The Restoration of Celia Fairchild - Marie Bostwick Page 0,20

bitter, blamed Calpurnia for everything.”

“But I thought it was the other driver’s fault, that he drifted into the other lane while he was unwrapping a cheeseburger.”

“It was, but Sterling didn’t care. And that wasn’t the only thing. When I was twelve, Sterling decided that we should move out. Calpurnia was devastated. She lost her mind a little bit and . . .”

I stopped. The odyssey was too terrible, too wonderful, too complicated to explain to Calvin, and sometimes even to myself. I skipped ahead.

“Anyway, it’s a long story. After Sterling died, I thought things would be different, so I went to the house and rang the bell. I knew Aunt Calpurnia was there because I saw the curtains move. I stood on the porch for a good twenty minutes, ringing the bell over and over, but she wouldn’t answer. That was the day I decided to go to New York.”

Calvin stopped in his tracks and looked at me. “That is really sad.”

It was.

We walked in silence for a while. I tried not to think about that day, the way the curtain had moved, just an inch, the time I’d spent standing there, the hollow, hopeless sound my footsteps made as I dismounted the steps and walked away. Instead, I looked at the palms and the people, the storefronts I remembered from the past, now with different names and stocks of goods, formerly familiar houses that had been updated, or painted a different color, or left absolutely untouched. When we walked past the college and a brick building with a fourth-story window of the room that had once been Sterling’s office, the memories clung so close that it was all I could do not to lift my hand to my face and brush them away.

We took a left onto Coming Street, past the overgrown ramshackle line of fraternities and sororities, separating into single file to avoid running into clutches of coeds, then crossed the street and headed into the heart of Harleston Village, the last and only place I’d ever really called home.

Harleston Village is a good neighborhood in a convenient location, close to the King Street shops and restaurants, with an energy that’s lacking in the stately mansions and staid streets south of Broad. Even when I was growing up, it was something of a mixed bag architecturally. You could find row houses, cottages, mansions, and classic Charleston singles from just about every era, even a few twentieth-century ramblers, often within the same block. But it was very much a neighborhood back then, a place where people knew each other.

We were early, so I took a detour to show Calvin the Queen Street Grocery, a corner store that’s been in business since 1922, once a full-fledged market, now more a café selling crepes, craft beer, and a few convenience goods. I told Calvin about buying ice pops there as a child and coming home with my fingers stained orange whenever the heat melted the syrup faster than I could eat, which was almost always.

We headed north on Queen Street, taking a couple of turns and arriving on time. But when we rounded the final corner, I stopped in my tracks. Calvin kept right on going, walking a good ten feet before realizing he was alone.

“Cel?” He turned to face me and frowned. “Are you okay?”

I looked right past him.

When I was growing up, Calpurnia’s house was one of the biggest, prettiest, best-kept residences on the block. Now it was my house. And it was a disaster.

The paint was peeling and the shutters were hanging at precarious angles. Three were missing entirely. The porch steps were completely stripped of paint, with treads that curled up at the ends, as if engaged in a battle to free themselves from the grip of the nails, a battle they appeared to be winning. If I’d had to guess, I’d say that a number of shingles were missing from the roof. When it came to the condition of the chimney, no guessing was required. The half-dozen broken bricks lying on the ground attested to its neglect.

An image of what the house once had been flashed in my mind then faded and melted into the shocking scene I saw before me now, like the clumsy special effect some talentless film student might use in his self-written, self-edited, postapocalyptic indie movie. It was awful and the garden was even worse.

Bordered by a decorative wrought iron fence and once Calpurnia’s pride, the tidy, trimmed courtyard I remembered from