Candle in the Attic Window(46)

She worked it into the lock. Grabbed the scratchy latch. Twisted and shoved.

Hesitation seized her with the panic of a virgin who has changed her mind just seconds too late. No!

And then came the rush of rotted air and the sweeping view through darkness to abandoned things huddled under stained sheets that always meant coming home.

Only, this had never been her home. Ave had never been more than a holiday visitor here, puzzled by the grandmother and aunts she loved so much.

Ave lifted a booted foot across the threshold. Eased her body behind it like a dancer poised at the edge of the stage.

Surely, someone was here. She could feel someone. “Sheridan?” Ave called. She couldn’t resist the hope.

But nothing stirred.

Ave pulled herself together with a little mental slap. Of course that was not the way to invoke a spirit.

Ave flung out a hand and patted the wall to her right in search of a light switch. Felt an old-fashioned knob at the end of a long, wire-covering tube. Turned it.

No lights flickered on. The electric company hadn’t come through.

I should have brought a flashlight from the car, Ave scolded herself. But she suspected that if she went back to the Porsche now, she would leap into it and drive straight to Canal Street to search for a hotel room. Mardi Gras Night, there won’t be one. So, she’d end up fleeing the Crescent City all the way back to the Golden Gate Bridge.

“And what will you do there?” Ave challenged herself out loud, just to hear a voice. “Jump off of it into the Bay?”

If she hadn’t jumped or overdosed during her zombie-state in the blighted seasons following Sheridan’s death, there was no point doing it now. Just see this through, Ave urged herself.

Maybe he will come. Perhaps he is already here.

Watching her. Counting on her to bring them together again.

Ave crossed the dust-coated hardwood floor to the closest lump of furniture hidden under dust covers. Grabbed a handful of cloth and yanked.

And screamed as a spiky clump hurtled across the toe of her boot, squeaking and trailing a bald tail an inch above the floor.

Ave was back on the street and had already grabbed open the Porsche’s resistant door before she got hold of herself. “Just a rat,” she panted and, “What did you expect?” she chided herself. “No one’s been in that house since the honeymoon.”

And with the accidental resurrection of that blessed, fairytale memory, she bent her face into her grimy hands and let belated tears of loss and despair gush free.

It felt good to cry. She sank against the Porsche’s side, her curved back pressed against Sheridan’s gaudily stenciled “914”, and sobbed.

Flashes of memory: Sheridan openmouthed like a child as they cruised the French Quarter’s narrow streets. Sheridan emerging from his gleaming Porsche, laughing and shaking his head with disbelief at the sight of her inheritance, this dilapidated mansion.

Sheridan coaxing her up the curved stairs, a candelabra in one hand and her wrist in the other. “Come on, babygirl. Aren’t you even curious to see if the old stories are true?”

They had been married in San Francisco on a long-ago Valentine’s Day before they rushed their honeymoon Gulf-ward. Sheridan so wanted to celebrate his first Mardi Gras in New Orleans: to revel in the streets and stack his neck with gaudy beads flung from masqueraders floating by in the night air.

Wanted to get into the townhouse attic by midnight and see if the ghostly Mardi Gras ball was only a spinsters’ story told to a gullible Creole child. As if, in this sunken city where history and myth trembled at the edge of the encroaching sea – holding back the final devastation – magic still lived.

The two newlyweds never made it into the attic. Ave thundered down the steps and out onto the street, cursing Sheridan’s insensitivity every step of the way.

He’d come after her. When he caught up with her among the revelers groping her rear end and waving strings of bright beads to tempt her to share her body, she slapped him. “That’s my childhood you’re making fun of, Sheridan! It’s not funny. And I don’t want to see whatever comes into the attic at midnight!”

Sheridan had laughed off his shock, kissed her, and swept her up into his arms to carry her back to the townhouse. Watching all this, the revelers cheered.

They’d spent the night out on the balcony. It was his idea. They’d told each other favourite childhood memories, and made love in a sleeping bag against a backdrop of fanning fireworks and the drunken laughter of merrymakers.

“Oh, Sheridan.” Now, as the sobs eased, Ave dabbed at the muddy paste her tears made as they mingled with the dirt she’d gotten on her hands when she pulled off the first dust cover. “Tonight I’ll make it into that attic for you, my love. Be there for me, too, Sheridan.” She pulled herself to her feet.

Ave looked toward the wide-open townhouse door. The ring of keys glinted in the dark parlour where she’d dropped them when she’d fled.

No way could she go back in there now. But she’d go get some candles, see if she couldn’t put in a call to the electric company, and maybe the gas and water people, while she was at it. Go do some groceries, as the locals called shopping, maybe find a few of Sheridan’s favourites. Then she’d be back.

When Ave returned, she drove the Porsche through the narrow alleyway behind the townhouse to its carport. The walk through the alleyway around to the front door, lugging four bags of food and cleaning supplies with a flashlight, normalized her re-entry. The flashlight’s beam swept ahead of Ave and sent vermin skittering out of sight to the edges of the dark parlour.