The Color of Dust Page 9

  She wondered why her grandmother hadn’t stayed in this room.

  If Carrie remembered correctly, her grandmother had been the mistress of the house for most of her life. Surely, it would have been appropriate for her to claim this room as her own. It was much larger than the little room in the east wing and much less stark even in its emptiness. But it was very empty. The closets, the clothes press, the medicine chest in the bathroom were all bare.

  The bathroom had not a towel, washcloth or lump of soap in it.

  Only one dresser drawer had an old sachet of dried flowers, but the smell was long gone. The suite was so empty it was almost devoid of character, except for the wallpaper, large blotches of red flowers with smears of green leaves. Carrie thought it was ugly, but someone must have liked it well enough at one time.

  Gillian poked her head through the door. “Hey, there you are. Everyone’s getting ready to leave.”

  Carrie looked at Gillian, at her flushed cheeks and bright eyes. She didn’t want everyone to leave. “Okay. Thanks.” And her soup had gotten cold again.

  Gillian walked into the room and took the mug out of her hands. She licked her thumb, rubbed at a smear of dirt on Carrie’s chin and then brushed a lock of hair back from her face.

  A finger lingered on the curve of Carrie’s ear. Carrie shuddered and Gillian turned away. She walked quickly over to the bedroom door, stopped and looked back at Carrie. She looked confused, as if she wasn’t sure why she had just done that.

  Gillian dropped her eyes to the mug in her hand. “I’ll…just go put this in the kitchen.”

  “Okay.” Carrie’s voice sounded thin and the air around her seemed almost too heavy to breathe. The soup churned uneasily in her stomach. Her ribs felt stiff against her lungs.

  Gillian shook herself slightly. She gave Carrie a shaky smile, turned and left.

  Carrie glanced at her empty hand. It was clear why her grandmother hadn’t stayed here in this suite. The rooms were just too ugly. The wallpaper was the most horrible thing she’d ever seen. The writing desk, the dressing table, the tall canopy bed were the most hideous pieces of furniture ever made. Carrie stood and walked out of the sitting room. She walked through the bedroom without looking at the bed or the clothes press or the dressing table. She couldn’t bear to look at them they were so awful. Her throat was so tight it hurt as her heart began to flutter in her chest. She nearly ran out into the hallway and the door shut behind her with a slam.

  Carrie stood on the front porch with Gillian standing at her side. The cleaning and clipping crews streamed out of the door in ones and twos. Carrie thanked each of them for their hard work, and each of them thanked Gillian for putting the day together.

  They all looked tired, but in a happy, satisfied way. Carrie shook hands and Gillian gave hugs. They said goodbye and watched the cars, vans and trucks rumble down the driveway until there was only one car left parked beside the fountain. The night turned quiet and still, broken only by the whir of the cicadas, the soft croaking of frogs. The same frogs, Carrie knew that had been in the kids’ pockets, now safely ensconced back in their fountain.

  The front door was still open. Light from the foyer poured out onto the porch, breaking the night into patches of light and dark. Gillian yawned and stretched her arms above her head.

  Carrie tried not to look at the flash of skin where her shirt rode up, at the tight stretch of material across her chest. She tried, but she failed. She dragged her eyes up to Gillian’s face just in time to meet her tired smile.

  “Well, I guess I’d better go, too. No point in keeping you up half the night.”

  Carrie shuffled her feet. “I really appreciate what you did for me today.”

  “It wasn’t about you,” Gillian said, her eyes sparkling.

  “So I understand.” Carrie smiled and held out her hand.

  “Thanks anyway.”

  Gillian took her hand and pulled her into a half hug. “Thank you,” she said softly against Carrie’s ear and then let her go. She grabbed her purse off the bench and dug in it for her keys.

  Carrie didn’t want her to go. The house would seem so barren after being so full of life and laughter just moments ago.

  But trying to keep her there any longer might seem strange, and Carrie didn’t want Gillian to think she was strange. She liked her and if she could be nothing else, she wanted to be her friend. It seemed that Gillian liked her well enough, too, and that wasn’t something you threw away for a hopeless craving.

