The attic, the entire house, was off limits.
We weren’t 12, hell we were 21 and 22 and we had had a little too much wine and the guys were boring. All they wanted to do was wade into the river with no clothes on and wade back out, their bodies shivering, appearing more buff as their smooth chests tightened in the cold. I started dreaming of older men with their lesser egos. Louise and I were down to our skivvies, but she grabbed her dress–she always wore something that was “easy in and easy out,” and called for me to follow.
I followed her through the dense wooded area that buffered the river to her aunt’s house. Louise’s family had serious money, but she and her mother lived the bohemian lifestyle. I just lived. She and I moved through the woods while the guys had their backs turned and we heard their cries of dismay discovering we had gone. Moving quickly, our clothes bundled beneath our arms, the cold heavy air of early October thick and clammy on the turning leaves of aged summer, we doubled our efforts. Slipping on the wet incline, giggling although my feet smarted from the wild and prickly raspberry branches creeping along the ground and the smell of marijuana cling to my hair, I wondered for a moment why I was following Louise.
Taunt inside, my skin, my arms and breasts, tingled tightly from thoughts of touch I would not allow because they bore Louise with the game. I knew she was right–once things got started the fun left, and we were on the ground putting up with men, but the trek up the river bank was no fun either.
“Hurry,” Louise hissed from just above me, the land sloped sharply up it was hard to see her, the foliage being thick.
“I am, but my feet hurt.”
“Quit whining, Auntie’s house is just up ahead.”
“I thought you weren’t allowed in there.”
“That depends on who is there.”
We plunged out of the woods and onto the green lawn. I had been there a few times with Louise. In May Justina, Louise’s older sister married Jonathan on the lawn. It was a last-minute ceremony and already the mosquitoes were drifting up from the river; I didn’t stay long. Louise spends Christmas with her aunt every year so I understood Louise’s banishment wasn’t absolute. The aunt, she told me, had peculiar ideas about her and her behavior. I read between the lines; Auntie didn’t trust Louise.
Louise backed up against the woods and pushed her long black hair out of her face and put on her dress. I followed suit and pulled on my cotton pants and an oversized shirt. Standing beside Louise with my bobbed off blonde hair and droopy clothes I looked the perfect sidekick. No matter what Louise did, she always looked like a movie star, who knew just how to move and just how much cleavage to show.
“Look, no one is there, let’s go,” I said.
I didn’t want to go in, and I didn’t step from the spot from where I had put on my clothes. Louise just kept walking away from me. She didn’t even turn to see if I was there. All I would have to do was walk back into the woods and have my way with two oversexed guys at the river. Even as I contemplated it, I knew I would follow, but I gave myself another second to feel that edge of rebellion.
The house was immense, new, and not creepy at all.. An understated orangish reddish brick, nondescript windows and a weird greenhouse looking wing that housed a small swimming pool. The shrubs were boring needing little maintenance — just right for an aging aunt who liked to entertain her other wealthy friends and who had to put up with the black-sheep side of the family.
The door being locked, Louise knocked in a loud insolent manner. Then she peered into what I could only guess was a living room, and then she threw pebbles at the windows that showed off the indoor pool. I stood there and watched dumb but not in wonder; Louise was odd. She put a rock through one small pane of the back garage door, reached in, scraped her arm on the broken glass and unlocked the door. We both walked, stood there for a good three minutes and said nothing. She turned and said, “I want to show you something.” We went nowhere in that house but to the attic.
I thought she would glance through the refrigerator or skinny dip in the pool and we would be out of there–but no; we went straight to the back and up the stairs.
“What the hell is this?” I asked Louise, “Is this where the servants live?”
The staircase was narrow, and it wound around like it had only one purpose–to reach the third floor. There were no doors to the second floor, and there was no odd smell or echoing sound as we moved up. I felt my heart pound and struggled to breathe.
“Shut up. Do you think she’d give up any of her money to hire help?” Louise’s voice was a little high pitched, as if she too were finding it hard to breathe. We came to a shut door. It was plain, even cheap looking and as Louise reached to open it, I wanted to say stop and it was on the tip of my tongue but the door seemed to open without her help, it seemed to know Louise was there and it opened of its own accord.
