It’s a scene that plays over and over in my head: my brother Michael destroying the houses Beth and I built from the wood blocks that Grandpa Bill had made for my brothers years before. Maybe the catastrophic sound of the tumbling blocks somehow collided with the memory of Dad leaving.
It was the morning after the party. Looney Tunes was playing on the television set in the corner, and Porky Pig was yelling out “Th-th-th-that’s all folks!” Beth and I were constructing one of our intricate Barbie houses on the floor just outside the playroom in the upstairs hall. Michael was lurking near the television set, his fringed eyes looking nothing like the glamourous ones that prompted Mom to call him Pansy Eyes—a name he despised. He might as well have been fluttering his hands like Snidely Whiplash with an evil grin pasted on his face.
Beth sat on the floor next to me, with matted and stringy hair and ratty hand-me-down pajamas with holes in both knees. I could almost hear Mom yelling at her to pull her hair back. “I want to see your forehead,” she’d say. Mom was always fussing over our hair, and she’d make all us girls roll our straight hair into pin curls like hers the night before every holiday.
Beth urged me to go downstairs for some Cap’n Crunch cereal, and that’s when we heard the tragic sound of blocks crashing to the floor. The look of horror on Beth’s face mirrored my own as we made a frantic dash up the stairs.
“Whoops, I tripped!” Michael said.
I was angry, but mostly sad when I saw Barbie lying under some blocks like she’d been crushed, so I swooped in to save her. In the background, I heard Beth yelling at Michael about what a dumb, stupid jerk he was. Michael just laughed and ran down the back stairs. I knew he was going to visit our dog Dudley, who Dad never let into the front part of the house—that’s where Michael always hung out.
Our house was sectioned off so that the back part of the house served as servants’ quarters, with narrow staircases running from the back hall on the first floor where Dudley was, and another that ran up to the apartment on the third floor. I always felt like I was entering another world when I went back there, because of the dark wood. I preferred the white wood in the front with the big, airy rooms, but there was one room in the back that had pretty pink floral wallpaper and a big mahogany bed with headboards and footboards that Mom bought when they first got the house.
Beth and I loved to play in that room, but sometimes I was afraid to walk out into the dark hall. We thought about taking our blocks in there to play, but decided it was too close to where Michael was hanging out, so we decided to rebuild in the forbidden side of the living room, thinking the two marble tables in front of the Monster would make a good base for our construction. The Monster was the white sofa with wooden dragons carved into the armrests. I don’t remember, but they told me I’m the one who gave it its name; as a baby, I’d shriek in terror whenever I looked at the dragons whose mouths were eye level to me.
The plastic runner that ran to the side porch from the centre hall was the delineation for No Man’s Land. Dad made Mom cover both the Monster and the two gold Victorian chairs on that side of the room with plastic, rendering them completely unwelcoming to anyone who even thought about sitting in them.
The sound of shrieking
The afternoon light streamed in from the window behind the Monster as I was balancing the last block onto the peak of my Barbie house, when the sound of Mom and Dad shrieking in the upstairs hallway interrupted my concentration.
Beth just shrugged when I looked at her. We tried to drown out the sounds by humming. Ann put another 45 on the tiny record player across the room. “Sugar Shack” started playing as she and Paula busied themselves pulling records from the round blue carrier that held all their favourites. I could hear them whispering something about little pitchers having big ears. It always made Beth mad when they said that, but I didn’t know what it meant.
“Wanna go play outside?” Beth asked. I nodded meekly, and we abandoned our blocks in the living room, regardless of Michael or the possible penalties. We pulled on our coats and snow pants, grabbed Beth’s Fisher-Price Tick-Tock Teaching Clock, and ran outside to sit in our favourite spot under the willow tree that was situated in the centre of the plaza at the foot of our street.
