A Gothic Tale
Mary and I have lived in our house the same length of time we’ve been married – 35 years. Marriage and home ownership – pretty darn big contracts! The trickle of sweat when you scrawl your signature on the mortgage, the moisture on the brow when you say, “I do.”
A lot happens to a house and to a marriage over 35 years. Stuff you didn’t know you signed on for. They didn’t put it in the contract that, four months after the wedding, the big sycamore out front would shed a limb and crunch the porch roof. There was nothing in the contract about a baby turning into a teenager, armed with a new driver’s license and the power to total our beloved Volvo station wagon. That Jack Russell puppy that came into our life, barking and running around for 10 years – the contract didn’t say anything about a dead dog and sobbing children graveside in the backyard. Eeesh. Thirty-five years of interminable homework, endless car trips, birthday parties, dinner parties, pity parties.
Thirty-five years in the conjugal bed. When we were young, we slept on a futon. The parenting decades were spent on a Sealy Posturepedic. Now we slumber on a heavenly Tempur-Pedic. Hmmm, a mattress composed of memory foam. Does it remember the hot nights . . . and the dark, chilly ones, too? Has it recorded all the snoring – Mary’s, that is, which she’s denied for . . . 35 years!
One wife, two kids, three mattresses. The tears, the fears, the wiping of rears. The quaffing of beers! Good beers, bad beers, warm beers, cold beers! Christmas trees up, Christmas trees down. Halloween pumpkins carved, Halloween pumpkins rotting on the mulch pile. The nest, once so full and vigorous, now – weep, weep – empty.
Ah. Okay, wait, hold on. I was being sentimental – but you are pragmatic. I mean, this is Swarthmore, right? You’re thinking – gee, 35 years. Won’t be long before Jon and Mary totter off into the sunset. Wonder if they own . . . a good house?
Hey, listen, I don’t take it personally. I know how houses move in Swarthmore – the rumors, the intel, the sly inquiries. So let’s get right to it. As you know, it’s incumbent upon the homeowner to reveal any existing problems on the “sellers’ disclosure statement.” All right, I have something to . . . disclose.
But first, dear reader – and potential future owner of our house – a quick digression. The skill that’s served my writing career so well – lying, fabricating, imagining – serves a marriage less well. I can’t answer a straight question with a straight answer, can’t tell a story without embellishing it. Sometimes Mary just wants the damn truth, pronto, no fooling around. So we have a code phrase: if she says “Really?” three times, and I respond “Really, really, really,” I am bound to tell the unvarnished truth.
Concerning the tale that I am about to tell you: “Really, really, really.”
In 1985, we bought our house from a lovely elderly couple, Connie and Bill. After we closed the deal, we paused outside D. Patrick Welsh Real Estate to say our goodbyes. Bill looked askance, then took me aside. “There’s something you should know. About the house.”
I blinked. Something I should know? Shouldn’t all the knowing have happened already?
Bill glanced over at Mary, who was chatting with Connie. “No reason to scare your little lady with this . . .” he whispered.
I believe I made a small squeaking sound. Bill leaned close.
“Connie saw them. I never did, the 25 years we lived in the house. Just Connie. Twice.”
Them?! What them?!
Bill, born in the 1920s, a Rotarian and God-fearing straight-shooter – a man who never needed to say “really, really, really”– proceeded to tell me the following. In the middle of the night, in 1966 and again in 1981, Connie came out of the bedroom to go to the bathroom. The bedroom faces the second-floor landing. Above the landing is a large Gothic window. Both nights were moonlit, the light beaming through that window. There was no mistaking the presence of two ghostly women in Victorian dresses standing, arms linked, on the landing.
Shocked, Connie turned, yelled for Bill. When she turned back, the women had vanished.
“Twice. Victorian ladies. Connie thinks mother and daughter,” Bill said. “Just thought you should know.” Bill and Connie drove off with a smile and a wave. Two seconds later I told Mary.
“I love it!” she said. “We just bought a haunted house!”
Mary is disappointed that we’ve never seen them. Though she’s never really, really, really asked if I have. And you, future homeowner, what will you see? Well, I’m extremely fond of this house. So on your way to the bathroom some moonlit night, don’t be surprised to see two Victorian women . . . and an old guy hoisting a spectral beer.