  Gillian walked to her car, keys jingling in her hand. She opened the door and got in. The car started, backed up a space and pulled around the fountain. She started down the drive with a little wave of her hand in the rearview mirror. Carrie stood on the porch until the red taillights of the hatchback disappeared into the trees. The night grew still again. A frog made a little chirping sound and Carrie heard it plop into the fountain. She turned around to look at the porch. It was a big porch. Someone had washed the benches, the tea tables and the rocking chairs, swept the dirt and debris from the steps. In the shadows, everything looked almost new. She pushed on the back of a rocking chair and started it moving. Maybe she should have asked Gillian to stay for a while. Offered her a cup of coffee or tea, a piece of cheesecake, a nightcap. She still had all those questions she wanted to ask, that she forgot to ask.

  Yeah, right, Carrie chided herself. She was heading for trouble. She could feel it coming. Nothing good ever came out of falling for a straight woman. Nothing good at all. She was sure to make a fool out of herself sooner or later and would probably lose a good friend in the bargain. She looked at the rocking chair.

  It was still rocking. She stilled it with her hand. If only it were that easy.

  She walked back into the bright, clean foyer and turned the chandelier off. The lights in the parlor were still on and also in the billiards room, the smoking room, the library, the dining room and the kitchen. She spent the next half hour walking around the house picking up cups, closing curtains and turning lights off. She realized that the house was starting to feel familiar to her, not quite so big as she first thought. Each room had its own purpose. Each room had a reason, even if the reason no longer existed. Even if there was no maid for the chambers, no butler for the pantry, no horses in the stables, no dogs in the kennel.

  Hounds. Gillian had called them hounds, as if the distinction was important. She remembered the sound of them barking…baying, one long, deep note then a couple of yips. It was an old sound, one that matched the rounded shoulders of the hills, the slow shuffling of the river, the creaking voice of the wind in the trees.

  Good God, she was getting positively maudlin. And even that word was old, not something typically in her vocabulary. Carrie felt a sudden urge for a beer and a slice of pizza, a fast drive in a sporty car along an interstate, a brainless sitcom on television.

  Carrie stopped, a tower of stacked plastic cups teetering in her hands. There wasn’t a single television in the whole house. She hadn’t realized that before with all the books in the library keeping her entertained. She might have to buy one when she ran out of books. Or she could just buy more books. Tough choice.

  She threw the cups in the trash and washed the few soup mugs still left in the sink, dried them and put them away. The kitchen did feel lonely now without all the people in it, just like she thought it would. She wiped at a faint smudge on the counter, at a speck left on the surface of the stove. She picked up a crumb from off the floor. The kitchen was as clean as it was possible for a kitchen to be. There wasn’t anything else left for her to do.

  Except take a bath and go to bed. She folded the dishtowel, hung it up and headed for the library to grab a new book.

  It was still dark when Carrie woke to a light rain pattering against the ground, drumming gently on the roof. A small gust blew the curtains back with the smell of mud and wet pine. She got up and closed the windows, wiping the damp off the sills with the hem of her pajama top. Back in bed, with the sheet
pulled up under her chin, Carrie listened to the muted sound of the rain.

  It was rhythmic and soothing, almost like music. She imagined each drop as the light tapping of a drum, each puff of wind as the breathy toot of a flute.

  Carrie sat up. She did hear music. In between the drops, she heard a soft tinkling sound, a scratchy trilling just on the edge of hearing, faint and far away. She sat as still as she could and listened, her eyes half closed, her head titled to the side. A gust of wind blew against the house, rattling the windows, driving the rain against the panes in a harsh clatter of drops. The wind died down and the other sound was gone. If it had been a sound.

