The Number 7
THE
NUMBER
7
Jessica Lidh
DEDICATION
To Nonnie and Poppop, who taught me how their stories are my story.
Det som göms i snö, kommer fram vid tö.
What is frozen in snow is revealed at thaw.
—SWEDISH PROVERB
I.
This is what I’ve learned: family secrets are never buried with their dead. They can’t fit in the coffins; they don’t ignite in the crematoriums. They linger and drift like the smoke of an abandoned cigarette. And I’ve learned that the living can sense them. We can’t see the secrets; we can’t even articulate what it is we feel when we’re close to them. But they’re there. They remain long after the rigor mortis has set in. Maybe it’s then that they escape. They get squeezed out of long, taut fingertips and burst into the wide open, gasping for air. And there they hang, waiting for someone like me to come and pluck them down.
Trust me.
Nothing stays hidden forever.
I didn’t want to go to Pennsylvania. Dad had requested my help, had enlisted my help, but Greta didn’t have to go. She feigned a cold the night before we left, walking around the house in her rose-colored robe, carrying a box of Kleenex. The kettle sang on the hour as she sniffled and poured herself another cup of Earl Grey tea with two cubes of sugar and some fat-free milk. Greta wanted to be British. Dad called it a phase, but I called it a con. She spelled her words with misplaced vowels: colour, theatre, humour. Her favorite channel was BBC, she obsessed over UK fashion, and she had pictures of Princess Diana and Duchess Kate framed in her bedroom. Dad and I drank coffee. No sugar, no cream, no fuss.
“Louisa, be sure to take some Sharpies and packing tape.” Greta sniffled the next morning as she climbed back into bed. “And take some biscuits for the road.” They’re cookies, not biscuits, I glared back at her.
“You know she’s not sick,” I sighed heavily, leaning against the side of our blue Subaru as I watched Dad struggle to fit his duffel into the back. The engine was already running. Exhaust coughed heavy gray clouds into the damp early morning air.
“Yep.”
“So why doesn’t she have to come?” I fingered the green fringe on my scarf. I always loved green. Not pink. Not red. And certainly not purple. Green was the color of our front door, and so green always reminded me of home.
“Greta’s about to turn eighteen. She needs to learn to make her own decisions. Do you have the thermos?” Dad pulled out my backpack and retrieved the carafe of freshly brewed coffee.
“I’m getting older, too. I’m sixteen now. Why do I have to go? I didn’t even know her.”
“To be honest, Lou, I don’t want to go alone, okay?” Dad sucked wind between his chattering teeth. “Get your mittens and let’s go.” Conversation over.
The North Carolina morning seemed to be getting darker; it was unusually cool for October. A hiccup in space and time. And I knew it was going to be colder where we were headed. He zipped up his bright orange fleece—the one Mom had given him for his birthday. It was a running joke in our family and memory 32 on my list of memories: Always gave Dad winter clothes in July.
As we pulled out of the driveway, Dad waved goodbye to Greta, who stood haughtily in the doorway. Her tall, dark silhouette waved back as I folded my arms in defeat.
II.
At the very least, I thought, Dad saved me from another week of mindless homecoming banter. For two months, I’d endured school hallways canvased with colorful posters about dresses and dates and how “enchanted” the evening would be. There were never any posters for the girls without dates.
I stared at my face in the visor mirror and pulled it close, preferring to look at my image in enlarged, exaggerated frames. Snapshots of pieces of me. I wasn’t afraid of seeing the oil, the blemishes, the freckles. It wasn’t so bad. But when I scaled back, that’s when my features felt out of place. In full-length mirrors I always turned to one side so I could only see my profile. There were my wide, brown eyes that sat far apart from one another, outlined in thin, black pencil. My two thick brows in need of shaping. A pink bottom lip that protruded just so. Greta said I gave the impression I was always pouting, but what did she know?
“It’s weird that you’re going back now—now that she’s not even there,” I said, sticking my tongue out at myself before flipping the mirror back up, not really knowing how to ask Dad what I was really thinking: how he was feeling. We all tended to avoid those types of questions.
