Page 6 of Dying to Meet You
I don’t believe in ghosts, and yet I understand why some people think this place is haunted. All old houses make noises, but this one makes more than its fair share. Creaks and groans. Century-old beams stretch and shift, like weary bones, and the atrium seems to magnify them.
My last stop is in the parlor—the biggest, brightest room on the first floor. There’s a carved marble fireplace imported from Italy and exquisite wall paintings of gods and goddesses, dolphins and ships.
To my eye, they’re a little overwrought. That’s my other dirty little secret—I don’t love the house like Beatrice does. My feelings about the mansion are the kind you have about a formidable acquaintance—one you respect, but whose company you don’t actually always enjoy.
This room is my favorite, though, with its high ceilings and French windows. The air smells of sunbaked varnish and perseverance. That’s the allure of old buildings—their dignity and their wisdom. I like to imagine this room in 1860, when the wall paintings were new. There would have been imported carpets on the floor and elaborate silk curtains on the windows.
Nobody becomes an architect by accident. You have to have an appreciation for grand spaces. You have to acknowledge the miracle of hand-carved moldings.
Although sometimes when I stand quietly in these empty rooms, it’seasier to evoke the Magdalene Home for Wayward Girls, circa 1965, than it is to picture the elegant mansion of 1860. I can almost hear the squeak of saddle shoes and the clank of the steam radiators that Marcus Wincott had installed to modernize the heating.
As I stare through the dust motes swirling toward the floorboards, I swear I can hear the murmur of the mealtime prayer from the dining room across the hall. The clatter of forks and the clink of teacups. The girls and their babies are almost more interesting to me than the Wincotts’ grandiosity.
After all, I was once a freaked-out pregnant girl myself.
I pause at the doorway and listen once more. Like people, every building has its own voice. The creak of the beams expanding under the slate roof. The rush of Maine’s coastal breezes buffeting the leaded-glass windows.
This home was built when Thomas Jefferson was president, and was expanded when Lincoln was president. Teddy Roosevelt slept here once in 1902, right upstairs.
And now another summer begins. This is the season when tourists swarm Portland. They’re here to eat lobster rolls and walk past the old buildings. The Wincott Mansion has stood like a solemn doyenne on this block for almost two centuries, as Portland grew from a little fishing village to a bustling city.
She stands here, watching through leaded-glass eyes as people swirl around her sandstone skirts with their ever-changing desires. They come and go with the seasons and the tides. The mansion looks down at them with a benign smile and thinks:Your petty dramas have nothing on me.
3
Coralie
When Mr. Wincott returns to the office, Coralie is taking a call from the caterer.
“He can have the goat-cheese cups,” the caterer says. “But not the prosciutto and melon. There are no decent cantaloupes this time of year.”
“Understood,” she says, scribbling this down on a pink telephone message pad.
“No other changes to the hors d’oeuvres.”
“Wonderful,” she says, wondering how you spellhors d’oeuvres. She writesappetizers, because otherwise he’ll mock her for her ignorance.
Unfortunately, she misses the next thing the caterer says, because she’s watching Mr. Wincott stomp over to the coffeepot, which is empty.
Oh no.
“Everything else looks good. See you Tuesday,” the caterer says.
“Yes. Thank you. Goodbye, now.” She hangs up, her head pounding. This job is easier when she’s not hungover.
Probably.
“No coffee?” he says in lieu of a greeting.
“I’ll make some now,” she says, hating the quaver in her voice. “You didn’t say if you were coming back.”
He slaps the empty carafe onto the counter with enough force that she winces. “Make it quick. I have a call in ten. Is the memo on my desk?”
“Yes, sir.” She’s just praying there aren’t many errors in it. Not like last time.That’s sloppy work, Coralie.You’re lucky I forgive you. She hears that a lot.
This is her fifth month on the job, and she can tell that his frustration is building.
She grabs a fresh coffee filter and fits it into the basket in a pantomime of “hardworking girl making coffee.”
