The Visitor

This was some time ago.

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“What are you doing here in the living room?”

She was so genuinely and openly surprised that I had to laugh. “I’m staying here, if that’s all right with you.”

She was nine or ten I would imagine. I’d had some practice with girls that age by way of a couple of nieces.

She was dressed in the same shift or sundress or play dress or whatever you call those simple straight-hanging dresses that children have been wearing for summer play for ages. 

Average height, short black hair – short for the summer I imagined – eyes that were bright and dark both. Curious eyes I call them, you see them all the time on kids, seldom on adults. Darting this way and that.

Also, a gesture all her own: she would cock her head like a little bird when she asked a question, and wouldn’t uncock until you answered. A most unnerving feeling to the other party, as if she had given you an assignment and was waiting upon your successful response.

“Well then,” she said, all take charge and direct, “what’s your name?”

“Charlie Callahan,” I said. “What’s yours?”

“Violet.”

“That’s a pretty name.”

“I suppose,” she replied, bored. “That’s what Mother says, ‘the prettiest name for the prettiest girl.’”

In those days I was credit manager for an outfit – Donnelly Contractor’s Supply – that sold, rented, and maintained construction equipment, all the way from the little front loaders to the big monster cranes and pavers. The maintenance part was our big distinction; none of our competitors could staff a shop like we could.

Eisenhower’s highway program was still going strong in the Midwest those years and every contractor who could rub two dimes together – and some that couldn’t – wanted in the game.

My job was to tell the difference between the two-dimers and the no-dimers before we sold or rented to them.

We took the four-state area as our rightful territory, but if you just looked at it cold, straight on, you’d have to say we were strong in Kansas, Missouri wasn’t far behind, Nebraska looked promising, and Iowa may as well have been on the moon for all the attention we had given it. I was trying to remedy that. Their construction program was finally starting to open up and we were in catch-up mode, trying to make contact with all the contractors we could find, explain what it was Donnelly did, make snap judgments as to their creditworthiness, and pray to God I got it right.

“Well, what are you doing here?” The head cocked.

I told her much of what I just told you, but in simpler language.

She took it in, and at the end of it she seemed satisfied, for her head straightened. She took a seat across from me.

This was before the time of bed and breakfasts, but when they finally did come along, I always had something to compare them against. This was the best place I had ever stayed.

At one time it had been a boarding house, and I suppose a private residence before that. Now Mrs. Jacobsen, the proprietor, ran a small hotel I suppose you would call it, whose neatness, cleanliness, decor, meals, and comfort she devoted her life to and clearly took great pride in.

The best part to me was the lobby, which in fact was more like a living room, well, just as Violet had called it.

At night the stillness would be broken sighingly by a breeze, and the sheer drapes would rise, levitate, and then fall ever so slowly. Luxury of luxuries, she served beer in that lobby – we really were a longer way from Kansas than the odometer would tell you – which was something they did in that part of Iowa.

 Like I say, at the end of a long hard day trying to size people up as if your living depended on it – as it did – it really meant something to simply sit there and let the day lift off of you.

There were pictures of the history of the house and all the people that lived there framed along the stairs to the room upstairs, but I hadn’t seen them yet; they would wait. For now I was content to simply sit.

That’s where she had come upon me with such surprise. Violet.

She looked at me gravely. “I bet you don’t know all the states.”

That was an easy one. “I bet I don’t either.”

“I do. Listen.” She jumped up and stood up straight as though at the front of class, which is where I bet she had last performed, and in the manner of proud little girls everywhere, rattled off her list.

She did pretty good too, only left a couple off. I suppose Hawaii and Alaska were pretty far from the Iowa cornfields. I applauded, and to my surprise – and hers, I think – she gave a little bow.

“I don’t imagine a single grownup I talked to today could do that,” I told her.

Contractors – I’d known them all my professional life – are interesting people.

Entrepreneurs from head to toe though they wouldn’t know the word, ready to try to turn every single into a double and every double into an inside-the-park home run… but you know what? They were often too hopeful; they let it run away with them. This isn’t a quality that a credit manager particularly wants to see, however attractive otherwise. Good men though, salt of the earth. I say ‘men,’ I don’t think I knew a woman contractor until the late 70s, and this was quite a bit earlier than that.

“I’ll bet you’re right!” she agreed. “I’ll bet they don’t know the Pledge of Allegiance, either,” and she proceeded to show me that she, by contrast, did.

Sterling manners, that’s how my mother and her sisters would have described this girl, and they weren’t generous judges of characters, those strong Irish women I grew up with. They would have liked this one, her assurance and poise.

She had a free-standingness that you don’t often see in children, as though she was sufficient unto herself. She’d been playing by herself for a long time I guessed – maybe the siblings were quite a bit older – but seemed content to do so.

After the Pledge she sat back down and tuned her hands in her lap, then ran her hands through her hair.

“Every night I brush my hair one hundred strokes, not one stroke more,” – she held up a finger – “not one stroke less.”  She looked around in an assessing manner. “New wallpaper. I think it freshens things up.”

She subsided for a bit but not for long.

