The Why of Things: A Novel by Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop

Author:Elizabeth Hartley Winthrop
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
ISBN: 9781451695755
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Published: 2013-06-11T07:00:00+00:00

Six

Somewhere up in the attic Joan is certain there is an old typewriter, which she has decided to search out to see how the process of writing might change if she cannot so easily press delete; this week alone she’s generated countless pages that all have vanished with the swipe of a finger. It is early—not yet seven o’clock—but she has been up for hours, unable to sleep for the yammering of starlings gathered in the trees outside and the oddly empty racing of her mind, so she’s decided to give in, get up, and start the day.

It is the first day of what is forecasted to be a heat wave; when Joan pulls down the attic’s hatch door, she can immediately sense the sweltering air above, which makes the hallway seem cool by comparison. She extends the rickety folding ladder and carefully climbs up; her heart falls when she emerges through the hatch and looks around. She can’t recall the last time she was up here, but it is more crowded than she remembers. What used to be an attic at their house in Maryland was converted into a bedroom by the people who owned the house before Joan and Anders moved in seventeen years ago, and so everything of theirs that one might keep in an attic is kept here, and the space is filled to capacity. Trunks and boxes are piled in the middle of the room, where the ceiling is highest. A narrow path leads around this pile, lined on its other side by the smaller items that are stored in the space where the sloped ceiling meets the floor, and against the back wall, shelves are filled from top to bottom. Joan has no idea where among all this stuff the typewriter might be.

A single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling just beyond the hatch; Joan pulls the string attached, and is unsurprised to find that the bulb has burned out. She doesn’t bother to go down to get a new bulb to replace it; there are pie-shaped windows at the attic’s either end, which are scratched and somewhat clouded, yet still let in a haze of light that is enough for her to see by. She wanders down the narrow path, scanning the labels of boxes in the center of the room to her right and peering into the low shadows at the loose things piled on her left.

There are several boxes of old clothes, one that contains suits of Anders’ from the eighties, one that contains baby clothes, and one labeled Winter Stuff. There is a box labeled Shoes, and another Grad School Stuff, whether Anders’ or her own she isn’t sure, nor does she bother to find out. There are all sorts of items tucked beneath the low slope of ceiling to her left. A pair of roller skates. Rusted cross-country skis. A folded stroller. A cardboard heart covered in purple velvet, which Joan made for Anders when he had surgery to remove a benign tumor from his lung before they were even married.

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