Photograph by Rea Bazal
If one was so unfortunate as to stumble upon a particular suburb amidst the endless sea of terracotta brick and asphalt where the shining sign reads TRELLOR ST, presume you are in the wrong place, and promptly turn around. Do not continue down the picturesque row of townhomes with perfect little iron gates and four steps leading up to a cherry-red door framed in white. Your eyes will certainly deceive you as you arrive halfway down the long stretch of homes. The flawless row will be interrupted by an ancient, crumbling, faded yellow house– if it can be called that– perched dead center in the row. That is if you can see it at all. 342 on Trellor Street has a habit of disappearing. The neighbors ignore it, as much as one could ignore a hulking mass of rotting wood and ten feet tall weeds, while the passersby go on with their lives blind to the ugly disruption of order.
If one was luckless enough to have some business on Trellor Street, pretend as though you have never heard of 342. The house was among those topics which would earn you a glare or two among residents. Perhaps, if you wish to appease your host or clientele, comment on the unseemly gap between 340 and 344. If you’d rather cause a scene, mention the girl who lived there.
Accounts vary depending on who is doing the recounting. Mrs. Folster will tell you why the girl is an inconsiderate young woman. Mr. Rance will mutter about conspiracy theorists and why lazy landowners are the downfall of society, and Little Lacy--- she will tell you she sounds sad but gives lovely flowers if you scrape your knee on the sidewalk of 342. All are as true as memory allows. Now, I will recount my own memories in the unlikely event someone such as yourself arrives face-to-face with 342 on Trellor Street.
New on the job and clutching a letter such addressed, I marched purposefully down the street only to find a great empty lot where there should, in all other circumstances, be a house. I paced, I reread the address on the thick paper and the sharp numbers boasted by other houses. The strap of my messenger bag dug into my shoulder as I tried again and again, day after day to find its destination or addressee. Thrice I asked nearby residents if they were or knew Melody Barrett. Twice I had the door slammed in my face. And once I accepted the fact that my colleagues were sending me on a wild goose chase, it was all for the better.
I kept the letter. Tucked into the side of my messenger bag like a thorn in a shoe. The edges crumpled, the ink bled, but there was something strange about it that kept me from tossing it. If you’re wondering about the return address, there was none. So, in my fraying bag, it stayed.
Not until I was charged with delivering a rather large package to a Mr. Morris at 343 Trellor Street and had the wits scared out of me, did I meet the spectral resident of 342. Mr. Morris’ ferocious little terror, excuse me, Terrior chased me from the porch, all the way down to the opposite sidewalk before satisfied
“It’s rude to traipse through someone’s geraniums,” a pitchy voice called from behind me.
Glancing down at my feet I saw that I was, in fact, standing atop a stomped-down geranium plant. Strange that I hadn’t noticed they’d been planted, I walk down this street six days a week. “I am so sorry Ms.---” I stopped short.
The young woman was standing on a porch.
My eyes were wider than the saucers Little Lacy put out for the neighborhood cat, swiveling back and forth down the street to see if anyone else could confirm what was before me. I was alone. The young woman looked down at me with a pout, 342 tacked on the post beside her. I realized I was still standing in her geraniums.
Carefully, I asked, “Ms. Barrett?” My breath stayed locked up in my chest.
She nodded.
“I believe I have a letter for you.”
The letter was suddenly as impossible to find as the house. I dug to the bottom of my shoulder bag until I grasped the worn edges, then offered it to Melody with a wavering hand. She plucked it from me gently and turned it over in her hands. Her pale brows pinched together.
Abruptly, she said, “Would you like to come to Mr.Hayes?”
More out of shock than anything, I said yes and we climbed the porch steps into the house. Seated at her kitchen table we spoke of odds and ends. She spoke sharply, eloquently but not unkindly. Her features went carefully still as to gauge my reactions to the oddness of her state. I am talking to a ghost, I remember the thought spinning in a circuit through the whole interaction. Though, I suppose ghosts were just people once.
Oddly at ease and invariably curious, I asked her, “Why do you…disappear?”
“You assume I disappear only because you cannot see me,” I recall her cool, saddened tone like I recall the birds’ summer song in winter. “You and I both know there are many things which people choose not to see.”
We talked of neighbors and politics, of novels and poetry. It seemed that her mind had all of the spirits her presence lacked. She was alive in a sense, but so easily the eye could slip by her when glancing around the room in a rush. Her hair color was indistinguishably dark; her face was a heart from the severe widow’s peak at her crown, and she wore a dress that appeared quite plain but for the ruffled collar high around her neck. I could not tell you the color of her skin. It changed as often as her background.
