The Color of Dust

by Claire Rooney

  He turned around to face her and pointed to the door they just came through. “When you walk in through the foyer, the doors on your right lead to a formal receiving room, or a parlor if you prefer. Those on your left lead to a formal dining room. You can get to the kitchen through there, and from the kitchen you can get into the servant’s quarters in the east wing.” He pointed to a spot behind her and to her right. “Over in the corner there’s a spiral staircase that leads up to the book balcony. From there, you can get to the master and mistress suites, or you can take the front staircases to reach them. The master rooms are to the west of the foyer, the mistress rooms are to the east. The veranda over the porch that you saw coming into the house is only accessible from the master sitting room.”

  Carrie squinted her eyes at him. “And you think that’s not complicated?”

  He smiled again and shrugged. “Well, you get used to it pretty quickly.”

  “How do you know so much about the layout of this house if you’ve never been in it?”

  “Well, now, I didn’t say I’d never been in it. Just not in the last fifty years or so.” Mr. Dumfries scratched his chin and looked around him. “My mother was a maid here when I was young. I’d come over after school and help her out a little, doing the heavy lifting and such. Of course, I had an ulterior motive. I hoped to catch a glimpse of your mother, maybe even to talk to her sometime. I never did get the chance before my mother found better paying work at the cotton mill.” The wistful expression crossed Mr. Dumfries’s face again.

  “You loved her,” Carrie said. It was a guess, but she didn’t think she was wrong.

  Mr. Dumfries shook his head. “What does a fourteen-year-old boy know about love?”

  Carrie studied his face, the long lines of his frown, the downward droop of his lower lip. “Enough to make an old man sad.”

  “That’s brutally direct, Miss Bowden,” Mr. Dumfries said, his frown deepening, “but you may be essentially correct.” He looked around the library and then shook his head again. “I think we’ve both had enough of this old man’s follies. I’ll show you the east wing servant’s quarters and then we’ll find out which room your grandmother stayed in.”

  He led her out through the south facing patio doors and into the garden between the wings. Only it wasn’t much of a garden anymore.

  “This must have been beautiful, once,” Carrie said as they picked their way over the broken stone path. The grass grew thin and tall. An espaliered apple tree leaned against one wall in a dense cluster of dying branches. The few scraggly flowers fighting their way up through the weeds made the whole garden feel forsaken. They picked their way toward a door in the middle of the east wall. Mr. Dumfries dug around in his pocket and pulled out a set of modern-looking keys. He unlocked the door, opened it and they went inside. Carrie stepped into a dim hallway. It was narrow and the ceiling was low, but it was cleaner looking than the library had been. The dust wasn’t as thick and the rugs looked newer, but the air felt heavy, more musty and close.

  Mr. Dumfries flipped a light switch. One of the four wall sconces lit with a dim flickering glow. “Well, would you look at that,” he said staring at the light in amazement.

  Carrie glanced at the sconce and then looked around her.

  Five identical doors were spaced evenly along the inside wall. At the end of the corridor was a door with bright sunlight shining through a row of small glass panes lined across its top.

  Mr. Dumfries gestured toward the sunlight at the end of the corridor. “That’s one of the service entrances. The other one is in the kitchen. Originally, the only way into the main part of the house from the servant’s quarters was through the kitchen. The door we just came through was a fairly recent addition. Relatively speaking, of course.”

  Carrie glanced back at the door. “That seems a bit stark.”

  “Yes, I suppose it does,” said Mr. Dumfries’s jingling the keys in his hand. “I imagine it’s a remnant from a time when servants weren’t always hired on a voluntary basis. Limiting their access might have seemed more important then.”

  Carrie looked up and down the hallway, at the plain un-papered walls and the simple square cut trim. “I think that bothers me a little.” She had been so interested in the house, she hadn’t thought about what it meant for the hands that might have built it or the hands it took to keep it.

