The Color of Dust

by Claire Rooney

  Carrie looked at the card in her hand. “Thank you. I just might.”

  Carrie sat in her car with her cell phone in her hand. Her heart was racing and she didn’t know why. She wasn’t a shy person, usually, but as much as she wanted to talk to Gillian again, she had to admit there was something about her that she found a little frightening. The self-assured poise and the casual elegance was a bit daunting for someone like Carrie. People like Gillian didn’t usually look twice at people like her. Gillian shined where Carrie was dull. But she had looked twice or, at least, she had smiled at her nicely. That probably didn’t mean the same thing to Gillian that it meant to Carrie, but it did mean that she was willing to be friendly or willing to fake it until she got her tour.

  Sometimes that was enough.

  Carrie took a deep breath and dialed the number on the card. Two rings and a woman with a smoky voice answered the phone.

  “Carriage House Antiques. This is Jo.”

  “Yes, may I speak to Gillian Dumfries?”

  “Who’s calling, please?” The voice did not sound pleased.

  “This is Carrie Bowden. I’m calling about the Covington place. I heard she wanted a tour.”

  “Oh. Sure. Just one moment. I’ll get her.” The tone of the voice changed, and the phone clunked on the counter. Carrie listened to the soft undercurrent of classical music clashing with the static buzz of her cell phone. She tried to still her mind, to calm her racing heart so that she wouldn’t trip over her tongue and say things that would make her sound like an imbecile.

  The phone scraped across the counter. “Hello? Ms. Bowden?

  What’s this I hear about a tour?” The voice was bright and eager, happy to hear from her, or something close enough to it.

  Carrie relaxed a little and smiled into her phone. “Your father seemed to think the promise of a tour would make a good bribe.”

  “And what a scoundrel he is. I can’t believe he told you my deepest desire.” There was laughter in her voice. “All right, what horrible task do I have to do to get the tour? If you say clean the stables in one day, I’ll have to turn you down. I don’t do stables.”

  “Not to worry. I haven’t even found the stables yet. It’s just that I’d like to know some things, and you seem to be the one to ask. Your father says you know a lot about local history and something about my grandmother’s family. I’d like to ask you some questions and I thought, while we were at it, maybe you could give me some advice on how to clean the cobwebs off the chandeliers.”

  There was a pause on the other end. “There’s more than one?”

  “There are two, one in the library and one in the foyer.”

  “He didn’t tell me that.”

  “If you’re talking about your father, that’s probably because he didn’t look up. I only saw the one in the foyer a few days ago after I finished cleaning the parquet floors.”

  “Oh, please, please, tell me you’re not using floor wax to polish the parquet.”

  “Um, no. I was only wiping the dust off with a damp rag. It was hell on my knees.” Carrie rubbed a hand across her knee.

  They were still a little sore.

  Gillian laughed. “I imagine it was, but that’s the right way to do it. Is the floor in good shape?”

  “Yes, it is, relatively speaking. It’s worn in places, particularly by the front door, but I put a small rug over it and you can’t really tell. The chandeliers are a mess, though. They’re completely draped in spider webs. You can hardly tell what they are, and neither of them actually work, but then half the lights in the house don’t work.”

  “Sounds like you need an electrician.”

  “And a plumber. All the sinks drain slow, if at all, and the fountain in the front needs some attention.”

  “Oh, I’d just love to see that fountain working.” Carrie heard Gillian’s sigh as a soft brush of static. “You know, now that I think about it, I know all the good workmen in the area and all the ones to avoid. How about if part of my horrible task is that I arrange for the electrical and the plumbing work for you?”

  Carrie hadn’t thought to ask her anything like that. “Thanks.

  That’s very kind of you. I’d appreciate it very much.”

  “Consider it done. As for my reward, I can’t get away today.

  I have a number of appraisals that I have to do. But if you’ll be home tomorrow, I’ll drop by in the morning. You can show me around and ask all your questions.”

