A White Room (5 page)

After the Dorrs left, I sneaked outside and sat on the front steps of our house. It felt haunted by the lonely feeling of a home that wouldn’t be ours for much longer. We lived in a red brick house with white-framed windows flanking the front double doors. I folded my arms, not having brought a coat. I embraced the bite of the cold as a form of martyrdom. There still wasn’t any snow, but the icy air nipped at my nose and reminded me of days spent playing rosy-cheeked in a white childhood wonderland long ago.

I heard the door open and close, followed by footsteps. I stiffened and straightened. I felt someone standing next to me.

“I believe congratulations are in order?” he said.

“Last rites sound more appropriate.” I looked up at my brother.

He chuckled.

“It’s not funny.”

“I thought it was clever.” He handed me my black coat.

James wore his black frock coat over gray trousers. He squinted out at the street as a horse and carriage clip-clopped and rattled down the road. “I figured I’d come out here and tell you to stop pouting.”

“I’m not pouting.”

“Uh-huh.”

I sighed. “How did you know?”

“Emeline, you can fool Mother and Mr. and Mrs. Dorr and him, but you can’t fool me.” He knew me too well.

“I don’t know what else to do. It’s going to save our family.”

He grunted and dropped down next to me. “I thought all girls wanted to get married.”

“Maybe I’m not a girl.”

“I always thought you were built for railroad work.”

I squinted one eye at him with annoyed amusement. “I would think I’d be a well-dressed lawyer—like you.” I poked him.

He laughed at the assault. “Yes, you are probably too weak for hard labor.”

We chuckled and then simmered down, submitting to the depressed state lingering around our home. The breeze rustled the branches of nearby oak trees, little dead leaves still clinging to them.

“Did you see him?” I asked.

“He seems fine enough, a little bit gangly, but other than that…”

“He’s so quiet. I’m afraid I’m going to be bored.”

“Boring is good.” James’ voice lifted.

“How’s that?” I folded my arms atop my knees and laid my head down.

“Boring is better than obnoxious. Boring means you’ll be married but not irritated.”

I admired James’ soft boyish features and realized that his confidence made him seem very grown up. “Maybe I want more in marriage than to not be annoyed.”

“I thought you didn’t want to get married?”

“I don’t.”

“Why is that again?”

I tilted my head and narrowed my eyes at him.

“Well? Is it something about him?”

“Promise you won’t laugh.”

“I promise nothing unless under the threat of torture.”

I gave him a stern look, the kind only an older sister can give—a look that threatened torture.

“All right, all right, I promise.”

“I kind of wanted…to work.”

“Work?”

I lifted my head. “You know, work, like what you’ll be doing soon.”

“At a law firm?”

“No.” I hesitated and blushed. “I kind of wanted to be a nurse.”

“Really?” He grinned.

I gave him another look.

He raised his hands in defense. “I’m not laughing.” He put his hands down. “I didn’t know you liked medicine, is all.”

“I couldn’t tell anyone, could I? Mother would faint.”

“So you weren’t going to really pursue it.”

“No, I was. At Grantville College I took classes. A lot of women are doing it.” I talked fast, excited. “I was waiting for the right time to ask…Father. He would have let me, I know it. Just…didn’t work out.”

James lowered his eyes.

“I don’t know.” I covered my face with my hands and then tore them away. “Obviously, I’m not going to be a nurse. I don’t mind John Dorr, or I didn’t until today. The problem is, I don’t want to move away from everyone. I never would have—it’s all a huge mistake.” I clenched my eyes shut and shook my head. “But I can’t take it back.” I leaned over and wrapped my hands around James’ waist. “I don’t know what to do. I want to stay with you.”

He put his hand on my back. “Emma, you know we could never stay together forever. I’ll probably get hitched soon, and then where would you be?”

I didn’t answer.

“You’d just be a burden. Our family needs this. You’re doing the right thing.”

“He’s going to take me away, though. I’m going to miss everyone so much.”

“Even the three hens?” He snickered. He’d come up with the nickname for our three sisters because they had the ability to appear perfectly calm and together until something excited them into a flurry of noise and feathers.

I smiled at the thought and smacked his knee. “This is serious!”

“You know you’ll visit us, and when I’ve gotten settled into the firm, I’ll come out to see you all the time.”

“Really?” I moved my head closer to his chest.

“Yes.”

I sat back up.

“I know you’re scared, but Emma, this is what people do. You get married. You have children.”

“
You
don’t have to.”

“Yes, I do.” His face hardened. “If I lived out on my own and didn’t get married, I would starve to death, but not before traipsing around in trousers full of holes.”

I held back a giggle. “What?”

“I don’t know how to do any of the ‘secret’ stuff you and Mother do. If someone threw me in a kitchen with everything I needed and a set of detailed instructions, I’d cook my own hand.”

I laughed, nodding. “But you are moving out alone.”

“And you can’t get mad if my trousers are uneven at your wedding.”

I chuckled a little.

“You need someone to take care of you, and John Dorr needs you to take care of him. I know he’s not everything you hoped for, but at least he’s not horrible. Just think what you could end up with if you don’t get married now.”

I raised my eyebrows and wondered what type of prospects I’d face as a destitute woman living in one room with my mother and three sisters.

“My point is, maybe you’re just a little scared. I’m sure if you give this John Dorr a chance, he’ll end up just fine, and if he doesn’t…” He stood and pulled me up by the hands.

I popped up. “Yes?”

“I’ll come get you.”