  “I think it bothered your grandmother a lot.” Mr. Dumfries’s eyes followed her gaze. “I like to imagine it was one of the reasons she closed the house and chose to live in the servant’s quarters as soon as there was no more family to think of. That’s just a guess, though. It might have been something else entirely.” The keys clinked together softly as he held them out to Carrie. “Here, you should keep these now. They’ll open everything in the house but the front door. You already have the key to that.”

  “Thank you.” Carrie took the keys from him solemnly.

  Mr. Dumfries gave a quick nod of his head and turned.

  “Which door do you think we should try first?”

  Carrie hefted the keys in her palm. It was a heavy bunch, but they didn’t weigh as heavily in her hand as the first one had. “If the door at the end of hall is to the outside, my guess would be that the door on the other end is to the kitchen.”

  “Close. It’s to the butler’s pantry which leads into the kitchen.”

  She closed her fist over the keys and slipped them in her purse. “I think that an older person living by themselves would probably pick the room closest to the kitchen.” Carrie pushed her hair out of her eyes. “Let’s try that one first.”

  She walked down the hallway and turned the knob to the first door. It opened into a small empty room with bare wood floors, dingy white walls and two narrow doors. Carrie walked into the room and opened the first narrow door. It was just a closet and there was nothing in it. The second door was to a tiny bathroom, toilet, sink and shower, shared with the next room over. That room was almost the same as the first except that the closet door was missing, shards of glass littered the floor and a baseball sat resting in the corner. The one small window was boarded over with a sheet of plywood.

  The next two rooms were also empty. Their curtainless windows filmed over with grime, bare walls and floors, two more empty closets. Carrie put her hand on the knob of the last door.

  A small slant of light fell against it, a bright square of sun staining the dull wood. She turned the knob and opened the door. The room was almost empty, but it wasn’t quite. A narrow cot sat in the corner with a nightstand beside it, a small bureau beside that.

  A short-beaded and fringed lamp stood on the nightstand with a book lying next to it. Only a very thin layer of dust covered everything, but the room was still colorless. It felt just as bare as the first four rooms with their small dirty windows and empty floors, their two narrow doors. This room had two doors as well, but they weren’t narrow.

  She opened one of the doors and stepped into a bathroom.

  It was small and drearily white. Medicine bottles lined the sink, a worn nub of soap sat in a dish, a frayed toothbrush rested in an old whiskey tumbler. The commode was tall with handles at the sides, and there were grab bars in the shower. A thin white bath rug lay bunched against the wall. Carrie straightened it with her foot, spreading it out in front of the shower. Still, the bathroom felt old. It made Carrie feel worn and hollow.

  She turned and went back into the bedroom. The other door was, as she expected, a closet. It was a larger closet than the others had been, but it was still nearly empty. A dress, a few skirts, two pairs of work pants, some shirts, all laundered and pressed, hung neatly from wire hangers. At the bottom, she saw a pair of orthopedic shoes, a pair of bedroom slippers, a silver cane with four feet, a forgotten oxygen tank in the far corner, and that was all. Carrie closed the closet door. Her throat felt thick and tight.

  There wasn’t anything left in there that could tell her who her grandmother had been. There wasn’t enough stuff left to fi
ll a Goodwill box.

  Mr. Dumfries cleared his throat behind her. “There were a whole string of nurses who came in to look after her. She had round-the-clock care. They made sure she ate, bathed, took her medicine, etcetera. They tidied up a bit, too, and read to her a great deal. Your grandmother loved books even after she couldn’t read them herself anymore.”

  Carrie touched the closet door with the tips of her fingers and then turned her back to it. She looked at Mr. Dumfries still standing in the doorway. “Did you ever know my grandmother well?”

  He shook his head. “After my mother quit working here, I had no reason to come back. I was at the tail end of my teens the year your mother ran off. Your grandmother fired all the staff that same day and stopped coming into town soon after. Much later, I had the occasion to speak to her a few times over the phone, but it was only about business. She didn’t invite casual questions, and I never had the nerve to ask them.”

