Home is a Four Letter Word

I have to get to Nightingale at some stage. He's the reason I never came back and the reason I left in the first place. I've spent so much of my life trying to forget he ever existed, telling myself that he holds no power over me, but he does. To this day, I freeze when I hear the sound of a match being struck, especially if the sound comes from behind me. And, of course, I have avoided returning to the house because his shadow is everywhere.

Nightingale. The name still gives me shivers. In English class at the Academy, I had to write a paper on Keats's "Ode to a Nightingale," which led to the most traumatic two weeks I've ever spent in my life. When I got to the lines "Was it a vision, or a waking dream?/Fled is that music:--do I wake or sleep?" I wondered whether I could pretend he was a dream, a horrible nightmare, whether I could force him and what happened out of my mind. In the end, I could not compare the horror that was Nightingale with the song of a bird, that Dryad of the trees. I got a C.

There's some law of physics that states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For the goodness that Nancy brought to my life, there had to be something to balance it. That was Nightingale.

Father hired him to take care of the property, and he was an excellent groundskeeper, though I hate to give him credit for anything. He was responsible for the gardens at the front of the house, the oak and maple forest beyond it, which contained a rhododendron grove, and the pine forest on the other side of the drive. Both forests covered the bulk of the property, and Nightingale was also responsible for making sure the stone walls that delineated the grounds were kept in good repair. At the end of the gardens, at the side of the house, a path that quickly turned to sand led to the base of the cliffs. At the top of the path, Nightingale had a greenhouse and a shed for his tools, and on hot days he would sit by the open door of the shed, transplanting seedlings from the greenhouse and smoking, incessantly smoking.

He appeared maybe six months after Nancy. She had already begun teaching me how to cook and had asked me to get some flat leaf parsley from the garden. I ran out the back door, and stopped when I saw Father with a stranger.

Nightingale. Dark, greasy hair peeked out from under a dusty tweed hat, and his long, craggy, pinched face was tanned to leather by the sun. Slightly stooped from the gardening he'd done most of his life, he wore an old plaid coat, from which his neck stuck out like a vulture. Father was giving him a tour of the grounds, acting like lord of the manor, which I suppose he was.

"Now this, Nightingale, is the kitchen garden. The cook takes care of it, so I don't expect you to do much back here. She might ask you for mulch or fertilizer or something, and I'll expect you to help her out if she asks."

Nightingale took a deep pull on the cigarette in one corner of his mouth, and blew the smoke out the other, keeping his hands in the pockets of his beige corduroys. "Sounds reasonable," he said, his voice scratchy from cigarettes and phlegm. His head swiveled around to me, his dark eyes narrowing.

"Ah, Joseph," Father said. "This is the new gardener. Phillip Nightingale, this is my son, Joseph."

I had been taught to be polite and to shake hands, and Father was looking at me with the expectation that I should. The thought of touching this man was repugnant, but I walked over and stuck my hand out anyway. "Pleased to meet you, Mr. Nightingale," I said.

Nightingale chuckled and ignored my hand. Looking around the side of the house, he asked Father, "That path lead to the shore?"

Taken aback by Nightingale's disregard for the niceties, Father stuttered, "Ah, yes, yes, that's the path down . . . shall we?" Nightingale slowly followed him, but stopped to take the remaining stub of cigarette out of his mouth and flick it into the herb garden. Then he turned to me.

"You look like a smart kid," he said. "You don't come anywhere near my garden. You got that?" His eyes narrowed further, his gaze like a laser beam.

I nodded, rooted to the spot. Nightingale twisted his mouth into a smile and followed after Father, pulling another cigarette out of a pack as he went.

I turned back to the garden and grabbed the parsley, running back to the house. Nancy was standing at the kitchen door. "Who was that?" she asked.

"The new gardener," I replied, handing her the parsley.

She put her hand on the top of my head, her eyes on Nightingale's departing back. "Gives me the creeps," she said with a shudder.

Though I thrived on the hours I spent with Nancy, she was very careful to make sure I didn't spend all my time with her. "You should be outside, exploring," she'd say. "Even inside exploring. This house is enormous. There must be plenty of nooks and crannies to discover."

Looking back, I suppose I slowed her down, asking questions, chopping vegetables three times more slowly than she did. She was my only safe haven, yet I suppose she was wise to put some distance between us, hired cook and employer's son.

On nice days, I would run out the back door, past the kitchen garden, and toward the path to play on the beach, standing first at the side of the house to peek around and see where Nightingale was. He terrified me, not just by what he'd said to me the day we met, but also because of his habit of stopping me whenever I was within earshot. He would invariably say something to me, something about a patch of irises trampled or stones knocked off a wall, and accuse me of doing it. I would stand there as he stood over me and demanded that I admit my wrong doings, even though he had to know it couldn't have been me; he had to know I spent most of my time indoors or down by the ocean.

