Sealed Off

by Barbara Ross

  “It’s just that, as I told you, my mother’s”—I searched for the word to describe the relationship—“elderly cousin is coming to the clambake tomorrow. She’s the only person alive who stayed in the house in its glory days. I would be crushed if she couldn’t see it before we ripped out walls and pantries, and—” I struggled, the words gone. After a long, circular journey, I had come around to the idea of updating the mansion for a business and family with twenty-first-century needs. Even though I’d never lived there, I’d roamed its empty rooms since I was a child. If I was having trouble with the destruction that had to come before the construction, I couldn’t imagine how Cousin Marguerite would react.

  “So you’ve told me.” Mark shifted from foot to foot in his work boots. “The crew and I have to get back to town. It’s quitting time.”

  I nodded my thanks and turned to go. Mark’s regular carpenters had done some preparatory work, but the demo crew had only been able to spend one day at the mansion. The previous week’s storm had come as something of a surprise. It had been expected to track much farther to the east and pass “safely out to sea” as the forecasters loved to say, forgetting about all the people in peril out there. By the time it turned, Mark had to rush out to the island with his regular employees to secure Windsholme and cart away the debris the demo crew had created in their single day of work so it wouldn’t fly around and cause more damage. He had job sites all up and down the Maine coast. We’d been lucky he got to us in time.

  As I climbed off the porch I looked over at the two dumpsters parked by the house. One was partially filled with fire-damaged wood, the other with molding and plaster covered in pieces of wallpaper I recognized as coming from the servants’ rooms on the third floor. The demo crew was making great progress in the right places.

  Captain George let out one long, loud blast of the Jacquie II’s horn and I raced down the path toward the boat. I reached it just in time.

  Right after we pulled away from the dock, a wave of chatter ran through the boat. Page and I followed it to the stern where the guests stood smiling, pointing, and taking photos. A young harbor seal sat on a rock at the end of the island, in front of an empty osprey nest. The seal had big, round, intelligent eyes, like a dog’s, with whom he shared a common ancestor.

  “So cute!” Even Page, who’d seen seals all her life, was impressed.

  The young seal sat up straight, staring forward, ready for the cameras.

  I watched until I lost sight of him in the gathering dusk.

  * * *

  When we’d seen the last guest off the Jacquie II, Page and I took off for my mother’s house at a run. Mom was expecting some very special guests. I’d promised to be there. I’d promised to help. In other words, I’d made all sorts of promises I couldn’t keep. I was barely going to make it before the guests arrived.

  “Beat you!” Page reached Mom’s house fifty feet ahead of me. At eleven, she was almost my height. She had her dad’s fiery red hair and freckles and her mother’s long legs and swimmer’s body. I couldn’t see myself winning a foot race against her ever again.

  Page scurried into the house, but I was still on the big front porch when my boyfriend Chris’s taxi pulled to the curb. The cab was one of Chris’s three jobs. In the summer he kept busy late at night ferrying tourists back to their hotels from the restaurants and bars. In the off-season, the fares consisted mostly of taking elderly clients to the supermarket and hairdresser. He wasn’t on the meter now. He’d met the train from Boston at the station in Portland and then driven the hour and a half to Busman’s Harbor.

  Chris jumped out of the cab and ran around to the passenger side to open the door. He offered his hand to the woman inside. Tiny and frail with great age, she didn’t refuse his help, something she might have done a year before.

  “Thank you,” my mother’s distant cousin, Marguerite, gasped. Then she spotted me. “Julia! How lovely to see you. Thank you so much for sending your young man to meet us at the train.”

  “I was happy to do it, Mrs. Morales,” Chris said.

  “Marguerite,” she insisted. “I am not going to tell you again.”

  “Marguerite.” Chris yielded to her command, as any sane human would.

  A young woman with wild blond hair, black at the roots, emerged from the other side of the backseat. I ran to greet her. “Tallulah! How was the trip?”

  Tallulah Spencer looked pointedly at her grandmother. “Challenging. I’m glad we did it this year.”

  “I hear you,” I reassured her. “We’ll try to take things as easy as possible.”

