Page 55 of The Shop on Royal Street
One of my dual undergrad degrees had been in art history, and I knew the moving-eye technique was a thing. But that didn’t explain the feeling that I got that the eyes in the portrait had actually lifted to follow me up the stairs. Turning my back, I ran quickly to the top.
A warm patina of age that couldn’t be manufactured, regardless of how much money people were willing to spend, covered the wooden floors of the hallway, which was lined with hand-loomed rugs from the Far East of a kind that was normally seen under plastic at house museums. Even in the house where I’d lived for almost ten years I hadn’t seen floors and rugs this pristine. With two small children and three dogs—sadly, now two—Melanie had given in and removed all the rugs in the house, planning to put them back when JJ and Sara were older, and the dogs better behaved. She was in the habit of telling Porgyand Bess that they were the reason we couldn’t have nice things, and then feeling bad for scolding them, and handing out treats.
Having been a docent over the years at several historic homes in Charleston, I found myself walking along the edges of the rugs, trying to hurry while also admiring the art prints and paintings, which displayed an eclectic taste curated over decades if not over a century. The wall on my right was lined with four closed doors, with an alcove window in the middle. I tried to remember if it was the second door before or after the alcove. Or the first. My wandering through the house and general nosiness had distracted me from recalling the simple directions. I studied the closed doors. I could either waste time by finding my way back to the kitchen and asking, or just methodically open doors, starting with the first.
One at a time, I turned the knobs of the first two doors, revealing large bedrooms, both furnished with antiques and wearing a sense of occupancy, including bedside tables with books and a framed New Orleans Saints poster. It had been signed, but already feeling as if I were trespassing, I hastily closed the door without getting a better look and moved past the stained glass window.
Knowing I now had a fifty-fifty chance of opening the right door, I quickly twisted the next knob, and was surprised when nothing happened. The doorknob plate had an empty keyhole like the other doors, so I tried again, thinking it had to be stuck. While turning the knob, I gave it a bump with my hip. The door didn’t budge, but something hard and heavy fell from the top of the doorframe, hitting the rug, then bouncing onto the wooden floor. I squatted to retrieve an old-fashioned brass key from beneath a demilune accent table, then held it up to the light from the window. The metal felt hot in my hand as a tremor went through me and I recalled something Meghan Black had once said, something about locked doors and unusual artifacts stored in the house on Prytania.
My gaze bounced from the key to the lock, then back to the top of the doorframe. I doubted that I’d be tall enough to stand on my tiptoesand replace the key from where it had fallen. If the door was locked, it was locked for a reason, and by process of elimination the next door was the one to the bathroom where I’d find the Tylenol for Beau. If I were thinking like my dad, I would move on to the next door, and then find another way to learn what was beyond this one. Like just asking.
Or I could be like Melanie, who jumped from thought to action without pausing in between. It’s what usually got her in trouble, and something my father had cautioned me against more than once, even using Melanie as an example. But maybe I was more like Melanie than I thought.
I shoved the key in the lock and turned it, moving it noiselessly until I heard a click. I pushed the door open, the hinges giving only a brief and noisy protest. I smelled dust and the familiar scent of old things as I stared into the completely black space. My fingers fumbled along the wall until I found a switch, and after a brief hesitation I flipped it on.
A Murano glass chandelier came to life in the middle of the ceiling, casting mottled blue and white light over the room. Wooden shelves lined the walls of the room, each crammed with an assortment of what looked like flea market items—children’s toys; lamps of all types and sizes; shoes for men, women, and children; a pair of cheerleading pom-poms; a full golf bag. An entire shelf was devoted just to women’s purses. There was too much to focus on, and I tried to take it all in and identify what exactly I was looking at. In one corner a mannequin wore a beaded and feathered Mardi Gras queen gown, its bodice covered in purple, gold, and green sequins. On the adjacent shelf sat a collection of hats, mostly baseball caps but also one lace christening bonnet with delicate pink ribbon ties.
Between two tall windows on the far side of the room, both with drapes closed to the light, stood a massive curio cabinet, each shelf covered with a morbid collection of naked pixie-faced porcelain dolls. A shudder tumbled through me, propelling me back against the wall. I was all too familiar with Frozen Charlotte dolls, Victorian portentsof doom meant as a warning for wayward children. My family had been haunted by one after it had been dug up from the collapsed cistern in the backyard; it proceeded to show up randomly throughout the house until we reunited it with its previous owner in a Magnolia Cemetery grave.
At the time of its discovery, Beau had laughed at the odd proclivities of late nineteenth-century people, calling them “crazy Victorians,” and mentioned that his grandmother had a collection of Frozen Charlottes. Now, seeing said collection in person, I wondered if the same adjective could be used to describe the kind of person who owned at least one hundred of these dolls. And why someone would even want to.
