From the Relief Society Magazine, 1962 –

Keep My Own

By Kit Linford

Chapter 1

At first glance the house related itself to the street outside. It was old, dignified, well used. Irene Spencer paused just inside the carved oak door and glanced about her. She stood in an entrance foyer that was larger than many rooms she had seen. Beyond it lay the dark abyss of a room. She shivered a little, and pulled her sweater closer about her.

“It’s awfully gloomy in here, Dick,” she said.

His voice came from the depths of darkness. “I know. Wait until I open the drapes.”

The drag of heavy draperies across a thick carpet made a soft, swishing sound, and raised a dust that filled the close air. Feeble streams of light invaded the room, but the gentle spring sunshine was filtered by dusty glass and wide window frames until it did little more than break the shadows into shapeless, sheet-covered mounds.

Dick moved down to the other end of the long room, pulling sheets off furniture as he walked. Irene stood alone in the louvered archway that separated the foyer and the parlor and surveyed the expanse of room before her. The drapes sagged with dust, and were a dark wine color. The carpeting was just a dirty shade lighter. The wood paneling that dominated the walls was dark walnut or mahogany. The gaping mouth of an uncovered fireplace resembled a small black cavern. Invading winds had blown loose soot back down the chimney and laid it wantonly on the rug and tile hearth. Those tiles that had not been given a peppery appearance by a layer of soot revealed themselves to be a rusty cocoa color, a hue that nearly lost itself in the black soot, red carpeting, and brown wood.

The room was musty, heavy with dust, close with disuse.

“Can’t you open a window? The air in here is so stale.” She pushed her pale gilt hair off her forehead, wondering if the dust had settled on it.

“Wait until you see the rest of it,” Dick enthused. “It doesn’t look like much now, but it’s a grand old house.”

“It must be ancient.”

“Fifty-five … maybe sixty years old. They don’t build houses like this anymore.”

“I’m sure they don’t,” she said flatly. Her sarcasm was lost on Dick, who had gone on into the next room.

She became conscious of the cold that permeated the room. The thick walls of the house had been thoroughly chilled all winter, and the gentle spring sunshine hadn’t yet become warm enough to penetrate them. She considered returning to the car for a coat, but thought better of it when Dick called out to her.

“Come on, honey. This is the dining room.”

Wispy puffs of dust played about her feet as she crossed the length of the room to catch up with him.

He had gone through another archway, and now stood beside the largest dining table Irene had ever seen. It appeared that tall garden urns had been painted gold and then drafted into use as legs to support the tremendous thick slab of polished wood. Dick wiped the dust off the table with one of the sheets he still carried.

The ugly carpet had followed her. Identical drapes hung in folds that were gray with dust. Massive furniture stood like shrouded ghosts in gritty sheets. A chandelier hung in suspended grandeur over all, but even its crystal prisms failed to catch or reflect light, because a heavy cloud of grime covered them.

Dick dropped the sheets into a heap at one end of the table. “My mother used to entertain in here,” he said. “Dozens of people. This room holds lots of memories.” He looked about with satisfaction.

Irene didn’t speak as she found the grimy pull cords and drew back the drapes. After nearly choking on resultant clouds of dust, she saw that the windows here were in the same condition as the others, too smoky to admit much light.

“I’m cold,” she spoke petulantly.

“It is clammy in here,” he agreed. “No one has lived here since my mother died. That’s when Granddad moved out, taking me and Davy with him. It was too big and lonely, without her. We’ll all be able to come back here to live, now. I know that’s what Granddad would like, and it’s what I want, too.”

Irene stiffened, refusing to recall her enthusiasm when Dick had first mentioned such an arrangement — months before their marriage. An old man and a handicapped boy, she thought. In this mausoleum of a house!

Before she could voice any objections, Dick reached up and pulled a sheet off a portrait that hung on the wall. ‘That’s my mother,” he said.

The painted face was totally unlike what Irene might have expected. She must have been a small woman, and much younger than one would have thought. A tender smile played on the sensitive mouth, and wide-spaced eyes looked down into Irene’s own.

