What came to be known as "The Suicide House" was a small, well kept bungalow around the Old Road, just this side of the Ryans. It sat atop a hill with a spectacular view of the ocean and good light and was much admired. It had been built as a vacation cottage for a well off Massachusetts couple who had gradually turned it into a permanent home and after their deaths, it had passed into the hands of the bank who in turn told it to the oldest Titus boy and his wife, Johnny Ray and Florrie.
Florrie was, as Uncle Willie liked to say, bright as a shiny new dime and pretty as a daisy. She was dark haired and slight, on the petite side, optimistic and sunny natured but tough as old boots on the inside. She kept the little cottage pristine and friends were always welcomed with buttermilk and biscuits and a comfortable chair. She sang as she went though her daily chores, any song that came into her head although she favored the old Patsy Kline classics, and sometimes Uncle Willie said, if the wind was right, he could hear her singing as she hung the washing or tended the small garden she and Johnny Ray had planted. She was a good girl, folks said, good for Johnny Ray and a pleasure to be around, content, generous, serenely happy and delighted with life. Something of a dreamer though, folks also said, seeing her leaning on her broom on the small porch, gazing toward the sea with a faraway look in her eyes, head tilted to one side as if she were listening. These were small moments, folks said, and they were infrequent, but during these small moments, Florrie went away, her mind captured by distant voices and sounds far across the ocean. She would come back to herself and shake off the brief journey with a reassuring smile. Reckon my mind sometimes just wanders off to the other side, she would say with a shrug and resume her sweeping. Other side of what? Uncle Willie asked once, and she looked puzzled for a second of two. Why, she finally said, To the other side of the ocean, I imagine, and she laughed.
Uncle Willie repeated this slightly odd conversation to my grandmother who frowned slightly and told her own story of Florrie, of how one Sunday morning she had come across her standing at the edge of the breakwater and staring out to sea. Florrie? Nana had called to her but there was no answer. Mildly concerned, my grandmother had pulled the old Lincoln to the side of the road and approached the breakwater on foot, keeping her eyes firmly fixed on the young woman and calling her name loudly. When she still didn't appear to hear, Nana laid one hand on her shoulder, What are you looking at, Florrie? she asked worriedly, and Florrie turned and smiled at her, Alice! she said with surprise, What are you doing here? Nana persisted, What were you looking at, child? And Florrie laughed and said, Why, the water lilies, of course! What else?
Johnny Ray heard these stories and dismissed them, She daydreams sometimes, he told people, We all do. But he took to paying more attention to his pretty young wife, as did everyone, but Florrie continued to drift away for little bits of time, returning with a bright smile and no memory of the few lost minutes. In time, most people became accustomed to these short lapses and no one was prepared for the sound of the shot that rang out on a clear summer Saturday morning. Nana was beating rugs and she froze in mid stroke then rushed across the strawberry field and stumbled down The Old Road, whitefaced and unaccountably panic stricken. Uncle Willie and the Ryans had heard it as well and fearing the worst, had raced toward the little bungalow. Florrie lay in a heap on the freshly swept front porch, one hand still on her old broom, the pistol inches from her other.
Johnny Ray, bewildered and shattered, buried his wife a few days later and returned to the bungalow, desperately searching for some reason, some answer, some cause for the unbearable tragedy. He looked for signs, for clues, for anything to help him understand the unexplainable, and though he searched for years, he found nothing and slowly, painfully, came to terms with his loss, and left the bungalow for the mainland and a new start.
Abandoned and unattended, The Suicide House succumbed to the pasture and high grass and was soon overgrown and left to the elements. A late summer storm brought a lightning strike and within a few hours nothing remained save ashes and scorched wood, all of which was swept into the sea by a fierce rain. The regrowth made a perfect and peaceful grazing ground for sheep and The Suicide House was no more - mysterious forces more powerful than man and far less understood had done their work and done it well.
Reckon there's some things we's meant to take on faith, Uncle Willie allowed to my grandmother as they surveyed the ruins, some things we just ain't never meant to understand. Ain't it a bitch.
No comments:
Post a Comment