Look Closely - Laura Caldwell [14]
I took in the whole room, vaguely aware of Jan’s talk about how the house had been completed for the Marker family in 1905, how craftsmen had needed the previous six years to complete it. Like the entryway, the library appeared much darker than I remembered, probably because it was now adorned with period furnishings from the early 1900s to make it look as it did back then—heavy red velvet drapes, brass candelabras, uncomfortable-looking high-back chairs. But I saw it as my mother had decorated it—with soft, stuffed chairs and ottomans, vases of fresh flowers, and the corner that was saved just for me, complete with a small child’s chair, the replica of the larger ones, and my own miniature bookcases.
“How do you like it?” I heard Jan ask.
“Oh, it’s lovely. I was just imagining what it would have been like to live here.”
“Well, when the Markers were here, they had a full staff of servants to carry out their every whim, and they entertained often. The Markers were famous for their balls and their travels.”
And what about the Sutter family? I wanted to ask. What were they famous for? Does anyone remember them?
Next, Jan led me to a large drawing room on the other side of the hallway. I listened to her speech about the oil paintings and the marble sculptures, because the room held few memories for me. I couldn’t recall my family spending much time there.
But no, that wasn’t quite right. A recollection came to me of my brother, Dan, seventeen years old when I was only seven, hunched over a scarred octagonal table, his straight blond hair falling over his forehead, writing furiously in his notebook, filling it with his stories. He’d used the room as an escape from the rest of the family, his teenage years making him crave privacy.
“Let’s go upstairs now,” Jan said.
I followed her back through the lobby and up the wide, dark wood stairway that was covered with a wine-colored carpet runner.
“You’ll notice the tapestry on the landing here,” Jan said, pausing, one hand resting on a carved wood globe that formed the top of the banister. Her other hand pointed to a silk wall-hanging in colors of gray and salmon. She described how the tapestry had been hand-woven in Italy, how the artist had visited the Markers. But I had quit listening.
I had returned to a moment that had lain buried until now. I saw my mother standing at the bottom of those stairs, dressed in a powder-blue suit, her feet in high heels I’d never seen before. She moved to the front door and opened it. She spoke to someone, their voices hushed, one voice much deeper than the other. A hand was on her blue shoulder. A large man’s hand. A ring on his finger. The soft sounds of crying. Then my mother swayed, nearly fell.
I had watched this scene, I realized, from the landing where I now stood. I’d been dressed in my favorite pair of jeans and the shirt with the sunflower on the front, my face peering around the post at the top of the landing.
“Are you all right?”
I focused on Jan’s face, her eyes wary. “Sure, sure. I’m fine.” I looked back down the staircase again, but the vision was gone.
“Well, come on up this way. I’ll show you the bedrooms.”
I followed Jan again, surprised at the sudden, vivid flash of my mother. It had been ages since I’d really remembered her in any detail. There were the vague recollections, like how she ran every night, even if it was raining, sometimes coming in the house with her long hair dripping in sheets, her chest heaving as if she’d been chased and not out for a leisurely jog, and later the feel of that hair sweeping my cheek as she leaned over me, kissing me good-night, the smell of lavender on her skin.
“This bedroom belonged