Every day this week I drove the children to their schools, then returned home and worked at removing wallpaper until my hands refused to scrape, pull or rub. Afterward, I showered and walked to the library. Exhausting my anxiety through physical labor relaxed me, but the time I spent doing research exhilarated me. Truthfully, I had no idea what I was doing or what poking into the past would uncover, but it seemed as good a start as any to learning why Irwin inhabited my house.
After four days, I had mapped out a history. In 1908, a man named James Allen, a widower with two children prior to his marriage the year before to Bernadette, built the house. According to the records, it was the first house on the street. There had been a previous house on the property and I thought it might have been destroyed by fire, although I couldn’t find any newspaper articles relating to that happening. The details became a little sketchy at that point. It didn’t pertain to my house, but I still wanted to learn about it, too, but left it for another time.
James Allen was a poor man. He, like many others in town, worked as a logger running logs down the Bekksid River to the local saw mill. Five years and four children later, the same river that provided his livelihood took his life.
His widow supported herself and their six children after her husband’s death by cooking, cleaning and sewing for the affluent in town.
In 1917, Bernadette married Joseph Smythe, a widower with two children. They now had eight children between them. But, alas, Bernadette seemed destined to be a widow. In 1932, Joseph died from what the doctor called “the grippe.” Pneumonia, I surmised.
After her death in 1965, the children sold the house to Anthony Cabrini and his wife, Dorothea. They had one six-year-old son, Rocco, who was killed two months later by a dump truck hauling bark from the paper mill to the dump.
That same year, the Simsons bought the house, and for the following fifty-six years lived there until their deaths last year. They had no children. They willed their estate to the Catholic Church.
I caught a glimpse of the past and the tragedies surrounding the house. Owners. Dates. Occupations. Deaths. Every fact and every detail I uncovered made me understand the house and the owners a little more. It bothered me there wasn’t more information on Dorothea and her husband and why they sold their house. Maybe it was because the house reminded them of their son’s tragic death.
I checked my watch. It was time to pick up the kids from school, then get them packed and psyched for their weekend with their father. I stuffed all my notes in my oversized bag and left the library, wondering what purpose, if any, they would serve.