The Mansion at the Corner

Every evening, or almost every evening, when the air in the suburb had turned soft and blue and the sprinklers had finished ticking over the lawns like little clocks, Sarah Whitmore and Melanie Voss walked past the mansion at the corner of Briar Lane and Ellery Drive, and every evening, or almost every evening, they slowed down in exactly the same place, beneath the leaning sycamore tree, where the iron fence bowed outward slightly, as though the whole estate were breathing in its sleep. “There it is,” Sarah would say, as if Melanie had somehow missed the three stories of pale stone, the green copper roof, the round tower with its narrow windows, the veranda curling around the front like a ribbon, and the fountain in the drive that had not worked in years but still looked expensive enough to be admired. “There it is,” Melanie would answer, slipping her arm through Sarah’s, “our house.” “Our house,” Sarah said, with the seriousness of a vow. They were twenty-five and twenty-four, respectively, which everyone in their families considered much too old to still be floating around in bedrooms decorated during high school, but not quite old enough, apparently, to be trusted with their own decisions, and since neither of them had found what their mothers called “a real job,” though Sarah modeled sometimes for catalogues no one admitted to reading and Melanie babysat for half the cul-de-sac, the two of them were still tucked reluctantly under their parents’ roofs, eating family dinners, borrowing cars, and inventing increasingly elaborate explanations for why Melanie needed to sleep over at Sarah’s house on Tuesday, and Sarah needed to sleep over at Melanie’s on Thursday, and why, when one mother called the other to ask whether the girls had gone to bed, there was always a pause just long enough to become suspicious. “They know,” Melanie whispered one night, stretched across Sarah’s narrow bed in the room with the white shelves and the old dance trophies. “They suspect,” Sarah said, brushing a lock of dark hair from Melanie’s cheek, “which is different.” “My mother asked me whether you and I were ‘particularly close.’” Sarah laughed into the pillow. “What did you say?” “I said yes.” “You didn’t.” “I did.” “Melanie.” “What? It’s the truth.” Sarah rolled onto her side and looked at her, at the pale face and the sharp dark eyes and the mouth that could look innocent even when Melanie was lying outrageously, and she said, “One day we are going to have our own place, and no one will call upstairs to check if we’re asleep.” “One day,” Melanie said, and her smile changed, softened, became something almost dangerous, “we’ll have the mansion.” Sarah kissed her forehead. “You always go too far.” “And you always pretend you don’t love it.” At first they tried to be sensible, which did not suit either of them. They rented a small house two streets over, a crooked little place with a peeling porch, a kitchen window that stuck in wet weather, and a bedroom just large enough for a brass bed, two wardrobes, and all the secrets they had carried separately for years; and for three weeks they were deliriously happy, making coffee barefoot in the morning, dancing to old records after dinner, and answering the door together when Melanie’s mother appeared with casseroles and questions disguised as concern. “You’re sure you can afford this?” Mrs. Voss asked, looking around the tiny living room with the expression of a woman inspecting a crime scene. “We’re managing,” Melanie said. Sarah, who had just calculated that managing would require them not to eat anything more expensive than toast until autumn, smiled brightly and said, “It’s cozy.” “It’s damp,” Mrs. Voss said. “It has character,” Sarah replied. “It has mildew.” After she left, Melanie collapsed onto the sofa and groaned, “We’re doomed.” “We are not doomed,” Sarah said, although she was staring at the stack of bills on the table. “We’re romantically doomed, which is worse.” “We are clever.” “We are beautiful,” Melanie said. “Beautiful is not the same as clever.” Sarah sat down beside her and put the electric bill between them. “Beautiful ought to pay better.” For a while, it paid a little. Sarah stood under studio lights wearing linen blouses and expensive expressions, while photographers told her to look wistful, then confident, then as if she had just remembered a lover in Paris, which was difficult because Sarah had never been to Paris and her lover was usually at home trying