by Ava Zavora
“Uh-huh,” Sera interrupted. “Who would have guessed?”
Stifling a laugh none too discreetly, Andrew now addressed the old man. “We wanna know if anything exciting’s ever happened in Venetia." Sera pressed on Andrew’s foot with the heel of her boot. “Like did people do anything other than farm?”
He fixed his stare at Andrew without smiling. “Well, in the old days, they used to drag ill-mannered young bucks through the town tied to the back of a horse. Is that what you meant, miss?”
Andrew put his hands in his pockets and started whistling as he turned around to inspect the cider press further.
“No, not quite. Sir,” Sera added carefully. “I mean,” she said as she leaned on the counter, smiling, “Things you aren’t allowed to tell the third graders." She was rewarded with a gleam of interest.
“Delong’s son, the senator, squandered his father’s millions and died deep in debt.”
“Really?” Sera encouraged.
The old man put down his paper, now animated. “During Prohibition, bootleggers used to smuggle rum through Venetia. A ship would run up the River and small boats would ferry back and forth to Black Point at night. If there was a raid, the rum runners would just dump the stuff in the water."
“Scandalous,” Sera said, her hands clasped under her chin. Andrew whistled amused behind her.
“And right outside there,” pointing to the front door, “The town’s first postmaster was murdered, back when this used to be the postmaster’s house. His killer was never found.”
“Fascinating.”
The woman, who had been softly snoring in her chair, now snorted. Her eyes remained closed.
Sera straightened up and nodded towards the Trumbull doll house. “What about old houses? Do you know any stories about them?”
“The Trumbulls?" The old man seemed disappointed. “Trumbull and his kin were model citizens. Not a speck of scandal. Sometimes the family that lives there now gives tours.”
“No,” Sera said, her finger tracing figures on the glass counter that displayed knick knacks for sale. “I’m thinking of the house off of Wild Horse Lane, up a dirt road near the Haviland farm.”
The woman opened one pink frosted lid at Sera. “Rosethorn?”
“Rosethorn?” Sera repeated. She had never heard that name before, but it struck her as right.
“Um-hm." The woman was fully awake now. “Miranda Haviland owns it now.”
“But no one lives in it." The woman shot her a shrewd glance. “I mean,” Sera said hastily, “When we went by, we saw it looked abandoned, empty.”
The woman sprang from her chair with a haste that made her lopsided, gigantic bun wobble in agitation. She waddled over to a metal cabinet in the corner and opened the middle drawer, deftly looking through files. Clutching a thin Manila folder, she came back to the counter and opened it to a large, yellowed newspaper clipping from the Venetia Advance. It showed a picture of soldier and a young woman posing next to the old house, looking slightly less rundown than it did currently. The caption read, “Lieutenant and Fiancée Vow to Restore the Guilfoyle Mansion."
“Now that’s a story,” the woman said as she tapped a plump finger on the picture.
Sera picked up the clipping and unfolded it to read the short article below. Andrew leaned in to look over her shoulder.
“Lieutenant Beau Kavanaugh recently purchased Rosethorn, the old Guilfoyle Mansion, from the Guilfoyle Trust for his bride-to-be, Miss Miranda Haviland." Sera and Andrew quickly looked at each other before reading further.
“Lieutenant Kavanaugh, currently stationed at Hamilton Air Force Base, is due to be shipped out any day now. Miss Haviland, the granddaughter of the former caretaker of Rosethorn, tells the Advance that she has long admired the once-grand estate, which has sat in vacancy for over 50 years. Lieutenant Kavanaugh and Miss Haviland plan to wed when his tour of duty ends. While her intended fights the war, Miss Haviland will begin the restoration of Rosethorn, in addition to working at her father’s farm. The couple met during the spring dance hosted by the Druids and were engaged after four weeks.”
The article was dated July 15, 1942. Sera looked questioningly at the woman.
“His plane was shot down over the Pacific, about a year after that picture was taken. She moved back to her father’s farm, shut down the place, and never stepped foot in it since. Or married anyone else.”
