Page 12 of Wildwood

Most of our furniture we’ve put into storage for now. It doesn’t make sense to move it until we know we are going to stay. Plus, it would look wildly out of place here. And would furnish just a fraction of the house. The exception is our king-size bed, which we’ve moved into the room with The Forest of the Dead. Topher thinks the mural is too unique not to use. The painting gives me the creeps, but I agree because I want him to be happy here.

We have already been discovering quirks that can only be found in an old house like this. Like the fact that the gaps between the broad pine floorboards in the parlor are so wide that I can see the basement light coming through when Topher pops down there to move something into storage. Or the door to the primary bedroom, with an antique latch that never stays closed, no matter how certain I am that I’ve secured it properly. Or the crooked window meant to keep out witches.

I was also surprised to discover that Ezra had a home security system installed. There are sensors on all the windows and doors, even those on the second floor. I guess I had an assumption that Newfield was one of those idyllic places where no one locked their homes or cars. We decided to keep the system activated, which feels a little funny, given we never had alarms when we lived in the city. But then again, Topher will be working the night shift almost exclusively at the beginning, so I suppose it’s not a bad thing.

Perhaps the most surprising thing to discover is that in Newfield Village, we have no cell service. I didn’t think there was a place on Earth, or at least a habited place in the US, that didn’t have cell service. I realized it on our first day, when I tried to order a pizza for dinner. Ezra had kept a flyer for Pizza Haven tacked to a corkboard. I called the number, but my phone kept saying “Call Failed” and I looked at Topher dumbfounded and said, “I think my phone is broken.”

We went to downtown Newfield and had dinner at Pizza Haven instead. When I told the server about our failed attempt at ordering delivery, she was amused both by our shock at the lack of cell service and the fact that we assumed anyone would deliver to Newfield Village at all.

“You’re out there, even for Vermont.” She laughed, shaking her head. “Don’t you have a landline?”

Topher and I looked at each other, eyes wide, and started laughing, as well.

“It didn’t even occur to us to look,” Topher said, a slightly sheepish look on his face.

City slicker, I mouthed to him, and we giggled again.

In the warm glow of the restaurant, with its tables covered by red-and-white-checkered tablecloths, I didn’t think much of her comment, about us being so far “out there.” But as we drove back to the house that night, on dark country roads illuminated only by our headlights, past the occasional lonely silhouettes of barns against the dark sky, I felt something akin to claustrophobia. A feeling of panic at being so far from others, and essentially cut off from communication. I decided to call our internet company first thing in the morning to expedite the setup and laughed to myself, in a way that made my chest feel tight, that I’d have to drive into town to make the call at all.

Chapter 10

I’m exhausted and my back aches exquisitely. Unpacking for a week straight, while pregnant, sucks. So I decide I deserve a break from cutting open Home Depot boxes and tearing through bubble wrap. I pour myself a glass of lemonade and begin to wander through the house slowly, alternating between taking sips and holding the cool glass on my forehead. On the second floor, instead of going left to The Forest of the Dead, I turn right and wander to the last room at the end of the hall. It’s a small square bedroom, with two wrought iron twin beds. The wallpaper has faded roses, and the beds have white-and-pink quilts on them. There’s a wooden bookshelf, with an old collection of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, and other childhood classics. I pick up a paperback copy of Where the Red Fern Grows and flip through the yellowed pages.

This is the room I would sleep in during summers at Wildwood, often shared with Anna when they were also visiting. We used to stay up past our bedtime, telling each other stories, playing truth or dare. I think on a dare, I once snuck out of the house at midnight. Or was it both of us? Now that I think about it, I seem to remember Anna leading the way, her long hair hanging down her back. It’s so hard to disentangle memories from dreams, dreams from stories.

This room would make a logical choice for the nursery. But for some reason, I don’t want the baby to sleep here. There’re other bedrooms on this floor, ones that will be closer to ours. I give the room one more once-over before clicking off the light and walking down the hall.

I peer into another bedroom. I think this is where Mathilde used to sleep. There’s a double bed with a quilt of pale blues, navy blues, and whites. The pattern is Evening Star. I don’t know how I remember this. A tarnished mirror stands in the corner. I surely must be imagining it, but I could swear the room still smells faintly of her perfume.

There’s another bedroom, this one at the opposite end of the house from the primary. I peer into it, almost as though it was a holy site. A simple double bed. A cream-colored quilt with orange flowers. A bird’s-eye maple dresser in the corner. My parents’ room. I remember creeping down here when I was very young and would wake in the middle of the night. I’d wriggle my body in between them both and drift off to sleep, blissful in the warm safety.

Unable to enter their room, for fear that simply by walking through I might disturb or remove the last traces of them, I turn and walk back down the hall. I get the sensation, not for the first time since moving here, of reconnecting with an ex who you haven’t seen in years. You know that at one point, you knew each other better than anyone else in the world. And now there’s an awkwardness to your interactions. A formality. An unsureness of how close you should feel.