She was a ghost of a girl walking around the ghost of a house like a half-forgotten song. Onlookers preferred ignorance to the scene which they could not understand. Melody explained to me that even she was unsure of the exact nature which kept her hidden from the world. It had kept her invisible from harm for centuries. Centuries. I turned the implications of the word over in my mind. As a parasite protects its host, protection comes at a cost. Melody could leave as she wished, but not be seen as she wished. Beyond the borders of 342, she ceased to be any more than an unseasonably chilly draft haunting the halls.
“Nor would I have it any other way, you understand,” she told me vehemently. “This is my home.”
At the time, I could not comprehend what sort of roots she had carved into such an isolated structure. My small, cluttered apartment would not provoke such a reaction from me.
Some silence passed between us. “May I ask after the letter?” My curiosity was a bother to most, I remembered, so I amended, “I do not mean to overstep. It’s just, I’ve carried it with me for so long, I admit I have grown quite curious as to its contents.” I rushed to curb my eagerness, it was just a letter after all.
Her gaze scanned over me with appraising suspicion. “You have not read it then?”
“No, no I have not.” Technically, I was not lying. The words I had seen made no sense at all to me.
“Hmmm.” The brow she raised did not believe the answer I had given.
“Though, I was tempted once or twice,” I conceded, now perched on the edge of my seat. A tide of guilt rolled in admitting my indiscretion to the phantom addressee.
Satisfied with my answer, Ms. Barrett removed the letter from her dress pocket and placed it on the table. Her hand remained on top of it, still, she did not seem at all interested in finding out its contents. Maybe she did not open it to know, I remember how readily I believed that which I could not understand.
“I have read your work.” She said, “Journalism becomes you.” My ex-employers would disagree but I did not correct her. Instead, I murmured a ‘thank you with a bowed head.
Ms. Barrett paused to examine me with her piercing gaze, sharp as a needle prick. “For years,” she said, “I have been looking for someone to write a story– My story. I have observed from a distance your interactions with the world, and the frankness you take to the pen. If you are so willing, I would like you to be that someone.”
What you are reading I believe is proof enough of my answer. Our interviews commenced on my days off. A small token from 342 would appear on my welcome mat. Sometimes a book, other times a teacup or odd trinket I had seen perched upon the mantle piece. There was always something to return, to use as my ticket into 342.
Now, the interviews.
For the sake of time and clarity, I present only the most memorable of our talks. It was our fourth interview, and trick of the light or not, I could have sworn Ms.Barrett was a few shades more transparent than I saw her last.
Her hair was in the same do as always, same dress as well. When I asked, she told me it was how she appeared on the day of her death, and could not change. That was as close to mentioning her death as she ever came during those first few months.
"The trowel?"
I swiveled around for the small shovel that had just been in my hands. Handing it over, I wiped my forehead with my shirtsleeve. I was not so useless when it came to gardening or minor tasks.
As we worked, Melody told me about the trials of her long existence and short life. Weeding the garden was a recollection of the economic crises and childhoods cut short by disease rampant in her hometown.
“You grew up here, on Trellor Street then?”
“No,” she sighed, “No, I grew up along the coast. Trellor Street was all fields back then. Fields and wildflowers.”
Her voice had warmed wistfully. “Sounds beautiful.”
“It was,” she nodded, “I daresay the land has changed more than I have.”
This was not the first time she sounded mournful on the subject. I handed her a newly unpotted plant dotted with budding yellow flowers. There were a dozen more questions I had prepared, that would go unanswered. Ms. Barrett did not like to dwell on most subjects, the garden her only obvious exception. We spent more time in the dirt than anywhere else on the property.
Ms. Barrett drove the trowel into the ground forcefully, “I wish I could. Change, that is.” She sighed.
Ill fitted for comforting restless spirits, I tried, “You cannot change your appearance perhaps, but you could…yes, you could fix up the house. I’m sure it was impressive at one time.”
She lent me a tight-lipped smile. “That is very true. I will think it over.” What I had first perceived as pain or bitterness in her expressions, I finally understood were signs of genuine thoughtfulness.
After this meeting, not once did we conduct our interviews in the small kitchen. There was always something to repair, mend, paint, weed, or otherwise fix up around the property. Repairing the stubborn window was the family she worked for as a housekeeper. Repainting the porch was joining causes in her late teens. Over a year we went on like this, trading a task for a memory. Every night I wrote down more questions to ask and every day she regaled me with more tales and trials. There was one event, in particular, we both avoided for the time. Her death.