to convince twins named Bella and Bonnie that toothpaste was not optional. Melanie babysat with astonishing competence and fading patience, returning home with juice on her sleeves and ten-dollar bills folded into her handbag. “This,” Melanie announced one night, dropping onto the bed, “is not the road to the mansion.” “No,” Sarah said, sitting at the mirror and removing her earrings, “this is barely the road to groceries.” Melanie turned her face toward her. “We could rob a bank.” “You would flirt with the teller and forget the money.” “You would apologize to the security guard.” “I would not.” “You would.” Sarah looked at Melanie in the mirror and smiled. “Then perhaps crime is not our talent.” But crime, or something that felt like it from the outside and like mercy from within, came to them on a humid Thursday evening, when Mr. Holland from the gray colonial at the end of the block left for Chicago with his secretary, who wore perfume strong enough to be considered evidence, and Mrs. Holland stood in her driveway watching the taxi disappear with such a still, abandoned expression that Sarah, passing with Melanie’s hand hooked discreetly around her little finger, felt an idea move through her like a match being struck. “She looks lonely,” Sarah said. “She looks rich,” Melanie replied. Sarah turned her head slowly. Melanie, catching the look, narrowed her eyes. “What?” “Nothing.” “That is not a nothing face. That is a Sarah-has-invented-a-plan face.” Sarah glanced back at Mrs. Holland, who had gone inside and left the porch light burning although it was not yet dark. “What if babysitting is the wrong business?” Melanie blinked. “I beg your pardon?” “What if there are people in this neighborhood who need sitting with more than children do?” “Dogs?” “No.” “Elderly uncles?” “No.” Melanie’s eyes widened. “Oh.” “I don’t mean anything vulgar.” “You rarely do at first.” “I mean companionship,” Sarah said quickly, though her cheeks had warmed. “Conversation. Dinner. Someone to drink wine with. Someone to make the house feel less empty.” “Sarah.” “What?” “That sounds either very kind or very illegal.” “Everything profitable is one or the other.” Melanie sat with that, lips parted, then began to laugh, quietly at first and then helplessly, until Sarah had to pull her behind a hedge because Mrs. Abernathy was walking her terrier across the street. “Wife-sitting,” Melanie whispered, delighted and horrified. Sarah covered her mouth. “Don’t call it that.” “That is exactly what it is.” “It is companionship.” “It is wife-sitting.” “It is discreet social attendance.” “It is wife-sitting, darling.” And because Melanie had said darling in that particular way, half mockery and half devotion, Sarah knew the idea had already rooted itself between them. The first woman was Mary Halloway, forty-five, elegant, restless, married to a man who traveled three weeks out of every month and returned with presents too expensive to be affectionate; Sarah knew her because Melanie had once watched Mary’s niece during a summer visit, and because Mary attended every charity luncheon within five miles with the glazed look of a woman preserved under glass. Sarah chose a pale blue dress, modest but flattering, tied her hair back with a silk scarf, and told Melanie, who was pacing the bedroom as though Sarah were about to board a ship, “I am only going to ask.” “You are going to ask a married woman whether she wants company while her husband is away.” “Yes.” “In that dress.” Sarah looked down. “Is the dress wrong?” “The dress is a confession.” “Melanie.” “I’m not jealous,” Melanie said, immediately and not very convincingly. Sarah crossed the room, put both hands on Melanie’s shoulders, and kissed her softly. “You are the house I live in. Everything else is rent.” “That was indecently good,” Melanie muttered. “I know.” Mary Halloway answered her door in pearls and a satin robe the color of champagne, though it was barely seven o’clock, and for a moment the two women looked at one another across the threshold with the understanding that nothing normal was about to happen. “Sarah,” Mary said. “Is something wrong?” “No. No, nothing like that. I’m sorry to disturb you.” Mary’s eyes moved over Sarah’s dress, her nervous smile, the small clutch in her hands. “You’re not selling cosmetics, are you?” Sarah laughed, relieved by the absurdity. “No.” “Good. I already bought an entire cabinet of creams from Denise Ellison and I still look like myself.” “You look