  “That sounds terrific.”

  “Great. It’s a date then. I’ll see you soon.”

  The phone went dead in Carrie’s hand. Things definitely didn’t mean the same thing to Gillian that they did to her. It wouldn’t be a date. Not even close, and that was a shame. She had a feeling that she could really get to like Gillian with her quick brain and bright sense of humor, in a way that went beyond drooling over the drape of her dress.

  Carrie wondered about the woman with the smoky voice, but she knew that she was just being an idiot. Having a deep voice and a boy’s name didn’t necessarily mean anything. It might, but then again, it might not. She turned off her phone. It would be so much nicer if gay women had a better way to identify themselves other than stereotypical behaviors that could be so confusing.

  A special password or a secret handshake would make things so much easier. That way you could know when it was safe to sigh and when it was better to keep your heart locked tight.

  But she was still being an idiot. She forgot all about asking where to buy bed linens. Oh, well. She’d just drive to Richmond and go to a mall. She remembered passing one or two on her way to Columbia. With a little luck, she could find one of them again.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Armed with freshly purchased bed linens, a new batch of old rags and a jumbo pack of thick paper towels, Carrie spent the rest of her afternoon cleaning the rooms in the master suite. The bedroom was large and spacious with an adjoining sitting room that had couches and chairs, an old writing desk and a set of glass doors that led out onto the veranda. The veranda stretched the whole length of the front of the house, but it was fairly narrow, just wide enough for a small table and two wicker chairs.

  Carrie slung one of the area rugs over the railing and shook it out. Dust billowed off in thick puffs of gray that drifted and danced in the light breeze before scattering over the drive. She left the rug hanging over the wrought iron rail to air and wiped the sweat off her face with the hem of her T-shirt. The breeze felt good against her hot skin as she leaned a hip against the railing.

  Carrie could see quite a way from where she stood. She could see where the driveway wound out of the woods, came in toward the house from the side and curled in a large looping circle around the fountain. Not far from that, the ground rose a bit and then sloped gently to the river. The sun was bright overhead and sparkled on the water with little flashes of diamond brilliance. It was easy to imagine someone sitting at the small wicker table, a hundred years ago, sipping their coffee while waiting for a boat to come up the river to take their cotton, cloth or corn back down the river to Richmond.

  That would have been a pleasant thought, but then she had to go and think of the hands that plucked the cotton, wove the cloth, shucked the corn, and then it wasn’t a pleasant thought at all. She looked at her own hands, roughened from scrubbing, and tried to imagine what they’d look like after a lifetime of hard toil. Not like hers, though her polish was scuffed and her nails chipped. She tried to imagine her hands covered with hard calluses and swollen, gnarled knuckles. Carrie rubbed her palms against her shorts, gave the rug a few more shakes and went back inside.

  She took down the gossamer curtains that hung in the windows and also those that hung around the canopy bed and washed them gently by hand. She tried to wash the pillows too, but those came apart in a large mound of soggy feathers that didn’t smell at all nice. It was a good thing she had thought to buy a couple of pillows while she was at the mall, nice solid foam rubber pillows. None
of this smelly feathery stuff. She wondered what the lumpy mattresses were made of but then decided that it was better not to know. It would still be more comfortable than the couch.

  The master suite bathroom was harder to clean than the curtains. The cast iron claw-footed tub had stains that were beyond her expertise. It stood alone in a corner of the room with an old brass hot water tank sitting next to it. A blue plastic curtain hung on a metal halo above it. The curtain was brittle and cracked when she tried to close it around the tub, but she didn’t mind. She liked bubble baths well enough.

  The floor was easier. It was made of small octagonal black and white tiles that did funny things to her eyes if she stared at them too hard. They cleaned up well except for the two that were cracked. The sink was a disaster, chipped and rusted, the hot water handle wouldn’t turn, and the squeaky cold water faucet dripped, not much, but enough to leave stains in the bowl that wouldn’t come out. The mirror over the sink was cracked and the medicine chest below it was full of sticky tubes of hair cream and dried out bottles of aftershave. There was a straight razor and a box of rusty blades on the middle shelf. A few crusty bottles of medicine with labels too faded to read sat on the shelf underneath.

