The House

The conversation drifted along on a variety of subjects. The pumpkin, mince, and apple pies came and went, with whipped cream and ice cream, and Sarah helped her mother clear the table and do the dishes. They had just finished cleaning up the kitchen when Sarah wandered into her grandmother's bedroom, to use her bathroom. One of the other ladies was in the second bathroom, so Sarah had decided to use Mimi's. She walked past the dresser where her grandmother kept so many framed photographs that most of them were concealed by the others. Sarah stopped to look at a photograph of herself when she was five or six, at the beach with her mother. There was another of Audrey on her wedding day. And one at the back, of Mimi on her wedding day during the war, in a white satin gown with a tiny waist and enormous shoulders. She managed to look both demure and stylish, and then another photograph caught her eye, of another young woman in an evening gown. The photograph had been hidden by the one of Mimi and her husband. Sarah stopped and stared at the photograph as she held it, and her grandmother walked into the room. Sarah turned to look at her, still holding the photograph with a dazed expression. This was where she'd seen it. It was the same photograph she had found in the closet of the master suite in the house she was selling for Stanley's estate, on Scott Street. She knew who it was, but she had to ask. She wanted to know. Suddenly she had to have confirmation.

“Who is this?” Sarah asked her as their eyes met. Mimi looked serious for a moment as she took it from her and looked at it with a wistful air.

“You've seen this before.” It was the only photograph Mimi had of her. All the others had vanished when she did. This one had been her father's. She had found it in his papers after he died. “It's my mother. It's the only photograph I have of her. She died when I was six.”

“Did she die, Mimi?” Sarah asked gently. She knew the truth now, as she realized clearly for the first time that her grandmother had never spoken to her of her own mother. And Sarah's mother had told her that her own grandmother had died when Mimi was six, so Audrey had never met her.

“What makes you ask something like that?” Mimi asked sadly, her eyes locked onto Sarah's.

“I saw that same photograph this week in a house we're selling for a client on Scott Street. We're selling it for his heirs actually. That's the house I mentioned at dinner. Twenty-forty Scott Street.”

“I remember the address,” Mimi said, as she put the photograph back on the dresser and turned to smile at Sarah. “I lived there till I was seven. My mother left when I was six, and my brother was five. It was 1930, the year after the crash. We moved a few months later to an apartment on Lake Street. I lived there until I married your grandfather. My father died that year. He never really recovered after the crash, and my mother left him.” It was an amazing story, the same one she had heard from Marjorie Merriweather about the family that had built the house on Scott Street. But more startling was the news that Mimi's mother had not died, but left. It was the first time Mimi had said it. Sarah wondered if her own mother knew the truth and never told her. Or if Mimi had lied to her, too.

“I never realized until I thought about it recently that I never knew your maiden name. You don't talk about your childhood,” Sarah said gently, grateful for her grandmother's candor now. Mimi looked uncharacteristically unhappy as she answered.

“It was de Beaumont. My childhood wasn't a happy time for me,” she said honestly, for the first time. “My mother disappeared, my father lost all his money. The governess I loved was sent away. It was all about loss, and losing people I had loved.” Sarah knew her brother had died during the war, which was how she had met the man she married. Sarah's grandfather had been Mimi's brother's best friend, and he had come to see them and bring them some of her brother's belongings. He and Mimi had fallen in love, and got married shortly after. That much Sarah knew, but she had never heard the earlier part of the story.

“What happened after she disappeared?” Sarah asked, touched that her grandmother was finally telling her what had happened. She didn't want to be invasive, but suddenly it had all become terribly important. The house that Stanley had lived in for seventy-six years, and that she was selling now for his estate, had been built by her great-grandfather for her great-grandmother. She had been in it dozens of times over the years to visit Stanley, and she had never suspected that it had a deep connection to her. And now, suddenly, she was fascinated by it and wanted to know all.