I am also struck by how little of Ezra I sense in this house. I was half expecting his presence to be overbearing, that on every wall or surface I’d find some reminder that I am squatting in someone else’s house. Photos, art, the scent of tobacco, a collection of scotch. But there are no photos displayed. The art all looks as though the pieces have resided in their current locations for hundreds of years. And the parlor’s stolid liquor cabinet was empty, with a thick layer of dust on the door and handles.

Aside from his clothes and the collection of muddy shoes, there’s nothing here that gives me a picture of who he was. All I can gather is that he was tidy and apparently was a teetotaler.

I sigh. Part of why I wanted to move here was to learn about my family. Who was Ezra? What did he do that was so terrible we stopped coming here? I realize then that I haven’t really explored the room that might actually have something useful, something informative. The library.

I wander into the small, windowless room and click on a few floor lamps, which cast a dim, orangey glow. There’s a massive mahogany desk on one end of the room, two large leather chairs at the other, and the walls are lined floor to ceiling with books. One shelf of particularly large tomes bows in the middle under the weight of it all. The air smells of that unmistakable, musty scent of public library books. I pull a book at random, an old copy of Poe’s The Fall of the House of Usher. I open the book and inhale deeply, and for a moment, I’m transported back to the library I went to as a child, flipping through picture books while my mother held me in her lap. There’s even a rolling ladder, which can move about the perimeter of the room. I smile as I touch the cool metal and move it a few feet. I take a cautious, testing step, fearing, for some reason, that if I climb it, the whole shelf will collapse on me. Nothing happens, but I step back onto solid ground. No sense tempting fate. Not while I’m pregnant.

I walk over and sit down at the desk, letting out a short, happy squeal when I notice a black landline phone on one side. I pick it up, hoping to hear the nostalgic sound of a dial tone, but am met with silence. I mentally add setting up the landline to the ever-expanding “to do” list. Next, I investigate the desk. It’s so old that it doesn’t have runners and the drawers stick and groan as I pull them open. Ezra was organized. The top drawer is filled with personal documents. There’re large accordion folders, containing tax records dating back nearly twenty years, each one neatly labeled in his handwriting. He wrote in cramped cursive, like my grandmother, which makes my heart ache a tiny bit. I rifle through other stacks, clipped and organized according to type. Old warranties, photocopies of instruction manuals. There’s a stack of passports. Older ones showing a younger Ezra. Handsome and groomed in the way that the older generation always looks in photos of their youth. Like they are ready to head off to the drive-in or to war. These are worn, the inside pages curved and stamped, markers of a life of privilege. The UK, France, Japan, South Africa, Argentina. The newest ones are at the top. These are rigid and clean. The pictures show an increasingly older Ezra, each one looking more like a ghost of a man. The pages are unused. This too makes my heart ache a bit. Then I remind myself that my mother never had a passport at all. I quickly scoop the passports into a stack and place them back in the drawer, impassive like a blackjack dealer.

I open the second drawer and discover it is jammed full of small, black leather-bound books. It looks like there are about fifty of them. I pull out the first book in a row. Flipping through it, I see Ezra’s writing. It seems to be a journal of sorts. There are entries for each day. For a moment, my pulse quickens. Is it possible that I’ll actually find something more here? Could it be as easy as that?

But as I scan through the pages, I feel my hopes deflating. There’re no deep reflections here. It appears Ezra cataloged each day with the weather and a succinct summary of events.

November 12, 1977: Fair. Stacked woodd awhile. Began hauling ice. 5 loads, 30 cakes across the meadow with Dapple and Tuck and the mules. December 25, 1977: Gray skies, frigid. Snowed a foot. Mathilde and Vera and the kids came to visit. Mathilde gave me a book. Vera gave me a scotch. March 17, 1977: Clear skies, cold. Went to the Grange for pancake breakfast. Checked the syrup buckets. 300 this year.

I sigh. I pick up a few more books and scanning them, it seems they are much the same. It doesn’t mean there isn’t anything worthwhile here. It might just take some time combing through the journals. What was I expecting? An entry that said Dear Diary, today I told Mathilde I never wanted to see her again? I shake my head and grab a few black books to take up to my room.

As I’m about to head up the stairs, there’s a knock at the front door. When I open it, Mr. Warnick is standing on the porch. Rain drips from the brim of a fedora and he’s shaking a black umbrella.

“Hi, come in.” I step aside to let him pass.

“No bother, you must have your hands full. Just wanted to give you these.” He has fished something that jangles out of his pocket and hands it to me. It’s a key ring, with one sturdy metal key attached.

“Thanks. Where does it go?” The key feels cool and heavy as I hold it, my palm upturned.