There were only six houses on our street, ours being the original that matched the pillars at the entryway. Even in the winter, the sweeping willow boughs served as a magical dome of protection that always brought me peace. It was the same place that Mrs. Page, our neighbour, snapped a summer picture with Beth holding her clock, me by her side and a subsequent pastel painting that now hangs on Beth’s wall—the same painting that induced endless taunting from Michael with “I see London, I see France, I see Dorothy’s underpants.”
Beth wound up the Tick-Tock Clock so it played “Grandfather’s Clock,” and the face of the clock rotated around as it displayed various scenes. We sat in the snow, listening to the music and watching our breath as it fogged around our faces. I made a snow angel with my legs as I kicked my red rubber boots in and out, wondering why Mom and Dad were so mad at each other.
I leaned my head backward and looked up at the graceful tree. Once I heard John tell Brian how Dad made him cut a willow switch so Dad could use it to swat him—I think John forgot to do the dishes. Mom tried the same trick years later on some of us, but we all just laughed because we knew she’d never actually go through with it.
Interrupted
Mom’s voice echoed through the winter afternoon, pulling me from my daydreaming as she called from the veranda for us to come inside. Her face was swollen and red; I knew she’d been crying, but her eyes weren’t welcoming and warm, so I quietly approached instead of running to her like I wanted.
Broad wooden columns lined the cobblestone wall on the veranda where she stood, which gave way to a rectangular flower garden. The veranda was about 47 feet long by 14 feet wide with a sparkly red granolithic stone floor. Soon Mom’s favourite lilies of the valley would be popping their heads from the cold ground in the flowerbed. I was never sure what was truly Mom’s favourite flower, since she said the same of daffodils, lilacs and magnolias.
At the far end of the veranda was a screened-in porch off the living room, where we’d sit in our creaky rockers on hot summer evenings or glide on the glider, listening intently to tales of when Mom and Dad were young and in love, or her tales of growing up in her small town. I can still smell the charcoal briquettes smouldering as Mom stood at the grill, flipping burgers and waving smoke from her face, a massive bowl of potato salad covered in plastic wrap waiting on the picnic table nearby.
“I want you girls to go get ready for your bath before dinner,” Mom said, as she tugged at her green woolen sweater. “I’ll be up to check on you shortly.”
We’d never even gotten out of our jammies that day, but we did as we were told.
“I call the good side,” Beth said as she dashed up the stairs. “That’s no fair, I always get stuck on the stupid spout end. You think just ’cause you’re older you can act like Ann and Paula.”
Arching my back over the spout, with my washcloth draped over my chest like it was a bathing suit, I lathered up a Mr. Bubble beard and spit bubbles across the tub at Beth. That sparked a splashing war, and before long we were whirring our hands around and around until we created a whirlpool wave that flooded the bathroom floor. That was when Ann walked in.
“What the hell are you little jerks doing?” she yelled, as she grabbed the doorknob to keep from slipping in the water.
Since Ann was 10 years old, she had more privileges, but she also had more duties, so Ann was sent to check on us instead of Mom. I’d heard stories of how Mom assigned all kinds of duties to my older siblings. Like changing my diaper. Apparently, I would only let Ann change my diaper without a fuss, but since she wasn’t as experienced, Brian would stand behind her and change me as Ann tucked her hands out of sight.
Mom still looked dishevelled when I went down to the kitchen for dinner. Dad wasn’t around, and nobody asked where he was. We’d heard them fighting and knew better than to say anything, so we sat and ate in virtual silence that night. Mom was seated at the head where Dad usually sat, picking despondently at her food.
At bedtime, I asked Mom if I could take Beth’s Tick-Tock Clock to bed with me so I could go to sleep to the rhythmic music, which always calmed me down. I wound it up until it stopped, and then wound it again, until at last I fell asleep with the wooden clock cradled in my arms.