“The irony is not lost on me,” Dad sighed.
“Well, it’s not like either she or Grandpa made that much of an effort to see us. And you never talked about either of them. Nothing’s going to change now that she’s actually dead.” I bit a hangnail and let my words fall. I could sense the flashing red lights, the blaring alarms; I was getting perilously close to the Magnusson “Do Not Enter” zone, the place we weren’t allowed to go, that place where we talked openly about the past.
“Thanks for coming, kiddo,” Dad sighed, steering the conversation away from where I was trying to take it. He was so good at that; I called it his “sleight of hand communication diversion.” Don’t-look-up-my-sleeve kind of stuff.
He leaned over and squeezed my knee apologetically. I wanted to erase the nameless space between us, gulp it down so it wasn’t outside of us anymore, but I didn’t know how. I pulled my scrawny legs beneath my chin, placed my feet up on the dash, and tugged mindlessly on the rubber soles of my Converse sneakers. Greta thought I needed a new pair, but I loved the look of tattered black canvas. They’d been worn out with love. How could I trash something like that?
“Sure,” I mumbled. I was used to repeating words that didn’t measure true feeling. I called them “the deficients”: words like “fine,” “good,” and “nice.” How are you feeling today, Louisa? I’m fine, thank you. I was a master of the deficients.
It was a long drive and as we entered Pennsylvania’s Brandywine Valley, I thought about chances. Dad always said that we had various chances in life, and it was up to us to choose the right ones to follow. To Dad, everything was a choose-your-own-adventure story. A chance to thrive or to suffer. The only chance we didn’t have was the chance to start over, the chance to go back. Being brave, Dad used to say, means never looking back. But there were times I wanted to look back—times I needed to.
Our destination was deep in the rolling woods down a winding, isolated road. Dad pointed up the hill to a house glowing in the fading light. Someone had left the porch light on.
The house was an old colonial with dark orange pine siding, but the paint was chipping off in large flakes. Brown, toothless shutters made the face of the house look cold and stiff. The door wasn’t green.
“Looks . . . nice,” I choked out, but even Dad could tell it was one of the deficients. I’d once studied the Merriam-Webster thesaurus, resolute in finding replacements for them. I thought I’d be able to expand my vocabulary and shed the deficients like an old skin. I thought I’d be able to drop words like copacetic, salubrious, and pulchritudinous into ordinary conversation. Instead, they stuck with me. I couldn’t part with them, or they with me. I realized renouncing the deficients would mean forgetting all those times I had needed them—had relied on them.
And my use for them wasn’t over. Greta. I sighed. Why wasn’t she here?
Crinkled leaves hedged a slate walkway to a small portico. I purposely walked along the edge of the walkway, letting the leaves crunch beneath my feet. On the front step sat two squatty pumpkins. Their flesh looked soft with decomposition and I tapped one with my foot. My shoe sunk into the pulp and I recoiled in disgust, wiping the excess flesh on the grass. A small, oxidized copper plaque sat next to the front door with one word:
Hemmanet. I ran my half-painted, half-eaten fingernails over the embossed letters.
“Swedish for ‘The Homestead,’” Dad explained, as if I should have known.
Standing in front of the door, Dad took a deep breath.
“I haven’t been here for twenty-three years,” he said into the fading light where his words hung in the air on a hanger. He stared up at the roof, surveying what had become of his childhood home. He shook his head absentmindedly. Being brave means never looking back.
“Sorry.” He turned the key and shoved the door open with his shoulder. Instinctively, he reached inside and flipped on an overhead light. He paused, taking it all in. I watched him, feeling as if I were on the other side of some oversized looking glass. He was on the inside, but I could only gaze in. I was separate from him. He knew this place. This house was his house; not ours, not mine. It was as if I wasn’t even there.
We stepped into a small mudroom. A single lamp hung from the ceiling. The air was damp and cold and smelled of antiquity.
“C’mon, the thermostat is in the kitchen.”
“Just draw me a map, Dad,” I muttered, but he didn’t notice. He was too absorbed jumping through time, navigating old memories.