lovely, Mrs. Halloway.” “Mary,” she said, then glanced down the street. “Come in before Mrs. Pike decides I’m receiving missionaries.” Inside, the Halloway house was quiet enough to hear the ice shift in a glass, and the smell of lilies was so strong it seemed less like decoration than defense. Mary led Sarah to the sitting room, where two lamps burned and no television played, and she poured them both sherry without asking. “So,” Mary said, sitting with elegant caution, “what brings you here?” Sarah held the little glass but did not drink. “I wanted to ask you something, and if it offends you, I’ll leave at once, and we can pretend I came to borrow sugar.” “How ominous.” “It isn’t meant to be.” “That is exactly what ominous people say.” Sarah smiled despite herself, then took a breath. “I know Mr. Halloway travels often.” Mary’s face changed by almost nothing, but the room felt colder. “I know,” Sarah continued carefully, “that many women in the neighborhood spend a great deal of time alone, and Melanie and I were wondering whether there might be a need for companionship on those evenings. Someone to have dinner with. Someone discreet. Someone kind. Someone who listens.” Mary stared at her. Sarah wished suddenly that she had indeed brought a sugar bowl. Then Mary said, “Is this a joke?” “No.” “Is Melanie outside?” “No.” “Does my husband know you’re here?” “No.” “Good,” Mary said, and drank her sherry. Sarah waited. Mary rose, crossed to the window, and looked out through the curtains. “People think loneliness is dramatic,” she said at last. “They imagine women in pearls crying over letters. Mostly it is sitting in a beautiful room and hearing the refrigerator turn on.” “I’m sorry.” “Don’t be. It’s not your fault.” “No, but I am sorry.” Mary turned. “And what exactly would this companionship include?” Sarah’s mouth went dry, but she kept her voice steady. “Only what both people wanted it to include.” Mary considered this with the sharpness of a woman who had spent years being underestimated. “And what would it cost?” “Whatever you thought fair.” “That is either very naive or very clever.” “It may be both.” Mary laughed then, a real laugh, low and surprised, and Sarah saw the girl she must once have been before the pearls and the silent rooms had settled around her. “Stay for dinner,” Mary said. Sarah’s heart leapt. “Tonight?” “Yes, tonight. Unless your courage expires after eight.” “It does not.” “Good. Mine might.” They ate salmon and asparagus in a dining room meant for twelve, and Mary told stories about college, about a trip to Rome, about wanting once to become an architect before her father told her women designed homes by marrying men who bought them. Sarah listened, not as a servant, not as a daughter, not as a threat, but as an astonished witness, and by the second glass of wine Mary had taken off her pearls and left them coiled beside her plate like a shed skin. “You’re very beautiful,” Mary said. Sarah lowered her eyes. “Thank you.” “So is Melanie.” “Yes,” Sarah said, smiling into her glass. “She is.” “You love her.” “With everything I have.” Mary studied her. “Then why are you here?” “Because love does not pay rent.” “No,” Mary said softly. “It rarely does.” Later, when the house had grown dark around them and the lilies had lost their sharpness, Mary put four hundred dollars into Sarah’s hand. Sarah stared at the money. “Mary, this is too much.” “It is not enough.” “I only—” “You gave me an evening in which I did not feel like furniture,” Mary said, and her voice trembled only once, so slightly that Sarah almost missed it. “Do not insult me by making that cheap.” Sarah folded the bills slowly. “Would you like me to come again?” Mary’s smile was shy, hungry, and afraid. “Tomorrow would be too soon, wouldn’t it?” Sarah smiled back. “Not necessarily.” When Sarah came home, Melanie was pretending to read a magazine upside down. “Well?” Melanie asked. Sarah placed the money on the bed. Melanie sat up. For several seconds neither of them spoke. Then Melanie said, in a faint voice, “I have been wasting my life with children.” Sarah burst out laughing, and Melanie did too, and they laughed until they were breathless, not because the money was funny, but because the world had tilted and revealed a hidden door exactly where they had once assumed there was a wall. “It was not what you think,” Sarah said later, when they were lying side by side and the money was tucked inside a book on the dresser. “What do I think?” “You think it was scandalous.” “I