Two Houses

Madeline Street, a crumbling asphalt road, was quiet at every hour. The road was lined on both sides by detached houses of brick, brown and worn, each staring dolefully past its neighbour opposite. Our former home on this street had a space below ground sectioned off into three bedrooms, a corridor, and a small kitchen. We let the rooms and watched the money come in. My father worked at an insurance company, and the combined incomes bought the house next door. We moved again, by a space of about fifteen feet. Soon enough, my father would lose his job. My parents did the logical thing and split up our former home with locks on doors that once held plain doorknobs, and doors where before there were no doors. New life appeared in these rooms in the form of grungy but earnest bachelors, who either worked or received government assistance.

My mother humoured them all. She was more than a landlady – she was maid, mother, and peer to them. We could see her, when we came home late from school, bringing out bags of trash from our home-house and our tenants-house. Then she came back in to wash her hands, heat up our dinner, and sit to talk with us as we ate. After polishing off the meal, my brother and I dropped the dishes by the sink and ambled in the direction of the television. Our mother washed the dishes in silence. She threw out a “hello” and “there’s meat and potatoes in the fridge” over her shoulder to our late-arriving father. Then she put on her coat and headed for the house next door. When I had my fill of TV and homework, I sauntered out into the back lawn to let the night air pick the sting out of my eyes. The back lawns of our two houses were divided by a low wire fence, obscured by tall brush and all sorts of weeds and flowers. There was a young maple, too, which hid a crude, U-shaped indentation in the fence. When I gripped either side of the U – careful not to cut myself on the sharp edges – and lifted one leg over, then the other – again, careful not to trip – I found myself on the other side. Crouching through the bushes and hidden in the shadow of the maple, I passed unnoticed and watched my mother as she talked with the tenants. Our tenants-house had a wooden deck built in the back. On it stood three or four plastic chairs, in a rough circle, and on them were my subjects. The harsh outdoor light set the figures ablaze, while the smoke from their cigarettes enveloped the scene in a thin, ethereal veil. I saw my mother smiling – something she didn’t do often at home – as she smoked and listened to the broken English of our tenants. I could only see parts of her: a wave of mousy-brown hair, a jean-clad leg, the flaming end of a cigarette, from between the vertical wooden planks on the deck. She burst out laughing at some mumbled joke, and I felt a vibration in my heart strings, a warm, inexplicable pain. I watched until she got up from her chair and stepped down the deck and around to the driveway. That was my cue to return home and pretend I’d been watching TV the whole time.

Winter came, with bitter-cold gusts of wind and icy blizzards. My father lost his job at the insurance company, but we did not starve because we had that other business. One day, another fight erupted. I was watching TV with my brother; about a quarter of my attention fixed on the audible drama in the kitchen.

“Why don’t you get a job already?” my mother snapped.

“I’m working on it, I’m looking – don’t you realize how difficult it is?” my father said in a low voice saturated with the bitterness of poison.

“Oh! You’re having difficulties? Why don’t you cook while I find tenants for the empty rooms?”

My father’s features hardened. His mouth set like a tense wire and his bulging eyes focused with nervous, furious force on her calm green ones.

“Speaking of the tenants,” he spat out, “just why the hell do you spend so much time with them? Why don’t they clean up after themselves, instead of making you do it?”

My mother started, but quickly regained her composure.

“You think it’s easy to get them to keep the house clean? Why don’t you try dealing with them? Why don’t you get the stove fixed, and clean up their messes? While they keep us from dying of starvation, while they’re bringing in money, I think we can sacrifice a little!”

There was yelling. There were loud, passionate cries, the stamping of feet, the appeals to justice and reason. These came mostly from my father. Finally, body and soul drained of logic and rage, my father usually stomped off into his little bureau and lock the door with a decisive click.

This time, however, there was a clang of dishware against sink and the sound of heavy, rapid footsteps toward us. My father went past his bureau and into the living room, then sat on the other end of the couch and stared at the TV with us. My brother and I did not condescend to glance at him. We knew he was wrong. Our survival depended on mom’s work. But we all three sat silently and watched the flickering screen. After some time my mother entered also and cast a long gaze at us – son, daughter, and husband slumped like old pillows while a thin light sifted in from outside.

“Papa,” she said evenly, “won’t you please at least shovel the snow?”

Our father remained silent. She thought he was ignoring her so she opened her mouth to repeat herself, but at last he said, “No,” and, “why don’t you get one of your tenants to do it?”

I tore my gaze away from the television set and looked at her. Her lip trembled.

“Simeon,” she addressed my brother, “would you… Please?”

My brother tossed his head debonairly and groaned, “Nooo…” without looking away from the screen. My mother sighed. She turned to go back into the kitchen, but I stood up and said, “I’ll do it!”

I sneered at my male companions – they didn’t notice – and leapt outside in boots and coat. I fetched the snow shovel from the shed and set to work on the driveway. The snow was up to my shins. My back and arms ached with each over-zealous bending motion, but the snow was powder-light. Still – I paused to breathe out white puffs of cloud. Still, there was a lot of it. I looked up. More started falling, slowly, catching on the tips of my lashes, on the edge of the gleaming shovel. More work. Manna from heaven. And nobody but my own hands to help me. I continued ploughing. I noticed a pair of black boots in the snow, stopped shovelling, and looked up at my mother. We stood, green eyes reflecting each other like ice, red cheeks burning under white snow. My heart melted.

“Let me do it,” she said softly and reached for the handle. I pulled it away, saying, “I know you’re tired, mum, I can do it,” and resumed shovelling. She looked at me for a long, silent moment. Then she turned and left. In a minute she came back with another shovel, one meant for the digging up of earth. She worked on exposing another section of driveway. We toiled in silence, only the scrape-scrape of shovel against asphalt audible in the membranous air. It was late evening when we finished. My mother came over to hug me from behind. My body, once rigid with cold, softened under her embrace, and I looked up at an indigo sky empty of stars, at a shard of moon. A distant scraping sound distracted me and I saw, on the driveway of the house opposite, two men shovelling snow. Somewhere, at least, men did men’s work.

~ by radachka on January 10, 2008.