Burnt Mountain by Anne Rivers Siddons Page B

heap since that old lunatic died; I can’t remember how long it’s sat empty. It’s falling down.”
    He smiled again and tapped the horn. The world bloomed into light.
    The lamps lit, soft, yellow, snow collared. The long, straight drive down to the house flowered with lights; ground lights
     studded its border, the overhanging great trees, into uplit statuary. Torches and flambeaus had been set along the way, flickering
     on the snow, dancing off the drifted limbs and the smooth white gardens beyond. At the end of the drive a great three-storied
     Greek Revival house stood, its flat roof a field of shining white, its twin chimneys sending blue curls of smoke up into the
     night. Its four white Corinthian columns were twisted with greenery and its three black iron balconies draped with more. Every
     window shone with light, many with candles, and the massive oak front doors were open. Each wore a great Della Robbia wreath
     with fruits and red ribbons. From the car Crystal could see that the house was thronged with people.
    It was a beautiful house, classically beautiful, shining with health and love, looking every inch as the old man who built
     it had envisioned that one day it would.
    Crystal opened her mouth, but no sound came. My father put his hands tenderly on either side of her face and kissed her on
     her open mouth. There were tears in his eyes and on his cheeks.
    “Mother and Dad have spent the last few months doing all of this,” he said. “It’s furnished, too. It’s your wedding present
     and your Christmas present all rolled into one. And it’s your wedding reception. Don’t you remember? They promised you it
     would be special. Welcome, my baby. Let’s go home.”
    He opened the door on his side and people flowed out into the night, people in long gowns and tuxedos, holding glasses aloft,
     smiling and cheering and calling out.
    These next things I know: I know that my father’s heart reached out to the house in sheer joy, for he loved it always. And
     I know that my sister, Lily, still barely joined cells in my mother’s womb, reached out to it, too, for she also loved River
     House, as my mother but no one else called it. Maybe not as our father did, but in her own way. Even I, so long yet to be
     even dreamed of, but there, in him and in her, disparate cells waiting to become me, certainly must have held out arms-to-be,
     for the house was for a long time my one true haven and my home.
    I did not try to see my mother’s face. At that moment, I quit trying at all. I could give her a honeymoon, but neither I nor
     anyone else could give her a home.

CHAPTER 4

    B y the time I was toddling at warp speed round the house, it had lost most of its look of unearthly, radiant white perfection
     and was no longer a castle out of a fairy tale. It was still a beautiful house; even now I know there was none lovelier in
     Lytton and few anywhere else that I have seen. But it was by then only and always a house. It had been much lived in, and
     it bore its scars nobly.
    There was a chunk out of one of its columns where Lily had smacked it, demonstrating her backswing to some smitten calf or
     other… there were always several mooing around us. One of its first-floor French doors had been smashed when the Steinway
     baby grand my mother had ordered for the living room missed its point of entry and the original old lintels and panes could
     not be duplicated. The new window, as it was always called, was fancy enough but always looked, as my father said, like a
     Band-Aid stuck on a wedding cake. Duringa Christmas reception for the entire school, two middle schoolers had set off cherry bombs on the second-floor balcony, and
     though the great smears of soot could be cleaned and painted over, the surrounding stucco was left perpetually pitted, as
     if peppered by a thousand BB guns.
    And there was no way under heaven the scuff marks and handprints on the front doorsteps and doors could be contained. Hamilton