Spanning the length of the house, it had the widest plank floors I’d ever seen anywhere, and I’m from Pennsylvania, home of the wide plank. But this was the great wild north of California, and the timber that was milled back then was staggeringly huge. As we crept, quiet as little mice up the last few steps, I saw what I remembered more vividly than almost anything else from my childhood.
I saw miles and miles of unobstructed deep blue ocean. Window after window set into the back of the house, eight panes wide and equally as tall. An attic had no earthly reason to have this many windows, it was a waste of heat and space. But it didn’t matter. Because the man who designed this home knew how important and how utterly unique a view of this magnitude would be. And thank goodness the subsequent generations felt the same way, as it was never walled over.
“Would you look at that,” Jessica breathed behind me.
“It’s stunning isn’t it?” I said quietly. Who knows how long it had been since someone had been up here? The dust motes dancing in the air current we’d stirred up indicated that Aunt Maude hadn’t used this space recently. And it was untouched by the pack rat stacks of crap that had taken over the rest of the house. It was still the attic from my childhood.
Dress mannequins were lined against one wall, like girls at a party waiting to be asked to dance. Some were wearing party dresses that had never been finished, and even after years of the sunlight fading them, the attic was filled with splashes of sugary pink, buttercup yellow, azure blue, kelly green, and ruby red. Sequins, bows, prints, and swirls waited to twirl.
On the other wall? Trunks, stacked four and five high. Travel stickers shellacked the sides with places I’d never heard of as a child, but sounded so exotic. Athens. Siam. Mexico City. Cleveland. Some of the trunks were empty, but others contained treasures. Old hats and gloves for playing dress-up, old-fashioned clunky cameras for pretending to take pictures while playing dress-up. Maps. Letters. Yearbooks full of people who had lived and cried and had babies and died, all before I was even born.
Old furniture, mirrors clouded with age but still reflecting everything that came within sight. Old landscape paintings, some of the sea, some of the mountains, but all massive and framed with ornately carved wood. I once found an anchor behind a full set of bowling pins, and had once launched an assault on the kingdom of Viviana with an army of tiny tin soldiers.
And it was all still there. Better yet, it didn’t look small, as so many things from childhood do. It was still larger than life, and all in front of those gorgeous picture windows. Jessica and I oohed and aahed as we looked through it all, squealing in delight when we found some new shiny thing or perfectly darling bit.
“This is seriously the coolest house ever, Viv.” Jessica sighed, sinking into an old wing chair by the windows.
“I know! I feel like I should be modest, but I so fucking know what you mean. This is the coolest house ever,” I agreed, sitting on a tufted ottoman in front of a window, gazing out over the large expanse of blue.
“I knew there was a reason I always wanted to come and see the inside of this place,” she continued, grabbing an old suntan reflector and making like a film star by the pool in the hills of Beverly. “What do you think you’re going to do with all this space up here? You can’t just use it for storage, it’s too cool!” She angled the reflector to grab some additional rays.
I had an idea—an idea that had been working on me since I was twelve. I’d stood in front of the windows, the natural light pouring in as I’d pretended to paint one of the big landscapes. Holding an imaginary brush, I’d pretended to feather in different colors, maybe make a different choice in the shading of that tree, or the shape of that hill. I saw my own painting laid over the actual, and in my mind’s eye I was in my own art studio.
I wasn’t quite ready to share that thought out loud, though.
If I was really going to consider working in this space, I’d have to get some heating and cooling up here. And install screens in the windows so they could be opened. “It’s getting a little stuffy up here; let’s head back down and get something to drink.”
“Are you sure? I feel like I didn’t help you at all, we just played,” she said, adjusting the top hat she was wearing.
“I kind of want to keep it like this for a while. So much of this house isn’t at all like I remembered it,” I said, running my fingertips across one of the paintings. “It’s nice to have something be exactly the same.”
She went down the stairs ahead of me and I paused at the top, looking back over the attic. There was another reason I was reluctant to disturb everything up here. I kind of wanted Clark to see it, as is.
I flicked off the light and followed Jessica downstairs.
We kept at the cleaning every day. Even Jessica’s boyfriend, John, had been drafted when we realized how heavy the Legless Knight was. He and Clark lifted him, reunited his torso with his better half, and took him down to the antiques store that had taken some of the other things.
“Don’t you think he should stay in the house?” Clark had asked, patting the knight on the head.