1
OCTOBER CAN BE a summer month in South Georgia. Temperatures in the nineties, leaves still green and locked onto the trees; humidity so thick that a small fish could swim in it. And the gnats were everywhere. I’d forgotten about the gnats.
I left my bags in the beat-up old Fiat I sometimes referred to as Igor owing to several unfortunate accidents that had left it misshapen.
The steps up to the porch creaked out a warning, but I didn’t pay any attention. If I’d paid attention to warnings, I’d never have followed Aunt Rose into the ridiculous world of the theatre.
Now I was too old for the ingenue, too young for the character parts, and you can only go to so many auditions for parts you don’t get before you start considering that job in catering. Inheriting a bookstore felt like a rescue plan.
The front porch was the same as it had always been. Dried leaves from other autumns, dust from a thousand summer nights, five bentwood rocking chairs, two with broken cane seats.
I couldn’t have said why my hand hesitated, holding the old-fashioned brass key at the front door lock, but I stood there frozen for a moment, hearing Rose singing softly to herself just inside the door. Sometimes, apparently, the memory of melody lingers long after the song is gone.
I grew up in Enigma, Georgia. It’s near Mystic and not far from Omega, and if you don’t believe that, look at a map. We trust in the arcane in this part of Georgia. We existed first for turpentine, then for lumber. There was no reason for a private liberal arts college to be anywhere near us, but Barnsley College was thriving in the wilderness. And there was even less explanation for my aunt Rose, born in Enigma, raised near the railroad tracks, and then inexplicably bathed in the bright lights of Broadway for most of her life. She founded the Old Juniper Bookshop when she retired from the stage and returned to Enigma.
And when she died, she left it to me.
Down from Atlanta, what should have been a three-hour drive took nearly five thanks to a disagreement between a refrigerated eighteen-wheeler and a pretty blue Volvo. I arrived exhausted. Driving down the lonely main street I was a little surprised by all the empty buildings, places I used to go when I was a kid, now out of business. And at the end of that road, I pulled into the gravel driveway of the old Victorian mansion just at sunset.
And there it was: the castle of my childhood, with all its foreboding shadows.
Three stories tall, gingerbread trim, peeling paint, wraparound porch, balconies, gables, and ripple-glass windows, the house itself was a character from some lost Hawthorne novel. The burgundy and dark green color palette had been an effort to restore its look to something like the original, but the final result was more Boo Radley than Southern Belle.
I grew up here more than in my parents’ house. I’d idolized my aunt Rose. She’d run away from home at seventeen and landed a job on Broadway the first week she was in New York, an understudy in Anyone Can Whistle. It opened April 4, 1964, and closed after nine performances, one of Sondheim’s less-than-successful efforts according to the critics at the time. But Rose kept getting work, mostly in the chorus or as an understudy. Still, it was a life in the theatre, and she filled my head with her stories.
Those stories buzzing in my brain, I opened the door, and there it was: dust motes,
musty air, the smell of old books, and I was in heaven. In that compendium of smells, I found my childhood, and all the long hours spent reading in the shop, talking with Aunt Rose, making plans and dreaming dreams.
I loved the ramshackle disorder of the place. It made me think of Colin Lamb’s observation, “Inside, it was clear that the books owned the shop rather than the other way about,” which was my aunt’s organizational philosophy. The books, she always said, had told her where they wanted to be. So finding anything in the entire place was more an adventure than a destination.
In the last beam of gold from the setting sun, as the dust motes danced in the air, the smallest ballerinas in the universe, I had a deep sense of home.
Then the silence set in. I stood still there in the doorway and thought I’d gone deaf. The house was alone at the end of the block on the edge of town, with nearly an acre of land for the backyard garden.
Suddenly the song of a brown thrasher shot through the air. It was so loud that it startled me, and I was worried that the bird might be in the house, an omen.
I stepped inside and realized that someone had opened all the windows, at least on the first floor of the house. It hadn’t done anything for the faint smell of mildew, but it had allowed the thrasher’s music to come in, a better welcome than creaking stairs or stale air.
The foyer hadn’t been swept in a while; it was difficult to see the other rooms in the failing light. I reached for the button switch beside the door, but when I pushed it, nothing happened. So first job in the morning: have the electricity turned on.
