The house I grew up in, was right next door to an abandoned Victorian. We used to play in it when we were little. It burned to the ground when I was about nine or ten years old, I think. As we got older, we would party in its charred foundation with our friends. I wrote this next little piece, using my grandparent's names for the characters as they had known the owners who left the house to decay...enjoy
The huge Victorian next door to their small bungalow had been vacant for several years before Wilfred and Marion moved to Summit Avenue, a two- home street at the top of the town’s highest hill. As newlyweds, they had often lain awake at night, their heads side by side on the pillow, dreaming out loud about what it might be like to live in a house like that, its fancy cupola just visible through the worn lace curtain that hung on the window above their bed.
Wilfred said that he would throw big parties at which he and his bride would make their entrance from the second floor and descend in grand style down the sweeping staircase into the marbled foyer to greet their guests. And, he would say into Marion’s soft black hair, the guests would not be just the boys from the pier, either. No sir, he was going to invite the finest folks in the town, the Villechamps, the Isaacs, even, he said, the Giglio’s who were rumored to have ties to the mob. Of course, Wilfred would go on, the boys from the pier could come too, but they would have to clean up real good first.
Marion’s dreams were no less grand than her husband’s back then. She dreamed of the staff she would have to employ and oversee in order to maintain such a large home; a cook, a butler, maybe even a girl or two to clean and look after the sons she was going to give her new husband. Certainly, they would need a gardener to keep the lawn trimmed and the shrubs neat.
She would have to order gowns from New York and Paris to wear at the parties Wilfred wanted to throw. The dressmakers here were not qualified, and certainly nothing off the rack at the mercantile would do. Marion wanted the finest fabrics and would insist that each dress have a long train that would follow her dramatically as she walked down the grand staircase on Wilfred’s arm. Sometimes, as she stood on the hard packed dirt of their front yard, scattering feed for the chickens, she would sweep her hand out in front of her and bow as if to some dignitary, the seed spraying out from her fingers as she did.
Two years and two miscarriages into their marriage, Marion delivered a healthy baby girl into the world. Wilfred tried hard to hide his disappointment that he did not yet have a son, but Marion saw it in his eyes and as soon as it was reasonable, she allowed Wilfred back into her bed and nine months later she gave birth to a still born boy. One year after that, a second daughter was born.
As their young family grew, Wilfred and Marion’s dreams seemed to shrink. The extravagant home next door no longer seemed like the perfect place to hold high-society soirees and their grandiose pillow talk was replaced with earnest discussions over the dinner dishes about how good it would be for the girls to have their own rooms and a real yard for playing. Wouldn’t it be lovely, Marion thought, to see them running barefoot on the lush green lawn she knew was hiding under the wild overgrowth of weeds and grass. Wilfred agreed that a house like the Victorian would do the girls a lot of good. Not just now, he had pointed out, but in the future. The girls would be well served if their suitors had to knock on that door when they came calling. Of course, Wilfred would always add, the house will need a bit of work; after all it had been vacant for over a decade.
Marion liked to listen to Wilfred talk about the work he would do to the house. She could picture him, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms, his broad back straining with effort, his friends from the pier would help out on weekends. She would cook huge hotdog and bean casseroles and serve cold beer and warm black bread with dinner. The girls would giggle and show off for everyone. Marion would smile when Wilfred showed her his handiwork: a new light fixture in the foyer, new shelves for the pantry, she could just see the pride in his eyes as his workmates admired his home and family.
Occasionally, when Wilfred was doing chores around their own house, working on the chicken coop repairing a run of nesting boxes that had succumbed to termites, reinstalling the clothesline pole that would not stay planted, or patching the roof over the girls room where the rain always seemed to find a way in, he would stop his work and look over at the house next door. He would listen to the sounds of his family inside the little bungalow and a feeling of longing would nearly overwhelm him. He burned for something and he believed with everything he was that the Victorian was the salve. That house, he told himself, that house would make everything different.
