Read Online Peachtree Road by Anne Rivers Siddons - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Anne Rivers Siddons
Ads: Link
juncture, it was with—for the house, at least—an almost physical stab of sorrow. And when I came back, even though the return was not initially of my own choosing, my heart gave the same small, glad wing-waggle that it always did when I rounded the long curve past Peachtree Battle going north and saw again those soft-rose bricks and the sweetly hipped roof.
It always seemed to me in that house of infinitely lovely proportion and abundance of clear light that, no matter what miasma of disharmony prevailed at the moment, anything so beautiful could not be in and of itself hurtful, but was merely sleeping under some spell soon to be broken, and when it waked, the happiness that would come flooding in would be mythic in its scope, out of my small imagining entirely. I think the reason I was never really unhappy there is that I waited with such absolute conviction for joy. What child dares see his primal danger plain? Even now, when whatever future I might have imagined for it is past, the house at 2500 Peachtree Road still smites my eyes with its beauty whenever I look at it. I do, several times each day, from the summerhouse.
“Lordee, but it’s big, ain’t it?” I remember Lucy saying on the first full day she spent in the house. We were standing on the half-moon front drive, looking up at it.
52 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
Her blue eyes had a dazzle in them not entirely from the sun.
“Do y’all charge admission for folks to come look at it?”
“Why would we do that?” I asked, honestly puzzled.
“Mama says people do in New Orleans.”
“Well, nobody does here,” I said, defensively.
“I bet you could make a pot if you did,” Lucy said. “I’m gon’ ask Aunt Olivia if I can do that. I bet lots of folks would pay to come see this house.”
“Don’t do that,” I said quickly, knowing instinctively that my mother would be outraged by the idea. “If you want some money I’ll give you some. How much do you need?”
“A nickel,” she said promptly.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a dime? I’ve got one.”
“No, silly,” she snorted. “Nickel’s twice as big as a dime.”
I gave her the nickel.
The house was designed in 1917, not by Neel Reid but by a young architectural student cousin of its first owner, a physician who made one of the early fortunes investing in Coca-Cola bottling equipment, as did so many of the men who built the first of the great Buckhead houses. Indeed, the intersection of West Paces Ferry and Roswell roads is still called Coca-Cola Corners. The young architect died a year after the house was finished, during the obligatory year’s study in Florence after graduating from Georgia Tech, attempting to swim the Arno after staying up all night drinking and reading Lord Byron. My mother told me the story when I was barely three; it is one of the very first memories I have: sitting in her lap in a rocking chair in front of the coal fire in her and my father’s big upstairs bedroom, rocking back and forth, back and forth as the red firelight leaped over her hands and the dark, seal-sleek curtain of hair that fell over her face and mine together.
PEACHTREE ROAD / 53
“Tragic,” she said, rocking, rocking. “Tragic, to die so young and so gifted, so far away from home. You must promise me never to drink, Sheppie, and never to leave your mama. Do you promise me that?”
I suppose I remember it so vividly because it was such a rarity in my small life; she almost never rocked me. In fact, I can’t remember another time. Old Martha Cater did, and I am told that my unremembered grandmother Adelaide Bondurant did, but I think I was far too apt to spit up in those first years for my mother’s sensitive stomach. I can’t imagine why she was doing it that one time; perhaps I was sick with some small childhood affliction that did not involve bodily secretions. At any rate, I promised her then that I would never drink and never leave her. I would have promised her, in that moment of
It always seemed to me in that house of infinitely lovely proportion and abundance of clear light that, no matter what miasma of disharmony prevailed at the moment, anything so beautiful could not be in and of itself hurtful, but was merely sleeping under some spell soon to be broken, and when it waked, the happiness that would come flooding in would be mythic in its scope, out of my small imagining entirely. I think the reason I was never really unhappy there is that I waited with such absolute conviction for joy. What child dares see his primal danger plain? Even now, when whatever future I might have imagined for it is past, the house at 2500 Peachtree Road still smites my eyes with its beauty whenever I look at it. I do, several times each day, from the summerhouse.
“Lordee, but it’s big, ain’t it?” I remember Lucy saying on the first full day she spent in the house. We were standing on the half-moon front drive, looking up at it.
52 / ANNE RIVERS SIDDONS
Her blue eyes had a dazzle in them not entirely from the sun.
“Do y’all charge admission for folks to come look at it?”
“Why would we do that?” I asked, honestly puzzled.
“Mama says people do in New Orleans.”
“Well, nobody does here,” I said, defensively.
“I bet you could make a pot if you did,” Lucy said. “I’m gon’ ask Aunt Olivia if I can do that. I bet lots of folks would pay to come see this house.”
“Don’t do that,” I said quickly, knowing instinctively that my mother would be outraged by the idea. “If you want some money I’ll give you some. How much do you need?”
“A nickel,” she said promptly.
“Wouldn’t you rather have a dime? I’ve got one.”
“No, silly,” she snorted. “Nickel’s twice as big as a dime.”
I gave her the nickel.
The house was designed in 1917, not by Neel Reid but by a young architectural student cousin of its first owner, a physician who made one of the early fortunes investing in Coca-Cola bottling equipment, as did so many of the men who built the first of the great Buckhead houses. Indeed, the intersection of West Paces Ferry and Roswell roads is still called Coca-Cola Corners. The young architect died a year after the house was finished, during the obligatory year’s study in Florence after graduating from Georgia Tech, attempting to swim the Arno after staying up all night drinking and reading Lord Byron. My mother told me the story when I was barely three; it is one of the very first memories I have: sitting in her lap in a rocking chair in front of the coal fire in her and my father’s big upstairs bedroom, rocking back and forth, back and forth as the red firelight leaped over her hands and the dark, seal-sleek curtain of hair that fell over her face and mine together.
PEACHTREE ROAD / 53
“Tragic,” she said, rocking, rocking. “Tragic, to die so young and so gifted, so far away from home. You must promise me never to drink, Sheppie, and never to leave your mama. Do you promise me that?”
I suppose I remember it so vividly because it was such a rarity in my small life; she almost never rocked me. In fact, I can’t remember another time. Old Martha Cater did, and I am told that my unremembered grandmother Adelaide Bondurant did, but I think I was far too apt to spit up in those first years for my mother’s sensitive stomach. I can’t imagine why she was doing it that one time; perhaps I was sick with some small childhood affliction that did not involve bodily secretions. At any rate, I promised her then that I would never drink and never leave her. I would have promised her, in that moment of
Similar Books
