Three Story House: A Novel (45 page)

The lady who got herself stuck turned out to be a long-lost relative. A cousin to Roger whom he’d never mentioned. She was visiting Memphis with her sister. The Hathaways were both teachers and had for many years planned vacations around visiting the gravestones of their family’s departed. Their work had taken them all across the country and in their younger years across the continents. My father learned a lot from Miss Hathaway while she was stuck because it took nearly three hours to free her and it was his job to distract her while the firemen worked. My dad always said that if the firemen had been left to their own devices, they would have had Miss Hathaway out in minutes, but Mellie demanded that the house’s blueprints be consulted before any demolition began.

Once the fire department developed a plan that satisfied Mellie, they used a sledgehammer to break through the plaster and brick in an area to the left of the front door. Once they could see the doorframe, handheld saws and crowbars were employed to cut away the portion of the frame where Miss Hathaway was lodged. During the hours it took to free her, Miss Hathaway held onto her sister’s hand and apologized time and time again, saying, “It didn’t seem impossible when I started through.”

Mindful of the onlookers and public officials who were present, Mellie offered a tight smile and took Miss Hathaway’s other hand. “Really, it will be all right,” she said. “We’ll fix this up as soon as we get you out.” But Mellie never looked at the woman’s face because she was busy counting the number of broken bricks in the pile of rubble in the foyer.

“They were lucky it hadn’t happened before or since. The smallest of front doors in an ordinary house is about two feet wide and most people need less than ten inches to clear a doorway.” The driver wiped at the sweat that pooled underneath his nose. He’d once again stopped the trolley alongside the back of Spite House. “That door, you can walk right up and see for yourself, door was a foot and a half across. I think they’ve put the place up for sale.”

“And no one lives there?” The woman stepped forward and asked to be let out.

“This isn’t a stop,” the driver said, looking in the mirror at the track behind him.

She pushed at the doors, and reluctantly the driver pushed the lever forward that opened them. The woman thanked him, and then waited for him to pull the trolley forward before crossing the tracks. As she walked up to the glass exterior of Spite House, she saw herself as if in a fun-house mirror. Fat and then thin, short and then tall. There were two Adirondack chairs in the backyard and she sat in one of them, looking up for a long time at her reflection. She decided all at once that she could not go back to her home. She closed her eyes and pictured Roger stuck with the land, Mellie stuck in that house, and finally the Hathaway woman who looked like the woman used to look.   

Reading Group Discussion Questions

  
1.
  
Until their great-great-grandmother points it out to them, none of the cousins realizes that all of their names are variants of the same name. What similarities are there between the women? Why do you think they share the same name? How do our cousins often represent lives that we could have had?

  
2.
  
The book is divided into three stories and Spite House has three stories. How do each of the women’s stories connect to the house they live in while they are trying to get their lives back on track?

  
3.
  
Despite being close to one another, each of the women keeps information from the others. What are their motivations in doing so? What do you keep secret from those close to you?

  
4.
  
Memphis is an important setting in the book. How does the city specifically and the South generally affect each of the women and the choices they make? Lizzie believes that living in Memphis on a fault line with the ever present threat of earthquakes has affected the way she looks at life. Can living in a place where natural disasters could hit at any moment influence the choices a person makes?

  
5.
  
Throughout the novel, the cousins find refuge in the water. Discuss the symbolism of the bodies of water—primarily the Mississippi River and the Massachusetts Bay in this novel.

  
6.
  
Why do you think Lizzie keeps thinking she has a chance at returning to her soccer team, even after she receives bad news about her knee? When should people give up on their dreams? When are the obstacles too great?

  
7.
  
Elyse doesn’t know how to fall out of love with Landon. How do you think her fascination with other people’s problems contributes to her unhealthy fixation on Landon? Do you know people like her? Have you ever had an irrational, one-sided relationship?

  
8.
  
Like Lizzie, Isobel experienced success early. How does having your dreams come true early affect the rest of your life? What can a person hope to achieve if she peaks early?

  
9.
  
Toward the beginning of the novel, the cousins decide to think of their year in the house as “their very last year.” In what ways do they make decisions based on this idea? How would you make decisions if you knew the world as you know it was going to end? What risks would you take?

10.
  
Do you think Lizzie’s parents kept secret the information about who her father was to protect Lizzie or to protect themselves? When are children old enough to be told about the complicated histories of their parents?   

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S
pite House—with its narrow façade and breathtaking view—has been in my imagination as long as I can remember. About ten years ago, I used it as the setting for the first story I wrote after deciding to stop talking about writing and write. And although that story lost its luster quickly, the house remained a glimmering Valhalla and my fingers itched to find the characters who could call Spite House home. Although this book didn’t come as easy as the first, in the end I got it right thanks to the people in my life.

Carrie Feron is a brilliant editor. She trusts the writing process enough to ask questions instead of giving answers. Because of her experience and exceptional intuition, those questions were always exactly what I needed to get me to the point where I could make the story in my head match the one on the page.

I feel so lucky to have landed at William Morrow. They believe in authors like children believe in the Tooth Fairy. Thank you to my tremendous publicity team (Ben Bruton is a genius); and a special thanks to Tessa Woodward, who has moved on to better and brighter, but left me with Nicole Fischer, who knows the answers to questions I forget to ask.

There are not words enough to express my gratitude that Alexandra Machinist exists in the world and is excellent in all the ways I will never be. Your world is beautiful and strange, and I’m glad you are so skilled at being in it. And if there’s someone I want to grow up to be, it is Stephanie Koven. Thank you.

Deepest thanks to Leslie Graff, Patti Meredith, David Williams, and Lindsey George, who read a very early draft of this novel and helped me to find ways to make it better. My writing group remains ever stalwart and ever needed.

Finally, thank you to my husband, who tells me every day that I’m his favorite person in the world. He is more than that to me. He is my only person in this world. And to my children, who in the end everything is for.

The Roots of the Olive Tree

Cover design by Amanda Kain

Cover photograph © by Hudiemm/Getty Images

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

THREE STORY HOUSE
. Copyright © 2014 by Courtney Miller Santo. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

FIRST EDITION

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Santo, Courtney Miller.

           
Three story house : a novel / Courtney Miller Santo. — First edition.

           
pages    cm

ISBN 978-0-06-213054-9 (paperback)—ISBN 0-06-213054-4 (paperback) 1. Cousins—Fiction. 2. Female friendship—Fiction. 3. Dwellings—Remodeling—Fiction. 4. Self-realization in women—Fiction. 5. Memphis (Tenn.)—Fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.