When Wilfred and Marion were anticipating their tenth wedding anniversary, something happened that neither of them had ever considered. One warm April day a shiny black Ford Victoria pulled up in front of the Victorian. A man got out of the car and reached into the back seat and pulled out a large placard. After several unsuccessful attempts to affix the placard to the house, the man walked down the street to the bungalow.
“Hello, the house!” he called loudly. Marion was down at the market with the girls selling the day’s crop of fresh eggs. Wilfred, having been let go from the pier along with most of his friends, was home and in the chicken coop mending the wire mesh on one of the doors.
“Hello…is anyone home?” The man called out, removing his fedora and using it to brush the dust off his trousers. Wilfred emerged from the coop, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Oh…Hey,” the man said as he waved his hat at Wilfred. “I’m John Danforth, with Isaac and Isaac. I was trying to get this darn sign up next door, but I seemed to have left the office without my hammer and nails.”
Wilfred nodded his hello and walked over to the man with his hand outstretched. They shook and Wilfred noted that the man’s hand did not feel like it could ever have wielded a hammer.
“Could you lend me a hand, Mister?” Danforth asked. Wilfred nodded again and ducked into the coop for a moment before returning with a hammer and four nails.
Walking back with Danforth to the Victorian, Wilfred realized that this would be the first time he had ever actually been on the property. All those years he and Marion had been dreaming of owning and living in the house, they had never presumed to trespass. He felt anticipation swelling up in his belly as they mounted the wide steps that led to the front door. His excitement turned to dismay, however, as Danforth flipped the placard around and held it against the side of the house, just next to the sidelight of the ornate, carved oak door. FOR SALE, printed in big red letters. Wilfred was not breathing.
Later, Marion stood in stunned silence as Wilfred recounted his conversation with the man from Isaac and Isaac. At first, she had been on the verge of tears when Wilfred broke the news about their house being up for sale. Then, when her husband told her that Danforth had offered him wages in exchange for tidying up the property, Marion cried tears of relief. Wilfred had been out of work for a few weeks, and the egg money only went so far.
Wilfred began work on the Victorian that very afternoon, swinging his scythe until after dark; he cleared the rear of the property of half its overgrowth. The next morning, Marion gathered her eggs and rushed down to the market and back, barely able to contain her excitement about the house. The man from Isaac’s had given Wilfred a key. They were going to get to go into the house.
Wilfred and Marion had sat across from each other the night before until close to midnight, the key on the table between them. Wilfred had fingered the key several times, and listened to his wife talk about how nice it would be to have neighbors. Maybe they would have children who could play with the girls. Wouldn’t that be nice? Marion had said, touching his hand on the key. Wilfred agreed it might be nice to have neighbors. They could be friends and he and Marion could visit them at the house. He could lend the man a hand with projects, and Marion could help the lady decorate. In the evenings, maybe he and the man could sit on the front steps together and smoke cigars and drink good whiskey from crystal snifters.
When Marion returned from the market, Wilfred was waiting for her on the steps of the Victorian with the key in his hand. Marion sent the girls home to put the egg money in the jar and stood next to Wilfred on the steps, smoothing her skirt and tucking strands of hair back into her net. Wilfred slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked, but swung open with ease and he and Marion stepped together across the threshold.
As the light from the bright spring day flooded the foyer, Wilfred and Marion saw for the first time that this part of the house was just as they had imagined it. A great double bridal staircase rose dramatically from the floor two full stories, leading to a wide hall that over looked the entrance. A crystal chandelier hung high above the foyer and the sunlight striking the prisms cast rainbows on the ceiling and walls and made the dust in the air sparkle like diamonds.
Wilfred reached for Marion’s hand when he heard her breath catch. She squeezed his back in return and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was still there, just as she had always dreamed it would be. Swallowing hard and fighting back tears she didn’t understand, Marion walked through the foyer and up the grand staircase with Wilfred close by her side.
