Souvenirs of Starling Falls

“Aren’t we going to go bed shopping today?” I asked.

“That was the plan, until you slept until noon. At this rate I’m not going to get any writing done today or tomorrow. And once my parents get here, well, I can’t write with them here.”

“You have plenty of time. Relax,” I said.

Tom shook his head. “I’m going down to the cellar to hook up the washing machine.”

The basement, I almost said. We’d agreed we were going to call it the basement instead of the cellar because that sounded so much less creepy. But I made a conscious decision to quit feeding the tension between us and said, “Okay. I’m going to start cleaning up here in the kitchen and pantry.”

“Sure,” said Tom. He left me there by myself. I considered following him downstairs but decided against it. Before we were married, I wouldn’t have been able to stop myself. Once a fight started, it escalated until it exploded. Now I was calmer, partly out of a desire to preserve something that was supposed to last a lifetime, partly because I knew since he was stuck with me, the opportunity to pick up a fight where it had left off never expired.

I found the box with cleaning supplies and got to work in the butler’s pantry. I wiped down all the shelves, deciding at some point I would paint them bright white.

With each swipe of the cleaning rag, I felt myself calming down. Dare I say, enjoying myself. A butler’s pantry. How novel. The thrill of our new home began to cheer me up a little, as I considered how to arrange my dishes on the pantry’s open shelves.

A dumbwaiter ran up through the house from the basement to the butler’s pantry, to a door in the wall in the upstairs hallway, all the way to the attic. I was both horrified at the thought of four stories of free-falling space big enough for a child to fit through, and thrilled at the reality of owning a house with such a thing. The access door here in the pantry had been painted shut, but we’d seen from other openings that the dumbwaiter inside was still on a set of functioning pulleys.

I pictured a future where it was restored and no longer full of scariness and spider webs. We’d have children (smart, good children who had the maturity to handle such a thing) and they’d play with it like the properly old-fashioned children this house could turn them into. They’d be the kind of children I read about in books like Little Women. They’d put on plays that they wrote during snowstorms, wearing costumes they’d made from old linens they’d found in a steamer trunk.

“I think I’m going to put a trunk full of fabric and old clothes up in the attic,” I yelled toward the basement door, temporarily forgetting that Tom and I were in a fight. How many kids would we have? Four? Five? Maybe six.

I pulled open a drawer—it barely budged and then came tumbling forward with a screech—and discovered a rusty old knife at the back of it. It wasn’t some heirloom or anything remarkable. Just a steak knife from the 1940s or ‘50s. I examined it and then ran its dull blade against the paint-sealed seam of the dumbwaiter’s door. Despite the real work ahead of me, I let myself be distracted by this new project, alternating between sawing at the seam and pulling at the small wooden knob, until finally the door loosened from its paint prison. Even without the layer of paint holding it in place, the door was a tight fit. I stuck the blade in to try to pop it open, careful not to damage the wood.

“What are you doing?” asked Tom.

“I didn’t hear you,” I said, spinning around.

“I could hear you. The washing machine is going in right next to the basement’s dumbwaiter door. I opened it and I could hear you sawing away up here. I figured you were trying to break in.”

“Yeah, I got distracted from cleaning, I guess.”

“Let me have a try,” said Tom.

“I’ve just about got it opened,” I said.

“I can do it,” he said, content to steal the big moment from me. He took the little door’s knob in his fingers, braced himself, and gave it a hard tug. It popped open, revealing lots of dust and an old, yellowed calendar hanging inside the door on a little metal hook.

“Well, look at that,” I said, setting down the knife.

“Nineteen thirty-seven,” said Tom. The calendar was turned to December, showing a painting of a table covered with a festive spread of ham and breads.

“A gift to our friends, from your friends at Smyth Pharmacy, Starling Falls, Idaho,” I read on the bottom of the picture. “I wonder if Smyth Pharmacy is still in business.”

Tom stuck his head into the opening. The dumbwaiter was up at the second floor, so the shaft down to the basement was empty. “I can see a little bit of light coming from down there,” he reported. “This thing is pretty cool.”

I switched places with him and peered down the hole. “Spooky,” I said, delighted.

“I think I got the washer and dryer hooked up right. Do you have some laundry ready?” Tom had agreed to take care of washing our clothes until we were able to make a proper laundry room that wasn’t down there. His tone was a little softer now. He was trying to make peace with me. Moving is stressful, I reminded myself. People get in fights. It’s not a big deal.

“Sure. Thank you,” I said, making a pile of towels and rags I’d used as cushioning around bowls and dishes. I handed them to him and tried to kiss him, but he pretended not to notice, took the heap of laundry, and ducked out of the way. He disappeared down the stairs and I went back to the dumbwaiter. Determined to correct a bad day in the making, I opened the door and peered inside just as he peered up at me. “I seeee you down there,” I said. I smiled and waved.

He looked up at me, squinting against the possibility of dust and spider webs getting in his eyes. “I see you too,” he said g

lumly.

Screw you, I thought. I decided I wasn’t going to let him get to me. I carefully removed the calendar from its little hook and began flipping through it. The pictures were big and the calendar portion of each page was just a teensy little panel, not at all like the calendars of today. In tiny, slanting script that reminded me of my great grandmother’s signature, it said Edward beside January 12.

“Tom,” I called down through the dumbwaiter, “the family that lived here before wrote their birthdays on this calendar. It’s so cool.”