  “Good luck with that.” Tallulah flashed a smile and hugged me.

  By that time, my mother and sister, Livvie, were on the porch stairs, calling out greetings. Chris pulled an old-fashioned suitcase and a modern rolly-bag out of the cab’s trunk.

  “Jacqueline, what a fine old house,” Marguerite said to my mother. She looked up toward the cupola on the mansard roof. “I remember this house well. You can see it from anywhere in the harbor. When I was a child, it meant we were coming to town from Morrow Island for a special treat.”

  “I hope it comes to mean something just as happy to you on this visit,” Mom said. “Let’s go inside.”

  Marguerite came up the walk, stomping her cane with her right hand while holding onto Chris’s arm with her left. Tallulah fluttered behind, fussing. Livvie and I picked up the suitcases from the sidewalk and followed.

  Inside, the house smelled of my sister Livvie’s delicious cooking. My nephew, Jack, eight months old, sat in a rolling gizmo. He was the type of kid who was never still for long, and he’d learned to turn that thing into a weapon. I looked at it, and then at Marguerite’s ancient, skinny legs, and shivered.

  Marguerite had no such qualms. “The youngest!” She greeted Jack. “I cannot tell you how happy it makes me to see the family go on.”

  “Me too.” Mom patted Marguerite’s shoulder. “Come into the living room and make yourselves at home. Do you need to freshen up?”

  Chris helped Marguerite out of her camel hair coat. She wore a beige cardigan underneath, over a black dress. Her white hair, like always, was in braids pinned to her head, framing her olive-skinned face, sharp nose, and hooded brown eyes.

  Tallulah slipped out of her cropped leather jacket. She had on a sleeveless dress that showed off the tattoo of a flowering branch that started on her back and flowed over her right shoulder onto her breast where a songbird perched, ready to sing. Tallulah was a singer, her husband Jake, a jazz pianist. They’d graduated from Emerson College in Boston in the spring and she’d taken off on a summer tour of small clubs. Now she was back in Boston auditioning and doing open mike nights, looking for the next gig. The couple’s lives in the arts were greatly supported by their ability to live rent-free in Marguerite’s town house in Boston’s Back Bay.

  Tallulah had worn a sleeveless dress every time I’d ever seen her, only covered by a coat when she went outside in the depths of winter. She seemed to have an internal heat source the rest of us lacked. I wondered whether her leather jacket had been a concession to the fall weather, or to her grandmother’s views about what constituted appropriate dress for train travel.

  I snuck upstairs to the hall bathroom, ran a clean washcloth over my face and a brush through my hair, trying to make myself presentable at the end of an already long day. The face that looked back at me in the mirror was my mother’s. I’d always argued everyone said I looked like her for superficial reasons. We were both small and blond. But in recent years some weird aging thing was happening to me and our features had become more similar. I was conflicted about it. My mom was lovely, but she was also, well, my mom.

  I headed down the back stairs to the kitchen where Livvie was stirring rice in a pot on the stove.

  “Where’s Sonny?” I asked.

  Livvie cocked her head toward the back door. “Grill.”

  “What are we eating?”

  “Greek lamb chops.”
>
  “Yum. How can I help?”

  “Set the table?”

  I did a mental count. Mom, Marguerite, Tallulah, Chris, Page, Livvie, Jack, Sonny, me. “So eight, plus the high chair. I’ll need to put in two extra leaves.”

  “Get Page to help you. Good china, Mom said.”

  “Roger that. Page!”

  Page and I put the leaves in the dining room table and I set her to work on the placemats, napkins, and silver. I went to the corner cabinet and counted out eight china plates and seven crystal wineglasses. Mom’s mother had died when she was young and the wineglasses, silver, and china were among the few Morrow family things that had been passed down to her. She always took pride in them, but they were particularly special today because they had been at Windsholme when it was a grand summer house, and Marguerite had been there, too.

  As we worked, I listened to the talk that floated in from the living room, so far pleasantries about the train trip.

