"Very cold," he said.
"Now then," Charlotte continued. "We must find you the best rooms to stay in and then we can talk and talk and talk until our throats get dry."
"They probably need something to eat and drink after so long a journey," Luther said. "I"ll fix something while you take them upstairs, Charlotte."
"Oh good," she said, clapping her hands together. "Come along then." She started out and Luther stepped toward us. "I didn"t tell her what you told me out there about your parents. You can explain it all when you come down to the kitchen. I was very fond of your ma," he added. "She treated us real well."
"Thank you, Luther," I said and we hurried to catch up to Charlotte, who walked and talked as if we were right beside her.
"Luther says we have to do some of the things Emily wanted us to do, like not burn the electric lights much because of the cost. We have so much house to light up," she added laughing. "But I don"t mind the candles and the lamps. It"s just remembering to fill them with oil all the time. I hate that. Don"t you just hate that?" she stopped to ask.
"We don"t have lamps like that in Cutler"s Cove," I said.
"Oh." She looked down at Jefferson. "h.e.l.lo. I forgot to learn your name."
"I"m Jefferson," he said.
"Jefferson . . . Jefferson," she repeated and looked up. "Oh there"s a man here on the wall named Jefferson," she said.
"A man on the wall?"
"She means a picture, I"m sure," I told him.
"Yes a picture. He was, um . . . a president."
"Jefferson Davis," Gavin offered.
"Yes," she said, clapping her hands. "That"s the man. I"ll show him to you. Oh, what"s your name?"
"I"m Gavin," he said smiling. "Any Gavins on the walls?"
She thought a moment and then shook her head.
But then she quickly smiled.
"I know. I"ll draw your picture and do it with thread and put it in a silver frame. Just find your spot."
"My spot?"
"Where you want me to put it," she explained.
"Oh." Gavin shifted his gaze to me and smiled.
"I"m changing the house," she continued as we walked on. "Emily made it such a dreary place because she thought it was evil to make it bright and happy. But Emily"s gone . . . " She turned to us. "She died and flew out on a broom. That"s what Luther says. He saw her fly off."
"He did!" Jefferson said. She nodded and leaned toward him to whisper.
"Sometimes, when it"s very dark and cold outside, Emily flies around the house moaning and groaning, but all we do is shut the windows tight and close the drapes," she added and straightened up again. Jefferson looked up at me in astonishment.
Even my smile didn"t relieve his anxiety.
We walked up the stairs. When we reached the second-story landing, Charlotte stopped and nodded toward the right, now all in darkness.
"That"s where your mother was and where you were born. In the morning, I"ll show you the room if you like," she said.
"Yes, I would. Thank you, Aunt Charlotte."
"We live this way," she explained, turning to the right where there were kerosene lamps lighting the way. The walls here were peppered with Charlotte"s handiwork, too-old pictures marked up and her own needlework pictures framed and hung in between, above and below the others. We pa.s.sed a small table that was draped in what looked like a bed sheet over the front of which had been painted the face of a clown.
Despite the haphazard manner in which things were hung and placed, Charlotte"s artwork was remarkably good. I could see that Jefferson enjoyed all the colors and pictures and I began to wonder myself whether or not Charlotte"s childish redecorating wasn"t of some value. This dark, cavernous old house was at least made bright and jolly by her work.
As we pa.s.sed other examples-jars and vases painted bright colors with happy designs and shapes, paper lanterns hanging from the ceilings and chandeliers, strips of colored crepe paper strewn over walls and windows-I felt as if we had somehow fallen into the mad but silly world of Alice in Wonderland.
"This used to be my parents" room," Charlotte said, stopping before the door, "and that was them,"
she said, turning to the portraits hung on the opposite wall. These pictures she hadn"t tampered with, even though neither Mr. nor Mrs. Booth smiled. In fact, they both looked angry and unhappy about being painted. Charlotte turned back to the door and opened it. "I always keep a lamp lit in there," she explained.
"Just in case their spirits return. Don"t want them b.u.mping into things," she added and laughed.
Jefferson"s eyes went wide again.
It was an enormous room with a great oak bed.
It had pillars that went up as high as the ceiling and an enormous half-moon headboard. The bed still had all its pillows and blankets, but the cobwebs were thick.
There was an enormous fieldstone fireplace with large windows on either side. Long curtains were drawn tightly closed and looked weighed down with years and years of dust and grime. Above the fireplace was a portrait of a young Father Booth. He stood holding a rifle in one hand and a string of ducks in the other.
There was a lot of dark, beautiful antique furniture in the room and on the night table there was a large bible and a pair of reading gla.s.ses beside it. But the room smelled musty and stale. When Gavin and I saw that the vanity table still had brushes and combs and jars of skin creams on it with some of the jars opened, we looked at each other. It was as if the room were being kept as some sort of shrine, left just the way it had been the day Charlotte"s father pa.s.sed away. I remembered that her mother had died much earlier. Charlotte closed the door and we continued to the next.
"This was where Emily slept," she whispered.
"I don"t keep any lamps lit in there. I don"t want her spirit coming back into the house," she explained. We walked- on, pa.s.sing another closed door and then another. "Luther and I sleep in here," she said, pointing toward one. "Now," she said stopping.
"These are two nice guest rooms." She opened the first door and went in to light a lamp.
The room had two single beds separated by a night stand. There were dressers on both sides and two large windows, one to the right of the bed on the right and one to the left of the bed on the left.
"This is a closet," Charlotte explained, opening a door, "and this door," she said, going to another, "is a door adjoining the next room. Isn"t that nice?"
We looked into the room. It was nearly identical.
"Is Jefferson going to sleep with Gavin or with you?" Charlotte asked.
