The Brick Place
- Aug 18, 2021
- 3 min read
by Melissa Ostrom
In August, the brick place at the end of Woodchuck Alley is trellised in bindweed. Rain stains the boarded windows to a penny sheen. The place is hard to place. An abandoned house? A shuttered shop? That window might have been a kitchen window with a sink below, its sill a shelf for an African violet, a cactus, a rock, or it could have displayed shoes or books or hats. Either way, somebody would have looked out, and somebody would have looked in.
Now it’s empty, full of emptiness, alive as only the empty-drenched can be. Ashton and Crystal, who are not little and not old, know this without knowing they know it. They live close enough to the ruin to take notice, close enough for its decay to occupy their minds. When one girl stares at the place straight on, she makes out a face. When the other does the same, she sees pain. The windows are bandaged eyes, bloodied and blinded. This place, the girls agree, is sad.
1965
The brick place down Woodchuck is a pretty house. A home. And Dory Winscott lives there alone. Kids around town call her the Iron Maiden, not because she’s mean but because she takes in laundry and washes and irons it. Their moms and dads make a big deal over how crisply she irons their collars, how precisely, their pleats, but Dory Winscott is middle-aged and unmarried, and somehow, for the kids on Woodchuck Alley anyway, that adds up to creepy. They make up dark stories about Dory Winscott, like how she kidnaps kindergarteners, irons off their faces, and gives them buttons for eyes. Through the window, they hear Dory Winscott whistling showtunes. Lida Rose, A Spoonful of Sugar, The Rain in Spain. The whistling gives them the shivers. She sounds so happy being evil.
1950
The whole town’s calling Dory Winscott a scandal. She’s not even divorced from Mack Jarod (a wastrel, sure, but still, a husband) yet now going by her maiden name and living in sin in that brick place down Woodchuck—yes, the former dancehall. How fitting. Her lover’s not from these parts. One story is, he used to be a man of the cloth. Got a good look at Dory Winscott and lost the cloth and his wits, to boot. According to somebody else, he was an actor. Either way, hard to blame him. Dory’s a beauty. In the evening, the laughter rippling out of the windows sounds right unholy, and Dory, after spending five years looking ghost-pale, has roses blooming in her cheeks, all the time, no matter the season. Wouldn’t be so bad if those cheeks were red with shame, but chances are, they’re flushed with passion.
1923
Every Saturday night in July and August, from seven to ten, the brick dancehall on Woodchuck opens its rear doors to make room for the weekend crush. Dancers spill onto the platform out back, including Mabel Brassy, a regular, and Clark Winscott, the dancehall owner’s oldest son. Mabel and Clark dance the Lindy Hop and sip champagne and dance the Lindy Hop some more, before kicking, circling, hugging, and tugging their way to the edge of the dancefloor, past the old shed, to the other side of the fence. It’s dark there. Dark and sweet. Fragrant with climbing roses, alive with muffled music, soft with wet grass, busy with kisses.
Clark says, I love you, Mabel. I love you more than anything.
And Mabel says, Show me, Clark. Show me how you much you love me.
Melissa Ostrom is the author of The Beloved Wild (Feiwel & Friends, 2018), a Junior Library Guild book and an Amelia Bloomer Award selection, and Unleaving (Feiwel & Friends, 2019). Her short stories have appeared in many journals and been selected for Best Small Fictions 2019, Best Microfiction 2020, Best Small Fictions 2021, and Best Microfiction 2021. She teaches English at Genesee Community College and lives with her husband and children in Holley, New York. Learn more at www.melissaostrom.com or find her on Twitter @melostrom.
