Children of Another Mother

~CHAPTER ONE~

There!  I’d brought the last box into our home and we were finally able to close up the empty moving van.  We’d done it all by ourselves.  The boys were hopefully in their rooms emptying their personal boxes and tidying up their messes.  I’d see later.  Looking into my sunken living room I wondered what I should do first.  Sleep was my first thought, but that would have to wait.  I headed for the kitchen.  Slowly, box by box, I unpacked all the kitchen utensils and wiped down the oaken shelves, ready to make tonight’s first dinner and then realized that was silly; I didn’t have any food!  Moving must have made my brain dead.  I knew I had been a little light-headed today with all the last-minute details but forgetting food?  I was surprised the boys hadn’t been downstairs to demand dinner.  Curious, I headed upstairs to find them.  I found them both passed out in their beds in each of their rooms. The beds, the only thing that had apparently been unpacked...no sheets, no pillowcases, and boxes everywhere about the rooms but the beds each held sprawling boys.  Laughing, I shook my head and let them sleep.

The move hadn’t been easy.  Mom had just died and I couldn’t, wouldn’t live in our condo one more moment.  Using the equity in the place I had bought a house in Los Osos in Central California.  We’d vacationed there many times or, more correctly, in Morro Bay across the bay from Los Osos and loved it.  How Mom would have loved my new house! There was even a room for her, never to be used now, I thought.  She had seen it of course, intended to live in it, but that was never to be.  The house was abandoned when I found it on one of our long drives up there.  The trip took four hours each way and was exhausting but I was determined to get us out of Southern California.  I loved it there but it was way too congested. I wanted the boys growing up in a more suburban area.  Not too far out in the sticks but far enough away that they didn’t have the pressures of the big city.  I knew I had found it in Los Osos.  We’d taken one of our many drives around the area looking at ‘For Sale’ signs, sure we couldn’t afford to live here. We had seriously talked when we came across a house I’d looked at many times.  It was located at the top of the hill overlooking the bay.  Not the very top (no houses were there) but as high up as the road went on the steep hill.  I’d liked that it was on a corner lot and could be accessed from two points.  The house was a mess though; the yard alone was so overgrown you could barely see the cute little Victorian with faded blue paint that stood there.  I’d known we couldn’t get a modern new house because there was a building moratorium in San Luis Obispo County to protect it from the Los Angeles and Orange County speculators that were salivating over all the open farm and grazing land. 

On a whim I had looked into the ownership of the place; I figured I could at least pull down the old place and build on its foundation with a newer, more modern place.  I found it after a month of looking, having been told it didn’t exist, on the rolls of tax liens and was surprised that no one had snapped it up.  I thought perhaps it was because of the paper snafu I’d come across and had to wade through to find it.  Through sheer stubbornness I had found us a home.  I contacted our banker, got pre-approved, and made an offer via fax.  The offer was ridiculously low but who was I to give them more than they wanted?  They called me the next day to accept.  Weird, I thought, that a county clerk would call me that quickly to accept the offer.  Better not to question things, just accept it and move on.  I liked the amount though, just for back taxes; what the heck was wrong with the previous owner to just let it go like that?  Naturally suspicious, I wanted to ask why and worried until all the t’s were crossed and the i’s were dotted and then sweated until the ink had dried over the thought there was some mistake and we wouldn’t get it.  Here a month later we were moved in.  We owned it!  Well actually the bank and me.  We’d all planned the move, planned the remodel, done some of the work ourselves.  But Mom dying hadn’t been part of the plan.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

To say it was a surprise wouldn’t be totally accurate.  To Mom, definitely.  To us however, no.  Mom had been seventy and ill a few times over the years.  However, she had been so excited about the new house I’d found and very supportive in wading through the red tape.  In fact, it was her moral support that had kept me going through that red tape when I’d wanted to give up time and again.  Finding her dead in her bed one morning had devastated me.  My mom, my best friend, my extra parent for the boys to be raised by, gone.  She’d been there for them when I had to be away from home.  She was always there for them when I worked.  She’d been my confidant, my shoulder to lean on when my husband left.  Now I had to be an adult, all on my own.  It wasn’t fair but then life truly isn’t.

