure and she felt the happiness of a young girl enjoying attention that was also affection. The feeling lingered with her long after he had left and was with her still as she drove down the mountain.

  That ease and contentment kept them at the table late into the night. For the first time, he talked about his life after the war—about the gambling that led to financial ruin, about Jim Cross coming to the rescue, helping him see that he had to get help. He told her about his long climb back to what he called “sanity.” Once John was “clean,” Jim had become his business partner. John talked about Jim’s loyalty. How his faith in him had changed his life. Winna had not asked and there was no mention of his taking money from the business to pay gambling debts. They had embraced tenderly when they said good night and had kissed.

  Driving downhill, she applied her brakes on a curve and admonished herself to slow down. A fitting image, she thought, of my life as Johnny’s girl. Back then, before women’s lib, she was both young and clueless. A thrilling thing—Johnny’s love—but clearly a downhill ride for me. “What a mess we made, John,” she said aloud as her tires whined around another curve.

  After their trout dinner, he had called the next morning to discuss the possibility of replacing the furnace. Before he said goodbye, he asked her to dinner at his house. She had accepted.

  Winna turned into a residential neighborhood at the base of the foothills. I’m not going to be a fool about John. I’m too old to be a fool. Don’t kid yourself, Winna. Resolutions and promises to herself accompanied Winna the rest of the way home.

  AS WINNA PULLED into the driveway at the house on Seventh Street, she noticed the attic light was lit. Had it been burning since she searched the trunk? In her excitement, she must have forgotten to turn it off. She parked in front of the garage and entered through the kitchen door. It was not terribly late, but Winna was tired and climbed the stairs to the second floor, stopping to flip off the light at the bottom of the attic stairs.

  She readied herself for bed and pulled the chain on the bedside table lamp, plunging herself into darkness—the perfect setting to discharge the accumulation of the day. Juliana, Edwin, Dolph, and baby Henry materialized in her mind until the memory of John’s kiss chased them away. Turning on her side, she snuggled into her pillows remembering how John had made love to her when she was sixteen.

  She closed her eyes as the words of her childhood prayer came to mind for the first time in fifty years. “Now I lay me down to sleep….” Look at what an old house full of memories does to you, she thought as tears wet her pillow.

  The bewildering sound of carefully placed footsteps on the attic stairs stopped her tears. Terrified, she lifted her head as the attic door opened with a click. Winna held her breath as the dark figure of a tall man crept past her open door. She froze as his footsteps quietly descended the back stairs. She was not dreaming. He was in the kitchen. She heard the sound of the kitchen door open and quickly got to her feet. Racing across the hall to the old nursery’s window, she saw the intruder run down the driveway, turn on Chipeta Avenue, and disappear into the night.

  STILL SHAKEN FROM the events of the night before, Winna poured her first cup of coffee, stirring in both sugar and cream. She remembered that until Walt had left her for another woman, she had always taken her coffee black. Was that the way she hoped to sweeten her bitter cup?

  She sat down in the library to mull over last night’s visit from the police. She had been terrified and, for the first time in her life, dialed 911. From window to window, she ran in the dark, making sure he was gone. She thought of the doors and hurried to check every one—all but the kitchen door were locked. Within minutes of her call, the police had arrived at the front door. Scared to be alone in the house for another minute, Winna had to restrain herself from rushing into their arms.

  She couldn’t remember their names—only that one was young, blond, freckle-faced, and about to burst out of his uniform and the other tall, dark, and handsome. She had taken them upstairs to the attic where they did their best to look around in all the clutter.

  “Is anything missing?” the blond one asked as he cast his eyes over the tangle of dark objects jutting from the attic floor.

  “I have no idea. Look at this mess,” she said, throwing her arms wide.

  “Who has keys to the house?” the other officer asked as he shined a long flashlight into the dark corners of the attic. “You should change the locks.”

  “The kitchen door wasn’t locked,” Winna said. “We’ve never locked the kitchen door—not in over eighty years.”

  He gave her a sheepish grin, then shook his head and said, “I’ll bet you’ll lock it now.”

  He flashed his light to the floor. “Nice and dusty. Come look at these footprints.”

  Winna doubted their value. “They might be mine. I can’t count how many times I’ve been back and forth across this floor.”

  The blond officer got down to his haunches for a look. “These tracks are pretty confused and if he picked up dust on his shoes and made a track in the hall, we probably destroyed it on our way in.”

  After the attic, she had shown them her room and described how she lay in bed holding her breath, hoping the intruder would think she was asleep and wouldn’t have to come in and kill her.

  They dusted for fingerprints around the attic door, the
n checked the front door and the door to the side porch to make sure they were locked.

  “Ok, Mrs. Jessup, we’re through here. Before we leave, though, I want to see the key to the kitchen door,” the dark-haired one said.

  Feeling like a foolish child, Winna disappeared into the library to look for the key. The officers waited for her in the reception hall while she rummaged through some drawers and finally found it. The moment she appeared in the hall, the older officer held out his hand, palm open, and she placed the key there.

  He looked at it and smiled. “Get the lock changed and keep your door locked. This is the oldest key I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “We’ll write this up, but don’t expect much in the way of an investigation—especially since nothing is missing. House break-ins are very common and hard to solve unless you catch the burglar in the act, or if stolen goods resurface somewhere later. Now lock yourself in and don’t answer the door again tonight.”

  “THEY MUST HAVE thought I was an idiot,” she said to herself on her way to the kitchen for another cup of coffee. Wondering who on earth had been in her attic last night, she comforted herself with the thought that she’d have new locks on the doors by the end of the day.

  Putting the terrors of the night before out of mind, she reached for the last of Adolph Whitaker’s letters. Winna had already read a few. The earlier letters were written while Adolph was a student at Brown University. He wrote to Juliana during her senior year in high school and the two years she attended college in Denver. Had Dolph written only twenty-eight letters in a span of five years? It seemed likely that Juliana had only saved her favorites.

  He described his classes—mostly classics and English literature—wrote his thoughts, and little poems.

  If college bred

  Means a four-year loaf,