Greenbriar Manor

Beyond The Trees

Brooklyn waits for an invitation to come home on the edge of night. 

His little sister sneaks and roams the old cellar looking for her doll. Fitfully she throws boxes aside and he carefully restacks them. Ingrim and Mack are his friends, and she has none. He will not lose his opportunity for some companionship here. The house is so old and drafty, and their father left long ago. He has heard Mack talking in his room to a picture. His dad is gone too. That is why it makes sense for them to be friends. Just like Bridgette was to his sister years ago, they had to take care of each other. He and her in the year between the eldest children moving away one by one and then the place being sold. They were lucky that the Greene family had let them keep the land and the treehouse. Some old developer could have come and torn it all down. He reminded her every single day. Still, she raged on into the night demanding some kind of truth he could not bring himself to tell her. Not knowing that he kept hiding her doll. So that for one more day, they would be together. 

He had lost Bridgette, and he would not lose his sister. No matter how many tantrums she threw. If they held out long enough the new little boys would go to school and bring home playmates and when a little girl arrived, then she too could introduce herself to them. Right now, it was too tender. The mother suspected something, and he needed time to get his mother acquainted with the idea of going over the hill and talking to her neighbors. She was the quiet type and stayed to her small patch of earth, nothing would bring her over the hill no matter what he asked of her she ignored him. Just sent them out to play morning until night again and again. Even the mother in the Manor did that with her sons. Adults do not like kids underfoot. So, they spent time in the treehouse with their checkers and other toys old and antiquated but familiar. Biding time. 

                                                                                    Meanwhile: Inside the Manor

Fran shoved the invitation she had found in the drawer of her desk and walked into the old library. She thumbed through row after row of brown binders overflowing with old newspaper clippings and photos. She opened the one marked summer of 45. A piece of waxy sheet music as thin as tissue paper fell out and drifted to the floor. She stared at it and refused to pick it up. This was the piece. Vera's old grainy audio recording in that shiny cylinder in her music box. Plink plinking along on that grand piano covered in plastic that she only played when at her most erratic and despondent. But not here. This was a timepiece lost. A hopeful child dream and an achievement that never came. Vera and Bridgette were family and friends, but they also were competitors for a prize far greater than a cake. Approval and a chance to become a woman in those days was everything. She opened the binder and in it was a Dodgers baseball ticket worn and brown around the edges. Dated the same day as the recital where Bridgette had a heart attack. 

She had always wondered where the others had been that day. What they had been doing when their sister was inexplicably lost to them. She turned it over in her hands and smiled a sad smile. If only Vera had come here instead of stayed in Vermont with her mother maybe, then all the strife would have been abated. Her poor grandmother and her half-addled desire to change the past and keep everything the way it was despite progress and age rattling on breaking her own stubborn old heart. A heart that wanted to be a little girl again so badly. Here at Greenbriar her cousin had lived and thrived and known peace. Here she now lived and went on with her own son. But, would she now struggle knowing it had all been an about face? She remembered the feeling of that tiny blue teacup sailing out of the car window and the relief she felt as it went spinning and shattering on the roadway as they drove as far away from that forsaken empty house as possible. 

Outside she saw a tiny girl go around the side of the house. Dark brown pigtails drifting behind her in the wind. She was scowling a determined look on her face. Farther down the road she noticed a Dodger's cap appear over the eve of the house. She perked up and ran to him and embraced him in a hug. They wandered off down the path back to the clearing where the boys' tree house loomed out from the underbrush. Did Brooklyn have a sibling or another friend? She opened the next binder and a tiny photo fell out onto the floor. "Marisol Grist aged 4" The little girl she had just seen could have easily been an ancestor of hers maybe she should wander down the path into the other pasture and meet her neighbors and thank them for her son being such good company for the boys. As she put the binder away there was a loud CLUNK! BANG! from under the house. She rounded the corner afraid to find her son hurt but what she did find was even more confusing to her. In the end of the hallway was a large portrait one that she had not noticed before. It was of a tiny green thatch roof house and a woman with a bun walking a grey dog with three legs and a tall man in overalls with a sorrel mule. The portrait was called Grindle Pond Homestead 1945. The painting was one done by the siblings that lived here before her employer bought the land. So there was another home and family on this land that was clearly dear to their hearts. She had to find them and maybe the threads would pull tight on the unraveling family quilt she had come from...she hoped...there were far too many holes in the fabric of her life....

As she turned to head back to her room...there was another loud clunk from above and a tiny metal bird rolled down the stairs and landed on her insole. She shuttered and gasped a silent scream escaping into the corridor like a ghostly secret...