I remembered that Rose always kept candles in the desk that she used as her cash register. The desk was in the parlor to the left, and that room was especially dark. But I knew it well enough to get to the desk and find several long tapers and a large box of kitchen matches. Two of the candles were already in their own pewter holders. I lit one and set it on the desk, the other I carried with me. Sunlight was fading fast, and the candle in my hand gave the parlor a distinct luster of melancholy, made the room more recollection than reality.
I almost saw Rose sitting at her desk.
And there I was, at sixteen, reclined on the antique French sofa and arguing with Rose about FSU.
“It’s the best theatre school in the south!” I’d told her.
She’d shook her head. “That’s like saying ‘the best bagel in Wyoming.’ You need to study in New York.”
Still, when I got a scholarship to FSU, Rose had paid all the rest of my expenses to go there. Would she have been proud of my so-called acting career in Atlanta?
The thrasher cried out again, and I suddenly had the impression
that the noise was panic, not song. I battled a moment of horror-film fear—the proverbial dark, empty, haunted house with no electricity and a taper in my hand—and went to fetch a few of my things from Igor. I only got my suitcases. The rest of it would be safe in the car. I hadn’t brought that much with me. I’d left most of my stuff in a storage place in Atlanta. I didn’t know what else to do with it.
Back inside, I considered calling Rusty Thompson, Rose’s lawyer, the one who’d told me about my odd inheritance, just to let him know I’d arrived. But I decided to leave that for the morning.
Struggling with the bags and the candle, I made more noise than necessary clattering up the stairs to the second floor where Rose had lived. There was a master suite, but that was Rose’s domain, and I wasn’t comfortable taking it over, not just yet. So I opted for the greenroom, the one I always slept in whenever I stayed over.
I dropped one of my bags at the doorway going into the room and I let the other fall to the floor several steps later.
The room, even in candlelight, was cheery. The walls had been painted long ago with climbing Lady Banks roses and pale blue wisteria. The antique oak Lincoln bed, the art nouveau lamps, the two-hundred-year-old Persian rugs all gave the room an air of such comfort that I once again had the sensation of homecoming.
I nudged my suitcases with my feet in the general direction of the closet. Then I got a look at myself in the mirror of the vanity next to the closet. My hair was up and wound in such a way as to hide most of the premature gray. The Irish sweater, comfortable in Atlanta’s version of autumn, was too hot in Enigma’s humidity. And why had I worn the jeans with the torn knees? Wasn’t I getting just a little too old for that look, my mother would have asked?
I shook off that particular ghost and then headed back downstairs, taper in hand.
I knew it was too much to hope that there might be something to eat in the kitchen, but that’s where I went nevertheless, because hope springs eternal in the hungry stomach.
The kitchen was in a back corner of the house, and it was small, but Rose had decked it out with the best: a Wolf dual-fuel range that must have cost a fortune, a Sub-Zero refrigerator, almost as expensive. The kitchen table had once belonged to Flannery O’Connor. There was a cast-iron skillet somewhere that she had stolen from the Broadway set of The Fantasticks. And in the cupboard, there was china given to her by Gwen Verdon when Rose had been in the chorus of Chicago. Where the money had come from or how she’d grown so close to such famous people were mysteries gone
to the grave with my aunt.
Unfortunately, most of the food items left in the fridge and pantry had also gone to graves of their own. Blue chicken, fuzzy bread, and blossoming cheese were all to be thrown out in the morning. A lonely can of pinto beans and a nearly empty bag of jasmine rice would have to do for my evening meal.
But before I could find pans for the pathetic repast, a smell of burning juniper suddenly assaulted the kitchen air, the unique, bittersweet combination of fresh pine and earthy balsamic. Juniper was a protector, Rose always told me—it’s why she planted so much around the house and garden. She said that when Mary and Joseph were trying to keep baby Jesus from Herod, a juniper tree hid them.
I stood there in the dark room trying to understand where the smell was coming from when a flickering red light began to spatter the back windowpanes. I took a few steps toward the window before I saw the flames.
The gazebo in the backyard garden was on fire.
