Sometimes, when it's slow at work, the tour guides (like myself) will be sent in the mansion to do some minor cleaning. So it didn't strike me as unusual at all when, after my lunch break one Friday, I was asked "can you go clean some windows?"
When I'm sent to clean windows, I always go the same route I've created for myself that hits the windows I always see most smudged: From the cleaning closet, I pass the aviary, go through the laundry room and pre-1906 kitchen, into the Guest Reception Hall to tidy the parlour windows, up the main staircase, and then through the second and third floors and back down to the cleaning closet. Imagine my surprise when, on my way through with a spray bottle and a rag, I spotted a small and dark figure in the locked-off front parlour through the window...
 |
| (The window on the far right of this older photo) |
Now, only my superiors have keys to that room. I've only been there once, when helping one of the managers set up for Halloween. The door should not have been open. And it hadn't been when I'd passed it seconds ago - yet when I turned around again, it was. I couldn't resist the temptation (I'm only human) and I stepped inside.
Immediately, things seemed radically different yet exactly the same.
The figure I'd seen was no longer a dark and wispy cloud, but a solid woman in black sitting in a table (had our table in the parlour always looked like that?) with a pot of fragrant tea and plates of scones and jams and curd and clotted cream. She gestured to the empty chair across from her to sit. I did so, setting down the window rag and spray bottle on the floor beneath my chair. Looking into her wrinkled face and sharply intelligent brown eyes beneath age-white eyebrows, I realised there was only one person she could be...
...Sarah Winchester!
I suddenly felt very small, and wished dearly that I was wearing something other than my work uniform.
She said nothing at first, but made another gesture to the items on the table. Was she seriously offering me something to nosh on? Hardly believing what was happening, I poured myself a cup of tea - it smelled like a nice, delicate Lady Grey - and helped myself to a scone with some cream and lemon curd. There were dried fruits in the scone, and, remembering that she dried plums on her estate, I asked in a timid voice, not the voice I'd address my tours with:
"Are these prunes that were grown here?"
"And the lemons for the curd and the fruits for the jams," she answered. Her voice was not at all what I'd expected. But at least it was friendly, rather than suspicious of me. I took a sip of my tea.
"It's delicious, thank you."
"You're quite welcome."
"Actually," I confessed, "I've wanted to talk to you for a while now. I never dreamed I'd ever get the chance!"
"Oh?" That seemed to surprise her. "You're not one of those ghost hunters, are you?"
"N-no, no, I... I just meant I admire you. I don't think you get nearly enough credit for how intelligent and innovative you were - are - or for how even through immense hardship, you never let your spirit get broken! This mansion... it's not some hokey ghost trap, is it? It's a monument to your unbreakable spirit!"
She stared at me with those sharp brown eyes. I couldn't help but blush. Oops. Why was I so awkward?!
"S-sorry... I didn't mean to rant..."
"I don't mind the rant. I just don't believe anyone has told me they admired me since... well, since William."
"You must really miss him. I'm so sorry."
"You don't need to keep apologising. If you make any truly grievous error, I'll let you know. But yes, I do miss him terribly."
"Would..." Here, I hesitated. Here was a woman who had already had to cope with unimaginable pain and loss. She'd lost her baby daughter, her beloved husband, her parents and in-laws, two of her sisters. She'd lived through the Civil War, the 1906 earthquake, and the Great War. Despite her philanthropic efforts, she'd been plagued with endless cruel rumours once she'd moved to California. Who was I to add to all of that?
But when would I get another chance to ask her?
"Would you have done all of this if you hadn't lost him?"
"...I imagine things would have been different. Perhaps we would have been expected to socialise more, or perhaps they would have lest us alone rather than constantly attempting to gawk at a lonely old woman. But I'd always intended to come out west with William, ever since we visited San Francisco in the seventies. The area was so charmingly provincial back then."
"Did you ever meet Emperor Norton?!" I blurted out, then blushed again at my own outburst, shoving another bite of scone into my mouth to keep myself from apologising once more.
"I can't say I ever did, no, though I was told of him. William found the story amusing. Personally, I find it mighty suspect that Norton's eccentricities were considered charming and celebrated, whereas I was considered..."
"Crazy?" I nodded. Victorian sexism. Then, I realised what I'd said. "Sorry. For what it's worth, I don't think you're crazy."
"I know you don't. Really, you needn't apologise so much. As a woman, you mustn't let people perceive you as weak, after all - people will find any reason to do so, especially over-apologising."
