The Painted Lady

The Painted Lady

By LuAnn Williamson

Dear Diary:

“Oh Papa, I’m sure it’s going to be the finest house in all of the Omaha area!” I exclaimed as I had to keep myself from fidgeting on the set of my Father’s buggy. Although a kind man and generous to our family, he could be quite cross if distracted while he was driving his buggy. I did not want to be left behind when it was my turn again to inspect the new property.

At first, Papa would go every Saturday afternoon by himself to check out the process of building our new house. He told the family that it was too dangerous for anyone to come with him. Finally, due to my Mother’s pleading and shameless bribery with cakes and cookies, he relented.

Finally, after a few batches of cookies, make by myself, he agreed to take me when he visited the house.

I don’t think he realizes that at age eight, Mary, the cook, has been teaching me to cook for a few years now. She says my baking is coming along nicely. But I don’t want to be prideful about it.

The foundation of the new house is finished. I had to promise Papa that I would be very careful where I tread and never go where he tells me that it isn’t safe.

I think I quite upset him when I found an earthworm and started playing with it.

“Put that filthy, disgusting thing down!” His voice was harsh. “That isn’t very lady like.” Do I stop playing with worms or do I only do it when he isn’t around?

I walked around the house in awe. The walls of the house are going up. It looks to be quite grand. Papa says that it will be fitting for a successful businessman that he has become. I only understand that he has created a patient for a new medicine that has become more and more widely used every day.

At age four, my Brother, Jonathan, is much too young to be taken for a visit and Bernice, my Sister, is but a babe in arms.

Father says we shall all have our own rooms and even a parlor, which our Current house does not.

Dear Diary:

“Oh Father the house is lovely!” I cannot contain my enthusiasm. 

Because I am nine and a half now, I do need to become more lady-like as I become more mature.

“It is even more beautiful than I ever imagined!” I tried hard to be sedate but I think I did not do it well.

It is Sunday afternoon. Mama has packed a picnic basket for us to eat on a blanket under the shady tree that my Father insisted it be spared from the builders so the house could always have shade, even on the hottest summer days.

Before we go inside, we all fall to our knees on the huge porch, as Father says a prayer of blessing on our new home. When we have a party next month, a Priest will say a blessing upon our house.

“Why are there two front doors?” I ask. My Father pats my head. 

“That’s my smart Girl,” he says. He touches the one closest to where we are standing. “This is the everyday door. We will use it most of the time. The red door is the parlor door where guests will enter.” 

He flings open the door and I gasp in awe. Just off to the right is the main staircase, with hand carved railings, polished till it shines. I step to the left, past the closed door to the parlor and into the dining room. I gasp again at the beautiful fireplace. The mantle is hand carved to match the banister in the hall and the built-in china cabinet. There are flagstones under the hearth, a lovely grey color.

Dear Diary:

“Oh Father, I’m afraid of dying!” I held his hand as bent down over my bed. His handsome face, creased with worry. He looked as if he’d aged ten years over the last few days.

“You’re not going to die. You will get better, I know it.” He clasped my hand in his. Strong hands, chemist’s hands that had brought pain relief to so many. But his best medicine could only dull the pain, reduce the fever that has ravaged my body for the last few days.

“You’re only sixteen,” he reminded me. “You have much to look forward to, a bright future when you will be married to Stanford. You will have babies of your own, watch them grown up, you will play with your grandchildren.”

“No Papa,” I calmly told him. “Mama told me that I was out of my head this afternoon. I was talking about heaven and calling my Grandparents’ names. I will miss you and Mama, Jonathan, and Bernice. But the only thing I will miss is this house. I have loved it the minute I first laid eyes on it. Part of this house will be the last thing I see before I close my eyes in death. Thank you for all you’ve done for me, for us, all these years.” I rested, trying to catch my breath, even after that short speech. “I love you, Daddy.”

He kissed my forehead, recoiling ever so slightly at the surprising amount of heat coming from me.

“I love you too.” That was the last thing he has said to me, probably the last thing he will ever say to me.

“Let me rest now,” I asked.

I will finish this entry in my diary. Then, using the last of my energy, I will put it back in its hiding place in the closet.

