Winter Sparrow (3 page)

The grass and weeds came up to her ankles. Their skinny, wind-tossed bodies scratched her skin. She itched. A pair of fireflies lit up a bit of the night around her cheeks. It was odd that something so small and simple could bring a smile to her face.

Mary heard Joshua’s car door slam shut seconds later. He walked through a slush pile of mud and weeds and stood next to her. The goose bumps would settle eventually, she told herself as she twisted around to try and get a clear view of the property. Blink after blink, Mary’s eyes were met with pitch black. All of a sudden, the happy insects were gone, and new darkness seemed to envelop them.

“Home, sweet home,” Joshua said with a deep breath. He threw one arm around her shoulder.

Mary shrugged. The enormous house seemed plagued with sadness.

“Shall we go inside?” he said with a creepy whisper.

“Can’t wait,” she replied, rolling her eyes. She took his hand and walked toward the front door.

It was almost cute seeing her fiancé stumble around for a light switch. She was just glad the place had electricity.
Calm down, Mary. This isn’t the house of a pilgrim, for heaven’s sake. It’s his father’s house. He isn’t some weirdo.

At least, not that you know of.

“When my father told me he was giving me the house, I just about flipped. Can you believe this place? It’s…well, it’s…”

“An albatross?” she said. “Filthy? In the middle of nowhere? Cold?”

“And dark too, and spooky.” He couldn’t help but make ridiculous faces when he spoke. “And yes, in the middle of nowhere. But it’s so much more. I’m surprised you can’t see its potential. It’s magnificent.”

They stepped inside.

How could he call this thing magnificent? Was it the peeling linoleum floor?  Or the kitchen cabinets with doors that didn’t close the right way? Maybe it was the fact that the ceiling had been dripping water onto the unfinished maple in the lower dining room. As Mary scanned a number of the lower-level rooms, she wondered if she really belonged here or if, like the tractor outside, she’d be pulled apart eventually, not by rocks or spiny roots but by time and resentment.

“It’s…a dump, Joshua. It’s unfinished. Why did your father give you this mausoleum?”

“Don’t be so down. Open your eyes. The very things you’re criticizing are what I love about it. So, we have to fix it up. Who cares? It will be
ours
to make what we want of it. Our own little world. Our home. I can fix the floors, the kitchen, the, um…whatever this room is in here.”

From where she stood, it looked like he was referring to what should’ve been a bathroom. She didn’t dare ask him to do a test flush.

“And the ceilings too?” she added, arching an eyebrow.

“And the ceiling too,” he returned, blinking as a splash of water stabbed his forehead. After rubbing the damp crease, he touched one of the walls to feel for divots or cracks in need of spackle. Some of the hallways had hideous wallpaper glued on. “The walls could use a little work, but I can manage it. I bet I can restore them back to their former beauty. All it takes is time.”

Mary meandered toward the staircase, which she knew she was to assume had been wondrous once upon a time. Several spindles were missing—broken off from age, or forcefully removed? The finish had all but chipped away, faded from what was left. She refused to venture up the way Joshua so unashamedly did.

“Did you actually live here at some point?” she asked.

“When I was a boy, but I…I must’ve forgotten it. The mind is a funny thing. It chooses what it wants to remember.”

“I can only guess why you blotted it out,” she grumbled under her breath. With little more than a blink, her mind began to strip and paint these walls, to furnish these rooms, in an attempt to remind herself that not all beauty was lost. She sought to give it life. But she couldn’t finish it. She just wasn’t able to finish it.

“Mary, this
mausoleum
,as you call it, was only
part
of my father’s estate. He worked hard for what he earned, and he lost much of it during the recession. But this, this house was always his favorite. And he left it to me. I mean, can you believe that?”

“Joshua, forgive my skepticism here, but are we walking through the same house?”

“Of course we are.” His voice echoed from above. He had already reached the top of the staircase and started across the middle hallway, which led to the other side. At the center hung a grand chandelier. In spite of the webbing and flickering light, the jewel casing still managed to sparkle.

“I just don’t see it the way you do. Will this ever really feel like home? I mean, we both work hard, and we don’t spend enough quality time together as it is. I just don’t see how we’re going to fix this place up.”

He rushed down the flight of stairs, coughing up some dust after trying to take a deep breath. “Mary, you know me. You know I’m good with my hands, have been since I was a teenager. I’m an architect, for crying out loud. I know carpentry, and I know how to tile and spackle, and you’re a genius with a paintbrush. Plus, don’t let the cursory stuff blind you. I can figure most things out when the occasion calls for it.”

“And what about all the wiring and electricity issues? Are you an expert at that as well?”

“Why do you hate this place so much?”

Mary glanced at the outdated wallpaper and the eerie, unfurnished grand foyer. What was she missing? What could Joshua see in this empty space that was so lovely? She wished for her artistic vision to kick in at any time like it had a few brief moments ago.

“I do not
hate
this place,” she responded. “I’m just not sure it’s us. I’m not sure it’s
me
.”

Joshua reached for her hands. “But I can make it anything you want it to be. Your wish is my command.”

“As long as I don’t wish for more wishes, right?” Mary replied, smirking.

“Precisely. I know I can make you happy here. I know you’ll love it. Besides, I haven’t shown you the best part.”

Joshua guided her down another long hallway. There were so many rooms. At any minute, she’d be bracing herself for a crypt-kept mummy to leap out of one of the naked bookshelves and suck the life from her bones. Or maybe some reckless jewel thief would drill up through the floor in search of a safe full of diamonds. After all, a big house means a big bank account, right?