  “I’m so sorry Vivian couldn’t make it,” Mom said. Vivian was Marguerite’s daughter and Tallulah’s mother. Mom was polite to her backbone and I had trouble believing she was truly sorry. Marguerite and Tallulah were lovely, but in their branch of the family charm was evidently a generation-skipping characteristic. Vivian was selfish, vain, and grasping, with a near constant need to be flattered. Every one of us had been glad when it turned out Vivian couldn’t come. Not that my mother would ever say such a thing.

  “And Jake,” Mom said. “We’re so sorry to miss him.” Tallulah’s husband Jake was a lovely man, a stabilizing influence on his impulsive wife, but he’d been unable to leave Massachusetts for this trip.

  “Yes, it’s too bad,” Marguerite agreed. “I would have liked to show Vivian and Jake Windsholme. But as it is, Tallulah will be their eyes and ears. She’ll take plenty of photos and videos.” Through the archway I watched Marguerite, who sat upright in one of the high-backed chairs, using her cane to punctuate her words. “I’m grateful I get to see Windsholme one last time. I never thought I would.”

  Livvie came through the dining room door. “Good. Everyone’s here. Let’s eat.”

  We piled around the table. Livvie served the lamb chops while Chris poured wine. I put Jack in his high chair and scattered Cheerios across the plastic tray.

  When we were all seated, Mom raised her glass. “To Windsholme,” she said.

  “Windsholme,” we all repeated.

  Livvie’s lamb chops were, as always, beautifully seasoned and perfectly cooked. She served them with a simple rice dish and a salad. For a moment we were all silent, enjoying the food.

  “Delicious,” Marguerite said. “Now tell me about your plans.”

  The plans, along with Marguerite’s great age, were the reason for the urgency of having her visit now, even though the ocean was cold and the October weather iffy.

  Windsholme had sat empty on Morrow Island since the Depression. More recent generations spent their summers on the island in the little house by the dock. The mansion had been deteriorating for years. I couldn’t remember any time in my life when its future hadn’t been debated. It would be expensive to tear it down and haul all that trash off the island, and even more expensive, many times more expensive, to fix it up. So for decades no decision had been made.

  Then, over the previous winter, my mother had discovered a family she’d never known she had, including Marguerite, Vivian, and Tallulah, and she had come into a fortune she’d never guessed she was entitled to. Fortune was perhaps too strong a word, but enough to renovate Windsholme. A lot of money.

  Mom spoke up. “Yes. The plans. We have them here, actual floor plans for the renovation, if you’d like to see them.”

  Marguerite shook her head. “Not yet, I think, thank you. I remember Windsholme the way a child does, disconnected rooms, flashes of wallpaper, my mother’s dressing table, a corner of a rug on which I sat. I want to tour the house tomorrow to remind myself, before I look at your changes.”

  “Yes, of course,” Mom said. “Julia, what’s the plan?”

  “We’ll take the Jacquie II out for the clambake. I’d love Marguerite and Tallulah to experience it. Wyatt Jayne, the architect, will meet us on the island and give us all a tour of the house.” I turned to Marguerite. “How does that sound?”

  “Lovely,” Marguerite answered. “It couldn’t be more lovely.”

  Chapter Two

  I was at the bow of the Jacquie II the next morning as we neared Morrow Island. Chris, Mom, Marguerite, and Tallulah were on board as well. Marguerite had insisted on sitting outside on the upper deck, even though the weather had turned overnight and the day was cool and gray. Tallulah had wrapped her grandmother in blankets and the two of them sat with Mom as she and Marguerite chatted about her summers on the island.

  Chris came up behind me.

  “Thanks for taking the day off to help,” I said.

  “Happy to do it.” He flashed me a smile, which made him even more handsome. With his tousled brown hair, green eyes, and the dimple in his chin, Chris attracted a lot of attention. He was tall, and his body had been shaped by the hard physical work he performed for his landscaping business, his primary job, which he supplemented with the cab and working as a bouncer at Crowley’s, Busman’s Harbor’s most touristy bar.

  “Look, do you see him there?” I pointed toward the outcropping of rocks where our island ended. The young harbor seal was there, exactly where I’d seen him the day before. “Why is he by himself?”