She didn’t toss her hair around in usual bravada, she sort of leaned and looked in. I remembered doing the same the first day of kindergarten. I was five, and afraid. My mom made me go, so I leaned in while my mom and my teacher talked over my head. I saw several children but one in particular with coal black hair that shown down her back; she was building a wall with cardboard bricks and when she saw me, she gently pushed it down. She smiled, her teeth shiny white and the glow of the fall sun shining in all around her as the meticulous cardboard wall teetered and then tumbled down.
Standing in the stairwell she turned and said, “Welcome to the attic.”
I couldn’t go forward with her standing there and for one wild moment I thought we would turn around–but we didn’t she stepped into the attic and I followed. Wooden beams. Books. Chests and wardrobes. Wardrobes for the love of God. Genuine ones, I could tell, lined the attic. The floor was bare wood with tattered chairs all about, and in the center of the room was a long looking glass. The looking glass had no dust upon it and it stood at such an angle it reflected the different portions of the attic.
“Looks like the old bat keeps the place up–not an ounce of dust anywhere.” Louise’s voice was flat with contempt, but I ignored her. Wardrobes and book cases edged the large attic. I knew by the crease and smell of the leather that the books were old, perhaps first editions. The chests were leather and wood and looked like they had just come off a 19th century steamship. I could almost hear the clang of a dockyard and the clatter of people moving about with their luggage, home from a lengthy trip abroad. I turned around and saw Louise open a wardrobe. It was ice cold inside, it was as if winter and all its ice blew into the attic.
Louise unzipped the blue plastic lining and took out one of many dresses. The dresses were late 19th or early 20th century; the material dark mauve and black. Louise held one against her and it transformed her from sultry beauty to royalty. She laughed at me. “I knew you’d love it up here. These all belonged to my great grandmother, my mother’s grandmother, my aunt’s mother.”
Louise danced about, small, little whirls with the dress clasped to her middle and the material floating about. “My aunt hated her mother. She was beautiful and passed none of her beauty along, you see–so my aunt resented her. Some say she even killed her.” Louise said the last with a little lilt to her voice–as if she were a child again and trying to shock me.
“How’d she do it?” I asked moving toward the wardrobe and picking out a dress of my own. A light rose-colored dress with ecru color lace and a low neckline.
“Poison. That’s what my mother always said. Auntie’s mother was ancient when she died, but I wasn’t around yet. I was born one year after–Mom swears I’m her, I’m back to torment my aunt, that’s why she has nothing to do with me,” said Louise.
I was smaller than Louise by far–and without thought pulled the dress over my head, traipsed over to the mirror and looked in. What I saw was me — a small girl in an oversized dress and just over my shoulder a figure clothed in dark mauve and black, her hair piled high in glorious waves and curls, fit for an evening at the opera or somewhere less cultured but thrilling. What shocked me wasn’t the transformation, the image of the ghost looking out at me from the mirror, but the look of pale rage upon her face. Her beautiful face was full of hate and loathing. I felt a shudder of cold deep within me; a physical reality of knowledge. No matter what the mirror was reflecting I was seeing Louise, and she was looking at me as she always did–with a hatred beyond reason–when my back was turned. I whirled around and I saw Louise again, the dress in front of her, her hair down but her face pale. “Please take that off,” she said. I said nothing, but I slid off the dress, keeping my eyes upon her and wondering if I would get out of that attic. I handed it to her, and she glided up and took the dress out of my hand without a word. She replaced both dresses but left the wardrobe open. “The old lady will be back soon–we’ll leave the place as is. She comes up here all the time to poke through her mother’s stuff–this will unnerve her.”
I said nothing; I felt nothing but fear, raw throated fear for myself. I felt no pity for the old lady that would tremble at the fact that someone had broken into her house and danced around in her attic. Louise floated down the steps and out into the garage. She closed the door and walked back toward the woods. She stopped and looked back at me. I had made it halfway, my feet still on the well-manicured lawn. I watched as she swayed with poise and grace toward the small, dense woods which lead to the river. She smiled at me, ducked her head down and disappeared into the foliage. Turning, I walked the lengthy drive to the road and took the long way home.