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Chapter 19

“A Woman’s Place” by Evelyn Cabot

Mademoiselle, October 1963

Decorators would have us believe one’s home is a canvas for self-expression. To an architect, houses are monuments to great ideas. To the developer, a tract of identical dwellings is a sound financial investment. When I bought my falling-down farmhouse, I thought completed projects would become subjects for stories, a fair swap of output for income even Karl Marx would deem equitable. Instead, I’m learning that houses demand a more complicated rate of exchange. Unlike the love of an ideal parent, the shelter they offer is conditional. Self-expression takes a back seat to mundane repairs. The bottom line brings lofty ideas down to earth. As for a sound investment? Time will tell, but so far, my house is no interest-bearing bank. It’s a well into which I toss every coin I earn in the irrational belief that one day, my wishes will come true.

I thought that scraping and caulking and painting the peeling planks of my old house would be enough to seal out bad weather. I didn’t reckon on the rot I couldn’t see, the soft spots behind the siding that a fresh coat of paint merely camouflaged. Only a couple of years have passed since the house looked good as new, and I’m happy to say most of the structure is holding up nicely. Lately, though, the back wing reminds me of an ancient lady whose youthful makeup has worn off. Her wrinkles are too deep to be hidden by cosmetics. Surgery is required.

As I contemplate the rotted siding that clads my recently renovated kitchen and the rented room above, I think of Robert Frost’s famous line “Before I built a wall I’d ask to know / What I was walling in or walling out.” I have my answer ready: I’m walling out the slant of rain that’s infiltrated paint-peeled boards and loosened horsehair plaster from damp strips of lath. I’m walling out the black ants who’ve feasted on softened wood pulp and the carpenter bees who’ve wriggled through popped knots to terrorize my tenant. I’m walling out the icy drafts that make mischief of frozen pipes and the snowdrifts that melt like a swooning debutante against the warm shoulder of my heated house.

And what am I walling in? The heat of winter mornings around a blazing hearth. The smell of fresh-pressed cider warming on the stove. Cozy evenings reading a book while rain patters against the window. My dry feet snug in slippers as I gaze through age-waved glass at the mighty oak standing sentry outside.

Rereading Robert Frost before writing this column appears to have rubbed off on me! How poetic I’ve waxed about a home repair rife with bloody splinters and hammered thumbs and curses that don’t rhyme with any words I know. The simple truth is, the boards that clad the three exterior walls of the kitchen wing must be removed and replaced. Even taken one at a time, it’s a huge job, and a hard one, too, though the tools it requires are simple enough: a sturdy ladder, a strong arm, and a good hammer.

In this age of quick-built Levittowns, I was pleased to learn that the woodshop in Schuywich still milled to order. I brought a sample of my siding to the owner, who promised to mimic the dimensions and deliver a pallet of fresh cedar boards in a week’s time. That gave me seven days to give the exposed north wall something it’s always lacked: insulation. I’m not talking about shredded newspapers or those new batts of fiberglass. No, for this project I chose a product as old as time, with the added benefit of being absolutely free. I’m speaking, of course, of fleece.

Ever since I became shepherdess to Mr. Green’s flock of Merino sheep, the man has come back each spring, good as his word, to shear their thick layer of winter wool. For the past three years, I’ve taken it upon myself to wash each fleece in the cold water of my spring-fed pond and dry it on a rack in the summer sun. Neighbors were baffled when I claimed to have no plans to spin yarn or knit sweaters. Rather, I’ve been storing up fleece until I had enough to blanket one of the walls of my drafty kitchen.

With the rotten siding torn down, the back side of the kitchen’s north wall was exposed, revealing keys of gray plaster oozing between strips of brown lath. Mr. Burgess down at the hardware store recommended spraying DDT to keep the ants and carpenter bees from coming back, but I’ve sworn off synthetic pesticides since reading Rachel Carson’s Silent Spring. Instead, I treated the wool with natural boric acid before tucking fleece between the studs, stretching and fluffing as I went. I enlisted the help of a few friends to nail up the newly milled boards. Together, we caulked and primed and painted twice, ensuring this siding will stand the test of time. Coming summers will see me repair the east and south walls in turn, the project synced to the shearing of my sheep.