  Carrie walked over to the cot. It was small but neatly made with white sheets and a neutral-colored spread. She picked up the book that was lying on the nightstand. It looked like a diary with an empty leather loop for a missing pen. There was a small flower embossed in the lower right-hand corner. She flipped it open and thumbed through it. All the pages were blank. She shut it again and put it back on the table. “What would you have asked her, if you could have asked her anything?”

  Mr. Dumfries raised his eyebrows as he thought about the question. “I would want to ask her a lot of things. I hardly know where to begin.” His eyebrows scrunched over his nose. “Well, I guess that’s not true. I would begin with Jane.”

  “My mother?”

  “Yes. I want to know why, after Jane married your father, she never came home again. She was only eighteen when she left.

  That’s hardly old enough to be out on her own. Certainly not old enough to be making decisions of that magnitude. And then she never came back.”

  “Do you think something pushed her out?”

  He shrugged. “After your grandfather died, this was not a happy home for your mother. It didn’t have to be any one thing that pushed her out. It could have been years of small accumulated grievances.” Mr. Dumfries looked around the room with eyes that were distant and dim. “This house has not been a happy home for anyone in many sheaves of years.” He shook his head sadly, turned and stepped back out into the hall.

  Carrie followed him and shut the door gently behind her.

  “Was this ever a happy home for anyone, Mr. Dumfries?”

  He turned to look at her with shining eyes under his drooping lids. “I sincerely hope, Miss Bowden, that this will be a happy home for you.”

  Mr. Dumfries drove Carrie to the small diner on Main Street where they had a passable dinner of fried chicken and green beans, mashed potatoes, sweet tea and a slice of pecan pie. They spoke of inconsequential things while they ate. Carrie talked about Chicago, museums and baseball, and Mr. Dumfries spoke about history, agriculture and getting old. Mr. Dumfries paid the bill and they walked the two blocks back to her car. Main Street was quiet. Most of the stores had already turned their lights off and flipped their signs to read “Sorry, we’re closed.” Standing by her car, Mr. Dumfries shook Carrie’s hand and then opened her door. He shut it for her as she got in and put her seat belt on. It was a vestige of his upbringing, she thought, perhaps like paying for the meal or calling her miss. He seemed like a nice man. This seemed like a nice town, but she wondered if either of them would be willing to accept someone like her just as she was.

  Carrie drove slowly back to Richmond, the setting sun glaring orange and amber in her rearview mirror, staining the trees red and gold. The drive back was much shorter since there were no wrong turns and she almost knew where she was going.

  She pulled into the parking lot of her motel as the sun dropped below the horizon.

  Inside her room, she sat on the side of the bed, its crisp white sheets turned down at the corner. She turned the television on, but it was news and she didn’t feel like watching the news. Carrie flipped through the channels, but there had been quite enough drama to fill up the day and she had never liked violence. Then the canned laughter started to get on her nerves. She turned the television off and, in the silence, thought about her options.

  What was there back in Chicago? A job that she didn’t like very much and a homophobic boss that liked her even less, an empty apartment with only the few sticks of cheap furniture that Megan had left, no friends to speak of or that would still speak to her.

  She was planning to move anyway as soon as her lease expired.

  Why not move to a brand-new place altogether? But this was a very new place and she truly didn’t know what kind of reception a woman like her was likely to have. How free would she be to live how she wanted? How much would she have to hide, and what would happen if she didn’t hide? She wouldn’t live her life in the closet. That wasn’t an option for her. She didn’t even know where the door was, much less how to open it and step inside.

  She kicked off her shoes and pulled off her jeans. Well, whatever. It wouldn’t hurt to stay a few weeks and work on cleaning the house a little. Wipe the dust off the furniture and clean the windows. She showered, brushed her teeth and climbed into bed. That was a good plan, she thought as she turned the light off and snuggled the sheets up around her ears. Wipe the dust off and clean the windows and then she could see clearly again.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Carrie sat slumped in the hard wooden chair, dirty and sore, sticky with sweat. Her head rested uncomfortably against the backrest and her knee bumped against the drawers of the antique desk, but she was too tired to move. She stared at the ceiling high above her and wondered how one went about getting spider webs off a chandelier that hung from the middle of a two-story ceiling. Or changing all the burned out lightbulbs. Or if they made lightbulbs that fit it anymore. A lot of the lights in the house didn’t work even after she changed the bulbs. She tried to trace the problems, but after zapping herself twice, she decided that she was just going to have to call an electrician. And buy a very tall ladder.