I looked around the foyer. A wooden staircase with two thick banisters shone with years of wear. On the wall, a long wire suspended a gilded frame.
“Hey, Mom,” Dad greeted the old painting. He sounded young. Like he’d missed curfew, or was late to dinner.
The portrait glanced casually down at us from a stretched canvas. My grandmother’s head rested in her curled fist, and her waxy cheek pressed around the bony knuckles of her left hand. She looked dignified, leering over the foyer—guarding the house, guarding its secrets. Who was I to be in her house? I knew nothing about this woman or her life. I was a stranger and she a ghost.
I peeked into the front parlor, where brass sconces holding half-burned candles hung on outstretched walls. Lines of soot snaked their way up to a plaster ceiling. Crowded bookshelves framed a giant hearth encasing ashes from a fire long cold.
Dad led me down a dark hallway to a black-and-white tiled kitchen where water stains and brown burn rings marred butcher-block countertops. I tried to picture Grandma standing there, placing sweating glasses of iced tea or saucepots full of tomato soup on the smooth wood surface. She hadn’t preserved her kitchen; she’d abused it. This was her workshop.
“I’m afraid to open it,” Dad gestured toward the avocado Frigidaire in the corner.
“She’s only been gone a couple days . . .” I ran my palm over a divot in the butcher block and let my bangs fall over my eyes. “How bad could it be?”
He walked over and pulled the latch. Inside, he found a last bowl’s worth of whole milk, a chunk of Swiss cheese, and a jar of strong mustard. He dumped the milk down the sink, where it poured out in small, sour chunks, and then he walked to the far end of the kitchen where the thermostat was mounted on the wall. He turned the dial and the radiator close to me began to warm.
“Dad?” I wanted to tell him that maybe this trip was meant to be and that maybe this was the fresh start he and I needed. I was about to tell him everything I’d been holding back for a long time when a small voice interrupted from down the hall.
“Hello?”
A tall, pale woman with striking copper hair glided down the hall toward us. Long strides and fluid footsteps. I’d seen that type of movement before. She had to be a dancer. The woman’s wide eyes grinned.
“I don’t mean to intrude, but I’m afraid your phone’s disconnected and no one answered the door,” the woman purred to Dad. “I came by to drop off my key. I’m Rosemary. I live down the hill. I’ve been watching over the house.”
“Of course. Sure. Nice to meet you. I’m Christian Magnusson.” He stuck out his hand and the woman took it tenderly. “We just arrived a minute ago. Can I get you something to drink? I don’t know what Mom has around,” he glanced toward the cabinets.
“No, thanks,” her voice was soothing, like slow-dripping honey. “I really didn’t mean to interrupt . . .” There was an extended pause as Rosemary surveyed the room. Her eyes lingered on me—almost through me—and she grinned even wider. I had to look away. There was something intense about her. Her eyes? Her teeth?
“It’s good to get life back into the place. Be sure to open the windows tomorrow. Release all this enclosed energy,” she smiled. “Christian, it was great meeting you. I’ll see you around, Louisa,” Rosemary pulled on red leather gloves to acknowledge her departure.
“I’ll walk you out.” Dad followed her to the foyer.
I shivered, despite standing so close to the radiator. Had I told her my name?
Dad’s old bedroom had been dusted recently. It looked as if Grandma had been expecting company—as if she’d made up the bed especially for me. It was creepy.
Dad put my bag down on a small vanity in the corner. None of the furniture seemed to quite fit. It was all just a mishmash of oddly sized Shaker antiques. Some Lilliputian, others colossal.
“The bathroom is across the hall. You have to turn the hot-water faucet twice as far as the cold, but it should work.” He opened an oversized trunk at the foot of the bed, pulled out two crocheted blankets, one green, one blue, and set them on top of my bag. The whole operation felt like a hotel check-in. Did I need to ask about a wake-up call? Or what time breakfast would be served?
“Okay,” I took a seat on the mattress, the springs squeaking even under my little weight.