Three

January 1901

Labellum, Missouri

M
y eyes moved across the steamboat passengers. Death lingered on the tip of everyone’s tongue, and everyone was clad in black crepe and taffeta. What an odd time to be newlyweds. I looked at John and considered him, clinging to the hope that affection would grow with time. I touched the ring he had given me—a tiny pearl atop a gold band surrounded by a circle of white opal spheres. Florence had eyed it after the ceremony. “Emeline?” she said as her smile turned. “Pearls mean tears.”

John had recently graduated law school, and his father wanted him to mentor under a friend, Mr. Lewis Coddington, who had a firm in Labellum, Missouri. On January 28, 1901, a few weeks after our private ceremony and only six days after Britain’s Queen Victoria had died, my new husband and I sat silent and still on a steamboat bound for the distant town. Not only were my family and I in mourning, but people all over the world were mourning the queen. A marriage was supposed to be a happy occasion, but the dark curiosities surrounding death twisted the minds of everyone around us.

We docked at the edge of the little town, nestled between two bluffs that gave it the appearance of a hole in the side of the world. I had lived in the city for my entire life, and now my best option was to live in a hole. We plodded off the boat, and John led me to our surrey, a plum-colored boxy carriage with a fringed canopy top and bench seat. The gray-haired driver made sure the horse clopped through town quickly.

“Just wait until you see the window molding.” John went on and on about the house he had found. “Oh, and the parlor. It truly is an architectural wonder!” He had explained that the previous owners had left all their furniture and decorations. I didn’t know why anyone would abandon their furnishings, but I imagined it was a sad story. Still, if the house was lovely, I knew I could be happy. The town was tiny and my husband a stranger, but I could be happy running a beautiful home. It was the one thing I would have authority over. I’d always detested my mother’s décor. Whenever I complained about it, she reminded me that when I got married, I could decorate however I wanted and I didn’t have to use a single thing she had chosen. It wasn’t as if I could—those things were all gone now.

“We’re getting closer.” John held himself up to see how far away we were, but the rocking surrey pitched him back onto the seat.

I observed him as he grinned, bobbing around to see past the horse and driver. At least he was twenty-five. Women in my situation had often found themselves married to fifty-year-old widowers. I hoped he thought well of me. We hadn’t had much time to become acquainted during a brief engagement that got swept away with moving arrangements and the holidays. I hoped he didn’t find my apparel unappealing. Unlike those who might mourn the queen for a few weeks, I would wear blacks, purples, and eventually white mourning garb for almost another year because of my father’s death.

“We’re here! We’re here!” John shouted and unsuccessfully tried to stand again.

I lifted my head and sat taller to see, struggling to glimpse through trees flashing past. When I finally laid my eyes on it, I saw a structure that was not what any home should be. The driver veered right at a break in the trees and took us on a straight path toward the monster. When we stopped, John jumped off to fiddle with something before offering his hand to help me out. If he had offered it immediately, I wouldn’t have taken it because I’d been stunned into stone, staring at the bizarre construction before me.

“It was built in 1880,” John said. “A gothic revival, I believe.”

I unfroze and remembered that it was supposed to be a happy day, but the only thing I could say reflected my disenchantment. “It looks…dark.”

“What do you mean? It’s white.” John reached out his hand, and after a brief hesitation, I grasped it and stepped out, drawing up my skirt to prevent a snag.

How could a white house seem so dark? The entire building, apart from the russet wood-shingled roof, was red brick painted over with a pasty white. The red base seeped out from beneath the blanched masquerade. It was overbearing, like a fortress. A fortress bloodied by war and then disguised as a house by some conspirator or…perhaps…the house itself.

A ring of broad- and slender-trunked trees circled the house and then thickened into woods. Winter had stripped the trees naked and covered the forest floor with a rug of decay. I imagined a splash of sunset color in the fall, the broad leaves turning orange, yellow, and a blazing red before blanketing the ground with a sea of fire. But now skeletons lingered all around.

John raved about the structural design, but it wasn’t a marvel—it was a catastrophe. Structurally sound at best. The anterior stuck out farther than the rest, and the sides jutted out like broken, lopsided hips. The front doors were abnormally located to the right rather than in the center. My gaze drifted above the front doors to a slender and strange gothic window with intricate crown molding on the right hip of the house. Its twin faced out of the uneven left wing. The front had two windows so close together that they could have been one if there hadn’t been a thick piece of frame between them.

“Is that the parlor?” I pointed at three-paned bay windows on the bottom floor.

“Uh, yes. The two tall windows above it are our chamber.” John lugged a trunk off the surrey with the help of the driver.

“And the other windows?”

They eased the trunk to the ground. “More rooms.”

“The porches…they’re peculiar.”

“I think they were additions.”

The Greek-revival columns on the porches would actually have been quite attractive if they’d been a part of another house, but they didn’t match a gothic revival—they only amplified its awkward state. The right porch had a few steps leading up to a small landing and the front doors. The bay windows completely interrupted the porches, separating them from each other. The left porch sat higher and stretched farther back, but because it had no steps, there was no way to reach it. I pictured some awkward little man deciding to build the porches and columns on a whim, having always desired a Greek revival and it being popular to remodel to one’s own desires. People generally did so with the aid of a professional to guide them, though.

“All right, let’s go inside.” John picked up two bags and led the way.

I walked behind, staring in wonder.

John opened the front double doors, releasing light into a long narrow hallway with a door directly to the left and a door facing us at the end. I’d assumed the awkward little man’s whim had been applied only to the exterior of the home, but once inside, I realized he’d had more vigor than that. I peered down the hallway. “Where are the stairs?” In most homes, the stairwell was the first thing you saw, and many people took pride in the magnitude and luxury of theirs. It was a mark of station.