Wilfred and Marion were at the house every day after that first visit. She cleaned and he repaired things. Considering how long the house had been deserted, it was in need of very little. Some pipes had burst in the basement, a few floor joists had termite damage, but not beyond saving. The entire house was covered in dust and a grimy film, and Marion came to look forward to cleaning it to reveal the beauty of what was hidden beneath the dirt.
Each week, Danforth would drive up in his fancy car to inspect the progress and hand Wilfred an envelope with sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents in it, a windfall for a family who had never had an extra dollar to spend on anything. At night, he and Marion would return to their own home and sit silent in the parlor, each one lost in their own thoughts, each one becoming more and more consumed with the house next door. Neither Wilfred nor Marion could bring themselves to talk about the inevitability of the house being sold. Occasionally, Wilfred would get up and walk out of the bungalow to go stand in the front room of the Victorian and look out the big window at the twinkling lights of the town spread out below. It was the same view he had from his own parlor, but it was somehow different here.
One day in late June when Wilfred was trimming the hedges and Marion was serving the girls a picnic lunch of egg salad and cucumber sandwiches on a blanket spread out on the lawn in the shade of the huge lilac bush, Danforth’s car pulled up in front of the house. Danforth jumped out of the driver’s side and rushed around to open the rear door on the passenger side. He extended his hand and helped out a pretty woman who looked to be about the same age as Marion. A moment later, a well dressed man emerged from the front passenger seat. He took the woman’s arm and they followed Danforth up the steps.
Wilfred inclined his head to Danforth as he passed with the two strangers. With a raised eyebrow in the direction of the girls and their picnic, he stood in silence as Marion cleared the picnic and sent the girls back to the bungalow. Marion walked over to Wilfred and smiled as Danforth introduced them as the caretakers of the property.
Wilfred held his wife’s hand as the pretty woman commented that the house was small. Her husband replied curtly that that was the point. The woman murmured something Wilfred and Marion could not make out as the three of them moved into the foyer. Danforth was talking about the staircase having been crafted by a father son team from Milford, and the quality of the turning, and so on. Wilfred and Marion each cocked an ear toward the door to hear the sales pitch.
Both Wilfred and Marion jumped when the woman appeared suddenly on the front steps just above where they had been eavesdropping. She was trembling and trying to light a cigarette with shaking fingers. She did not notice them. As she exhaled, letting the smoke escape through her pretty nostrils, her husband stepped out to join her on the landing. He took the cigarette out of her mouth and dragged deeply on it before replacing it gently between her rouged lips.
“Listen, darling,” he said, “I know this place isn’t what we are used to, its small, its old, but do you know what it isn’t?”
The woman, who had been studying her polished nails, raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. She raised one hand to her mouth a picked a bit of tobacco of the tip of her pink tongue, then said, “what isn’t it, Charles…livable?”
"Splendid, darling…Let’s get nasty shall we?” Charles took a deep breath and continued speaking as if he were dealing with a child. “No, what it isn’t Gloria, is out of our price range.”
“But Charles,” Gloria pleaded, “The money isn’t gone for good is it?” I mean you will make more of it, won’t you? The market can’t stay like this forever, can it?” She dropped her cigarette on the landing and ground it into the flagstone with the toe of her cream and white colored spectator pump.
Danforth came out of the house then and clapped Charles on the back as if they were old friends. “So?” he asked.
Charles turned and took Danforth’s hand and shook it firmly once. “You’ve made your sale, old boy. Let’s go back to your office and handle the details. How much for the caretakers?” he asked waving a finger in Wilfred and Marion’s direction.
“Pardon?” Danforth appeared taken aback.
“Gloria will need help running the place, I can’t expect her to give up everything. How much will it cost to keep them on?” Charles asked.
"Oh, yeah sure…um, let me think. The office handles this, but I am almost positive they get twenty-five dollars a week.” Winking, Danforth poked a gold-banded cigar into Wilfred’s shirt pocket and patted it with the palm of his hand.
“Done.” Charles said as he headed for the car where Gloria was already waiting, crying in the backseat of the Ford.