Mom’s funeral was quiet, it was nice to see all the relatives but I was anxious to get back home and pack up.  I hadn’t told my siblings of my move; why bother?  They’d essentially abandoned us when we’d moved to California and they had their own lives.  I’d send them a notice after the fact.  I had my own life to lead now and wanted to get on with it.  It wasn’t that I resented them and it wasn’t that they resented me.  It was just we all had things to do and didn’t need each other involved.  We all had our lives to lead and did so without interference from our siblings.  I would have resented their assumptions regarding me and my life had they had the guts to voice them.  My streak of independence infuriated them.  I was the baby, I was the little sister, and I didn’t need them or their interference.  It created tension on their part.  I was oblivious to all of it.  I went my own way.  I didn’t ever do what they expected.  It was okay though, I lived far enough away that I didn’t screw up their lives in any shape, manner, or form.  Although I could sense the silent condemnation and was able to ignore since we didn’t see each other that often anymore.

After a horrendous flight home with all of us motion sick, the boys and I crashed at the condo and while they were at school the next day I began to pack.  One by one the rooms got packed up.  My mom’s stuff I just put in boxes with the intention of going through it at a later date.  Her clothes I put in boxes and bags in the back of my Jeep Cherokee.  I took these to the Salvation Army, the only charity Mom ever felt actually did a damn bit of good.  I was surprised how much there really was.  Mom had saved everything!  Why would a woman who never wore dresses need a couple of dozen petticoats of the kind you would have found in the fifties?  She had been raised during The Great Depression so I guess saving everything went with the territory.  Shaking my head, I finished the job.  Man, how depressing.  The boys packed up their toys once they got home from school and I began on the kitchen, keeping only paper plates and plastic forks for our daily meals until we moved.  By that weekend we were ready.  I rented a truck that I thought was overly large and began to fill it with the boys’ help.  They loved the lift gate and wanted to play with it, but I kept their fingers and toes from being sliced off.  I had one of the boys keep an eye on the truck and our things as we brought, box by box, furniture, and other things out and filled the gate.  We all rode up and unloaded the gate into the truck.  I was surprised how much crap we fitted into it and that we were able to fill the truck completely.  Mom had had a lot of boxes stored under the steps, in the closets, and in the storage units.  I’d have a lot to get rid of after this move, I thought.  It took all of Saturday to empty the condo and it was weird how it echoed with our voices after everything was gone, no furniture or other things to absorb the sounds. Time and again we opened cupboards and cabinets and closets checking for last minute things we may have left behind, we’d been thorough though.  We slept that final night on the floor in sleeping bags with the cats curled up nearby and the dog snoring across one of the boy’s legs.  Early Sunday morning the realtor came by and I signed the necessary papers, arranged for the entire place to be painted (Mom had never let me while we lived there), and arranged for new carpeting to be put in.  Myself, the two boys, the dog, and I drove off in our moving van, towing the Cherokee holding the cats in a big dog kennel.  I was excited and I think the boys were too.  A new adventure.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~

We arrived Sunday afternoon, after a four-hour drive that turned into five with traffic, with a heavily loaded truck and I looked at the house that was to become our new home.  We hadn’t had time to do much and there was so much more to do.  The painters had finished while we’d been back east at Mom’s funeral.  Inside and out was fresh paint and the new carpets were in, but there was so much more I wanted to do. The landscaping hadn’t even been tackled and the weeds were taller than I was (which wasn’t really saying much since I’m only five and half feet tall but for weeds, that was tall).  Buried behind all the brush, grass, garbage, and other debris was a cute little Victorian house that I had had painted blue with white trim and a wraparound porch that ended to the east of the house.  On the main floor was the living room, a library or den, a powder room, the kitchen, and a dining room.  Off the kitchen and dining room was a deck that spanned the entire back of the house.  That view from the deck was worth more than I had paid.  It looked out over the hill, the village, and all the other houses. I could see the bay and even across it to Morro Rock.  Upstairs sat the four bedrooms with three bathrooms.  The master bedroom was all for me with my own bathroom and I needed the space after living in the two-bedroom condo and sharing the master bedroom with two little and growing boys for too many years.  The basement was huge and one of those open kinds where we could have a patio, if we ever found the ground underneath all the crap.  There was one corner of the basement I planned to close off and make a separate room, perhaps a guest room. But with Mom’s room now available, maybe not.  God, I missed not sharing this all with her.

