The Room at the Top of the House

Simon stood in the yard with his bare feet in the dewy grass. The garden beds bordering the lawn were still sunk in winter sleep, though the air told him spring had arrived, maybe only just now, this morning. Behind him he could hear the little creek at the edge of the woods as it gurgled over gray rocks.

Across the yard, a large house rose over a woodshed, a root cellar half-buried in the earth, and a handful of faded outbuildings. Grandma’s house.

Simon was barefoot in the cold grass because he had spent the night outside in a thick sleeping bag on one of the lawn loungers. Sleeping outside under bright stars, far from city lights, was worth braving the heavy dew and night chill. He hopped through the wet grass toward Grandma’s house, his damp sleeping bag bundled in his arms. Everyone would still be asleep at this hour. Except for Grandma, of course.

The house rose before him, three stories tall. More accurately, it was two stories of normal house perched on top of a daylight basement that was set into the side of a small canyon. His grandfather had poured that foundation himself long before Simon was born. All around, trees marched thick and green down the sides of the canyon, creating a shaded nest of forest and underbrush around the house and yard at the bottom. At the back of the house the second story was level with the lawn. In front it rose to its full three-level height above thick green grass and flower gardens. On the third floor was a room filled with books. The room felt as far away from the bottom-floor kitchen (where everyone spent all their time) as the dark side of the moon. It was the only place in the house Simon wanted to be.

When he came in from the yard he was surprised to find Mom already seated at the long table with coffee and book, a few of the smaller children tumbling sleepily around her feet. He shot by before she could ask him anything and dashed up the first flight of stairs to the living room on the second floor. He dumped the damp sleeping bag in the corner, then climbed the next flight of steps and crept past the unfinished bathroom full of building materials. At last he stepped through the door at the end of the hall and into a space of books and dust and pale light. He closed the door behind him, shutting out the smell of raw wood from the bathroom construction zone and musty carpet from the hallway, sealing himself into a silent, private cocoon.

The sun hadn’t yet risen above the rim of the canyon. The light was diffused, a dim blue that made everything less colorful, unearthly.

To Simon’s right was a closet full of moth-eaten clothing and old theater props: velvet gowns and coats, faded robes, large hats with feathers sticking out of the bands, tall boots, piles of fake jewelry, paper-mache masks. One mask looked like a grinning cat, missing an ear. Another was a samurai with his open mouth turned down at the corners. His favorite was a white, weeping face with large empty eye holes.

Straight ahead, a set of sliding glass doors opened onto a small deck. The 2x4 wooden railing had never been finished properly and it wobbled. It was a long way down to the yard and pointy branches of the big apple tree three stories below. All of them (the grandchildren) were forbidden to go out on the deck. From out there it was easy to climb over the railing and onto the roof of the house, scramble up the steep incline to the ridgepole, and look out over the surrounding wilderness. Wooded hills crowded in on the small box canyon from every direction. Not a single neighbor could be seen in any direction, even from the roof. On summer nights, the stars from the ridgepole were like the inside of a cavern of brilliant crystals—a glittering roof, vast and close, almost close enough to touch.

The left side of the room held a guest bed that no one had slept in for years. Beyond the bed were the books.

Green painted shelves rose from floor to ceiling and ran the full width of the room. Every inch was crammed with books, two and three rows deep. Some were upright, some stacked on their sides. Some were crammed into the space between the upright books and the underside of the shelf above them. A few stuck out over the edges and threatened to come cascading down in small avalanches at a touch. On the floor, more books leaned against each other in rows or rose in tall, teetering stacks. Several decades of National Geographic magazines completely filled one corner.

Far away at the bottom of the house, in another world, Simon could hear yelling and the slam of a door.

The first book he picked up was full of vintage science fiction paintings. He had seen this one before. It had probably belonged to one of his uncles or aunts when they were teens. Strange worlds depicted in rich, vivid colors spilled across the pages. Chrome cities glinted under twin red suns. Giant tilting planets with multiple rings around their middles and people in improbable spacesuits.