  But she wasn’t going to do that right now or even tomorrow.

  Right now, she was tired, and tomorrow she had to find a place to buy a set of sheets since the ones she took off the bed in the master suite tore to ribbons in the wash. At least the washing machine worked. She hadn’t been sure about that when she found it in a closet in the butler’s pantry. It was an ancient clunky looking thing, probably the first electric Whirlpool ever built.

  The dryer was newer, though that might not have been such a good thing. After she finished drying her first load of linens there was nothing left of the pillowcases but an armful of lint and two tags. The bedcover had come out of the dryer in rags. But they were nice smelling rags, so she used them to dust off the books in the library. She still had to vacuum the rugs around the balcony, but after all her hard work she didn’t have the energy to lug that heavy old thing up the spiral staircase. Besides, the lights dimmed and flickered when she ran the vacuum. It would probably be a good idea to have the electrician come out and look at the whole setup before she tasked it too heavily.

  Carrie blinked over the tired grittiness in her eyes, took a deep breath and then sat up in her chair. She rubbed at the ache between her shoulder blades as she looked at the desk in front of her. It was the most interesting piece in the room and the only thing that still had a thick layer of dust. She had saved it for last, as a reward of sorts, for her Herculean labors of the last few days.

  The foyer was now impeccably clean. A beautiful parquet had been hiding underneath the dust. Multihued woods patterned the floor with interlocking blocks of triangles and squares. The banister of the grand staircase had deeply carved scrollwork on the ends and the rails had a shining richness that only came from countless years of polish. She had tackled the kitchen after that and now enough of it was clean to make it useable, but she hadn’t had the energy to go through all the cabinets
and drawers. And the library called to her, its books and its strange combination of delicate and massive furniture.

  Carrie shook out one of the last of her clean rags, still nice smelling. She had cleaned the library from bottom to top.

  Everything in it was dusted, swept, brushed, vacuumed and polished to a shine, except for the rugs in the balcony that were still on the to do list and the desk she was sitting in front of.

  Most everything cleaned up wonderfully, even if the materials underneath were a bit faded and worn. Everything except for the surface of the old mirror hanging over the fireplace. That wouldn’t come clean no matter how hard she rubbed. It was hazy and spotted, reflecting the room behind her with funny bends and waves. The frame cleaned up nice, though, with its gold gilding and ornate carvings of grapevines, leaves and clusters, which sparkled under her rags.

  The mantel under the mirror became, with a swipe of her cloth, intricately swirled green and white marble. The couches and chairs, even the tall row of windows on the south wall were now dust free and as clean as they could be. The windows had been a challenge, but she found a tall stepping stool in the pantry that let her reach the top. The glass was clear and bright, if a bit wavy in spots. From where she sat in her uncomfortable chair, she could see the scraggly garden outside, the short picket fence that marked its boundary and the low hills just beyond, a dark line of woods after that.

  Carrie swiveled her chair around in a full circle. The seat rose about an inch. She twirled around the other way and it went back down. The chair wasn’t comfortable to sit in, but it was interesting to look at with its clawed feet and swirling armrests.

  They matched the carved patterns of the desk, the same swirls decorating the trim and the drawer handles. The desk had all kinds of neat little drawers and cubby holes, stuffed with old yellow papers, small account books and pens and pencils of varieties that she had never heard of before. Waterman, Conklin, Pelican and Dickey. There was even a quill pen standing in a pewter inkwell with a sad looking tuft of feather, gray with time and split with age, a coating of ink dried rock hard on the sharpened tip.