First thing we put the cats, still in their kennel with the litter box, in the basement under the steps in a quiet little closet next to the water heater and furnace.  I didn’t want to lose them as we moved into the strange place and this would give them time to calm down after the five or so hours they had been in the car.  Our Golden Retriever, Brandy, was up and down stairs, in and out of rooms, and in and out of the moving van, wagging her tail good naturedly the whole time.  She was happy, but then that was the nature of the breed.  The boys were excited, a combination of their age and that we were in a new place with new things to discover.  They realized that each had their own room, their own space, for the first time in their lives.  We’d shared the master bedroom in the condo and the second bedroom had been for Mom.  That kind of closeness was overrated and now at an end.  Now each of us had our own rooms and rooms to spare. 

Struggling with boxes up the stairs I realized that the closet door to the left of the hallway was ajar.  I was annoyed that one of the boys had explored the closet and left it open.  Trying to close the door with my hip had it popping right back open.  Trying to slam it with my foot didn’t help and then I realized something metal was keeping it from closing properly.  What had they put in this closet?  I put down my box and opening it wide enough to let in some daylight, I realized it wasn’t a closet at all.  A metal cage met me and, pushing the door of it aside, I saw it was an elevator.  The house hadn’t even listed an elevator on its inventory.  It made me wonder.  None of the buttons worked.  Going into the library to the left of the front door I pulled the panel back that controlled all the circuits in the house.  One by one I turned everything on that hadn’t been on before.  Lights came on in the oddest places all over the house.  As we moved in we turned them off one by one and before night I had most of the circuit breakers labeled, including the ones for the elevator and except for a couple I couldn’t find where they went.  I’m sure they had some purpose and maybe we would find them over time.  There was one in the corner of my bedroom, though, that just wouldn’t go out.  It was in the round closet that I had assumed someone had built into the master bedroom; I hadn’t explored it yet and just knew it was there.  With all the walk-in closet space already in the master bedroom I had just dismissed it.  I didn’t need it yet, so I hadn’t looked into it.  I attempted to open the door but couldn’t find it.  Yes, I know that sounds odd but there was a light coming out slightly from under one of the panels.  Finally, after struggling with it for a while I found it was a pressure door that opened from pushing against the door and quickly letting go.  How clever.  Inside this closet I found a staircase leading up into the attic and down to the library below my room.  How spooky.  No one had discovered this or the elevator; what other surprises were we in store for?  A piece of wood was propped against the wall on the first step and picking this up had the light turning off.  How cool...pressure activated lighting!

I ended up phoning for pizza and soda to be delivered that evening.  I didn’t have everything hooked up in the house yet so I had to use my cell and assure the guy that it wasn’t a prank call, explaining that the number coming up on his caller ID was my cell.  The number had an area code from Southern California so naturally he was suspicious.  I gave the delivery driver a good tip, hoping to be remembered in the future.  The boys woke up enough to eat their dinner and half-heartedly unpack some more and I counted myself lucky that we were able to get their beds at least made.  The mattresses were made up anyway.  The beds themselves didn’t exist, since I still needed to purchase them.  I made my way down the ‘secret’ staircase after they were asleep in bed and found to my surprise that lights turned on as I reached each floor for the next one.  The pressure plates were in the steps, too cool. 

I went all the way downstairs and found myself coming out into a storage area of the open basement.  Nothing was down here yet other than the cats, but I closed the door anyway and the lights went out.  Or at least they appeared to; like a refrigerator you always wonder.  I made my way over to where the cats had been let out of their closet and opened the door slightly so they could access the cat pans anytime. I knew with the strangeness of the place they were in hiding for now.  I checked the patio walk-out doors to be sure they were locked and looked out at the jungle behind the house, thinking of all that I had to do in the coming months, then I went up the normal stairs from my empty basement to the kitchen.  Checking the doors on this floor, I was ready to head to bed when