I'm sure he enjoyed torturing me like this, enjoyed the fact that I wouldn't run when he called my name, would stand with my head hung as he berated me. Instead, I found a shortcut to the path by skidding down the dangerous rocky side of the cliff, skirting boulders and entangling myself in the thorns of beach roses. Sometimes I'd look back up the hill and see Nightingale standing there, eyes narrowed, puffs of smoke wafting out of the side of his mouth.

It was worth it to get to the shore, though. I spent long hours combing the ride line for treasures: driftwood, oddly shaped shells in the sand, pieces of fishing tackle.

I've often wondered about the sea. So many musicians and poets give it a slow, undulating presence, as though the sea lulled, that you could lie on it and relax in its slow up and down caress. The sea I grew up with is a mess: sharp waves bumping into others, some waves hitting the beach head on, others lost arriving diagonally, crashing into other lost souls, dying on the beige sand without having any of their frightened seeking answered. Somehow the chaotic nature of the waves that crashed haphazardly on the beach and cliffs near the house made me feel better about my own life, as though there was something in the world less in control than I.

On rainy days I would lie on my back in the drawing room making up stories or read in the window seat. I read all sorts of books, but mysteries were my favorite. I started with the Hardy Boys, and after I devoured that series moved on to Alfred Hitchcock's Three Investigators. After that, I began looking at the world in a whole new light, examining spaces in the house I thought I knew so well, trying to infer things from boxes I'd find in closets, following Grahame around to see what he did during the day (which turned out to be very innocuous, except for a stolen cigarette or two in the basement, the scent of which he would spritz away with Binaca).

In a closet at the top of the spiral stairs, I found a dumping ground for toys and books, some made long before Father was born. One box contained hundreds of antique marbles, agates, tiger-eyes, blue and green and red balls that glowed on my palm. I took them into the hallway outside my room and flicked them at certain spots along the wainscoting, trying to hit the same spot each time, perfecting my game, whatever game that was. One of my favorite marbles got wedged in a crack in the wood, and as I tried to pry it out I saw that the crack wasn't a crack at all. Following it up the wall over to the right, I could see it was a hidden door.

I felt ready to apply my new investigator skills. First, I checked to make sure no one was down the hallway. Then I rapped along the crack, trying to find a hidden latch. Fetching a chair from my room, I pushed along the top edge of the door, and it popped out. Peering into the opening, I had to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Slowly, I began to make out a dusty landing, with stairs going up and down. I needed some light to see better, so I ran across the hall to my room where I had an old metal flashlight.

I stepped onto the dusty landing and played light on the door to the hallway to find a latch so that I could safely shut the door and get out again. Then I made the decision to go up. There were heavy wisps of web left by spiders long gone, and I pushed them out of my way as I climbed, taking care to test each step for creaks before I put my full weight on it. I didn't want anyone else finding the secret staircase.

At the top was another latched door, and I stood for a moment listening for any noise on the other side. Then I slowly lifted the latch and swung the door open.

It was late morning, and the sun was still shining full on the east side of the house, sending dusty shafts of light through the attic windows. The ceiling was high, higher than you'd think by looking at the top floor of the house from the outside, and the floor was made of thick wood planks. To the right was a two-story construct, like a hayloft in a barn, which was packed full of trunks and antiques, some covered carefully with drop cloths, others tossed carelessly and left to gather dust. The light was beautiful, and I was drawn to the rectangular space on the floor the sun made. I sat down and closed my eyes, letting the heat warm me through. It became my favorite space.

The secret staircase led from attic to basement. I later surmised that Grandfather must have built it to help his bootlegging activities. I explored it all the way down to the basement, but the only use I could really see for it was sneaking up on Grahame, and since I'd already "investigated" him, I used it only for sneaking up to the attic. I spent hours up there, at all times of day, looking at antiques, going through trunks, finding old photographs of family, reading about how beloved Great-Grandfather had been, inferring how universally reviled Grandfather had been. The huge windows afforded a great view of the ocean at the back and the gardens and forest at the front. They were also high enough to give a view of the village church and cemetery, which stood on a high point of land before sloping to the harbor.

I became a watcher, counting the ships that sailed up and down the coast, seeing what I could see of others down on the ground. I became most interested in Nightingale, of course. Knowing I was high above him, watching without being observed, gave me a sense of power over him. On the ground, he seemed omniscient, always knowing where I was. But up there, he had no idea I was scrutinizing his every move.

Through following him, I realized that he, too, was a watcher. Nothing escaped his notice. If Father drove off, I saw Nightingale check his watch and check it again upon his return. He watched as Nancy went to do the weekly shopping, as Mother wandered off to buy more gin, as Grahame washed the cars. Sometimes he wrote things down with a pencil in a small notebook. He watched Mary go by, riding her bike or walking to the shore. But that look was different. He would stand taking deep drags on his cigarette, exhaling slowly, sometimes standing and watching even though she had disappeared from view. After a few minutes he would shake himself out of his reverie and go back to raking or planting or whatever it was he was doing.

