The Silver Star(13)

The eulogy made me feel a lot better about both Fido and Uncle Tinsley. On the way back down the hill, I asked about the goldfish we’d found in the pond. “The fish are koi,” Uncle Tinsley said. “That was Mother’s garden. One of the finest private gardens in all of Virginia, back in the day. Mother won prizes for it. She was the envy of every lady in the garden club.”

We swung around the barn and the big white house came into view. I started telling Uncle Tinsley about my house dream and how, when we first arrived at Mayfield, I realized it was the actual house in the dream.

Uncle Tinsley became thoughtful. He rested the shovel against an old water trough in front of the barn. “I guess you’d better see the inside of the house, then,” he said. “Just to make sure.”

We followed Uncle Tinsley up the big porch steps. He took a deep breath and opened the door.

The front hall was large and dark, with a lot of wooden cabinets that had glass doors. Everything was a mess. Newspapers, magazines, books, and mail were stacked high on the tables and the floor, alongside boxes of rocks and bottles filled with dirt and sand and liquids.

“It may look a tad cluttered,” he said, “but that’s because I’m in the middle of reorganizing everything.”

“It’s not so bad,” Liz said. “It just needs a little tidying up.”

“We can help,” I said.

“Oh, no. Everything’s under control. Everything has its place, and I know where everything is.”

Uncle Tinsley showed us the parlor, the dining room, and the ballroom. Oil paintings hung crooked on the walls and a few were falling out of their frames. The Persian carpets were worn and frayed, the silk curtains were faded and torn, and the stained wallpaper was peeling away from the walls. A grand piano covered with a dark green velvet cloth stood in the big ballroom with the French doors. There was all this stuff piled on every available surface—more stacks of paper and notebooks, antique binoculars, pendulum clocks, rolled-up maps, stacks of chipped china, old pistols, ships in bottles, statues of rearing horses, framed photographs, and all these little wooden boxes, one filled with coins, another with buttons, another with old medals. Everything was coated with a thick layer of dust.

“There sure is a ton of stuff in here,” I said.

“Yes, but every single thing you see has value,” Uncle Tinsley said. “If you have the brains to appreciate it.”

He led us up a curving staircase and down a long hall. At the end of the hall, he stopped in front of a pair of doors that faced each other. Both had brass door knockers shaped like birds. “This is the bird wing,” Uncle Tinsley told us. “This is where you’ll stay. Until your mother comes to pick you up.”

“We’re not sleeping in the barn anymore?” I asked.

“Not without Fido there to protect you.”

Uncle Tinsley opened the doors. We each had our own room, he told us. Both were wallpapered with bird motifs—common birds, like robins and cardinals, and exotic birds, like cockatiels and flamingos. The bird wing, he explained, had been designed for his twin aunts, who were little girls when the house was built. They had loved birds and kept a big Victorian birdhouse full of different kinds of finches.

“Where was Mom’s room?” I asked.

“She never mentioned it?” he asked. “The whole bird wing was hers.” He pointed through the door of one room. “When she brought you back from the hospital after you were born, she put you in that cradle in the corner there.”

I looked over at the cradle. It was small and white and made of wicker, and I couldn’t understand quite why, but it made me feel very safe.





CHAPTER SIX


The next morning, over our poached eggs, Liz and I tried to talk Uncle Tinsley into letting us help him clean up the house just a little bit. But he insisted that nothing in the house could be thrown out or even moved. Everything, he said, was either a family treasure or part of one of his collections or necessary for his geological research.

We spent the morning following Uncle Tinsley around the house as he explained what all the stuff meant to him. He’d pick something up, say an ivory-handled letter opener or a tricornered hat, and give us a long explanation of where it came from, who had owned it, and why it had extraordinary significance. I came to realize that everything was, in fact, organized in a way that only he fully understood.

“This place is like a museum,” I said.

“And you’re the curator,” Liz told Uncle Tinsley.

“Well said,” he replied. “But it’s been a good while since I gave my last tour.” We were standing in the ballroom. Uncle Tinsley looked around. “I admit the place is a tad cluttered. That was the phrase Martha liked to use. I’ve always loved to collect things, but when she was alive, she helped me keep the impulse in check.”