The Red Victorian

In an average New England suburb, among the ‘50s style ranch homes, gaudy new constructions and charming ‘40s bungalows, there once stood a red Victorian with a wraparound porch and attached barn garage. The house was a relic from the 1800s, left over from a time when bungalows and ranches and even (especially) vinyl siding had yet to be imagined.  Back then it had stood alone, strong and proud beside the grooved farm-to-market road, surrounded by acres of apple orchards and corn fields, and farther out still, forests and marshes all teeming with life.

             But those days were long gone.  The red Victorian, now closely neighbored by manicured lawns and freshly paved drives, had evolved to have more in common with the forests and marshes than she did with the adjacent houses.  The barn and the grand wraparound porch sagged like clocks in a Dali painting, and there were holes in the roof where every manner of creature could be seen coming and going, flashing feathers and fur and claws.  The shingles themselves mossed over, then thickened, and then, with the passing of the seasons and the dropping of acorns and pinecones, began to sprout trees from their very skin.    

             Inside the house, with the birds and the bats and the squirrels and the constant drip drip drip of a thousand weeping cracks, there lived a tiny old woman of indeterminate age and origin.  At least, that’s what people used to say.  No one could recall ever actually seeing her.  Warm, dim lights were lit downstairs each day as the afternoon slid into evening, and as evening descended into night, the lights came on upstairs as well.  Occasionally the barn door was left propped open on its one remaining hinge to reveal a ‘90s era Toyota Corolla that never moved.

             The neighbors talked, as neighbors often do.

             “She must need help,” Betty Bungalow would whisper to Ruby Ranch as they passed by on their morning walk.  “That house is going to be the death of her.”

             “She could sell it and move to an apartment,” Ruby suggested.  “The lot itself is very desirable.  Someone could build something nice there.”

             Betty sighed, and her pretty face creased with concern.  “I just think that someone ought to help her.  But how do you knock on someone’s door and say: ‘I couldn’t help but notice that your house is a dump.  Are you suffering terribly living in all that squalor?’”

             “You should try it,” cracked Ruby.  “I dare you.”

             But of course she didn’t.  The years passed and the red Victorian sagged lower toward the earth, the trees on the roof stretched higher toward the sky, and the neighbors continued to discuss the house in earnest.

“Why doesn't the town do something?” Marty McMansion asked Carl Colonial while they shared a beer across the hedgerow.

             Carl shrugged.  “She pays her taxes like the rest of us.  What right does the government have to get involved?”

             “I’ll drink to that,” said Marty, and two long necked bottles clinked over the meticulously square-cut hedge, sending condensation flying into the humid summer air on impact.

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             The porch was the first thing to go. 

            One day in late fall, with the added weight of the first real snow of the season, it simply sighed and released its hold on the side of the house.  None of the neighbors heard anything; they only noticed when they emerged in the morning to run their shiny snowblowers up and down their driveways.  There were holes in the side of the house where the porch had lost its grip; holes that were too dark and stuffed with house guts to see into, but which had to be at around ankle level to anyone brave enough to go upstairs.

            “She’ll freeze in there,” Betty fretted to Ruby over coffee. 

            “Never mind freezing,” Ruby replied.  “She’s going to fall right through the floor.  Her whole bed will go with her.  Hopefully she lands on top.”

            “Oh, Ruby!” cried Betty.  “What if that actually happened? She could be lying in there alone and hurt, and no one would even know.”

            “Someone should get that lady a cat,” said Honey, the Bungalows’ five-year-old daughter. 

Betty and Ruby exchanged a look.  They hadn’t realized she was listening.

            “Oh, Honey,” Betty cooed.  “That’s sweet.  But trust me, a pet is the last thing that poor woman needs.”

            Honey lowered her eyes.  She shuffled her feet shyly.

           “It’s not about needing a pet,” the little girl said finally.  “It’s about needing someone who loves you.”

           “That’s a very nice thought, Honey,” said Ruby. “But cats need love, too.  They need to be fed and their box needs to be cleaned.  It’s too much responsibility for someone who lets their house fall down around them.”

            And perhaps Ruby Ranch was right about that.  When the house did fall a few months later, just past midnight and in the dead of winter, it was a good thing there wasn’t a cat inside or it would have been crushed to dust like everything else.

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           When the house collapsed there was a sound that the neighbors heard, though they remained warm and oblivious in their beds; a sound that broke through their dreams and manifested in that strange sleep state as the rumble of a distant earthquake, or the cracking of thick ice over a mountain lake.  In the morning everyone was shocked to behold the pile of snow and shingle and other debris where the red Victorian once stood. 

           The men returned to their kitchens to discuss the event with their wives.

           “Should we call someone?” Carl Colonial asked his wife Cindy.

           “Who?” she asked in return.

           “Town hall, maybe?  The fire department?”

           “I don’t know, Carl,” said Cindy, wringing her hands until her knuckles were white. “I’m sure they already know.  It’s really none of our business.”

           And so the neighbors whispered amongst themselves and waited and watched, but no one from the town hall or the fire department came.  After a while the snow melted, revealing a pile of strange mulch from which the former rooftop saplings, relieved to finally be anchored over solid ground, grew taller and thicker by the day.  In the full bloom of spring someone walking by might catch a glimpse of the ghost of a familiar object--the outline of a lampshade or a nightgown, a row of balusters laid out without a staircase like the disembodied grin of a Cheshire cat. The light hit differently in that area. Everyone walked a little faster when they were passing by.

             In time the trees reclaimed the lot, and it returned to what it once was before the earth was plowed for fields or carved up for roads.  It was odd that such a desirable parcel was allowed to return to nature, but the neighbors had other things to talk about these days, block parties to facilitate and PTA meetings to attend. 

             And it seems very strange, but they forgot all about the little old woman who had lived there.  Or maybe they didn’t; not really.  Maybe they just chose not to think of her, of what had probably happened to her, and of where she might be at this very moment.  In any case, they never spoke to one another about her again.

But every so often on a clear summer’s night, Betty Bungalow stands at her living room window and inhales the scent of pines and oak and detects the faintest hint of something else in the air, something dark, something secret and haunted and soaked in sorrow.  In these hushed moments without another living soul around to see her, she shivers and wraps her arms around herself. Then she sighs and whispers softly to no one: “It’s a good thing she didn’t have a cat.”