***

That was the summer that I became “Kid.” Not the perfectly serviceable name of Scott that my parents gave me. Not Mister Adams, no, Old McAlister considered the term “Mister” somehow is a foul word, something that would have caused the Victorian Ladies to have a case of the vapors. So I was called “Kid,” at least when I wasn’t being called “Stupid” or “Dummy” or other words I don’t want to use here. You get the picture.

         It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in college. After a year of getting the basics down I decided my major was to be architecture. I’d been in love with buildings since I was a kid and it seemed perfect for me. All I can say is that I sure was naïve. 

         That’s when I discovered that anyone who wants to consider architecture as a career had better have some construction experience. I needed that experience and I needed it quick. By the time I had the revelation, I was late to the job market. 

        Add to the mix, it was the time when the Omaha economy was reeling from the ConAgra move. They’d picked up and moved out to Chicago in what I could only think of as the corporate equivalent of a snit.

       When the Mini-Soft Corporation, long ago having grown past its small name and into a corporate giant, made the collective decision to move to the Midwest, Omaha was on the short list. Would they be content to move into prime, riverfront property on a beautifully landscaped campus? Oh no, they wanted a place of their very own. North Omaha was the land of opportunity for them with economic development grants and tax incentives.

      Well, much of the land under consideration was already occupied. The private landowners objected, vigorously and loudly all over the media. Lawsuits ensued. But corporate giants were the elephants in the room. They could sit anywhere they pleased.

      So, with the limited job opportunities available, I found myself applying at a demolition company.

      I found myself sitting across from McAlister in an untidy office, trying not to react as he waved a lit cigar around as he gestured, which he did frequently. I guess he didn’t get the message that a law had been passed several years ago forbidding smoking in the work place. I found out later that was not the only law he chose to ignore. But that’s another story, rather several of them.

       “Kid,” he said for the first but certainly not the last time, “it’s not construction you want.” “If you want the education you’ll never get at that fancy school of yours, you want to work demolition. Tearing buildings apart, will tell you what makes them stand up and what will bring them down.” He looked straight at me and I could tell he was measuring me and I was coming up short.

       It was mostly McAlister and me. We were prepping an old Victorian house in a style called The Painted Lady. Some of the older houses were abandoned and in sad shape. Some had been carefully, tenderly renovated and very few in between. This one was one of the few that had been repaired, sometimes haphazardly, sometimes carefully, but not updated or renovated.

       McAlister handed me a sledge hammer and gave me a briefing on electrical safety and told to go get the wiring. I double checked to make sure the power was off. I took a moment to appreciate the beautiful craftsmanship of the woodwork, the layers of wall paper. I peeled off the top layer of a rather garish paper that I suspect was from the nineteen sixties.

      “I’m paying you for working, not gawking,” McAlister yelled up the stairs. I swung the sledgehammer, taking a moment to regret the destruction of such a historic treasure.

    When I stopped to take a swig of water, I thought I could hear someone crying. I screwed the top back on the super-sized insulated cup. I smacked the wall, the plaster crumbling off the wooden lathing.

       We had a group of salvagers in on the next day. They were nothing like the friendly, cheerful and informative crew on the television show

       I thought I heard someone gasp as they took a crowbar to the hand carved mantle of the main fireplace in what had been the parlor. In its time, the house was a luxury model. McAlister told me that having two front doors, with one going directly into the parlor was a status symbol. Servants’ quarters in the attic were small but well insulated. 

    With care, this house could’ve been standing proudly for another hundred, even two hundred years. I vowed never to buy another Mini-Soft product as long as I lived.

      The salvagers cracked the wood, splitting it in a jagged line down the middle. The younger man made a rude noise, tossed the wood aside and kicked at it.

     “Don’t do that,” the older man said. “A little bit of wood glue, a bit of putty and some fools with more dollars than sense will never know the difference.”

      I got tasked with hauling out the pieces of the flagstone used in front of that fireplace.

    I found a twenty dollar gold piece wedged under the stones. I tried to hand it to McAlister but he took one look at the coin, covered with a layer of patina and waved it away with a gruff, “Keep it.” I’m sure he didn’t realize the value of the old coin. I tried to do the right thing.

    I also found a couple of jacks. I admit I didn’t know what they were. I swallowed my pride and asked McAlister what they were.

    “Jacks,” he said gruffly. “Don’t you kids today know anything?”

     I shook my head and picked up the crowbar again to start prying out the next stone as he pocked the old toys.