Sera gazed at the picture of the young and lovely Miss Haviland in a pale dress with puff sleeves, her hair in soft waves, and at the handsome man beside her uniform, their smiling faces unaware that they would never marry and live together in the house that loomed behind them.
“Funny thing about Miranda Haviland. She won’t live in that house, but she’d rather sell parts of the farm than let it go. Her nephew’s been at her, and she just won’t budge.”
“But it’s also called Guilfoyle Mansion,” Andrew asked. “Who lived in it before?”
“Ahhh,” the woman said almost beside herself. She turned to the back of the folder and lifted a faded black and white photograph which looked even older than that of Ms. Haviland and her soldier. “Captain Gervase Guilfoyle. Dashing name, isn’t it?"
Sera and Andrew looked at Captain Guilfoyle, who sadly did not look anything like his dashing name. He was bald, with a fleshy face of middle age, and although he looked distinguished in his carefully groomed mustache and beard, the Captain was not a handsome man.
“He used to run goods and produce once a day from San Francisco to Venetia and back in his schooner, The Aegis. That was before they built the railroad tracks by Old Town." The woman squinted at the back of the photograph.
“1890, it says here. He was a sworn bachelor, lived in the hotel above the saloon. And then one day out of the blue, he brought home some woman from the City. He said she was his wife." Her tone indicated skepticism.
“Very young and a beauty by all accounts. The captain built that mansion for her, exactly the way she wanted. Stained glass windows everywhere, imported materials, the best of everything. No ordinary house would do for her. Planted roses everywhere because it was her favorite flower. But soon after it was finished, she disappeared. Some said she ran off with her lover. Some said he killed her in a fit of jealousy. No one really knows. But, just like Miranda Haviland, the Captain never married again after she ran off and he didn’t live in that house too long either. No one’s lived in that house that’s lived happily." The woman tapped her finger again at the newspaper clipping of Rosethorn. “That house there’s a ruin of doomed love."
Andrew and the old man both snickered. The woman turned to her companion. “What? It’s true.”
The old man just shook his head behind his newspaper.
Affronted, the woman closed her manila folder. “These are the things we don’t tell the third graders.”
*****
“Good thing, too,” Andrew said later that afternoon as they took refuge underneath the shade of one of the big oak trees that dotted the Catholic cemetery.
After visiting the museum, Andrew and Sera had taken their bikes and boarded the bus to Petaluma, then rode from the bus stop, almost to the edge of town. He had not wanted to go back to Rosethorn, as Sera had requested, but instead tempted her with a visit to a turn-of-the-century graveyard. “A ruin of doomed love,” he repeated.
After Sera had taken her fill of photos of the small cemetery’s crumbling winged angels and mausoleums, she had taken her notebook out and started scribbling.
“Um-hm,” she replied absentmindedly to Andrew as he sat eating the melting and broken chocolate chip cookies she had baked for him that morning. She could not get the mansion out her mind or its tragedies. It made her itch with possibility. Her suspicion that a tragedy lay buried in Miss Haviland’s past was now proven, giving leave for her imagination to soar with her sad story.
I looked into the brave wooden faces of the griffins that stood as sentinels, the fire animating them so that were they to take wing a
nd depart from their posts, I would not have been surprised. She dreamt as she wrote, a story spinning itself out of lost love and the old house.
“Sera.”
“Um-hm.”
“Sera." Andrew’s tone was insistent. She looked up at last.
“What are you writing?” she drew her notebook to her chest protectively.
“Don’t look at me like that. I’m not going to spy on you." He laid down the bag of cookies. “Why do I feel like I made a mistake taking you there?”
“What are you talking about?”
“It’s just a house. A rundown old house." Andrew was scowling at her, a bit of melted chocolate on the edge of his lip.
“Are you pouting?"
“You’re ignoring me.”
Sera folded her notebook and put it back in her backpack. Then leaning over, she slowly and deliberately licked the chocolate off of Andrew’s lip.