Departure in the night
“Shhh, wake up, Cha-Cha,” Mom whispered, as she gently shook me awake. Her musky scent evoked an almost palpable calm, until I noticed that all three of my older sisters were standing in my room wearing their winter coats. Ann, with her arms folded over her chest; Paula, shifting side-to-side with her hands in her pockets and her shoulders up to her ears; and Beth, clutching her favourite tattered pink rabbit.
I could feel Mom tugging at the toy clock I’d fallen asleep with. I just wanted to lie back down and twist the knob so the music would play again.
“We have to go, but we need to be quiet,” Mom said as she pulled my blue woolen coat over my arms. Mom was wearing her black tailored coat with the red belt and the mother-of-pearl buttons closed right up to her neck. My static hair stuck to my mouth like feathers. Mom’s cold fingers brushed the soft wisps away as she hoisted me from my warm nest and clutched me tightly to her bosom. We made our way down the nursery hallway out to the centre hall, my sisters trailing behind.
Shards of broken porcelain littered the floor. When I flash back to this scene, there are scattered white bits strewn about like someone dropped a bowl of popcorn.
I have no memory of ever kneeling at the altar, but have heard many stories from my siblings of how Dad made them all kneel for nightly prayers. The statues from the altar were conspicuously absent. I felt a rush of air all the way to the pit of my stomach as I noticed my older brothers, Brian and Michael, standing at the foot of the third-floor stairway that was the delineation for the servant’s quarters in the back part of the house. My oldest brother, John, had already gone back to college earlier that day.
The ashen looks on my brothers’ faces frightened me. Where is Dad?
“Come on, girls,” Mom whispered as she herded us through the hallway like we were walking through a minefield. Statues crunched underfoot. I noticed the Mary and Jesus statue that always stood in the centre of the altar was almost intact, with only a large chip missing from its base. It lay on its side next to the radiator. I wanted to reach for it and rub my fingers over Mary’s bumpy blue robes, but Mom had other ideas.
“Hurry! Go quietly down the back stairs so we don’t wake your father!”
The old wooden stairs creaked and moaned with every step we took. Mom’s arms were tense around me as we made our descent. I tasted my salty tears as they streamed into my mouth. Why are we running away?
We made our way through the snow to the driveway. Even with moonlight, the dark sky made it difficult to navigate the rutted path that ran to the plaza at the front of the house. Mom stumbled and grabbed a branch from the lilac bush to keep from falling with me in her arms.
“Mom, what is that?” Ann asked as she tugged on Mom’s sleeve. I heard Mom gasp, and I whipped my head around and caught a quick glimpse of what appeared to be a dark stain in the snow.
“Don’t look,” Mom said as she forced my head back down on her shoulder. “Come on, everyone, we need
to move!”
Mom’s breathing was heavy, and I could feel her heart racing as she pulled me even more tightly to her and herded her flock up the street. The Napolitans’ house stood at the top of our dead-end street, and we were heading down their driveway made of the same sparkly pink granite as our veranda.
The driveway wound to the back of their house, the same driveway where I would spend countless hours jump-roping and drawing hopscotch patterns with Luke Napolitan, and skip down in gleeful anticipation of playing up in their third-floor billiard room and laying on the tiger rug with the green glassy eyes and fangy teeth. But this night only held a disconcerting terror for all of us.
Mrs. Napolitan greeted us like a command soldier: “Come in, Elizabeth, I’ve been waiting for you.”
Dorothy Preston has a degree in communications/media and has worked in the publishing industry for more than 20 years. She has lived in Maine, New Hampshire and New York, but is currently settled in her native state of Massachusetts in Johnny Appleseed country, just outside of Boston. If Preston is not hiking, cycling, running or skiing, she’s taking in the aroma of apples and tapping away on her computer at her house on the hill with her dog, Rylee.
“Departure in the Night” from Getting Off the Radiator by Dorothy Preston, copyright © 2021 Dorothy Preston. Used with permission of Shanti Arts LLC, www.shantiarts.com. All rights reserved.