“You never told me how you came to reside on Trellor Street,” I stated, taking a screwdriver to the rusted hinges of the first-floor shutters. “Nor have you mentioned it in your other memories.”
Melody, we’d bypassed formalities by now, helped me lay the shutter on the dead grass. Winter swept in with force and refused to quit anytime soon. She took a long while before answering, long enough I considered she might not answer my remarks at all. She did that sometimes when she was not fond of the memories my curiosity invoked.
“This home,” she said, “has housed more sorrows and grief than anyplace I have stepped foot in. And yet, overwhelming joy and laughter pour out of every crevice. One goes nowhere without the other, no matter how you run.”
“I was a pulse in these halls for the last years of my life. I helped people here, it was a shelter. The property itself was owned by a dear friend, Walter, and he gave it over to me in all but deed. Though not without a price, as you can see.” Melody gestured down to her ghostly form, then said, “I always wished for it to return to one. I did what I could, but… I needed to do more.”
I had paused mid-turn of the tool to listen. She granted me another morose smile and drifted back to the garden. Melody was transparent enough that the outline of the bare trees was nearly visible. Why this particular scene stuck with me, I am not sure. Perhaps it was because it is such a human thing to regret what will never be. To dream. Melody retained her humanity in a way, but it was always clear how much of her was beyond the grave. Most of her emotions and expressions had a hollow edge, yet every so often, bits and pieces shone through that made it easy to forget she was a specter.
Over our final months, I felt I had come to understand her as well as she would allow, and during this period we worked especially hard restoring 342. The house was very possibly the most beautiful on the street by the time we were done, it was a shame no one else got to admire the change. The garden was flourishing in the height of spring, the chipped paint boasts fresh lily-yellow, we had added window boxes to the front windows, and the porch was still rotting in places but shone white. The inside hosted just as many improvements. More and more often I saw those glimpses of life in Melody’s presence, though she was more faded than ever.
We have arrived at the last of Melody and my visits, a day which I will never forget.
An old copy of The Canterville Ghost book awaited me at my door that morning. I chuckled at the reference. Where apprehension had dwelled this time last year, an excitement akin to friendship had taken its place. To be true, I genuinely came to enjoy Melody’s presence. My small world consisted of a few acquaintances, coworkers, and holiday meetings with family, so a constant presence- even a ghostly one- did me good. I wondered what we could possibly have left to fix in the house, there would always be something. That is just how it works, when you think you must be done another project springs up.
I remember thinking Melody had to be inside because I could not see her until I walked up the steps. The only signs of her were a faint blur in front of the door and a slight shift in the color of the wall behind her. We did not like to bring up her fading, or what it meant.
“I would like to sit today,” she said. I followed her into the dining room where our interviews began. On the table were my notebooks filled with her life stories, the one on top was open. We sat down, I took the open one, and turned to a fresh page, then Melody said softly; “There is only one substantial memory left, isn’t there?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
When she was ready, she told me everything.
Melody slid a letter across the table at the end of our most somber visit. I recognized it to be the letter I first delivered here, resealed and fuller, but otherwise the same. I frowned at it.
“I will be back again tomorrow.”
“I will not be.” A feather-light hand rested atop mine, and a chill swept through my bones.
“You have given me peace, Thomas. Thank you.”
She did not wish me to stay for whatever was to happen. I waved from the end of the drive, I believe she waved in return though I did not see her. A great flash illuminated the house as I stepped off the property. Too late, I turned to find an empty lot and an empty street.
Melody is truly gone. Not gone, no, gone implied a missing piece. Not departed either which implied impermanence. She had made her peace, healed her gaping wounds, which is as much as any of us can hope for, I suppose. Her story has been told, and I am honored to be the one who held the pen. Her letter remains tucked into the folds of my notebook, though it resided in my messenger bag for many years, and in my coat pocket for just as many more.
342 on Trellor street has returned to the purpose Melody had intended. It is now a shelter, a home, for any who seek it, knickknack or novel in hand. The pantry stays stocked, and the books are scattered around the house just in case. Melody’s letter accompanies me on my visits there, which have grown less frequent over the last few years due to my health. When I see Melody again, I will need eternity to tell her all of the wonderful things 342 has accomplished.
There is only one more announcement I must make:
If one was so fortunate as to stumble upon a particular suburb amidst the endless sea of terracotta brick and asphalt where the shining sign reads TRELLOR ST, presume you are welcome.
Unless you trample the geraniums.