Almost appeased, Andrew uncrossed his arms and drew her to him. “That’s cheap, Sera, real cheap.”
She lingered just a breath away from his mouth, knowing full well now just how much power she held over him. “Should I only think of you every waking moment and nothing else?”
“Why not,” he asked with an unshakeable certainty that only a 17-year-old could possess, “When you’re everything to me?”
Chapter 11
Although it had just begun, Sera already knew that this summer would be the one she would remember as the most golden and idyllic of her youth.
Summer days, spent in some adventure or another exploring the mansion or going for long, aimless drives if Andrew had his mother’s van or long, aimless walks if he didn’t, seemed to last forever, as the sun shone until nine o’clock at night. Dusk would find Sera and Andrew sitting on the steps by the gate to her house, their parting as slow and reluctant as the setting of the sun, even though in a few hours he would sneak in through her window or she would sneak out.
Adrift in this golden sea of sunny days, Sera did not expect much to change for the rest of the summer so she only felt the mildest apprehension when she found herself in public in a bright orange bathing suit, the only one she could find left in the store that late in the season which fit her.
Andrew had done a double-take when she took off her shirt. “Kinda bright, huh?”
Andrew shook his head. “No. It’s a nice color.”
“Liar. I look like one of those highway workers.”
“It, uh, fits you nice.”
She had joined Andrew and his family for their annual Fourth of July in a campground right by the Russian River. Sensing how much it meant to Andrew, Sera did not make excuses so that she didn’t have to go. She had thought they would be going to the pebbly beach by Guerneville where the river came up to her waist.
Instead, they had driven to Forestville and picnicked by a high bank next to a deep watering hole. She tried not to worry when she saw a thick rope tied to an overhanging branch of a tree that dangled over the river.
Sera was on her best behavior here, which meant that she was unnaturally quiet amidst his large and raucous family, a mute midget in the land of fair-haired giants. She watched them in fascination, envying their easy familiarity with one another and funny stories of past misadventures, how Andrew’s grandfather had taken all the grandchildren on a fishing trip one summer and accidentally hooked Christian on his knee, the one spring they went river rafting and the raft bearing Andrew and his brothers capsized because Andrew’s uncle was trying to keep his twelve-pack from floating away, the time when Andrew and his cousins went canoeing and got caught in a nudist camp down river.
The whole day was filled with the loud laughter and the merciless ribbing of a large family. Besides Andrew’s parents, his brothers and their girlfriends were Andrew’s grandparents and all his uncles and their families.
After being introduced to a dizzying sequence of names and curious faces, Sera was grateful that they had taken it for granted that she was there so that she could sit quietly and observe them all, especially Andrew, who was just as loud as they all were, at ease and happy. It pleased her to see a different side to him, that as the youngest of the grandchildren, he seemed to be the most beloved and the one who inspired the most embarrassing stories, which everyone was eager to tell Sera.
“Does Sera know how you snore like a bull being castrated?" Christian jeered.
“I do not! He’s totally lying. How can you even hear me when you sound like a jetliner!" Andrew retorted, his face red.
“Did he tell you about the time he burned his eyebrows. They didn’t grow back for two years!" Joseph joined in.
“Shut up!" Andrew covered his forehead.
“Or the time he blew up the shed?" Andrew got up and went over to Christian, who dodged him with a laugh. “Sera doesn’t know you’re a pyro does she?"
Andrew got Christian in a chokehold and panting, demanded, “Tell her you’re a liar.”
Christian grinned at Sera through Andrew’s arms. “And I wouldn’t kiss him if I were you-I dared him to eat dog turd for five dollars and he did! Ugggh!" Christian groaned in pain as Andrew tightened his hold.
“I was four, Christian, you jerk!"
Andrew dragged a struggling Christian to the edge of the steep bank to the river down below. Christian broke free and ran the rope dangling from a tree branch overhead and with a great big whoop of a banshee, swung out and dropped to the river below. Andrew followed suit, yelling just as wildly as his brother before plunging into the water.
