Page 2 of The Shop on Royal Street
As I spoke, her gaze traveled behind me toward the stairs with the missing balustrade, her eyes following something. Or someone. I didn’t turn around. She forced her attention back to me and gave me another tight smile. “Are the bedrooms upstairs?”
“Yes. Just two, and because they have to fit under the pitch of the steeply gabled roof, they’re tiny, according to the floor plan. I noticedtwo dormer windows outside, which should at least let in a lot of light. I might have to knock out a wall to enlarge both bedrooms, as well as make the one full bath bigger. And more functional.”
“More functional?”
I tried speaking too fast and too softly, in the dim hope that she wouldn’t hear me, and would be too embarrassed to ask me to repeat myself. She was highly sensitive about her age, for no reason except the fact that she was a few years older than my dad. This meant I should be safe from further scrutiny regarding the condition of the house and my sanity. “Ali mentioned that the toilet was missing. As well as a sink. But at least there’s a half bath down here. Although I believe the toilet doesn’t actually flush.”
“You do realize that despite my advanced age I have perfect hearing, right?” Melanie moved toward the stairs, turning around to take stock. “So, this room runs the length of the house and doubles as entryway and living room.”
I followed behind her, smelling her rose perfume—something she’d started wearing my freshman year in college, when I’d moved back home. “Right. The other front-facing room is the dining room, and behind it, facing the fenced-in backyard, is the kitchen.”
“Which I’m sure is just as functional as the upstairs bathroom.”
“No,” I said, hating to admit she was right. “The kitchen has a sink.”
Melanie glanced over her shoulder at me but didn’t say anything.
As we climbed the stairs to the second level, the temperature changed as if the thermostat had abruptly dropped thirty degrees, despite the hot sun streaming in unimpeded from one of the dormer windows. Except there was no air conditioner. Or thermostat. Melanie didn’t say anything, but I saw her shiver.
We both ducked at the top of the stairs to avoid hitting the pitched ceiling, Melanie rubbing her arms as she looked around at the laminate wood panels covering the walls. Dust motes floated in front of the filthy windows, the musky scent of old house—an oddly appealing mix of dust, ancient fabrics, and furniture polish—making me a little homesick.
This room was as long as the living space beneath us, but far less functional because of the ceiling slope. Still, it held a lot of charm, and it had the same cypress floors as the first story. While getting my master’s degree in historic preservation at the College of Charleston, I’d done a lot of floor rehab, and my fingers itched to see what a little sanding and linseed oil might do to these.
Melanie’s gaze focused on a closed door at the top of the stairs, her mouth opening and then shutting immediately. I walked past her and turned the knob. “It’s locked, and there’s no key in the keyhole. I think it’s just a closet. We can ask the owner.”
“Do you smell that?” She stuck her head forward, sniffing the air. “It’s pipe tobacco. It’s like someone just blew pipe smoke in my face.”
“I don’t smell anything. Just the house.” Which wasn’t exactly true. I had caught a whiff, but just a whiff.
She nodded, her eyes remaining on the closet door. “I think...”
“You promised.” I gave her a warning glance before going through an open doorway that led directly into one of the small bedrooms. There were two other doorways, one to the second bedroom and the other to what must have been the bathroom.
I stuck my head into the bathroom, and immediately pulled it back. “I don’t recommend you look in there.” I was grateful for the lower temperature sparing us from the scent of heat-baked whatever had been left in the plumbing. I looked at the tall, sloped ceiling, at the original wooden beams and dormer window surround, and a fireplace like the one downstairs, with its mantel intact. “I think if I just reposition these walls, we could have two decent-sized bedrooms. And...”
The familiar notes of “Dancing Queen” being loudly hummed behind me caught my attention. I shouldn’t have been surprised. Loudly humming ABBA songs was Melanie’s way of drowning out the restless spirits who wanted to talk to her. I assumed they found it as annoying as the living did, which is why it worked. It was one of Melanie’s quirks—definitely weird but also surprisingly lovable.
I sighed. “Fine. I’ve seen enough up here. Let’s go back downstairs.” As I turned, I spotted an unhinged door leaning against the wall. Thewood tone and the opaque glass of the top panel told me it hadn’t come from the house, but it didn’t tell me why it was there.
Melanie stopped humming long enough to lean down to look at the iron lock and doorknob. She touched the assembly gently with her finger. “It has the initialsMBembossed on the handle.”
I leaned closer. “I’ve seen a few of these doors before. They’re from the iconic Maison Blanche department store building downtown. When the store and the offices on the upper floors were gutted to be transformed into the Ritz-Carlton in the late nineteen nineties, a lot of the unwanted interior was scavenged.” I ran my hand along the privacy bubbles in the glass, admiring the thick wood of the door, a relic from a time when even basic office doors were made with longevity in mind. Straightening, I added, “Mostly by locals wanting to keep something of a New Orleans landmark, and also by renovators who wanted a piece of history in their houses. In grad school I saw a lot of pictures of how people used some of the scavenged materials—including a lingerie display counter repurposed as a kitchen island in a house in the Quarter.”
Melanie suddenly turned toward the window, her head tilted slightly as if she was listening to someone speaking. She shook her head, then began humming again, this time “Waterloo.” Without waiting for me, she marched through the doorway, then down the stairs as I hurried to catch up to her, glancing over my shoulder only once.
I caught up to her in the kitchen, where she’d placed her bag on a scarred and pitted countertop with stains of indeterminate origin the color of a sunset before a storm. I decided to believe they were from marinara and spilled hurricane cocktails. We both studiously avoided discussing the elephant in the room—or whatever that had been upstairs—as I examined the peeling laminate floor, its lifted corners revealing the cypress planks beneath.
Melanie opened her bag and pulled out one of her infamous spreadsheets. “I’ve been looking at the comps in the Faubourg Marigny....”
I held up my hand to stop her. “You know how you grit your teeth when you’re with a client who wants to buy a house in Charleston butdoesn’t know how to pronounce the street names? They phonetically sound out ‘Legare’ and ‘Vanderhorst’ and it’s like fingernails on a chalkboard? So please. Locals here call it ‘theMAR-i-nee.’ No need to put ‘Faubourg’ in front of it, because it means ‘suburb,’ so it’s redundant. And while we’re at it, it’s a streetcar, not a trolley, and whatever you do, donotsay ‘NewOrleens,’ okay? It’s all one word—‘Newawlins.’ Otherwise, people will have the same reaction you get when you overhear a tourist call Charleston ‘Chucktown.’ ”
A shudder rippled through Melanie. “Got it. Since I imagine your dad and I and the twins will be visiting you a lot, it’s important that we fit right in.”
At my look of alarm, she quickly amended: “I mean—not too much. You’ll be busy with work, as will your father and I, and the twins have school, but I just thought...”
I put my hand on her arm and squeezed. Melanie, for all of her quirks and idiosyncrasies, had been my mother and fierce defender ever since I’d shown up unannounced on her doorstep just shy of fourteen, lost and alone, with only the name of my father—Jack Trenholm—as a certainty in my life. Owing to her own shattered childhood, Melanie had recognized a kindred unmoored soul and taken me in without reservation or conditions and proceeded to mother me long before she married Jack and the title became official.
“I’ll miss you, too,” I said softly. “And you and Dad and JJ and Sarah can visit as often as you like. And Aunt Jayne and all the grandparents. Just not too often, okay? I need to do this on my own.”