 “They say that some girls look pretty with long hair, but I’m glad mine is short. I think long hair can make a girl look common.” She looked at me sideways as she said this and cocked her head.

“Your haircut looks very nice,” I said evenly. “But I can’t believe that any little girl could look common just because she lets her hair grow.”

She considered this and uncocked her head. “I think you’re right,” she said. “I don’t think so either. I’m just saying what some people say.”

More silence, more turning her hands.

“They say I’m too young to paint my nails. What would you say was the proper age for a girl to start putting nail polish on?”

“What age are you?” I asked warily.

“Ten.”

I paused as if weighing my words carefully. “I think about twelve, maybe thirteen. That’s what everyone says back home.”

That seemed to fly, but then a darker thought took hold. “They’re saying these days that you can make proper pancakes using plain milk from the bottle, but I think you need buttermilk. Where do you come down on that question?” The head cocked. She was testing my worthiness I suppose.

“I can’t imagine making pancakes with anything other than buttermilk,” I said as emphatically as I could. “Anything else would be an outrage. Say, now, has anyone ever told you that you certainly seem to have a lot of opinions?”

But that topic didn’t interest her, and now she was off on something else. She leaned towards me and lowered her voice, imparting a secret. “They say this house is haunted something awful.” She looked around theatrically with her eyes wide open.

I grunted. “’They’ have a lot of opinions, don’t they?”

“Something awful,” she repeated.

“I don’t know if people should be telling little girls ghost and goblin stories,” I offered. I didn’t want her scaring herself. It had been twilight when she had bounced in, now it was nearly full dark. The sheer curtains rose and fell with the breeze.

“Haunted in the worst possible way!” she stage whispered again.

I sighed. “Well what in the world does that mean? ‘The worst possible way?’ I would have supposed a house was either haunted or it wasn’t. What’s the worst possible way?”

She considered this in a straightforward manner. “Well, I can’t say that I know. It’s just something they say.” A pause. “Do you suppose they mean it’s the scariest, or do they mean it’s the saddest?”

Now she had me. It was my turn to be surprised by a thought. What would be the worst way for a house to be haunted? Banshee wails and clinking chains, or the residue of pure sorrow?

“What does tragedy mean?” she asked, and I started. The word had just been in my head. She simply looked at me.

“Well, it would be something very, very sad. Sadder than the ordinary sadness of life,” I said, trying to give the sense of proportion that comes when that word is spoken, "it’s as if life itself turned on you and done something you couldn’t forgive it for.” I stumbled over my words, and wondered how I had gotten into the situation of tutoring a young girl on the meaning of tragedy.  “When did you hear that word?”

“When we were all there in church,” she waved her hand impatiently, “they all kept saying it.”

I was pleased to hear of this church business and looked for ways to bring the conversation around to the familiar and the holy and the comforting.

She had a habit when she was uncertain, or had forgotten something or was shy about bringing a topic forward of looking off into the middle distance, that little head cocked, and she was doing it now. I saw my chance to get a sentence off, and nearly did…when she spoke again and it slipped away.

“And what’s an epidemic anyway?” She waved her hand and warded off my question, again in that bored to tears manner. “That’s something else they were all saying in church. The last time we were all together.”

I was starting to understand. Just like that one niece of mine. Between one thing and another she had spent most of her time with adults, not children, and had picked up the habits of speech and intonations of grown-ups.

People get fooled though, and forget, and talk about things in front of kids like that that they never should. Now who in their right mind would be talking to a ten year old about epidemics? Now that other niece, she was a different story. That one was a tomboy, never in the house, always clambering up in the trees. A scamp.

“It’s a very serious situation that happens when a disease runs through a town or a village.” I took a sip. “It’s very rare these days though. This was all in the old days.”

That seemed to satisfy her, or at least satisfied her as much as she ever was satisfied. Like I say, a child full of curiosity, and it was no surprise to me when she stood up, came over and shook my hand, with that same grave attention and simple courtesy that she’d carry with her all through her life. You could tell.

And then she was gone as quickly and suddenly as she had arrived, in that silent way that children have of slipping in and out of the familiar spaces of their lives.

Cute kid. Charming really.

I groaned and thought of the five appointments I had the next day. I had one long swallow of beer left and I finished it, all but smacking my lips, just as Mrs. Jacobsen came to the front door in a flurry, loaded down with grocery sacks, trying to free a hand to reach for her key. I opened the door and took the sacks from her and set them on the counter in the kitchen.

“Why thank you, Mr. Callahan, you are not only a perfect lodger but a gentleman and a scholar to boot. I trust you’ve had a pleasant evening by yourself?”

“Oh, not by myself at all. I’ve been talking to Violet,” I said, and laughed, as I knew Mrs. Jacobsen would. It would always be more like listening to Violet than talking to her, that would be true her whole life through. “That’s some little girl you’ve got there.”

Mrs. Jacobsen looked at me, puzzled.

“Violet,” I said.  “The little girl with the short black hair who lives here. I presumed she was yours.”

“What little girl?” asked Mrs. Jacobsen.