"What would you like to do, Jefferson?"
"I"ll sleep with Gavin," he said, a.s.suming a male bravado that made me smile. He wasn"t going to admit to the need to sleep with his big sister.
"As long as he doesn"t snore," Gavin said jokingly. "We"ll take that room," he said, indicating the room through the adjoining door.
"The bathroom is just across the hall," Charlotte said. "There are towels in it; there always are, and there"s soap, too, nice soap, not the soap Emily made us use. And we have hot water again, although sometimes it breaks down and Luther has to fix it. Do you have to change your clothes?" she asked.
"We have a small problem, Aunt Charlotte," I said. "When we were waiting in New York City for Gavin to arrive, all of my and Jefferson"s clothes and things were stolen."
"Oh dear me," she said, bringing her hands to her throat. "How sad. Well," she said, smiling quickly, "tomorrow we"ll go looking for new clothes. We"ll go up into the attic where there are trunks and trunks of things to wear, including shoes and hats, gloves and coats, okay?"
"I guess so," I said looking at Gavin. He shrugged.
"Now let"s all hurry down to the kitchen to have something to eat and then you can tell me everything from the day you were born until now," Charlotte said.
"That could take quite a long while, Aunt Charlotte," I said smiling.
"Oh," she said, her face turning sad. "Do you have to go home soon?"
"No, Aunt Charlotte. I don"t want to ever go home again," I said. Her eyes widened.
"You mean you want to stay here forever and ever?"
"For as long as we can," I replied.
"Well that"s forever," she said nonchalantly and clapped her hands together. Then she followed it with a short laugh. "That"s forever."
We followed her out. She took Jefferson"s hand and started to describe how much fun he was going to have exploring the house and grounds. As she shuffled down the corridor, she told him about the rabbits and the chickens and the sly fox that was always haunting the coops. When we arrived at the kitchen, we found that Luther had prepared cheese sandwiches and tea for us. Charlotte opened a bread box to reveal some jelly rolls she had baked.
"Soon after Emily died she explained, "we went to town and bought twenty pounds of sugar, didn"t we, Luther?" He wooded. "And we buy it all the time now. Emily never permitted us to have sugar, only sour b.a.l.l.s occasionally, right Luther?"
"Emily"s gone and good riddance to her," he said firmly. The three of us sat around the table and ate our sandwiches while Charlotte went on and on about the things she had done since Emily"s death. She had gone into sections of the house Emily had once forbidden her to go into; she had opened trunks and looked into dresser drawers and she wore perfume and even put on lipstick whenever she wanted. Most of all she had gone all out with her artwork and handicraft.
"Do you like to paint pictures, Jefferson?" she asked. He looked up quickly.
"I never did," he said.
"Oh, well you have to try it now that you"re here. Tomorrow, I"ll show you all my paints and brushes. Luther made me a regular art studio, didn"t you, Luther?"
"It used to be Emily"s office," he said happily.
"I just moved all her things into storage and moved all Charlotte"s supplies and materials in."
"Did you ever weave beads, Jefferson?" Charlotte asked him. He shook his head. "Oh, you"re going to have so much fun. And I have pounds and pounds of clay, too."
"You do?"
"Yes." She slapped her hands together. "I know what-we"ll give you a room to do over. You can paint everything in it anyway you want."
"Wow!" Jefferson said, his eyes bright with excitement. Then Aunt Charlotte sat down and folded her hands. She watched us eat for a moment.
"So," she finally said. "When are your mommy and daddy coming to get you?"
I lowered my sandwich to the plate.
"They"re never coming for us, Aunt Charlotte.
There was a terrible fire in the hotel and they died in it. We couldn"t live there anymore," I added.
"Oh dear. Died, you say?" She looked up at Luther who nodded, his face dark. "Oh, how sad for you, for everyone." She looked sympathetically at Jefferson. "Well, we won"t let sadness come into The Meadows. We"ll shut the door on sadness. We"ll have lots of fun making things and cooking good things to eat like cookies and cakes and we"ll think up games to play and listen to music."
"My sister plays the piano," Jefferson bragged.
"Oh, she does." Aunt Charlotte clapped her hands. "We have a piano in the living room, don"t we, Luther?"
"Probably badly out of tune and dusty, but it"s a nice piano," he said. "Charlotte"s mother used to play after dinner," Luther said but then he fixed his gaze on me. "Somebody must be looking after you kids now, though, ain"t they? Won"t they be coming for you?"
I looked at Gavin and then shook my head.
"They don"t know we"re here," I said.
"You run away, did you?" I didn"t have to answer. He saw it in our faces.
"Please let us stay a while, Luther. We won"t be any trouble," I pleaded.
"No sir, we won"t," Gavin said. "I"d be glad to help you with your ch.o.r.es around the plantation, too,"
he added.
"You ever done any farm work?" Luther asked quickly.
"A little," Gavin said.
"Well, we got hay to bale, crops to harvest, pigs and chickens to feed, firewood to cut and split. Let"s see your hands," he said and reached out to grab Gavin"s wrist and turn his palms up. Then he put his hand alongside Gavin"s. "See these, calluses. That"s what comes from farm work."
"I"m not afraid of getting calluses," Gavin said sharply. Luther nodded and came close to smiling, his lips twitching in the corners. He stepped back.
"We get by on what we grow here," he said.
"I want to help too," Jefferson said.
Charlotte laughed.
"He can learn to gather the eggs," she said.
Jefferson"s face lit up.
"And I can help with the house ch.o.r.es," I said.
Even with the dull lighting, I could see that the house needed hours and hours of cleaning. "We won"t be a burden," I promised.
"Of course you won"t, dear," Charlotte said.
"They can stay, can"t they, Luther?"