Not a chance.
Mary was still waiting for her art to take off. She’d just painted a portrait of the mayor. In all honesty, she was a little ashamed at how desperate she’d become. In the past, Mary had turned down the chance to paint politicians or overtly religious images because both were topics she’d rather not get involved in—the former for societal convictions and the latter for reasons she’d never divulged to anyone, not even the man she planned to marry. The man now leading her through dimly lit, cobwebbed halls and grand banquet rooms she couldn’t ever picture filling with enough legitimate houseguests. The bedrooms were located on the second and third floors, along with a number of bathrooms, great and small.

“You might be able to fix a leaky pipe, Joshua, but do you really think you can keep a place this size clean?”

“Can we do a rain check on that answer, baby?”

Mary ran her fingers through her hair, checking for webs. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’m only kidding. Once you sell those masterpiece paintings of yours and make it big, we’ll just hire a maid.”

It was odd how their voices echoed off the walls. They were so narrow but still capable of dragging human sound anywhere they wanted. Did these walls view them as intruders or was that just her subconscious looking for a way out?

Rain check on that answer, Mary
, she told herself, slightly curious as to where her fearless fiancé would take her.

Being led somewhere with a blindfold was one of those things girls tended to fantasize about during adolescence. There was something romantic about not knowing which way to go, about listening to the sound of nothing but your footsteps and someone else’s voice. But here she had no blindfold. The gentle strokes of her feet atop the tired, outdated carpet runner weren’t a peaceful sound. Instead there was Joshua’s luring and the glass shelves she surmised once housed weapons too heavy for her to carry. But she was thankful there weren’t any grizzly bear heads covering the walls.

“Almost there, my love.” Joshua’s sweet whisper took her from her worries, such listless distractions. Wherever was he taking her?

She lost count of her steps. She lost count of how many times she let slip an anxious breath. She ignored the fact that they had to wander nearly the entire lower half of the mansion to find the location her fiancé was looking for.

Finally, they arrived.

Mary paused when she saw how awestruck Joshua’s face was. How perfectly still each muscle in his jaw sat or the manner in which he took his next breath.

He fumbled around the dank-smelling room, more like an afterthought garage. It resembled a metal cage.

When the outside lampposts flashed, her eyes followed the light.

“Isn’t it unlike anything you’ve ever seen?” Joshua asked before she had the chance to speak.

Even when the opportunity presented itself, she was at a loss for words. Her eyes were fixed on the circular garden outside. By far, the most lovely and peaceful scene of the entire property.

“But how can this be?” she asked. “Everything about this place is so dilapidated, ruined. But this little garden…”

“Little?” Joshua said, turning on the remainder of the outside fixtures. It looked like Christmas, the grand, artificial glow warring against the night. Other sections of the enormous structure surrounded the garden, which sat at the center of everything.

After he unlocked the rickety door, Joshua let her walk the brick-laid path his father completed many years before. “What’s the first word that comes to your mind?”

“Breathtaking,” Mary responded without hesitation.

“I thought you’d like it. My father believed that as long as the garden remained intact, everything else would fall into place.”

“But it didn’t, Joshua,” she argued, still unsure how it was that so much brilliance could be confined to such forgettable mansion walls. “His home became ugly.”

“Time tests all things. But I think it was always meant to be mine.” He grinned. “Ours. I can restore it.”

He hadn’t made an oath to do so, but oaths weren’t necessary; Mary knew by Joshua’s tone that he meant what he said. She walked inside the garden. She was home. Here and in her youth. She was fourteen and tomorrow. Flowers of every variety and shape and color reached up out of the dirt like resurrected, painted souls. The fireflies had returned, flickering all around her. She looked back at her lover for a moment then focused once more on the jewel of this mausoleum. 

“Of all the greenhouses and meadows I’ve seen, Joshua, nothing, nothing at all compares.” Was it normal for her to feel like she might cry? Was she supposed to start choking up from only a glimpse? But no, she had
touched
the flowers. She had smelled them. She had placed her hands into the dirt, into the earth to feel nature’s art for herself. She knew it was real. Her senses, her eyes, her everything confirmed it.

This was a new memory. And this one tasted like honey.

After Mary walked through the garden, exploring it from every angle, Joshua called her and asked if she was ready to see the remainder of the house. Still taken aback at the sheer size of the house, Mary nodded. Joshua had already made his rounds once through the many corridors and entrances. Getting familiar with a place might make it feel more like home, he suggested to her. But she didn’t much care about what surrounded the garden that seemed to defy all pattern and prediction. It didn’t fit with everything else.
Not yet
, she could almost hear Joshua echoing in her eardrum.

A deep sigh and a long breath permitted her leave followed by one last blink to capture the perfect image.

“I’m ready,” she said with an enchanted smile.

It didn’t take long to walk through the rest of the mansion. The fact that she kept a steady pace ahead of her fiancé didn’t at all add to the romance of seeing the place for the first time, but she felt how she felt, and he couldn’t begrudge her for that, could he? She was an artist, so to see something beyond the ugly and malnourished should’ve been effortless. She would try. She swore to herself she would try.

The garden still had her mind tightly in its grasp. Its thin, winding passages and overhanging branches dripping with splashes of life. Blink upon blink she returned there, while Joshua carried on about how much torque it must’ve taken his great-grandfather to put this building together. And here it was, still standing. She couldn’t help but tune in to the important parts.

Her nostrils finally took note of the smell. It wasn’t a horrible smell, necessarily. It was a kind of smell like she’d just walked into Grandma’s house and wasn’t sure if the smell made her comfortable or if she’d get used to it eventually. She’d read somewhere that everything was eventual. How true that was. After some flaring, and several deep breaths through her nostrils, she settled herself and got used to the smell. The
eventual
came pretty quickly this time.