Read A White Room for Free Online

I’d been stunned into stone, staring at the bizarre construction before me.
    “It was built in 1880,” John said. “A gothic revival, I believe.”
    I unfroze and remembered that it was supposed to be a happy day, but the only thing I could say reflected my disenchantment. “It looks…dark.”
    “What do you mean? It’s white.” John reached out his hand, and after a brief hesitation, I grasped it and stepped out, drawing up my skirt to prevent a snag.
    How could a white house seem so dark? The entire building, apart from the russet wood-shingled roof, was red brick painted over with a pasty white. The red base seeped out from beneath the blanched masquerade. It was overbearing, like a fortress. A fortress bloodied by war and then disguised as a house by some conspirator or…perhaps…the house itself.
    A ring of broad- and slender-trunked trees circled the house and then thickened into woods. Winter had stripped the trees naked and covered the forest floor with a rug of decay. I imagined a splash of sunset color in the fall, the broad leaves turning orange, yellow, and a blazing red before blanketing the ground with a sea of fire. But now skeletons lingered all around.
    John raved about the structural design, but it wasn’t a marvel—it was a catastrophe. Structurally sound at best. The anterior stuck out farther than the rest, and the sides jutted out like broken, lopsided hips. The front doors were abnormally located to the right rather than in the center. My gaze drifted above the front doors to a slender and strange gothic window with intricate crown molding on the right hip of the house. Its twin faced out of the uneven left wing. The front had two windows so close together that they could have been one if there hadn’t been a thick piece of frame between them.
    “Is that the parlor?” I pointed at three-paned bay windows on the bottom floor.
    “Uh, yes. The two tall windows above it are our chamber.” John lugged a trunk off the surrey with the help of the driver.
    “And the other windows?”
    They eased the trunk to the ground. “More rooms.”
    “The porches…they’re peculiar.”
    “I think they were additions.”
    The Greek-revival columns on the porches would actually have been quite attractive if they’d been a part of another house, but they didn’t match a gothic revival—they only amplified its awkward state. The right porch had a few steps leading up to a small landing and the front doors. The bay windows completely interrupted the porches, separating them from each other. The left porch sat higher and stretched farther back, but because it had no steps, there was no way to reach it. I pictured some awkward little man deciding to build the porches and columns on a whim, having always desired a Greek revival and it being popular to remodel to one’s own desires. People generally did so with the aid of a professional to guide them, though.
    “All right, let’s go inside.” John picked up two bags and led the way.
    I walked behind, staring in wonder.
    John opened the front double doors, releasing light into a long narrow hallway with a door directly to the left and a door facing us at the end. I’d assumed the awkward little man’s whim had been applied only to the exterior of the home, but once inside, I realized he’d had more vigor than that. I peered down the hallway. “Where are the stairs?” In most homes, the stairwell was the first thing you saw, and many people took pride in the magnitude and luxury of theirs. It was a mark of station.
    “They’re around the corner.” John dropped the bags next to the coat rack and hung his hat.
    I detected the musty smell of cedar, lamp oil, and dead flowers.
    John grasped a small oil candle lamp with handles in the shape of snakes from the table next to the coat rack. It had a flat top and a rounded base that came to a point in front in the style of a genie lamp. John sparked the flame, but it was the middle of the day.
    “What