Page 71 of Coram House

I get back into my car, feeling as if I’ve just had an encounter with a unicorn. The unplowed road stretches ahead.Fuck it.I step on the gas. The snow scatters like baby powder.

By some miracle, I make it the two miles without getting stuck, but I’m sweating with anxiety by the time I park behind the yellow farmhouse. I walk up the steps onto the wraparound porch. A pair of rocking chairs creak back and forth, buffeted by wind. It’s the kind of place where you’d sit on a summer night, listening to crickets and watching as stars appear one by one over the hills. But summer is impossibly distant.

I knock. A chorus of barking comes from inside. A few seconds later, the door flies open. A woman with wild gray curls smiles at me. Karen Lafayette. Her legs are spread to contain the herd of dogs jostling behind her. “You made it! Get in here before we all freeze. This old place is a bitch to heat.”

Somehow I squeeze past her. The floor is littered with muddy boots and piles of gardening tools. Three black Labs present their silken ears to be scratched and lick my wrist with soft pink tongues.

“Hang your jacket anywhere you can find a spot.”

Karen waves her hand to indicate the wall hooks already crammed with sweatshirts and raincoats. Her hair is held back by two sparkly butterfly clips—the kind I loved in middle school.

“Come on, gang. Out of the way!” Karen shoves aside the clambering dogs and strides into the kitchen.

I hurry to follow. “Thank you for meeting with me,” I say.

“Happy to,” she calls over her shoulder as she fills the kettle. “Not much to do around here in the winter except feed the horses.”

I force myself to stop shuffling my feet. I’m a bundle of nerves, whereas Karen seems entirely at ease. She must be in her sixties by now, but there’s something decisive in her movements that make her seem younger. She doesn’t wear makeup but her clothes aren’t frumpy. A long gray sweater over black pants. Bangles that sing up and down her arm as she gestures.

“There’s a fire going in the living room,” Karen says. She holds up a box of tea bags. “Do you drink tea? I’m afraid I don’t have any coffee. Gave it up years ago.”

“Tea sounds great,” I say. “I’ll drink anything warm.”

Once the water boils, we take our mugs through the low doorway into the living room. “Watch your head,” Karen says. “People in the 1800s must have been Hobbits.”

The living room is ten degrees warmer thanks to a wood-burning stove. The dogs lie in a pile on the rug, only inches from the flames. Except for the soft snoring, you’d never know they were alive. All the furniture is overstuffed and faded by years of sun, and every flat surface is covered in photos. Karen on a beach. Karen at a long table full ofpeople, a giant turkey in the center of the frame. Karen and a cluster of women holding matching pink cocktails.

“I don’t think I’ve ever been in a cozier room,” I say.

“As long as you don’t sit too close to those drafty windows.” She laughs, but I can tell she’s pleased.

Karen talks for a while about the history of her house, the farm, how they inherited it from her husband’s aunt before he passed. As she talks, she walks around the living room, straightening a stack of magazines, fluffing a throw pillow. She has the kind of barely bottled energy you see in children, stuffed into fancy clothes and made to sit through long dinners, legs under the table bouncing up and down. I think about steering the conversation to Coram House, but don’t. Some people need to get there on their own.

Finally, she seems to run out of steam and sinks into a chair. “How was your drive? Not too much trouble getting here?”

I picture the unplowed road, but shake my head. “No trouble. Oh—I did see an owl, a white one.”

Karen claps her hands, which makes all three dogs sit up. When it’s clear we’re not about to take them on a walk, they settle back down on the rug.

“A snowy owl,” she says. “How exciting. You must be good luck.”

I laugh. “I don’t know about that.” But I’m pleased that she too recognizes the strange magic.

Karen looks out the window. “Well, you’ve let me go and tell you my whole life story.”

But, of course, that’s not true. She hasn’t mentioned Coram House. Nothing at all from her childhood. I’ve done enough interviews to feel the moment when it comes. I wait, silent.

“Truth is,” she says, “ever since you called, I’ve been thinking about the House. Remembering all these tiny, stupid things that don’t matter to anyone. It’s strange the way they just come back into your head like that. I hardly ever think about it anymore.” She turns back and looks at me like she just remembered I’m there. “Anyways, I imagine you have questions.”

Only hundreds. But I force myself to appear relaxed. I take out myphone and put it on the coffee table, hit record, so she can see. “Karen, is it okay if I record the rest of our conversation?”

“Yes, of course,” Karen says.

I clear my throat. “I’d love to start with what it was like. All those tiny things you mentioned, they do matter—to me. I’ve read all the depositions from the case, but most people who actually lived at Coram House are gone or don’t want to talk to me—which I completely understand.”

She waves away my concern. “God, no. I’m happy to talk. Always have been. But no one ever wanted to hear it. I think you should put everything in your book.”

Karen takes a deep breath as if she’s about to plunge underwater. And then she starts talking. The stories pour out of her. Some are terrible—being made to strip naked and stand outside in the snow as punishment, the other children watching from the windows. Kneeling on the icy floor of the chapel until her knees bled. Other memories could be from children anywhere. Smuggling crackers from the kitchen in their pockets. The nuns taking their lessons outside on a sunny day. Watching the leaves change and blanket the graveyard in red. A time when the bakery in town brought cider donuts for the children and they each got a half. With every story she sits up a little straighter, like it’s a stone she casts off in the telling.

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