     After the flagstones were piled neatly into the van, it was back up into the attic. It was sweltering in the afternoon sun. I propped up the window to get some cross breeze and it helped a little. Still the sweat was pouring off me, almost literally. I demolished the super-sized ice tea along with the lathing. I swear I heard crying as I struck the plaster and pulled out the copper wiring. These houses had been guarded so the thieves couldn’t strip the wiring.

     When the attic was done, we both moved onto the second floor where the bedrooms were located. Eventually, when every bone in my body was aching and the medicine I’d swallowed at lunch and break couldn’t even touch the pain, McAlister finally called a halt for the night. 

     I was most of the way to my car when I realized that I’d taken my wallet & keys out of my pocket, since they kept falling out anyway and left them on the railing on the top of the stairs on the second floor.

    I expected a volley of abuse from McAlister and I wasn’t disappointed in that. He unlocked the front door, the one the salvagers left behind. He asked me if I wanted him to hold my hand so I wouldn’t be scared of the dark. I scowled and waved him away. His away consisted of sitting on the front porch, minus all the railings that had been stripped away.

     I had a high powered flashlight and made it up the back staircase, since the main stairway was gone. I found my keys wallet and phone. That’s when my flashlight went dead. It went from full battery to absolutely no light within a second. Not kidding.  There was still light from the streetlight coming in the windows but they didn’t shine in the stairway. 

     My blood ran cold when I saw her. She looked like a ghost straight out of any scary movie ever made. She was transparent white or light grey. I turned on the camera on my phone with no flash. I didn’t think I’d record anything. As it turned out, I didn’t get anything at all. Nothing but total darkness; not even something taken by weak streetlight. 

     She was wearing her hair piled high on her head and a long dress like someone might have worn when the house was new. She was lovely and she looked young despite her head bent over in a sorrowful pose.

     I finally found my voice, “Who are you?” I felt my breath coming in raggedy gasps. “What do you want?” I thought she might blame me for the destruction of her house. “It’s not my choice, to tear down this house. It’s just my job.” I thought a moment. “I hate doing it. I hate to destroy something so beautiful.”

     “I don’t blame you.” I heard the voice more in my mind than in my ears. “I loved this house since I was a child. My Father had it built.”

     “What is your name?” I asked.

     “Joselyn.” A pause and then, “You’ve seen my Father’s name around the city. Phillips library downtown, the music hall. There was an opera house but it burnt down.”

     “What do you want?” I asked as gently as I could.

     She pointed to the space that was once a closet. “Save them. Please? Your heart will tell you want to do.”

    Then, she vanished and my flashlight switched on. I went over to the space she showed me. I ran the beam of my flashlight over the space. Just below the space where the plaster was knocked off, there was a little trap door. I opened the door to a small area behind the closet, not much bigger than a crawl space. 

    I found a box, like a child’s jewelry box, a beautifully furnished doll house, which I pulled into the main room to show McAlister tomorrow. Lastly, there were five small books. They looked like diaries. When I shone my flashlight over them, the writing was faded but legible. I tucked them into my overall pockets and the box into my overalls between it and my t-shirt, my tool belt keeping it in place.

    I took more guff from McAlister for taking so long. He said he had places to go and things to do. I suspected he had a hot date with a whiskey or two. 

    I kept the diaries for a few days, reading them. Then I almost tore the delicate pages. I realized that the fragile manuscripts should be in the hands of professional conservators. I contacted the Omaha Historical Society. We were able to work out a deal where the books would be on permanent loan, along the beautiful jewelry. In return, I would get transcripts of the manuscripts as they became available. I even talked McAlister into donating the doll’s house.

    I read the transcripts as I went back to college in the fall. Is it possible to fall in love with a woman from the past?

     One visitors Saturday in my dorm, I got a knock on the door. A young woman stood there. “Let me introduce myself. I’m Joselyn Phillips. Yes, I’m named after my ancestor. I understand you have the transcripts of my Great-great Aunt's diary. I was hoping to read them for a history project.”

     I took stock of her. Her hair was soft brown and cut short, not the raven hair of her ancestor, the famous beauty of North Omaha. She was wearing jeans and a t-shirt that proclaimed her love of history.

    Do you believe in fate? I’m beginning to think that I do.