Sarah Daly |
The house is empty, hollow.
Yet, it is filled with cobwebs.
And yet, it is filled with dust.
The house is so different, now.
Now, that it is hers, at least, for the year.
For, she is only renting. She does not have the responsibility,
the (Honor?) of owning.
Indeed, the house is hers, now. It is hers to clean and decorate
and care for.
The house will be her oasis, her refuge. Three miles from campus, on a rural, country road. There is only one other house on Cederbrook lane, a small ranch house that she must squint to see. While hers is an old farmhouse. Two floors! Though, the second floor is tiny, only containing a bedroom and a closet. The bathroom (only one) is off the kitchen, with an old-fashioned, not-so-clean tub. And a toilet with a chain.
But the house is hers. For the ridiculously low price of $1000 a month. When a studio apartment in that area is $1200 a month, easily.
But even $1000 is a lot, for her. She is a graduate student, only earning $22,000 a year, before taxes. She will have to be extremely frugal, with half her income going to rent.
Indeed, she has negotiated a lower rent by promising to do some “light” repairs around the house. In addition to cleaning up after herself, of course.
Though, the city bus does not go down that street. So, she will have to bike to campus.
But it will save her a gym membership, she optimistically decides.
She is a graduate student, studying biology. Taking classes first though, unsure how much research she can, or will be expected to complete.
Though, orientation is not for another week. She must prepare! She must unpack and clean the house thoroughly. She has very little in the way of belongings. For furniture, she is using the shabby cast-offs of the previous tenants. A once-red velvet couch, now threadbare and nearly black; a wobbly and scarred kitchen table; two stiff chairs; a sagging mattress on a creaky bed frame.
But she cannot help smiling as she cleans! Hers! All hers. She has never had her own place before. She had lived with her parents during undergrad, commuting to campus daily.
Her parents had, in fact, been quite disapproving of her move. And not only moving out, but for graduate school! Couldn’t she get a job, finally, after all those years of them supporting her? She had laughed off their fears, saying that everything would be paid for. She, in fact, would be paid for going to school.
This had not assuaged them. In fact, it had made them even more vocal when they learned how little she would be paid and how much apartments cost there.
But she had always been a good saver. She knew that it wouldn’t be an issue. And after some struggle, she had found this place, and then had created a budget.
#
She turned on the gas burner. She lit a match and then dropped it in, flinching as the flame sparked. She was trying to boil some eggs. When it came to cooking equipment, she had only found a rusty pot, a few dull knives, and a cast-iron skillet. But, oh well, it was enough for her. She could only make quick and easy meals, anyway. Nothing fancy. She was taking four classes in addition to working in the lab. There was even talk of her teaching an undergraduate lab section since they were so short-staffed.
She finished boiling the eggs and then tossed them in her lunch bag. She had not realized how many things were needed: silverware, plates, cups, utensils.
She had purchased these things cheaply in a thrift shop near campus; only one or two of each, which she then lugged back on her bicycle.
Every evening, she had to ice her legs, they cramped so badly. Even worse, the washing machine was clunky, and the dryer was broken—she had to air dry everything.
But she imagined that she was a pioneer. And the idea of her own “home” outweighed all.
#
The house was weaving its spell on her.
Imperceptibly, it was drawing her in.
With each baseboard she polished, she slowed down a little more.
With every newly shined window, she felt more content.
It was more difficult to wake in the mornings. More and more she lingered at breakfast, staring out the window at the fields and trees which were slowly changing color.
Nobody ever came by. There seemed to be no “mail” for 227 Cedar brook Lane. Not even “junk” mail, flyers, or newsletters. Perhaps this was not unusual. For any important documents she received, she picked them up at school, in her small, unlocked cubby in the graduate students’ offices. Yet, every evening, she religiously peeked into the rusted mailbox at the end of her lane, before pedaling up the driveway to her “Home”.
But she hardly cared. She wasn’t social, wasn’t the type to be “hurt” or “offended” that neighbors avoided her. That she was probably (justly) treated with suspicion, as a young, woman, alone, a student, to boot, who could be involved in whatever illegal activities they could conjecture.
And her fellow “students” were cliquish, drawn into their own alliances with other students or their own tight-knit families. A few were significantly older than she, clearly in their mid-thirties, often caring for younger children while trying to complete their studies. It was clear that graduate school was not as welcoming, or as conducive to easy socialization as “undergrad” had been.
But this never bothered her. It was a relief, almost, to be anonymous at the large university and even within the large department. If she didn’t arrive at the office until late morning, nobody seemed to notice or care. And it was (almost) a relief that she had no obligation to invite anyone over, that she would have her house to herself. That she could devote this extra time to its upkeep.
She even cleaned the “cellar” one Saturday. Even though she should have been studying for an upcoming midterm, she was determined to air the place out thoroughly, dragging out old rugs to air out on the porch, sweeping, pulling down cobwebs. In one corner, she found a few, mildewed photo albums. She dragged these upstairs and looked at water-stained photographs of women in house dresses and men in straw hats, and chubby babies waddling on the front lawn. She smiled, imagining what it had been like, whose lives this house had witnessed.
#
Next was the attic.
The mysterious, creaky attic, which let in so much heat and cold. At night, in bed, she would listen to the scuttle of mice above her. Listen to the moaning wind and the creaking of the boards. She almost expected to hear something shatter or fall, but this never happened.
Her curiosity about the attic only increased. Perhaps, she shouldn’t go up there; perhaps it wasn’t safe. The floor could be weak, there could be mold. She quickly dismissed these thoughts, in the face of her curiosity. If there was a problem, then she should know it, and perhaps she could fix it.
It was a starkly bright, unusually warm day for the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. She had nowhere to go, and though she should have been thinking about studying for finals, she could not bring herself to do so. Instead, she would go to the attic.
The attic could be accessed from the hallway on the second floor. There was a hanging string that, when tugged, released a ladder that was accompanied by a plume of dust and dirt.
After she did this, she nearly choked and had to open all the windows on the second floor to clear the air. But she climbed up the ladder anyway, in search of what she could find. At the far end, there was a large looking glass, surrounded by battered trunks. She carefully opened them, smoothing the ages away. Inside, there were faded dresses and bonnets, carefully wrapped in yellowed newspapers that crumbled as she lifted them. But the stitches on the clothing were strong, and she could unfold them, smooth them, look at them. She found an old red-and-white checked housedress and tried it on. She tied her hair back in a bun and looked in the large, oval mirror. She realized that she could be someone from one hundred years ago.
Perhaps, it would have been easier to have lived one hundred years ago. To only be concerned with keeping house, cooking, cleaning, caring for babies. To be courted by a bumbling farmer at fifteen and to be a mother by twenty. To live off the land and what it could offer. To seek warm shelter in the house, to sit around the fire knitting and reading aloud from Dickens. To set bread to rise, to frost cakes, to roll pie crusts. To subscribe to catalogs and read one person’s opinions and thoughts on a subject. To cut patterns for new dresses and to embroider wall-hangings. To have someone warm to wrap oneself around on those wintry evenings.
These were the things she thought of, instead of studying biology.
#
The phone rang inside 227 Cedar brook Lane. It was an old, rotary phone that was mounted onto the kitchen wall, black and sturdy. It rang for hours on end, and no one picked up.
Later, the front bell rang, and rang, but nobody answered.
One person came and knocked and peered in the windows but found no one home.
#
The next Fall, someone else moved in.