He also spent time studying the grounds and the house. Once I thought he had caught me watching him, but it seemed he was only studying the attic floor from the outside, trying to make out its dimensions. Occasionally, he would appear in the kitchen and ask Nancy for a cup of coffee. I would always leave the room when I saw him coming, but would stay within earshot, sometimes hiding in the secret stairwell so that I could jump out and defend her if need be. He always treated her with respect though; it was a side of him I didn't think could exist. Nancy always maintained that polite or rude, he gave her the creeps, but if he wanted a coffee he could have one.

Listening one afternoon, I realized that he was working out the layout of the house, trying to fit the puzzle of its architecture together.

"You got a fruit cellar or something downstairs?" he asked her, slurping loudly from his cup.

There was a pause before Nancy spoke, and I knew she was trying to figure out what exactly it was that he wanted. "No, I have a cool room off the butler's pantry. It keeps things well enough. Besides, the basement is dusty and in need of a coat of whitewash, and a dirt floor isn't my idea of hygienic."

More slurping. "There's some sort of passage there, though, isn't there? A door or something to the shore?"

I could hear irritation in Nancy's voice as she replied, "I wouldn't know about that, Mr. Nightingale, I'm just the cook. I should think you needn't worry about that either, since it isn't attached to the gardens as far as I know."

Nightingale took on a conciliatory tone. "Yes, ma'am, you're absolutely right. I just like solving puzzles, is all. I didn't mean any offense." I heard a cup sound on the counter. "Sorry to have bothered you. Thanks for the coffee, it was very good."

I finally understood his interest in the goings on at the house one afternoon as I tiptoed up the secret staircase to the attic. I had a habit of moving stealthily, waiting and listening before I opened a door or moved up or down the stairs. Sometimes I'd pretend I was a spy on a mission, gathering intelligence by surveillance. Before I opened the secret door to the attic, I stood and listened. And heard a step. Then a scrape. Someone was in the attic, moving through the antiques.

From the heavy sound of the steps, I knew that I could lift the latch and open the door without being detected. As I peered out between the door and the jamb, I had to stifle a gasp as I recognized Nightingale.

I hadn't expected him in my territory, and I was furious and terrified in turns. Was there no place safe for me? But my emotions were tamed by my budding realization that he had planned this visit very carefully. Father was at a weekly meeting in the city, a meeting that lasted all afternoon. It was Nancy's day to do the grocery shopping, and she would be gone for at least two hours. These were the very reasons I had come up to the attic myself. Mother was probably having her afternoon "nap" after the first pitcher of gin and tonics had been finished off. I knew from my investigations that Grahame would be in the basement indulging in a cigarette or two in the few hours of quiet he had. And Mary, well, Mary was always away; the only times she was ever around was on rainy days which she would spend practicing the piano or reading in her room.

I watched as Nightingale moved through the hayloft of furniture, uncovering some pieces, moving others to the side, and taking notes on it all in that little notebook of his. He was taking an inventory of the antiques, licking the nib of pencil lead with his tongue before putting it to paper.

After about thirty minutes, he checked his watch, pocketed the notebook, and climbed down to the main attic floor. I shut the secret door as softly as I could and waited until I heard his footsteps cross to the front of the house, then down to the staircase that led to the second floor and finally the kitchen.

I opened the door and walked out into my violated sanctuary. I knew I could never again feel safe here; I would always be listening for him. I thought of the times I had fallen asleep in the swath of sunlight on the floor, waking only when my body felt the light move over the house. I could never do that again, never watch for him out the windows for fear that he would appear behind me.

As a consequence, private space became very important to me. I guess it is to everyone, but more so to me, who growing up never had any space that was truly mine, a place where I could be alone and feel safe. Oh, I had my room I suppose, a narrow dark place with a small window that faced the ocean. But this little space had replaced a huge airy room at the front of the house, next to Father and Mother's room. After Mother's discovery of Father's infidelity, Mary and I were exiled to the back of the house.

At least Mary had been smart enough to move herself down to the large corner room that must once have been the housekeeper's space, dragging boxes of her belongings down the hallway and hounding Grahame into moving her mahogany bed frame.

Even now, as an adult, I take private space seriously, like a religion. I won't allow girlfriends to leave cosmetics in the medicine cabinet, and more than once I've stood above the opened drawers of my bureau, pointing and scolding, "No," while mascara tears run down their faces. "Understand? Mine." That's usually the sign that they'll be moving on soon.

But for that twelve-year-old boy who lost his refuge, there was no pointing, no declaring, "No, mine." For him there was only a shrinking world, and I began to feel the resolve to expand it somehow.