Later as Wilfred leaned on the railing, watching Marion scrub the soot mark off the flagstone landing on her hands and knees, he thought about what the extra money would do for his family. His oldest daughter would need new shoes this year, and both girls could do with a new coat. He could buy a few more laying hens and a rooster if he went up country for them.
Wilfred looked at his wife’s back; her dress was threadbare and stretched taut across her back as she scoured off the offending mark. He thought about the woman, Gloria, with her red lips and pink tongue and whiney voice. He did not think he could live with a woman like that.
That night, in bed, Wilfred and Marion talked about the house for the first time in a long time. For weeks, they had been so immersed in the daily care and renewal of the house that they no longer wondered out loud about what it would be like to live there. As the summer breeze shifted the lace curtain, and the cupola blinked in and out of view, Wilfred and Marion dreamed one final dream about the house next door to their own home.
A few nights later, when the warm breezes of June had given way to the sweltering stillness of July, Wilfred and Marion went over to the Victorian. Marion had put on her best dress, the blue bias-cut rayon with satin trim around the sleeves and hem. It did not have a long sweeping train, but Marion felt like a movie star when she wore it. Wilfred had dusted off his wedding coat and derby hat. The trousers no longer fit, but the jacket dressed up his work pants just fine.
As the couple entered the house, Marion’s eyes began to water. The smell was stronger than she’d thought it would be. They would not stay too long, just enough time to walk together down the grand staircase as if they had a foyer full of guests waiting to be greeted. Impulsively, Wilfred grabbed Marion by the waist and waltzed her across the marble floor toward the front room. They stood together there for a few moments watching the display of Fourth of July fireworks illuminate the sky over the town.
As the fireworks built to the inevitable grand finale, Wilfred and Marion went out onto the front steps to watch. Wilfred pulled the cigar Danforth had given him out of his jacket pocket and carefully removed the band. Biting off one end, he bent to strike a match against the flagstone at his feet. Marion’s pretty face was briefly illuminated in the flare of the match head.
When, at last, the fireworks reached their crescendo, and the sky was nearly as bright as day, Wilfred puffed at the cigar, turning it slowly under the flame until the head glowed red. Turning back toward the house, he tossed the lit match into the foyer. Immediately, the two trails of kerosene he had carefully applied earlier that day ignited and sent twin flaming snakes winding across the floor to wrap themselves around the perfectly turned banisters of the stairs.
Wilfred and Marion stood together on the stairs for a few more moments, until the heat became insufferable. Then they turned and walked slowly home together, hand in hand, back to their little bungalow next door to the big Victorian.
She would have to order gowns from New York and Paris to wear at the parties Wilfred wanted to throw. The dressmakers here were not qualified, and certainly nothing off the rack at the mercantile would do. Marion wanted the finest fabrics and would insist that each dress have a long train that would follow her dramatically as she walked down the grand staircase on Wilfred’s arm. Sometimes, as she stood on the hard packed dirt of their front yard, scattering feed for the chickens, she would sweep her hand out in front of her and bow as if to some dignitary, the seed spraying out from her fingers as she did.
Two years and two miscarriages into their marriage, Marion delivered a healthy baby girl into the world. Wilfred tried hard to hide his disappointment that he did not yet have a son, but Marion saw it in his eyes and as soon as it was reasonable, she allowed Wilfred back into her bed and nine months later she gave birth to a still born boy. One year after that, a second daughter was born.
As their young family grew, Wilfred and Marion’s dreams seemed to shrink. The extravagant home next door no longer seemed like the perfect place to hold high-society soirees and their grandiose pillow talk was replaced with earnest discussions over the dinner dishes about how good it would be for the girls to have their own rooms and a real yard for playing. Wouldn’t it be lovely, Marion thought, to see them running barefoot on the lush green lawn she knew was hiding under the wild overgrowth of weeds and grass. Wilfred agreed that a house like the Victorian would do the girls a lot of good. Not just now, he had pointed out, but in the future. The girls would be well served if their suitors had to knock on that door when they came calling. Of course, Wilfred would always add, the house will need a bit of work; after all it had been vacant for over a decade.