hope it was a little scandalous.” “It was sad,” Sarah said. “And sweet. And strange. She talked for hours.” “About what?” “Herself.” Melanie turned onto her elbow. “Imagine that. A woman in this neighborhood being allowed to talk about herself.” Sarah looked at her. “Would you do it?” Melanie was quiet. Then she said, “If the woman were kind.” “And lonely.” “And generous.” “And discreet.” “And if you promised not to become noble and jealous and dramatic.” “I promise to become only two of those.” Melanie kissed her. “Then yes.” The second assignment came through Mary, though not directly, because directness was considered vulgar among the women of Briar Lane, while betrayal, adultery, and emotional starvation were merely unfortunate; at an afternoon tea hosted by Evelyn Carr, Mary mentioned, with a careful little pause over the lemon cakes, that she had recently hired a young woman for “private companionship on dull evenings,” and that the girl had been “very soothing,” which in that circle was a sentence with the force of a gunshot. Evelyn Carr lifted one eyebrow. Denise Ellison dropped a sugar cube. Mrs. Pike said, “Companionship?” Mary stirred her tea. “Yes.” “What sort?” “The sort one misses.” There was silence, rich and trembling. By Friday, Melanie was standing at Evelyn Carr’s door in a black dress and red lipstick, muttering to herself, “I am soothing, I am discreet, I am not terrified,” while Sarah waited three houses away in the car, gripping the steering wheel like a getaway driver. Evelyn opened the door, looked Melanie up and down, and said, “You’re not the blonde one.” “No,” Melanie said. “I’m the other one.” Evelyn’s mouth twitched. “Come in, then, Other One.” Melanie returned just after midnight with her hair slightly mussed, her eyes bright, and an envelope tucked into her handbag. Sarah, who had spent the entire evening imagining every possible disaster from arrest to romance, threw open the door before Melanie could knock. “Well?” Melanie stepped inside, leaned against the wall, and said, “Evelyn Carr has never had anyone ask what music she likes.” “That’s tragic.” “She likes jazz.” “That’s promising.” “She also gave me five hundred dollars and asked whether I knew anyone trustworthy for her sister in Fairview.” Sarah put a hand over her mouth. Melanie smiled slowly. “Darling, I think we have started a business.” At first they kept everything in a hatbox. Then the hatbox became too small, so Sarah bought a ledger, and Melanie, who had an unexpected gift for organization when motivated by silk dresses and mortgage fantasies, made columns for names, evenings, preferences, payments, discretion risks, and emotional hazards. “Emotional hazards?” Sarah asked, peering over her shoulder. “Mrs. Carr cries after jazz.” “Fair.” “Mary likes compliments but not pity.” “Correct.” “Denise Ellison wants to feel wicked but panics if anyone parks in the driveway.” “Also correct.” “And Mrs. Pike is not to be accepted under any circumstances.” “Why?” “She asked whether I had references.” Sarah shuddered. “Blacklist her.” By the end of three months, they were busy half the week and exhausted most of the rest, but it was a glamorous exhaustion, the kind that came with satin robes over breakfast, secret envelopes behind loose bricks, perfume lingering in the car, and conversations whispered at midnight over scrambled eggs. “Do you ever feel guilty?” Sarah asked one morning, sitting on the kitchen counter while Melanie counted money at the table. “For the women?” “For the husbands.” Melanie looked up. “The husbands who take their secretaries to hotels named after lakes?” “Point taken.” “For society?” “Maybe.” “Society pays us in cash and asks us not to park under street lamps.” Sarah smiled. “Point also taken.” Melanie set the money aside and came to stand between Sarah’s knees. “We are not stealing husbands. We are not breaking marriages. We are providing what everyone pretends women do not need.” “And what is that?” Melanie kissed her once, lightly. “Attention.” Sarah looked at her, thinking of the mansion at the corner, still empty behind its iron gates, its windows dark, its fountain dry. “And what do we need?” “A deed,” Melanie said. The business grew because loneliness, once noticed, appeared everywhere. It sat beside swimming pools with untouched magazines, reclined on chaise longues beneath wide-brimmed hats, smoked on screened porches, wandered through kitchens renovated by men who never cooked, and looked out of bedroom