"S-so you're almost, like, a feminist?"
"I don't involve myself with politics," she deadpanned.
"Right... so you fell in love with the area when you visited with your late husband. Why, then, did you still move? Wasn't it hard?"
"Losing William didn't diminish my want of a slower-paced lifestyle than that of New Haven. While I can't say that riding the train along the Transcontinental Railroad for six days - from New York to Oakland - was the most thrilling experience of my life, it was reasonably comfortable."
"No, I mean... leaving behind all the memories you'd made in New Haven..."
She sipped her tea and gave me a thoughtful look.
"Just because I left Connecticut doesn't mean I immediately forgot everything about it. The memories are still with me. I'm sensing you may be projecting a more personal issue."
Damn, she was perceptive...
"I'm going to be moving, too," I said. "But in the other direction. San Jose to New York. All alone, too, just like you did. I know one person out there - actually, her name is Sarah, too - but everything else I know is here, so..."
"So you're scared."
"I think it's totally normal to be scared," I sniffed defensively.
"The emotion itself, yes. Letting that emotion dictate your every action, not so. What, exactly, are you so afraid of as to let it paralyse you?"
"I- I'm leaving behind everything! I've built a whole life for myself here in California! Even if I end up a failure here, at least I'm a failure in a place I know."
"Do you expect yourself to fail?"
"I hope I don't."
"That isn't the question that I asked."
I blushed. "Maybe I do. I don't know."
"Then you are setting up a self-fulfilling prophecy for yourself. You're looking for reasons to fail so that if you do, you may pretend New York is to blame rather than yourself. But surely you have a reason for planning to leave behind all that is familiar to you."
"There are better educational opportunities in New York for what I want to do," I answered. "There are almost no graduate programs in California for my chosen career, and New York City alone has, like, ten." The surreality of explaining all this to Sarah freakin' Winchester of all people did not escape me. "B-but that's if I even get in. There's a chance I might not..."
"There's a chance I may spontaneously burst into flames every time I consume a hot beverage, and yet here we are," she waved her teacup. "Again, you make excuses. Are you going to let a mere chance stop you?"
"Maybe a part of me doesn't want to leave everything I know and love."
"If there's one thing my life has taught me, dear girl, it's that nothing is permanent."
She, who had suffered unimaginable losses, had every right to say this to me. She was right about me, too.
"Are you going to let this fear stop you? Things won't stay the same as they are, no matter where you go. You're smart enough to know that without my telling you so."
"I don't have a choice. I've already got the plane ticket."
"You always have a choice. What do you choose?"
"N-New York, I guess. Sarah is there - my Sarah, not you - and I need to do right by her. I would do anything to ensure her happiness. I mean it, I would."
"Then you already have your answer," she nodded her satisfaction. "When you strip away all material possessions in California, all career prospects in New York, human connection is the most important thing of all. That's why I had Belle and Daisy come out west with me." (I knew she was referring to her sister Isabelle and her niece Marian.) "The foundations of my life disappeared when my parents and husband died, and I truly do not know what I'd have done if not for those I am close to. And you do seem very close to your Sarah."
"She's the most important person in the world for me," I answered without hesitation. "More than anything else, I fear letting her down."
Maybe that was the root of my problem. Maybe I was so scared of letting Sarah down, my mind was latching onto anything it could in order to avoid it. Subconsciously, the wondering if I'd be better off in California, in a hell I was familiar with, was just a mask for the fear of going to New York and failing Sarah.
"Then don't let her down," Mrs. Winchester snapped me out of this revelation. "If she has faith in you, then trust her judgment. The biggest way you can fail her is by not trying."
"I... I know. Some part of me always knew that."
"I thought as much. Qui transtulit sustinet, dear girl."
"I- I don't speak Latin."
"The one transplanted still sustains," she translated, then finished her tea. "Now, if you would pardon me, I do have a schedule to keep."
"I should be going, too," I shot up, grabbing my cleaning supplies. "Um... thank you."
She merely smiled and walked off, leaving me stunned over what had just happened - until I remembered I was supposed to be cleaning windows before my tour.
Shit, how long had I been in here? I ran out into the Guest Reception Hall and pulled my phone out of my pocket only to find that - huh? No time had passed at all. Not one minute, though I swore I'd been talking to Mrs. Winchester for at least twenty. My mouth still tasted like tea and lemon curd. But when I turned back around, the door to the front parlour was closed and locked - just as it should be. And I was left utterly baffled as to what the fuck had just happened to me.
-Nym-
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