Marion liked to listen to Wilfred talk about the work he would do to the house. She could picture him, his sleeves rolled up to reveal his muscular forearms, his broad back straining with effort, his friends from the pier would help out on weekends. She would cook huge hotdog and bean casseroles and serve cold beer and warm black bread with dinner. The girls would giggle and show off for everyone. Marion would smile when Wilfred showed her his handiwork: a new light fixture in the foyer, new shelves for the pantry, she could just see the pride in his eyes as his workmates admired his home and family.
Occasionally, when Wilfred was doing chores around their own house, working on the chicken coop repairing a run of nesting boxes that had succumbed to termites, reinstalling the clothesline pole that would not stay planted, or patching the roof over the girls room where the rain always seemed to find a way in, he would stop his work and look over at the house next door. He would listen to the sounds of his family inside the little bungalow and a feeling of longing would nearly overwhelm him. He burned for something and he believed with everything he was that the Victorian was the salve. That house, he told himself, that house would make everything different.
When Wilfred and Marion were anticipating their tenth wedding anniversary, something happened that neither of them had ever considered. One warm April day a shiny black Ford Victoria pulled up in front of the Victorian. A man got out of the car and reached into the back seat and pulled out a large placard. After several unsuccessful attempts to affix the placard to the house, the man walked down the street to the bungalow.
“Hello, the house!” he called loudly. Marion was down at the market with the girls selling the day’s crop of fresh eggs. Wilfred, having been let go from the pier along with most of his friends, was home and in the chicken coop mending the wire mesh on one of the doors.
“Hello…is anyone home?” The man called out, removing his fedora and using it to brush the dust off his trousers. Wilfred emerged from the coop, shielding his eyes from the sun.
“Oh…Hey,” the man said as he waved his hat at Wilfred. “I’m John Danforth, with Isaac and Isaac. I was trying to get this darn sign up next door, but I seemed to have left the office without my hammer and nails.”
Wilfred nodded his hello and walked over to the man with his hand outstretched. They shook and Wilfred noted that the man’s hand did not feel like it could ever have wielded a hammer.
“Could you lend me a hand, Mister?” Danforth asked. Wilfred nodded again and ducked into the coop for a moment before returning with a hammer and four nails.
Walking back with Danforth to the Victorian, Wilfred realized that this would be the first time he had ever actually been on the property. All those years he and Marion had been dreaming of owning and living in the house, they had never presumed to trespass. He felt anticipation swelling up in his belly as they mounted the wide steps that led to the front door. His excitement turned to dismay, however, as Danforth flipped the placard around and held it against the side of the house, just next to the sidelight of the ornate, carved oak door. FOR SALE, printed in big red letters. Wilfred was not breathing.
Later, Marion stood in stunned silence as Wilfred recounted his conversation with the man from Isaac and Isaac. At first, she had been on the verge of tears when Wilfred broke the news about their house being up for sale. Then, when her husband told her that Danforth had offered him wages in exchange for tidying up the property, Marion cried tears of relief. Wilfred had been out of work for a few weeks, and the egg money only went so far.
Wilfred began work on the Victorian that very afternoon, swinging his scythe until after dark; he cleared the rear of the property of half its overgrowth. The next morning, Marion gathered her eggs and rushed down to the market and back, barely able to contain her excitement about the house. The man from Isaac’s had given Wilfred a key. They were going to get to go into the house.
Wilfred and Marion had sat across from each other the night before until close to midnight, the key on the table between them. Wilfred had fingered the key several times, and listened to his wife talk about how nice it would be to have neighbors. Maybe they would have children who could play with the girls. Wouldn’t that be nice? Marion had said, touching his hand on the key. Wilfred agreed it might be nice to have neighbors. They could be friends and he and Marion could visit them at the house. He could lend the man a hand with projects, and Marion could help the lady decorate. In the evenings, maybe he and the man could sit on the front steps together and smoke cigars and drink good whiskey from crystal snifters.
