An excerpt from In Good Hands: A house, the blues, and the road to recovery. Photos and writing by Rebecca.
The house on the corner of Rochester Avenue and Lebleu Street has sheltered many a growing man since 1912. And from the years between 1995 to 1997, that house on the corner of Rochester and Lebleu healed Russell Marsland's heart.
On the winter day when he first saw the place, he said he caught a fleeting glimpse of its soul when he saw a twinkling light spill through to the main floor from the balcony doors. Marsland brought his wife to the place. She cried and they bought.
The source of the dancing light was two diamond-shaped crystal windows in the kitchen. A friend later called them the eyes of the house and later still, when Marsland finally gave into the bank and closed the front door behind him for the last time, he carried those window eyes with him.
The first time he left the place on Rochester was during a dual
divorce: Marsland and his wife, Marsland and his house. The old house,
with its crooked front porch and tiny wooden kitchen alcove stood
alone and without a man to shelter.
Weeks passed by before Marsland returned. His excuse was to prevent
the place from vandalism but the real reason was to settle with the
past. He broke into his empty house with the scratches on the wooden
living room floor from where the couch was dragged, the pencil-tip
sized holes from where pictures once hung, and set up a green army cot
in the bedroom. Memory lane would be flooded by the early morning,
making it a sorry place to visit indeed.
"I went there to heal," Marsland said. "There was nobody to pat me on the head; there was nobody to give me a scotch. There were times when I lay there on that bed and sobbed all night. I didn't know what I was going to do..."