“She was pretty wonderful,” Dick said. “Remember I told you what a hard time she had of it? Always wanted a big family, and had to settle for just the two of us, Davy and me. There’ re twenty years between us, too. Dad died a month or so before Davy was born. He had been sick for years. Davy wasn’t healthy either. Mother nursed him through some bad times. She wasn’t very strong, and it finally wore her down. She died when Davy was three.”

“And you went to South Africa.”

“Somebody had to recoup the family fortunes. Dad’s prolonged illness and then Davy’s on top of it, bled us pretty dry. All we managed to hang onto was this house, after having been one of the leading families in Spencerside. Mother managed to keep me in school, although I’ll probably never know what sacrifices it entailed for her and Granddad. When I was fresh out of school the Government offered me the position in Africa. I needed the kind of money they offered.” He grinned at her. “At the time it seemed like the end of the world. Now I’m glad I went. You were there.”

“What happened to Davy?” Irene asked. “Was it those illnesses during his babyhood that caused him to be mute?”

Dick had always been reticent about discussing Davy’s handicap. He hesitated before he replied. “No. It wasn’t that. He had learned to talk as well as any three-year-old when Mother died. It’s hard to explain what we all went through then, but Davy most of all. We knew what had happened. We could accept it. He was too little. He couldn’t understand. To him, she had just deserted him. When we were getting ready to go to the funeral … he stayed home with Aunt Ella … he somehow got the idea that we were going to get her and bring her home. When we came back without her, he started to cry. Cried for hours. We thought everything would be all right then. Only it didn’t work out that way. It wasn’t long before we realized he had stopped speaking. He hasn’t uttered a word, since.”

Her heart twisted with pity. “How terrible for you,” she whispered.

“Terrible for all of us, but mostly for Davy.”

A nerve was jerking spasmodically at Dick’s temple. Irene touched it tenderly, seeking to soothe it away. “I’m sorry. I didn’t completely understand. You never wanted to talk about it… .”

“No one really understands,” he said as he took her hand. “How can any adult comprehend the disillusionment and pain and sorrow of a three-year-old child?” He shook his head to drive the memories away. “The kitchen’s in here. Come on.

An ornately decorated black stove stood in one corner of the kitchen like a reigning goblin. Its tall black chimney stretched into the shadowy caves of the ceiling far above. Two dirty windows made little more than narrow slits in black-streaked, dark green walls. Expanses of green cupboards reached an almost unbelievable height. A low old sink stood on carved legs in another corner, beyond a width of green counter top. The floor was a mass of dirty little tiles. Irene scraped some of the accumulated soil off them with the tip of her shoe. They were dark green, too.

“We’ll have to do some fixing up in here,” Dick said lamely. “I had forgotten how out-of-date things are.

“That’s a prime understatement,” she said bitterly, her tenderness of a moment ago forgotten.

She felt him withdrawing from her. Oh, Dick, forgive me. Married only seven months and already it appears I’m developing into a shrew! I don’t want to do that. Just give me a little time. Time to adjust to leaving my home, this impossible house … Davy… .

His voice was tired. “I’m sorry you’re disappointed. Maybe I painted a rosier picture than I intended. This house is my home. I hoped you could see the gracious living it offers, under the dust and neglect of these past few years.”

“You admitted yourself it’s too out-of-date. I am anxious to make a home for you, but there are limitations to what I can do… .” How can I tell you I’m frightened at the prospect of living here with your grandfather and your brother? I don’t know anything about handicapped children. I’m afraid to even attempt to rear Davy. What if I failed in some way? Oh, Dick, I knew all these things before we were married, and I accepted them all without question. I was so in love! Can anyone, particularly a girl in love, visualize such things? I didn’t see a day past that beautiful ceremony in the London temple and the honeymoon that followed. Now the magnitude of it all frightens me. I am such a coward. This house and everything that goes with it are just overwhelming!

“We can’t live in it as it is now,” he said quietly, running a thin hand through his prematurely silver-touched hair. “I can see that. I had hoped to set up my studio in the solarium … sort of an office … well, modern plumbing and appliances will make all the difference in the world.”