2
I DROPPED THE bag of rice and ran out the kitchen door. Twenty feet away, the old wooden gazebo, the center of the garden for a hundred years, was burning. I thought first to get water from the kitchen, then remembered the garden hose. The spigot was near the kitchen back door. It was a little hard to find in the growing darkness, but when I located it, I turned the water on full blast and dragged the hose across the lawn to the fire.
The hose was only marginally more useful than spitting on the fire would have been, but I thought it would be a good stopgap measure, especially drenching the ground and plants around the gazebo, mostly burning juniper.
If I had been a different person, I might have dragged a cell phone out of some pocket and called 911, but I didn’t own a cell phone. So when the fire was subdued a bit, I dashed back into the house, to the desk in the parlor, where there was an actual telephone, and dialed the emergency number.
The fire truck was there in seven minutes, one of the benefits of a small town. The fire was out in short order, and the team of three firemen was very nice to me in the Southern Gentleman way.
“Okay then, ma’am, I’m Captain Jordon, and I believe we got her if she don’t jump.”
Assuming that meant the fire was mostly out, I thanked him with a nod.
Black hair, chiseled jaw, he stood over six feet tall, and the fireman’s hat only added to his stature. I didn’t recognize him, which almost certainly meant that he wasn’t from Enigma.
“It’s no telling what might have happened if you hadn’t been here,” he went on. “Which, excuse me for asking, but why are you here? The lady that owns this place has been dead for a couple of weeks.”
Right. I stuck out my hand. “I’m Madeline Brimley, Rose’s niece. She left the … the bookshop to me.”
“Oh.” He took my hand very delicately. “That’ll explain it. I guess. What started the fire, do you know?”
“I just got here,” I told him, staring at the smoking ruins of the gazebo. “Like fifteen minutes ago or something. I took my bags into the house and went to the kitchen to see if there was something to eat and there it was: fire.”
“I see.” He let go of my hand. “Well. Your deck, or whatever that was, got doused with gasoline. I mean like a whole lot. And if what you say is accurate, it looks to me like somebody set this fire right when you got here, from the burn rate. And all. Did you happen to see anybody?”
“I didn’t look,” I said. “You mean that somebody poured gas on that thing and then waited until I got here to light it on fire?”
He nodded, staring into my eyes. “That’s one possibility.”
He stood silent for a little too long and I finally realized what he was thinking.
“Wait.” I shook my head. “Do you think I did this? I’m the one who called the fire department!”
“Well.” He looked away at last. “Either which way, I got to report this to the police. It’s arson.”
I kept going. “You think I drove down from Atlanta, put my suitcases in a room upstairs, and then set my own inheritance on fire?”
His affability wore off just a little. “Ma’am, I don’t know you. I don’t know who owns this house. I don’t know anything about this situation.”
“I grew up
here,” I said, squinting. “You’d know that if you were from Enigma.”
“Albany,” he answered curtly.
Albany, Georgia, was only an hour away, but it was a city of 70,000 or so as opposed to Enigma’s 1,251.
“I see.” I nodded once. “Well, thank you for putting out the fire. You tell the police whatever you want. I’m going inside now to unpack. And I’m also going to try to forget about somebody watching me from the gazebo and then setting it on fire. Thanks for the nightmares.”
With that I spun around and stormed back into the house. I went right to my sad little can of pinto beans, opened it, and watched the firemen pack up. Captain Jordon made notes in some kind of log, stared at the house for a moment, and then got into his fire truck and they all drove away.
The silence after they were gone was very, very loud.
Then the beans began to boil, a bubbling whisper. I turned off the burner and thought about sweeping the rice up off the floor. Instead I found one of Gwen Verdon’s china bowls and a relatively clean spoon and stared at the smoke rising from the gazebo. It mixed with the first moonlight enough to make the backyard garden look like something from a Bela Lugosi movie.
I looked around the kitchen and talked louder than I should have. “Not the welcome I was expecting, Aunt Rose.”
Sometimes lots of noise can chase the ghosts away. And sometimes it can’t.
I could almost hear Rose say “Atlanta”—and I knew she was shaking her head. Shaking her head because I hadn’t stayed in New York.