  Carrie listened for a few more minutes, but she only heard the rain. She lay back down, snuggled into her sheets and clutched the extra pillow tight against her chest.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Carrie woke earlier than usual. Her eyes were still gritty and heavy, but she got up anyway feeling just as tired of being in bed as she was still just tired. Her dreams had been disturbing, but she couldn’t remember what they had been about. She shuffled her tired feet down the front stairs and headed for the kitchen.

  As her coffee steeped in the press pot, Carrie stood at the counter and gazed out the kitchen window. The night rain had washed down the trees, and now the outside looked as polished as the inside with the small drops of water sparkling in the bright morning sun. She pushed the press and poured the coffee into her waiting mug of cream and sugar. She was the one who needed the cream and sugar this morning, not the coffee. Dark mingled with light in a blending swirl and came to an earthy balance near the rim of her mug.

  She carried her coffee into the library and sat at the desk.

  The letter that Gillian had told her about was still lying there on the leather blotter. It had been crumpled and then smoothed out again. The handwriting was spidery and thin. It was hard to make sense of the words that flowed over the page where they bunched up at the edges and then dropped to the next line. Carrie squinted her eyes and tilted the paper into the light.

  She read it through slowly and then put the paper back on the desk. She had no idea why Gillian thought it was a love poem.

  The lines spoke of cutting flowers from a garden. The writer put the cut flowers in a vase to decorate her dressing room table and then wrote of how she felt as they withered. That didn’t sound much like love to Carrie, but then again, she wasn’t much into poetry. She read the paper again as it lay on the desk. No, it definitely wasn’t a love poem to her. It was more of a lament. The words made her feel strange. Almost weepy. Sad for the brief life of flowers and for the guilty knife that cut them.

  That wasn’t like her. Carrie rubbed at her eyes and took a deep sip of her coffee. She picked up the watch. It was a small fob, meant for a chain that might have been gold once, but now it was hard to tell. The numbers on the face were faded, the hands frozen at a quarter to five. Something about that seemed almost as sad as the poem. She put the watch down and shuffled through some of the other papers lying on the desk. There was a bill from the 1930s written in blotched ink in nearly illegible handwriting for a list of miscellaneous items, a sack of flour, two boxes of nails, a crate of peaches, twelve pounds of coffee, a bolt of cloth. Another was for a dress that cost eighty dollars in 1945.

  She wondered if eighty dollars was a lot of money back then and what the dress was for and where it was now. That reminded her of the attic. Gillian and the cleaning crew must not have found a way into it since no one said anything. She would have to find it herself, but she didn’t want to look for it now. The sun was shining so beautifully, glistening on the wet leaves and grass. The breeze coming in through the library windows was warm and inviting.

  It was going to be a good day to be outside, and since the kitchen was already clean, finding the attic could wait for that rainy afternoon. She would go look at the stuff the kids found in the stables, go find the kennel, which she hadn’t even seen yet, and then finish trimming in the little cemetery. Not that anyone in there was in a hurry, but it would make her feel better, more respectful of those at rest. She stood and stretched her tired muscles, picked up her mug and then headed upstairs to dress.

  As Carrie trimmed around the headstones and the little obelisks, she jotted into a small notebook all the names and dates chiseled into the faces and whatever little homily she found carved at the bottom. She found her grandfather’s grave in the near corner, a headstone but no footstone, carved with his name, Robert Daniel Burgess, born 1885, died 1940. Resting in the arms of our Lord. He had only been fifty-five when he died, her mother only five years old at the time. A child of his later years. Just like she had been. She wondered what Gillian knew about his story.

  There was an empty place next to his grave. Carrie supposed it was for her grandmother, but her grandmother was in another place in another county. She wondered if her grandmother would have been buried here if anyone had remembered that this cemetery existed. Who knew? Maybe zoning laws had changed or something. Having a cemetery in her backyard did seem kind of creepy, especially when it was so wild and unkempt.