“Call me if you need anything. I’ll be right downstairs.” Dad began to leave. “Oh, and kiddo?” He paused in the doorway. “I love you.”
“I know. I love you too, Dad. Night.”
“Good night.” He closed the door, and I heard him descend the stairs. Then everything was still.
I skipped brushing my teeth and went straight to bed. The sooner I fell asleep, the sooner it’d be morning. The room was warm, but the bed sheets cold. I slid between them as carefully as one enters a cool pool of water. Stretching out my legs past the end of the bed, I felt like a doll in a dollhouse. I thought about Greta. What was she doing? No doubt sitting in bed with a cup and saucer balanced on one knee, rolling her hair in pink foam curlers. She slept in them, but I wasn’t ever allowed to tell people that. With Greta, there was a lot I wasn’t allowed to tell. And lately, there was a lot I didn’t seem to know. Still, I wished she were here in this big house with me. I breathed heavily into my blanket and listened to the house’s creaks and pangs sounding like the popping joints in an old body. An animal screeched outside, and I wondered: if I shouted out into the darkness, would it answer me back?
III.
I woke with the sun the next morning to find Dad already awake, tossing a freshly toasted onion bagel onto a plate.
“I had to swing by the funeral parlor to sign some papers, so I stopped to pick up some breakfast on the way.”
“Sounds good,” I yawned. “Is everything okay with the . . . arrangements?” I hated having to ask. I loathed funerals.
Dad poured me a tall tumbler of orange juice. I gulped it down in one shot and wiped my mouth with the back of my hand.
“She didn’t want a funeral, so we’re doing a cremation,” he remarked casually.
I wondered if he hoped I wouldn’t think about it, but I did.
“Like Mom.” I chewed on a piece of bagel.
“Like Mom,” he sighed in agreement.
For a moment, I thought about the oak tree against the stone wall near Mom’s plot. This late in the year, the cemetery would be ablaze with color. I closed my eyes, visualized Mom’s headstone, and envisioned its inscription.
Dismiss whatever insults your own soul
And your very flesh shall be a great poem
Walt Whitman, Mom’s favorite. Memory 4. I’d already decided that on my eighteenth birthday I’d get it tattooed. I just didn’t know where. My wrist? My ankle? Somewhere I could see it every day. I slowly exhaled.
“I was going to have you start with the attic, and I was going to work on packing up the kitchen.”
“And I thought it couldn’t get any worse,” I moaned.
But Dad was undeterred by my cynicism. He poured himself more coffee from the pot on the counter. “Later, we can take a walk around the property. We own ten acres.”
“I didn’t realize we owned anything.”
I watched him as he ran his hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. He was getting grayer by the day, but it looked okay. I wasn’t ignorant of the fact that my dad was handsome. I remembered how single moms reapplied red lipstick at the lunch after Mom’s memorial. They munched on cucumber sandwiches, drank Sweet’N Low coffee, and talked in hushed whispers, smiling hopefully at my dad. He never noticed them, but I did.
The wind blew outside the kitchen window.
“Despite everything, this is a good house,” he said to himself, staring intently into his cup, but I, of course, had no idea what he was talking about. Despite what, Dad? “Be sure to take a jacket; I don’t think there’s any heat up there.”
My grandmother’s attic was a mausoleum. A lamp with a mosaic shade rested in a corner. An old, foot-powered sewing machine sat to one side. I casually opened the lid of a cardboard box and found it packed to the brim with red-and-gold glass Christmas ornaments. Loose gray puffs of rock wool insulation burst along the walls as if the house were a teddy bear splitting at the seams. I spelled “Louisa” in the dust atop an organ with yellowed keys and then blew it away. Walking to the far end of the attic, I shoved a circular dormer window with my shoulder and it fell open with a deep sigh. This house needed to breathe fresh air just as much as I did. It would be redundant to say everything in the attic was old. In a large rolltop desk stained with inkblots I found stamps from 1957 and a disintegrating typewriter ribbon. Tucked in one of the letter slots was an unstamped postcard. The picture on the front was an old photo of the Liberty Bell in Philadelphia. I could vaguely make out the handwriting.