I’m learning there’s so much more to owning a home than seeing one’s name on a deed. There are stories, too. Of that nasty splinter that left a scar on my shin. Of friends gathered round for no other reward than thanks. Of villagers who’ve come to accept (or at least tolerate) the unmarried city girl who’s elbowed her way into their tight-knit community. Of forgotten people who laid the foundation on which my house is built. From inside my kitchen, the plaster walls that wave and wrinkle like the visage of a grand old dame don’t look any different. In the future, no one eyeing them will guess the fleece within harkens back to the land grants that brought Marcus Green’s ancestors to the Adirondacks, to John Brown and Harpers Ferry and the fight for abolition that nearly tore our country apart. That story will stay hidden unless it’s kept alive in words, like the ones I’ve shared with you here, today.

Last night, when I closed the windows and lit the fire and set a pot on the stove, I asked myself again, what was I walling in? Not just the warmth and comfort of the women who live here. I’m walling in history and community and hope that the dream of freedom Rev. Martin Luther King evoked in his magnificent speech in Washington this summer will one day become a reality, upstate, downstate, and across our land.

Chapter 20

“How did you do at the grand reopening?” Sandra asks.

“Great, actually.” I get comfortable on the massage table she’s set up in the shade of a sycamore by the pond. Apparently, my essential elements are out of whack; Sandra says I need the influence of water to balance an excess of wood.

“I told all my friends they had to buy at least one book, but most of them got two or three.” Sandra lights the citronella torches she’s staked into the ground. “Oliver was happy with his tips, wasn’t he?”

“Oliver was a hit,” I murmur, cheeks squeezed by the face cradle. “He’s been back every day for the past week. Besides making coffee, he’s got a side hustle selling beer and firewood to the cyclists who’ve been camping on the lawn. He may be living in one of the tents himself, I’m not really sure. Anyway, he took up a collection to pay for the port-a-potty, so that helps.”

“Oliver Campbell is one of the good ones,” Sandra says. “His aura is spectacular. It must be nice for you not to be all alone out here at night.”

“I guess so.” I worried, at first, about the campers infringing on my solitude, but I’ve grown used to the low murmur of their voices through my open bedroom window.

“Take a deep breath now, Audrey.”

I fill my lungs with air that smells of wildflowers and wood smoke and the sweet tang of weed wafting from where the cyclists are partying around a fire. Sandra places one palm between my shoulder blades, the other at the base of my spine, and begins moving me back and forth. A sacral rock, she calls it. I don’t care what it’s called. The rhythmic motion is wonderfully soothing. This is my third session with Sandra; both times before, I’ve ended up fast asleep. I close my eyes and let my mind wander as the heat of her hands melts the tension from my body.

Eleven people (Aisha, ever the data gatherer, took a head count) made the trek to Schuywich to see the Cozy Cozy Lady in person. Most were from the Capital Region, with one devotee driving all the way up from Poughkeepsie and a family who turned out to be descendants of Henry Green coming down from Keene Valley. After the livestream, the audience dispersed into the shop, where my display of books about crocheting and knitting and Adirondack history sold out in minutes. Lucinda spent the afternoon outside, sipping iced lattes with her late husband’s kin, while Aisha helped me in the shop. By the time I closed for the day, my coffee supplies were dwindling and Oliver had earned himself a jarful of tips. Toward evening, a peloton of cyclists rolled up in response to Oliver’s post and set up camp on the lawn. That night at the dining room table, I counted close to a thousand dollars in sales of coffee, books, prints, maps, and online orders. I couldn’t consider the business profitable until I cleared my debt, but for the first time since sinking every cent into Red Barn Books, I had hope.

“You can turn over now, Audrey,” Sandra says.

I scoot down the massage table and roll onto my back. Dappled daylight exposes the tracery of veins on the inside of my closed eyelids. A woodpecker’s tapping echoes through the trees. The rubber-band twang of a croaking frog reverberates across the pond.

“I’ll begin by making sure all of your chakras are spinning in the right direction, okay, Audrey?”

“Fine by me,” I say, sinking back into my thoughts.

Wren was underwhelmed by the handful of people who visited his pop-up antique shop, but more have been trickling in since the write-up in the Times Union. He’s expecting another bump once the magazine article comes out in Saratoga Springs. Each morning, before he opens for business and I go out to the bookshop, we sip our lattes and talk over ideas for house renovations. When I pick up the notebook on my nightstand before bed, what spills from the tip of my pencil instead of sentences are sketches of kitchen layouts and lists of building supplies.

“How are you doing, Audrey?” Sandra’s voice seems to come from far away.

“Oh, good.” I yawn. “I almost fell asleep.”