windows at taxis disappearing toward airports. Sarah and Melanie learned quickly that the suburb was not a place of peace but a theater of appearances, and behind every clipped hedge and polished brass knocker was a woman who had been told to be grateful, elegant, quiet, and tired. Some wanted dinner. Some wanted dancing. Some wanted to confess that they had once wanted to be painters, doctors, singers, pilots, or women who drove west without asking permission. Some wanted to be called beautiful by someone who meant it. Some wanted to fall asleep with a hand held in theirs and wake before dawn with no questions asked. And some, not many at first but more as the whispers traveled safely from tea table to garden club to charity committee, wanted to work. The first was Clara Niven, thirty-two, recently divorced and dangerously cheerful, with red hair, a laugh like broken glass, and no patience for shame. “I hear you girls are running a little comfort racket,” she said, appearing one afternoon at Sarah and Melanie’s door with a suitcase in one hand and a bottle of gin in the other. Sarah nearly choked on her tea. “Who told you that?” “Everyone, by not telling me.” Melanie leaned in the doorway. “And what exactly do you want?” “A job.” “We do not hire.” “You should. You’re too popular to be everywhere at once, and I am very good at being adored.” Sarah glanced at Melanie. Melanie glanced at Sarah. Clara smiled. “Also, I can drive stick.” They hired her. Then came Juliet, who had worked the cosmetics counter downtown and knew how to flatter without lying; then Nora, a widow who understood grief so well she could sit beside it for hours without trying to fix it; then Beth, who had once been a secretary and therefore knew exactly which husbands were lying and which wives were merely waiting for proof. Sarah and Melanie became something stranger than criminals and more organized than dreamers. They became employers. They rented a second telephone line under Clara’s cousin’s name, bought appointment books in three colors, established rules, rates, safety signals, and a policy that no woman, client or companion, would ever be mocked for wanting too much tenderness. “This is becoming an empire,” Sarah said one night, staring at the wall where Melanie had pinned a map of the suburb and marked friendly houses with discreet gold dots. “Not an empire,” Melanie said, placing another dot near Fairview. “What then?” “A refuge with invoices.” Sarah laughed. “You are impossible.” “I am practical.” “You are wearing a silk dressing gown at two in the afternoon.” “It helps me think.” “It helps me lose my train of thought.” Melanie turned, smiling. “Then come here and be unproductive.” But Sarah did not move at once, because beyond Melanie, through the window, she could see the mansion’s tower rising over the trees, and something in her chest tightened with the old longing. “It’s for sale again,” she said. Melanie’s smile faded into attention. “The mansion?” Sarah nodded. “How much?” “Too much.” “How much is too much?” Sarah told her. Melanie sat down slowly. For a full minute, the house was quiet. Then Melanie said, “We could almost do it.” “No.” “We could.” “Melanie.” “Not alone. But with the business, with Clara and the others, with what we’ve saved—” “It would take everything.” “Good,” Melanie said. “What else is everything for?” Sarah looked at her, half terrified, half already walking through the mansion’s front doors in her mind. “And what would we tell people?” “That we are investors.” “In what?” Melanie smiled. “Women.” The purchase should have been impossible, and perhaps it was, but impossible things had been happening to Sarah and Melanie ever since Sarah first knocked on Mary Halloway’s door in a blue dress and asked whether loneliness had a price. They used savings, loans, favors, Clara’s alarming knowledge of divorce settlements, and Mary’s introduction to a banker who blushed every time Melanie said his name; and when the papers were finally signed, when the keys lay in Sarah’s palm heavy and cold and real, Melanie stood beside her in the empty front hall of the mansion at the corner and cried. “You’re ruining the dramatic moment,” Sarah whispered, though she was crying too. “I am enhancing it.” “You’re dripping on the marble.” “It’s our marble.” Sarah looked around. The hall rose above them in pale, echoing grandeur, with a staircase curving upward like a question, a chandelier wrapped in dusty cloth, and tall windows filmed with years of