He picked up a history of railroads in frontier towns, part of a matched series of books with thick, oddly spongy covers about the growth of early America. He cracked one open and a familiar odor invaded his nostrils, as if the soot and steel and oiled leather in the somber black and white photos was seeping from the pages into the room.

Outside on the deck, a meadowlark chirped its distinctive melody. The sun was almost breaking over the rim of the hill now. Light sparkled through the tops of the trees along the ridge.

One whole section of shelves was dedicated to mystery novels. Simon recognized some of the names from Mom and Grandma’s conversations (and from other trips to the room at the top of the house): Agatha Christie, John Dickson Carr, Mary Roberts Reinheart. Not that he had read any of them. But the hand-painted covers were captivating. He slid one out at random. Here, a sunny lane wound between tall trees, a wide-eyed woman looking back over her shoulder, her mouth open in… fear? She was really pretty. He pulled out another book. A big black mansion took up most of the cover, the white lettering of the title jagged and tilted at an angle. A lone car sat in the driveway, its door open but no one in sight. He set the book aside and picked another. An empty tennis court encased in wire. A crow looked out through the cage at Simon with eyes that seemed too intelligent for a bird. Or how about this one? A shadowy still-life with an arrow, a stack of books, a pistol, and a girl’s pale face, blood running over her lip and chin and down her neck. All of them with titles like Double Sin or The Trouble with Willow set in heavy type.

He pawed through rows of paperbacks. His fingers closed on a thick black spine he did not recognize. Something new? He slid it out.

A woman, transparent and ghostly, sat at a desk with her back to the reader. She wasn’t wearing anything. Her hands hovered over a mechanical typewriter.

A muffled voice from the bottom of the house echoed in the stairwell beyond the closed door. “Simon? Where are you? Simon!”

He shoved the book roughly back into its slot on the shelf among the sea of spines. He hadn’t even caught the title. For a few fleeting seconds he studied the patterns of color and shape before him, hoping he would remember where to find her, the woman at the desk.

Scrambling to his feet, he hurried from the room and down the stairs with practiced stealth. He left through the back door on the second floor (where it was level with the grass) and jogged down the sloping lawn to the front of the house, soaking his feet with icy dew all over again.

Mom was in the doorway, hands on her hips. “Where have you been? I’ve been calling and calling.”

“Sorry.”

“The kids haven’t had breakfast yet.” She turned and went back inside.

When he entered the kitchen, it was clear he had annoyed not only his mother, but Grandma too. They scowled at him, side by side in front of the stove. Mom pointed at the long table. His younger siblings were already assembled, bowls of oatmeal in front of them. Simon hated oatmeal.

He helped them with the milk and sugar. He stirred. He spooned heaping globs of lukewarm oats into waiting mouths. Some of them spit it out again. It got on his hands and the sleeves of his sweater.

Grandma circled the table, pushing the handle of a butter knife between the chair slats into the back of any kid who slouched. Mom resettled herself at the head of the table with her book.

“Sit up straight,” Grandma warned, shifting the butter knife to her other hand.

One of the babies started screaming. Simon closed his eyes.

Stars winked over the ridgepole, close enough to touch. Books tumbled out onto the deck with the wobbly railing, flowed like water from the shelves, their pages leaking girls with big dark eyes who lingered by the sea under indigo clouds. There was a murderer in the closet among the masks. Planets with orange sand and pink trees flashed along the horizon. A woman in a wooden chair wearing nothing at all stood up slowly and began to turn. “I wrote a story,” she said. “Just for you. Shall I read it?”

“Simon!”

He dropped the spoonful of oatmeal. It hit the floor with a thick splat.

His mother sighed. “Now look at what you’ve done. Better clean it up.”

Meekly, Simon stooped and began to pinch up the warm gray lumps with a napkin.