One by one, like lemmings, Sera thought, all the kids swung from the rope and jumped in with yelps and screams. With a sinking feeling, Sera watched as almost everyone joined them. The water was a deep and opaque green. She saw Andrew try to dunk Christian, who slipped past him and swam away fast. Giving up with a laugh, Andrew started looking around him.
Sera could tell he was searching for her so she backed away from the top of the bank to where he couldn’t see her and went over to his mother, who was cleaning up the remains of lunch.
“Let me help you."
His mother looked at her in surprise. “Thank you. But you don’t have to. Go ahead and join them.”
Sera shook her head as she started piling up the paper plates. “I’m still kinda full."
Andrew’s mother laughed a little as she glanced to the side at the noisy crowd below. “We haven’t scared you off have we?”
Sera smiled at her. “Andrew’s lucky to have such a big family. You all seem to have a lot of fun.”
“I remember when I first met the LaSalles,” Andrew’s mother shook her head, a little smile playing in her lips, “I thought I had walked in on a circus. Everyone seemed so loud, so different from my own family. ”
Sera nodded in agreement, noticing how Andrew looked the most like his mother. “You and Andrew are the only ones with no freckles,” Sera exclaimed, then reddened. “I’m sorry, that was random.”
Andrew’s mother laughed. “Yes. I don’t know how Andrew managed that." She paused and looked at Sera. “I like the pictures you took of him—they’re really very good.”
Sera smiled shyly. “He’s beautiful."
His mother glanced sharply at her, momentarily silent. “Yes, yes, he is,” she said, surprised, then resumed picking up some fallen plastic cups. “Not many people can see that.”
“Hey, she’s not telling you about the time I ran naked down the street is she?" Andrew panted as he ran in from up the bank.
“Was that last week?”
“No,” he bent over to kiss her, “when I was two." Sera moved away, giggling as he caught her in a cold, wet embrace. She felt his mother’s eyes on them. Andrew let her go and sat beside her, his eyes teasing her.
“I was looking for you,” he said as he shook his head to clear the water from his ears.
“Sera was helping me." His mother started tying up the plastic bag. “It’s okay here. Thank you." She waved them off.
Andrew jumped up and motioned to the
rope. “Let’s go.”
Sera bit her lip, then clutched her stomach. “You know, I probably better not. I have a stomach ache.”
His mother looked at her in concern. “Oh, dear. Do you want to lie down?” she pointed towards a beach chair.
Sera shook her head. “No, that’s okay. I’ll just sit here. I feel better when I’m just sitting." She avoided meeting Andrew’s eyes, who said nothing but looked at her.
After a moment, she turned to him and smiled. “You go ahead,” she urged. “I’ll be okay." He kept looking at her, brows furrowed. “Go on.”
Andrew looked down at the water where Christian and Mike were wrestling with each other. Sera could hear everyone’s loud laughter and screams. Andrew looked back at her. “That’s okay. I’m done.”
“Don’t be silly. You were barely in there. I’ll be fine,” she reassured him.
He shook his head. “My ears are clogged."
Andrew sat with her the rest of the afternoon, pointing out each head bobbing in the water and told her story after story so that by the time she was dropped off that night, Sera felt as if she had come to know them intimately.
She had watched his animated face, tracing the family resemblances and noticing the mannerisms he had inherited from his father, the surprising introspection and quietness that seemed to come from his mother. By looking at the LaSalle men, Sera could see hints of the man Andrew would someday grow to be.
His whole life was open for her to read, his past, as well as his future. Someday, like his father, his uncles, and his grandfather, he would take raise a family in Venetia and take them here on Fourth of July.
She was envious that there was no mystery to his origin or his destiny.
“Was I too shy?” Sera asked Andrew when next they met.
She had accompanied him to one of his summer jobs, housesitting for his parents’ friends who were at their cabin at Mammoth Lake for two weeks. She sat by the patio table, watching him as he watered the plants in the backyard by the pool. What she really wanted to ask was why in the world he had wanted to go out with her in the first place.