  By late afternoon, Carrie was almost finished with the trimming and the clipping. She sat resting on the grass, her back pressed against the trunk of the gnarled willow tree that grew in the clear space in the middle. Its drooping branching offered a green canopied shade from the heat of the day. There was only the far back corner left to be trimmed, and she had saved that for last because it was such a dense cluster of tangled weeds and thorny vines. Milkweed and straw grass grew tall and twisted among wild tea roses with thick stems and small clusters of pink puckered flowers.

  Carrie turned a page back in her notebook, reading through the names and dates. The oldest date was 1863. A Mrs. Jebediah Covington had died then and been buried underneath a small round topped stone. The next oldest was 1887, a Mrs. Beauregard Covington. The one after that was a second Mrs. Beauregard Covington who died just three years after her predecessor in 1890.

  Either Beauregard was hard on his wives or he had immensely bad luck. Beauregard himself didn’t die until 1923. That would be her grandmother’s father, her great-grandfather. Carrie thought she remembered someone saying that her grandmother was an only child, but she wasn’t so sure about that. There were two very small graves, the closest to the willow tree, both of them also from 1887. Two boys, William and James, ages five and seven, who might have been her grandmother’s brothers or maybe half brothers. It was hard to tell.

  Carrie closed her notebook, tucked it in her back pocket and looked over at the tangled mess still growing in the far back corner. She didn’t have the first idea about how to prune roses.

  They were fussy little flowers, she knew, being both hardy and fragile, beautiful and cruel. She remembered reading something about clipping off the deadwood and trimming back the offshoots.

  She picked up her clippers. The blades were still shiny and sharp, even after two days of hard use, but the thorns in the back corner looked even sharper. Carrie stood and slapped the grass clippings off the seat of her shorts. Doing something was better than doing nothing, and nothing was going to get clipped if she didn’t start somewhere. She waded into the densest part of the tangle and shoved her clippers in.

  Metal scraped across stone. The sound was jarring in the silence of the cemetery, too loud, too harsh for a place so quiet.

  Carrie cocked her head and rubbed her ear against her shoulder.

  She stepped back a little ways from the tangle of vines and began to snip more carefully, taking off the dead branches a piece at a time, paring back the live ones inch by inch. The tall straw grass growing between the twisted branches confused the issue. There was only one rose bush, she discovered, but it grew in a cluster of thick stems twisting in and out and over each other. She cut the grass back and brushed the trimmings aside. There was a small stone under the weeds, not quite a foot tall. A marker of some kind, maybe, but there was no name or date on it. Just the carving of a flower cut deep int
o the face.

  A chill prickled at the back of her neck. She wasn’t sure why.

  There was nothing scary about a small headstone, not anything scarier than the big ones. It was only that it was lying in the far back corner of a wild cemetery, lost under the creepers and the weeds. That wasn’t scary. That was sad. Or maybe it was so sad that it was scary. Carrie stood and stepped back from the stone.

  Its rounded top was worn and the face of it was dark with age and blotched with lichen. Of all the sad things she had run across so far, this little stone struck her as being the saddest thing of all. It was something that was meant to be forgotten. And then, it was.

  Carrie rubbed at her cheek with the back of her glove. Sweat stained the dark cloth. At least, she was pretty sure it was sweat.

  It stung her eyes, ran down her face and tickled her under the chin. She squeezed her eyes shut and shook her head. It was just a stone with a flower. That was not something she would cry over.

  Carrie wiped her face on the sleeve of her T-shirt, leaving a large damp blotch smeared across her bicep. It had to be sweat. Carrie turned abruptly away from the stone. The rest of the cemetery was neatly trimmed, the grass mowed, the weeds pulled. The only thing left to be done was to rake up the debris.

  The day had been warm and bright, but the temperature was falling along with the sun. Carrie grabbed the rake and started sweeping. She made neat little piles and then swept the little piles into big ones, finally piling everything into one great big pile over by the gate. It would all get composted later, when she had time to decide where the compost pile was going to be. Carrie stopped to catch her breath and looked at the mound of trimmings. There were flowers in there, from the scraggly limbs of the rose bush, half buried under the grass clippings and the weeds, but still pink and full. Lying there unawares.