When Marion returned from the market, Wilfred was waiting for her on the steps of the Victorian with the key in his hand. Marion sent the girls home to put the egg money in the jar and stood next to Wilfred on the steps, smoothing her skirt and tucking strands of hair back into her net. Wilfred slipped the key into the lock and turned it. The door creaked, but swung open with ease and he and Marion stepped together across the threshold.
As the light from the bright spring day flooded the foyer, Wilfred and Marion saw for the first time that this part of the house was just as they had imagined it. A great double bridal staircase rose dramatically from the floor two full stories, leading to a wide hall that over looked the entrance. A crystal chandelier hung high above the foyer and the sunlight striking the prisms cast rainbows on the ceiling and walls and made the dust in the air sparkle like diamonds.
Wilfred reached for Marion’s hand when he heard her breath catch. She squeezed his back in return and closed her eyes. When she opened them, it was still there, just as she had always dreamed it would be. Swallowing hard and fighting back tears she didn’t understand, Marion walked through the foyer and up the grand staircase with Wilfred close by her side.
Wilfred and Marion were at the house every day after that first visit. She cleaned and he repaired things. Considering how long the house had been deserted, it was in need of very little. Some pipes had burst in the basement, a few floor joists had termite damage, but not beyond saving. The entire house was covered in dust and a grimy film, and Marion came to look forward to cleaning it to reveal the beauty of what was hidden beneath the dirt.
Each week, Danforth would drive up in his fancy car to inspect the progress and hand Wilfred an envelope with sixteen dollars and seventy-five cents in it, a windfall for a family who had never had an extra dollar to spend on anything. At night, he and Marion would return to their own home and sit silent in the parlor, each one lost in their own thoughts, each one becoming more and more consumed with the house next door. Neither Wilfred nor Marion could bring themselves to talk about the inevitability of the house being sold. Occasionally, Wilfred would get up and walk out of the bungalow to go stand in the front room of the Victorian and look out the big window at the twinkling lights of the town spread out below. It was the same view he had from his own parlor, but it was somehow different here.
One day in late June when Wilfred was trimming the hedges and Marion was serving the girls a picnic lunch of egg salad and cucumber sandwiches on a blanket spread out on the lawn in the shade of the huge lilac bush, Danforth’s car pulled up in front of the house. Danforth jumped out of the driver’s side and rushed around to open the rear door on the passenger side. He extended his hand and helped out a pretty woman who looked to be about the same age as Marion. A moment later, a well dressed man emerged from the front passenger seat. He took the woman’s arm and they followed Danforth up the steps.
Wilfred inclined his head to Danforth as he passed with the two strangers. With a raised eyebrow in the direction of the girls and their picnic, he stood in silence as Marion cleared the picnic and sent the girls back to the bungalow. Marion walked over to Wilfred and smiled as Danforth introduced them as the caretakers of the property.
Wilfred held his wife’s hand as the pretty woman commented that the house was small. Her husband replied curtly that that was the point. The woman murmured something Wilfred and Marion could not make out as the three of them moved into the foyer. Danforth was talking about the staircase having been crafted by a father son team from Milford, and the quality of the turning, and so on. Wilfred and Marion each cocked an ear toward the door to hear the sales pitch.
Both Wilfred and Marion jumped when the woman appeared suddenly on the front steps just above where they had been eavesdropping. She was trembling and trying to light a cigarette with shaking fingers. She did not notice them. As she exhaled, letting the smoke escape through her pretty nostrils, her husband stepped out to join her on the landing. He took the cigarette out of her mouth and dragged deeply on it before replacing it gently between her rouged lips.
“Listen, darling,” he said, “I know this place isn’t what we are used to, its small, its old, but do you know what it isn’t?”