  Carrie finished wiping the shelves and washed the hair goop off her fingers. She was tired of cleaning. Her back hurt and her hands were raw and red. She rinsed out all her sponges and rags and dried her hands. She crossed the hallway and went through the door that led to the second-floor balcony of the library.

  She picked a new book off the shelf. It was nothing she’d ever heard of before, but she was an adventurous reader. She sat in the tub soaking her tired bones and read the book. It was about a detective who drank too much, called women skirts and liked to sock the bad guys who very conveniently all had glass jaws. It was almost funny. Almost. Carrie put the book down, washed her hair and rinsed. She was sleepy now that the water had soaked all the soreness out of her. She didn’t wait for her hair to dry but shrugged into her pajamas, crawled into the tall canopy bed behind the clean curtains, between the fresh new sheets, and turned out the lamp.

  She wasn’t sure what woke her. Carrie turned onto her back and stretched her toes under the sheets. The night was warm and wonderful. All the windows of the bedroom were open to the night breezes. Small gusts fluttered the curtains. The sound of the wind in the trees carried in with it the chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs, the soft hooting of an owl. Carrie heard a rustling from below the balcony, the steps of something walking lightly through dry leaves. She sat up and listened to the steps creeping closer to the house. She got out of bed, went through to the sitting room and stepped quietly out onto the balcony.

  The moon brightened the sky from high overhead and glimmered on the dark band of river. A fox was trotting across the drive, heading toward the fountain, its paws shushing softly through the leaves. It stopped suddenly, ears pointed forward and down. The fox jumped high into the air and pounced with its two front paws pounding into the grass. Carrie heard a brief high-pitched squeak and the fox raised its head. A mouse dangled from its jaws. It trotted past the fountain, ears up, head held high, and disappeared into the tall grass.

  It was strange to Carrie that the world worked liked that.

  The mice ate the seeds from the flowers, the fox ate the mice and, no doubt, something would eventually get the fox. It seemed like a sad way to run things, in a system where ultimately nothing would win. Or maybe that was the wrong way to look at it.

  Maybe life was a balance of winning and losing. Carrie stood quietly for a time listening to the wind flutter through the leaves.

  She eventually went back to bed, but it was long time before she could bring herself to close her eyes.

  She woke to the twittering of birds, the chattering of squirrels, the far-off drone of an airplane. From where she lay, if she tilted her head just so, she could see the newly dawned sun painting the sky pink and the leaves of the trees an autumn red. Carrie yawned and stretched, breathing in deeply the crisp clean air.

  She put her slippers on and padded down the front stairs, cut through the formal dining room, through the breakfast nook and into the kitchen to make coffee. There was a shorter route.

  She could go through to the library balcony and down the spiral staircase, through the library and into the kitchen. But she still hadn’t gotten tired of the grand staircase. Going up the left side and down the right. She hadn’t tried sliding down the banister yet, but she damn well would one of these days, and soon.

  The kitchen was still mostly a mess. Almost everything still had a light coating of dust. The only things she’d cleaned were the sink, the stove, the counter in between and the heavy oak kitchen table. It would be a monumental task sorting through all the cabinets and drawers cluttered with more than one lifetime of accumulations. The pots and pans, sets of odd dishes and mismatched silverware, serving trays and wooden spoons, heat-blackened spatulas. It was a task she would leave for a rainy day.

  She never did find a coffeepot in all the clutter, but she did find an old French press and a pretty flowered teapot. She boiled water, poured it into the press over the grounds and waited for it to steep. It was kind of neat how the press worked. She pressed the plunger, and the grounds sank to the bottom. Maybe she wouldn’t bother with a coffeepot. She poured the coffee into a cup and took her first sip. It was a good-flavored coffee, not in need of rescuing with cream and sugar. That was a good thing, too, because she had forgotten the cream again. She sipped, and her second taste was even better than the first.