“Didn’t you hear one word I said?”

“I heard you, but we have to be practical. If it won’t be too much of a hardship on you, I want to try to live here. I would like to rear our baby here, where I was reared. You have judged the house too quickly, anyway. You haven’t seen enough of it. Just starting out in business as I am, I have to think of expenses. It would help a lot to have a place here where I could work until I’m established. The money I earned in South Africa won’t last forever. It’s time we got down to the business of living normal lives, Irene. We’ve been married seven months. That’s a pretty long honeymoon. Besides, you knew about this house … and everything else … a year ago.”

She couldn’t deny that. He hadn’t hidden anything from her. They had discussed it many times. She had always agreed before. It was hard to veto those prior arrangements now.

He left her while he went to explore the rest of the house. Irene stood shivering alone in the kitchen, thinking of the years that Dick’s family had lived here. Dick’s father, Dick, and Davy had all been born in the same room. Dick’s parents had both died here. It was no wonder Dick revered the house.

The rooms echoed with reverberations from the past that were foreign to Irene. The gloom seemed to close in about her, although it couldn’t have been much past the noon hour. The sun was high outside. She longed for that sunlight as the eerie quiet enveloped her.

She drew her breath in deeply through her mouth, and tasted staleness, dead air, dust.

She waited for Dick in the deathlike silence of the old mansion that had waited five years for him to come back and resurrect it.

A few short hours ago she had felt like the bride she was, then she had stepped across the threshold of this hideous old house. Everything had changed at that moment. Her entire perspective of life had changed. In her own eyes even the view of her marriage had changed. Her complacent happy world had been given a good shaking. She had looked into the past, and tried to look into the future. She hadn’t liked what she saw in either place. Unconsciously, she rebelled against it, and wanted no part of it.

Irene had been content in South Africa. America was a dream. Zion was perhaps more than a dream, she had even thought of it as the center of her faith, but never as a reality that she might someday experience. Dick had appeared like a Prince Charming from that dream world, a man young in years but already making a deep impression in the field he had chosen. He was a gifted architect. He had gone into architectural engineering at the suggestion of Government officials when he went to work for them. He had traveled like a diplomat, but was a sober young man. Irene sighed, thinking of the Prince Charming she had married.

Something moved under the sink. She strained her eyes to see into the shadows, when without warning a mouse scurried out, across the floor.

Irene screamed. Her voice pierced the silence, breaking the dusty quiet. “Dick, Dick!! Oh, Dick, where are you? Dick, Dick, wait for me!”

She ran through the door. He, too, had come running at the sound of her voice, and was right outside in the hall. He caught her in his arms. “Irene! What happened? Are you all right?”

She rested in the safe haven of his arms for a moment. Then, shamefaced, she looked up into the concerned depths of his gray-green eyes. “I didn’t mean to be such a fool. Only, it was so quiet, and dark, and then I saw a mouse. In the kitchen.” A convulsive shudder ran through her.

He allowed a wave of relief to engulf his frame. “A mouse. You scared me to death. I thought you’d been hurt or something.”

A deep voice that wavered with age startled them both. “We’ll have to get you a cat.”

“Granddad!” Dick released Irene and hurried to where the old gentleman stood in the kitchen door.

They embraced, emotion overpowering their reserve for a minute. Irene remained aside, respecting that emotion and their need to express it. She felt again that foreignness, and wished she could turn about and run … far away … where she would never have to meet and know this man who held prior claim on her husband.

Then she saw the child.

He was perhaps eight or nine years old. He stood close to Dick’s grandfather, and a little behind him in the shadows. He looked like any other boy his age, at first glance. His blond hair was tousled, and he wore blue jeans with a brightly striped shirt. Irene smiled in greeting, and in so doing looked directly into his eyes. She almost gasped aloud. She retreated within herself in horror.

Davy was looking at her. He didn’t smile in return. In the blue depths of black-fringed eyes that met hers, she read nothing. Emptiness. A blank. There should have been something to read in those eyes!

But Davy’s eyes were as void as his lips. The child had no expression whatever on his face.

(To be continued)