  “Because he’s old enough. His mom let him know it was time to leave her,” Chris answered.

  “They usually haul out in groups. He looks lonely.”

  “You’re anthropomorphizing.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  Chris laughed.

  Captain George made an announcement about the seal over the loudspeaker system and soon the bow was full of people excitedly taking photos with their phones. The seal posed like a celebrity showing off a designer-labeled frock and then capped off his performance by diving into the frigid water.

  “Time to think about going south with the rest of your clan,” Chris called to him as he swam past us.

  “Like a snowbird,” I said.

  “Except he’s only going as far south as Massachusetts or Long Island,” Chris responded.

  “Then like a summer person.”

  Wyatt Jayne met us at the dock on Morrow Island. I’d asked her to give Marguerite and Tallulah the tour of Windsholme not just because she was the architect overseeing the renovation, but also because she was an expert on the history of the house and its original architect, Henry Gilbert.

  “Wyatt, I’d like you to meet—”

  “Marguerite Morales!” Wyatt threw her arms around Marguerite. “Née Morrow. The last living person on the earth to have seen Windsholme in its original state.”

  “I’m not sure I like it put that way.” Marguerite seemed taken aback and I held my breath, but then she smiled. “I am she.”

  “I cannot wait for you to tell me everything about the house,” Wyatt enthused.

  “I was going to say the same to you,” Marguerite responded.

  “But first,” Mom said, “we eat.”

  “We’ll take it from here.” Chris offered Marguerite his arm. Mom and I ran off to our clambake jobs, she to the gift shop and me to my hosting duties.

  Sonny was hard at work at the clambake fire. He, Livvie, Page, and Jack had come out to the island earlier on the Whaler along with Pru and our third cook, Kathy Cippoli, and Jason and Terry, who needed to arrive in time to get the fire started. I wondered if it had been tense on the little boat. A number of guests stopped in their progress up the walk toward the dining pavilion to observe the clambake operation and ask questions. Jason and Terry worked in apparent harmony, at least for the moment.

  I helped guests pick out dining tables, most in the semi-sheltered dining pavilion due to the less than stellar weather. Emmy made sure her tables were ready, putting out
the caddies that contained the utensils and the paper towel rolls that served as napkins and filling pitchers with drinks.

  The old boat the demo crew used pulled up at the dock. They were off to a late start, perhaps because it was Sunday. Six men disembarked and headed for Windsholme. I would have preferred they not work on the day we gave Marguerite her tour. Seeing Windsholme after all this time was bound to be emotional for her, and to see people tearing it apart . . . I couldn’t imagine. But Mark Cochran had insisted they had to work due to the time lost to the storm, and I’d reluctantly agreed.

  “Remember, only the third floor,” I called to the crew chief as he walked by me. He nodded, so at least he’d heard me.

  The crew chief was in his fifties, a fireplug of a man with a bald head ringed by graying hair. The next three men, who walked by me in a clump, looked as you’d expect a demo crew to look, all broad shoulders and bulging muscles. Next, some distance back, came a skinny guy with a prominent Adam’s apple, who looked like he was barely out of his teens. Mark Cochran had told me the men were all Russian immigrants who went from town to town and only did demolition work. He had used them before and spoke of them highly. He said we were lucky they were available.

  The last man to come up the path was a handsome guy in his thirties. He was dressed in the same coveralls as the other men, but something about him was different. I watched him for a moment, wondering what it was. He wasn’t quite as big as the three big guys, but that wasn’t it. It was something about the way he moved, his walk.

  I turned my head slightly and realized I wasn’t the only one watching him. As he walked toward the clambake fire, Jason stared straight at him. He caught the man’s eye and both of them started. It looked like they had recognized one another.

  I couldn’t imagine how Jason and a member of a traveling Russian demo crew knew each other. The day before had been the only one when the clambake had run and the crew was on the island at the same time, and the demo crew had arrived before the clambake employees did and had stayed on after. Maybe the two of them had run into one another in our public restrooms or something like that. But the look I’d seen pass between them appeared to have more significance.