The woman, who had been studying her polished nails, raised her eyes to meet her husband’s. She raised one hand to her mouth a picked a bit of tobacco of the tip of her pink tongue, then said, “what isn’t it, Charles…livable?”
"Splendid, darling…Let’s get nasty shall we?” Charles took a deep breath and continued speaking as if he were dealing with a child. “No, what it isn’t Gloria, is out of our price range.”
“But Charles,” Gloria pleaded, “The money isn’t gone for good is it?” I mean you will make more of it, won’t you? The market can’t stay like this forever, can it?” She dropped her cigarette on the landing and ground it into the flagstone with the toe of her cream and white colored spectator pump.
Danforth came out of the house then and clapped Charles on the back as if they were old friends. “So?” he asked.
Charles turned and took Danforth’s hand and shook it firmly once. “You’ve made your sale, old boy. Let’s go back to your office and handle the details. How much for the caretakers?” he asked waving a finger in Wilfred and Marion’s direction.
“Pardon?” Danforth appeared taken aback.
“Gloria will need help running the place, I can’t expect her to give up everything. How much will it cost to keep them on?” Charles asked.
"Oh, yeah sure…um, let me think. The office handles this, but I am almost positive they get twenty-five dollars a week.” Winking, Danforth poked a gold-banded cigar into Wilfred’s shirt pocket and patted it with the palm of his hand.
“Done.” Charles said as he headed for the car where Gloria was already waiting, crying in the backseat of the Ford.
Later as Wilfred leaned on the railing, watching Marion scrub the soot mark off the flagstone landing on her hands and knees, he thought about what the extra money would do for his family. His oldest daughter would need new shoes this year, and both girls could do with a new coat. He could buy a few more laying hens and a rooster if he went up country for them.
Wilfred looked at his wife’s back; her dress was threadbare and stretched taut across her back as she scoured off the offending mark. He thought about the woman, Gloria, with her red lips and pink tongue and whiney voice. He did not think he could live with a woman like that.
That night, in bed, Wilfred and Marion talked about the house for the first time in a long time. For weeks, they had been so immersed in the daily care and renewal of the house that they no longer wondered out loud about what it would be like to live there. As the summer breeze shifted the lace curtain, and the cupola blinked in and out of view, Wilfred and Marion dreamed one final dream about the house next door to their own home.
A few nights later, when the warm breezes of June had given way to the sweltering stillness of July, Wilfred and Marion went over to the Victorian. Marion had put on her best dress, the blue bias-cut rayon with satin trim around the sleeves and hem. It did not have a long sweeping train, but Marion felt like a movie star when she wore it. Wilfred had dusted off his wedding coat and derby hat. The trousers no longer fit, but the jacket dressed up his work pants just fine.
As the couple entered the house, Marion’s eyes began to water. The smell was stronger than she’d thought it would be. They would not stay too long, just enough time to walk together down the grand staircase as if they had a foyer full of guests waiting to be greeted. Impulsively, Wilfred grabbed Marion by the waist and waltzed her across the marble floor toward the front room. They stood together there for a few moments watching the display of Fourth of July fireworks illuminate the sky over the town.
As the fireworks built to the inevitable grand finale, Wilfred and Marion went out onto the front steps to watch. Wilfred pulled the cigar Danforth had given him out of his jacket pocket and carefully removed the band. Biting off one end, he bent to strike a match against the flagstone at his feet. Marion’s pretty face was briefly illuminated in the flare of the match head.
When, at last, the fireworks reached their crescendo, and the sky was nearly as bright as day, Wilfred puffed at the cigar, turning it slowly under the flame until the head glowed red. Turning back toward the house, he tossed the lit match into the foyer. Immediately, the two trails of kerosene he had carefully applied earlier that day ignited and sent twin flaming snakes winding across the floor to wrap themselves around the perfectly turned banisters of the stairs.
Wilfred and Marion stood together on the stairs for a few more moments, until the heat became insufferable. Then they turned and walked slowly home together, hand in hand, back to their little bungalow next door to the big Victorian.