So, beans gone, rice swept up, pot and bowl in the sink, I gave up. The moon was high, and the silver slant of light through the open windows nearly hid the smoldering ruins in the backyard. But the smell of it, mixed with juniper, was beginning to give me a headache.
Up the stairs, too tired to unpack, I collapsed onto the bed in the greenroom, clothes and all.
The greenroom. Appropriate, or at least Rose might have thought so. The greenroom, of course, was where actors waited just before they went onstage. Rose always asked me, in phone calls and letters, why I was waiting in Atlanta. Why I hadn’t already gone back to New York. And now it wasn’t even worth going back to Atlanta.
I stared at the painted wisteria, frozen forever in just that state of bloom, never quite fully blossomed.
“Thanks for the metaphors,” I sang out loud to the memory of Rose.
The memory made no answer.
So I kicked off my high tops and rolled over on the bed. I lay there for a moment, afraid that I was too tired to sleep, trying to keep out the
image of some monster setting fires in the back. And what about the fireman? What about that guy? He was going to tell the cops that I started the fire. I was going to have to deal with small-town cops.
I rolled over so that I wouldn’t have to face the damning wisteria, and there, peering up at me from the scarred hardwood floor, was the largest cat I’d ever seen, black and round.
“Are you really here?” I asked him, “or are you another memory—of all the cats who used to live here?”
He answered with a very real and hearty grunt.
“Okay,” I told him. “Come on up.”
I patted the bed and he launched himself onto the pillow beside me, purring louder than a Volkswagen. I lay back and he settled in.
“In the morning,” I said to the cat, “you’ll have to tell me who’s been taking care of you since Rose…”
I just couldn’t finish that sentence.
The smell of wet smoldering wood was getting worse, but I couldn’t quite get myself off the bed to close the windows. And the metaphors just kept on coming. I couldn’t quite get up the gumption to do something that would be good for me. Something that I knew would make me feel better.
When I was ten or eleven, I would often spend the night with Aunt Rose. In this very room. Why couldn’t I just let the memories of those nights—free from my parents, free from my room in my parents’ house—wash over me? They were great nights.
I turned on my back and stared up at the ceiling, the glass light fixture, the cracks in the paint, and the spiderwebs. I guess I was afraid I’d dream about fire.
“‘For in that sleep of death what dreams may come?’” I asked the cat in my best Hamlet.
The cat did not immediately respond.
I’d played Hamlet twice. Once in an all-woman cast, once in a production so bad that we often began Act II in front of an empty house. Often.
I suddenly bolted up. “Enough!”
I said it loud enough that the cat looked up and the crickets momentarily stopped their music. I hadn’t even noticed that they were singing until they stopped. I missed the sound. Isn’t that always the way? You don’t miss your water until your well runs dry. I loved that song. Wait. What song was that line from? Wait.
“You know what’s happening, right?” I said to the cat. “I’m spiraling. Mind roulette, insomniac’s free association, sleepless stream of consciousness.”
It had to stop; I was exhausted.
Maybe I should get up and go downstairs and read, I thought. Find some long, boring book and I’d be out in five minutes.
Then the phone
downstairs began to ring.
I glanced at my watch. The telephone on Rose’s desk downstairs was ringing after most people in Enigma had gone to bed. And it didn’t stop.
I thought I could let it ring forever, but after a couple of minutes it began to drive me crazy.
“Are you going to answer that?” I asked the cat.
He didn’t even open his eyes.
I slid my legs over the side of the bed. By the time I was down the stairs and into the parlor I would have done almost anything to make the ringing stop.
I grabbed the receiver and barked before it even got to my mouth.
“What?”
There was a momentary silence, and I was about to hang up. Wrong number, prank call, some drunk.
But then: “Clear out!”
The man’s voice was gravelly and red hot.
“Who is this?” I demanded.
“Clear out of that damn house, girl!”
“Who is this?” I repeated.
“Leave now, right now,” he whispered fiercely. “Next time I’ll burn down that whole house. Burn it down with you inside! ...
We hope you are enjoying the book so far. To continue reading...
Copyright © 2024 All Rights Reserved
Please log in to recommend or discuss...