  She was just about to take her coffee upstairs when she heard the sound of tires crunching along the driveway. A car horn beeped merrily. Carrie looked at the clock on the stove. It was only eight. She wasn’t expecting Gillian so early, but maybe

  “morning” in this part of the country had as different a meaning as “old” and “date.” She looked down at herself. At least her pajamas were decent, even if her hair was a wreck after sleeping on it wet. Gillian would just have to excuse her for not being much of a morning person. She took a large swig of her coffee, relishing the burn on her tongue and the jolt to her system.

  The sound of tires on the cobbles seemed louder than they should have and echoed strangely through the open windows.

  Carrie peeked out the window of the breakfast nook. There was more than one car heading down the drive. She pulled the blinds back further. It was a whole herd of vehicles, a long line of cars, trucks and vans winding as far back into the woods as she could see. Carrie watched them as they approached the house, circled the fountain in a random fashion and parked in a scattered mess in the tall grass of the front lawn. People began to pile out, women and men, girls and boys. They were carrying buckets and rags, rakes and pruning shears, tool boxes and belts. One truck said Zachary’s Electrical. Another said Masterworks Plumbing and Septic. And there was Gillian in the lead. Carrie looked at her pajamas with some chagrin as she saw them all heading for the front door. At least the pajamas were new and covered a decent amount of skin. The hair they would just have to forgive. At least, Carrie hoped that they would.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “Surprise!” Gillian said with an expansive wave of her arms as Carrie opened the front door. Carrie looked at Gillian’s neatly bunned hair, light linen shirt, freshly ironed slacks and sighed.

  Gillian’s bright smile wobbled a bit as her eyes jumped from Carrie’s wild mess of hair to her fuzzy blue bedroom slippers.

  “Did we wake you? I’m so sorry. I guess I should’ve called first,” she said as her smile returned, twice as bright as before only now there was the glint of amusement sparkling in her eyes. “I’m sorry I didn’t think of calling. It’s just that everyone is so excited about you fixing this place up again. Evelyn saw you buying cleaning supplies at the hardware store and word got around. Mind if we come in? I achieved my task.” She gestured at the vans and trucks.

  “Zachary’s here to do the electrical work, and Mr. Masters to
do the plumbing.”

  Carrie looked out the door at the porch full of people.

  “What’s everyone else here for?”

  “They’re here to do whatever you need them to do.”

  Gillian’s smile was just way too bright and cheery for eight o’clock in the morning. Carrie blinked at her and then at all the people standing there staring at her. She stepped back and opened the door wide. People poured into the foyer with the growing buzz of whispered conversation that turned into chatter and laughter as they looked around wide-eyed and wondering.

  Gillian again took the lead, herding everyone through the dining room and into the kitchen. Good thing it was a big kitchen.

  Carrie brought up the rear and had to squeeze through the kitchen door between a woman who smelled like purple bubble gum and a man in frayed coveralls who smelled like something she wasn’t eager to identify. More people were milling around the old oak table in tight clumps, unpacking grocery bags, laying out doughnuts and pastries, biscuits and gravy, tubs of grits and plates of ham. One small elderly lady unpacked a bag of coffee grounds, cream, sugar and a stack of Styrofoam cups.

  “I’m sorry,” Carrie said to her. “There’s no coffeepot. There’s a coffee press, but it only makes two cups at a time.”

  The old lady laughed and her eyes twinkled. She patted Carrie’s hand fondly. “Of course there’s a coffeepot, dear. There’s a thirty cup urn in the butler’s pantry. We used to use it for parties back in the day when there used to be parties here. I doubt if anyone’s moved it in all these years. Don’t you worry about a thing, sweetheart. I’ll just make myself right at home.” The lady bustled off and disappeared through the swinging door that led to the pantry.