neglect; it smelled of old wood, closed rooms, and roses growing wild outside, and it was not beautiful in the polished way they had imagined as girls, not yet, but it was theirs, which made every crack in the plaster glorious. Melanie walked to the staircase and touched the banister. “Do you remember the first time we stopped outside?” “You said it was our house.” “I was right.” “You were delusional.” “I was early.” Sarah laughed and crossed the hall to her, taking both her hands. “What now?” “Now we fix the fountain.” “And after that?” “After that,” Melanie said, looking up toward the landing, “we fill the rooms.” “With furniture?” “With women who need somewhere to breathe.” So the mansion became, officially, the Briar House Ladies’ Social Club, a private association dedicated to dinners, lectures, music evenings, charitable coordination, and the improvement of feminine fellowship, all of which was true enough to be printed on cream stationery and false enough to be useful. On Wednesdays there were card games. On Thursdays there was dancing. On Fridays there were private appointments no one mentioned. On Sundays there were brunches that lasted until evening, during which wives, widows, divorcees, secretaries, heiresses, shopgirls, and one retired school principal named Agatha sat under the restored veranda and laughed so loudly that men walking past lowered their newspapers and wondered what, exactly, was so amusing. Mary Halloway came often, wearing lighter colors now, her pearls replaced by painted scarves. Evelyn Carr brought records. Denise Ellison eventually stopped pretending she was only there for the tea. Mrs. Pike was admitted after six months of probation and two apologies. Clara managed schedules with the relaxed menace of a duchess. And Sarah and Melanie lived in the tower suite, where the morning sun touched the bed before anywhere else in the house, and where no mother could call upstairs to ask whether they were asleep. One evening, nearly six months after they moved in, Sarah stood at the bedroom window and watched the lamps come on along Briar Lane, each house glowing politely behind its curtains. Melanie came up behind her and wrapped both arms around her waist. “Thinking?” “Dangerous, I know.” “About money?” “No.” “The business?” “No.” “Then it must be love or prison.” Sarah laughed. “Do you think we’re wicked?” Melanie rested her chin on Sarah’s shoulder. “Frequently.” “I mean it.” “So do I.” Sarah turned in her arms. “Melanie.” Melanie’s expression softened. “I think we are two women who wanted a life and found a door where there wasn’t supposed to be one. I think some people would call that wicked because it frightens them. I think some would call it criminal because they cannot bear women making their own rules. And I think, my darling, that if this is a crime, it is at least beautifully furnished.” Sarah looked at her, at the girl who had once lain across her childhood bed and dreamed without permission, at the woman who had made a ledger out of longing and a mansion out of whispers, and she felt a happiness so sharp it almost hurt. “You always go too far,” Sarah said. Melanie smiled. “And you always pretend you don’t love it.” Downstairs, someone began playing jazz, and another woman laughed, and another called for more champagne, and somewhere in the garden the restored fountain finally began its soft silver rush, water spilling over stone in the moonlight as though the house itself had awakened and decided, after years of silence, to speak. Sarah kissed Melanie slowly, with all the doors open and all the lights on. For now, at least, the mansion was theirs. For now, the suburb kept its secrets. For now, the wives came and went through the side gate with flowers in their hands and color in their cheeks, and the husbands, poor fools, continued to believe their houses were quiet because nothing was happening inside them. And Sarah and Melanie, who had once been two girls walking past a dream they could not afford, slept every night beneath the tower windows, wrapped around each other like thieves, queens, lovers, and conspirators, happily ever after, or at least happily enough to know that forever was only useful if one had the courage to begin it. A Story by Germaine Corbeau - Click here for links to all Germaine Corbeau Stories! Quick 👏 Guide: 0 = I got lost! - 1-4 = Nice font... nice images. - 5-9=Read a bit. Nice try!, 10-14=Okay... Pretty good!, 15-19=I actually enjoyed this! - 20=Absolutely legendary!