I averted my eyes to study the rest of the room. It was smaller than the other two and might have once been part of the bedroom next to it and used as a dressing room or sitting room. Tucked inside a small circle surrounded by the crowded shelves sat a Queen Anne chaise longue covered in red brocade and flanked by two cane-backed black walnut chairs and a low table upon which rested a child-sized pair of pink gingham sneakers and a matching gingham hair bow. An old Sony tape recorder with toothlike silver rectangle buttons sat on a corner of the table, a white cassette inserted in it, the name Adelyn Wallace written on it in black marker.
I recognized the tape recorder because my father still used one for his writing, finding the pressing of the buttons as reassuring and comforting as Melanie found the clacking of her labeling gun. The habit of clinging to old technology was one of the idiosyncrasies of old people that I had learned to be patient with, like their insistence on using phrases like “record a show” or texting in complete sentences.
I stepped closer to the table, my curiosity admittedly leading me into trespassing. But my dad, in his search for facts, had long since taught me that sometimes it was easier to ask for forgiveness than for permission. Completely ignoring the fact that I wasn’t researching anything, I hit the play button.
For a full moment the only sounds I could detect were the soft whirring of the recorder turning and the background hum of centralair. Then, almost imperceptibly, came the sound of whimpering and the high-pitched voice of a child saying over and over,I’m cold. I’m cold. But no, not a child. A woman. A woman speaking in a child’s voice. The child/woman stopped speaking and the ambient sounds of a room were added to by the shifting of fabric, like the movement of a woman’s dress as she leaned closer to the recorder. Then, in a low, terrified whisper, came the wordsUncle Freddy.
With a trembling finger, I hit the stop button, missing it twice before I could press it hard enough to stop the chilling voice. I stepped toward the door, unwilling to turn my back on the macabre tableau and disembodied voice. My shoulder grazed a shelf, knocking off a small stuffed sheep. I quickly picked it up, eager to get out of this chamber of horrors or whatever it was, and settled it back on its perch, prepared to turn and run.
But I couldn’t. I froze, staring at the hairbrush on the shelf next to the sheep, separate and random like the rest of the objects displayed on the shelves. Except this object was glaringly familiar. I picked it up, recognizing the faded brand name on the handle, and even the shade and length of the hair in its bristles. It was undoubtedly my missing hairbrush, the one I kept in my backpack but had gone missing at some point that I hadn’t been able to recall. Yet here it was in a room full of random personal items and a curio case full of Frozen Charlottes.
“Nola?”
At the abrupt sound of Beau’s voice shouting from somewhere outside of the room, I dropped the hairbrush, the smack of it hitting the bare wooden floor like a gun firing next to my ear. I stood immobilized, unsure about everything except that I didn’t want him to find me in the odd little room with dark curiosities and the eyes of sightless dolls.
I forced myself to replace the hairbrush on the shelf and flip off the light before retreating from the room.
“Nola?” he called again from the bottom of the stairs. “Are you lost?”
“Nope!” I called back, my voice sounding surprisingly normal.“Just admiring the beautiful architectural details of the house and all the art.” With a trembling hand, I managed to lock the door before placing the key on the floor in front of it so it would appear as if it had fallen. Which, technically, it had.
Then I threw open the last door, relieved to find that it was, in fact, a bathroom. I swung open the medicine cabinet above the sink and grabbed the red-capped Tylenol bottle before walking quickly back down the hallway to the top of the stairs. Holding the bottle aloft like a proud Olympic torchbearer, I forced myself to walk slowly down the steps.
“Thank you,” Beau said at the bottom of the stairs as he took the bottle, his face even more flushed than before. “We thought you’d gotten lost.”
“I might have,” I said, practically jogging as I tried to keep up with his retreating form as he walked toward the kitchen, the wordsI’m coldechoing in my ears as the penetrating gaze from the man in the portrait chilled the back of my neck until I passed out of its sight.
CHAPTER 18
I wasn’t sure if it was my imagination that Mimi was looking at me more closely than usual, her bicolored eyes more penetrating. Or it could have been just my guilt over having trespassed so blatantly. As I sat down in the chair Beau had pulled out for me, I had to bite my tongue to keep from blurting out all my questions about that weird room, including why I had found my missing hairbrush amid the detritus of other people’s lives.
“I’m sorry I took so long,” I said, helping myself to a steaming bowl of white rice. “I was admiring the architectural details of your house, as well as the artwork.” I passed the bowl to Beau, who placed it on the table without taking any. “Whoever picked out the art has an incredible eye,” I continued. I’d learned in my recent past that when lying it was best to keep as close to the truth as possible. I was hoping to also butter Mimi up in the hope that it might save her opinion of me in case she discovered I’d been snooping.
Mimi lifted the lid from the tureen and I ladled red beans and sausage on top of my rice. I was grateful for the sausage, as I could focus on removing it and not meet Mimi’s eyes. Beau waved his hand at Mimi, indicating that he didn’t want any, his plate conspicuously empty.
“Really, Beau,” Mimi said. “Go on up to your room and lie down, at least until the Tylenol kicks in.”
