A Bright House

"You little prick. Do you really expect me to believe that a heavy stone sill just happened to dislodge because of the air conditioner, at the exact moment that I was standing below it?”

“Stranger things have happened... mom married you, right?”

“This is what I get in return for busting my ass to keep this roof over your head? To feed your ungrateful face?”

“Busting your ass, that’s a good one coming from a guy who sits around playing cards, or playing with himself all night.”

“Say that shit to me when you turn eighteen, Kevin. Please.”

“Trust me, daaaaaddy, I won’t fucking be here.”

Jenny’s Sunday shift was auto pilot molasses. Tortoise paced after-effect from a Saturday that awoke the distant recall of how another body felt, how the laying on of gentle hands could lay open a soul. Because of her dream, where the young Ray’s anguish and stricken face had reached soft places long forgotten, she already felt a caring for him. A caring all the more enriched by his gentleness and concern, one day later. There would be ample time for cynicism and reestablished incarceration; times ahead where the hours mocked her for daring to believe in him. Or in herself. For the Sunday of the day after, however, Jenny did her job for the usual customers and battled a refreshed urgency that carried no name. He was at a funeral service. Would he walk through the diner door? Would he call? Would he, better yet, contact her in the evening at home? She knew unequivocally that his call, should it happen, would be met with an invitation to visit her there. What she wanted from it, Jenny could not identify.

She was finding that her emotional shifts were fluctuating to a new tempo, vacillating between anticipation and a quiet despair, hope into embarrassment at how easily she had shed her skin for a fascinating, caring, touched-by-tragedy stranger. It was one of those rare times when even her innermost thoughts would not speak the voice of uncut truth; what did she want? His compassion had been evident. His hands on her wrists and forearms may have been the most effective method through which he could receive information, but would he have used a similar method for a male client? The leaning back into him, his body heat, the gentle warmth in his touch, that unforgettably tender kiss; this she wanted to hold tightest to. He had confided in her when they sat on the picnic table. She doubted that he had been giving to her in order to get her relaxed, open; his tears had been spontaneous and oh so real. Sunday’s shift came sigh-wrapped for Jenny. The solid diner flooring beneath her work shoes seemed to coexist with quicksand promises.

Ray Townes wore his new suit well. He stood tall and outwardly stoic. He said and did the right things during the service. He watched his father’s body lowered into earth that was foreign to the Townes bloodline, and yet it had been in his last will and testament that he be buried in Toronto. Rather than allow the vulgarity, the wrongness of it, to root and blossom in his chest on that blustery Sunday afternoon, Ray closed himself down to an extent that would get him home with his grace intact. For the hundredth time he thought, this is a long way from our farmland, and glanced over to the hardened eyes of his father’s second bride, now widow. And how not to take stock? How could he stand there among the small gathering, listening to words that fell empty, and not assess his own fifty plus years? Never in love. Hadn’t made love. Nowhere close to entering into a partnership.

There are many who have felt a sorrow for Ray; those who believe we are here to procreate through loving union, to continue our genetic lines, and failing that, what point in life? There are others who don’t want children, for as many reasons as there are leaves on trees, and these people are content to live out their days as aunts and uncles, friends and neighbors. Others so badly want to be a father or mother, they can taste it, cry for it, ache from it, and life doesn’t present the opportunity; right time wrong partner, wrong time right partner. Ray watched the coffin being lowered, felt wind and sun on his face, and focused into the void where his dad’s essence used to be. He was truly gone. At peace. This made the man even more of a mystery to his son.

With no spoken words shared between them to prove the feeling, Ray knew that his father’s great love had been the one left hanging on a veranda. The love of that man’s life, she who had given him a son and loving firmament upon which to build dreams, would never be replaced. Not even the cruelty of her exit, the seeming selfishness of such a complete abandonment of her two men, could have shaken the foundation of the love that united her husband and son. Ray wore his suit well, his stoic features composed, and took stock of his mortal coil. He had helped a lot of people in need. He could sleep at night knowing that he would die in this body without guilt to haunt his transforming soul, but always in his thoughts, persistently underpinned by the way Melinda left her loved ones; who was she? Where is she now?

Kevin May has a clear view of the aluminum storage shed next door. There are large trees and thick shrubs that line the dividing fence between neighboring back yards, but from his bedroom window, Kevin sees the shed and has taken to watching the behavior of the mystery dog, Whisky. It wasn’t exactly local news headlines, but the disappearance and reappearance of the family pet had been the talk of the block. The Dwyers weren’t the friendliest bunch of people. Details hadn’t been forthcoming other than the fact that Bradley, who Kevin barely spoke to by virtue of his being a jock and therefore plague-worthy, had broken his ankle and lost his dog out in the bush. A year and a half later the dog shows up, gaunt and terrified. Kevin remembers Whisky as a boundless energy people adoring dog, now a cowering slinking shell that lives mostly in a shed.

It fascinates him; he adds a new element to his ritual kit... watching for glimpses of Whisky when he leaves the shed to do his business in the yard. Kevin has begun to photograph the dog and was surprised upon having the first roll of film developed; none of the images were in focus. He has double checked the Canon automatic, taking a few random pictures of his room and the house next door; the camera is functioning perfectly until he attempts to photograph Whisky. In the second roll, peripheral imagery is sharply focused but the dog is slightly blurred. His features are washed out by an overlay of transparent rippling, as is the ground beneath his feet. This fascinates Kevin to no end. It gives his imagination a buffet of delicious possibility, all of it anomalous. This mind food will become heavily spiced when Kevin experiences his first nocturnal journey to what he will later call “the horror farm”.

Jenny’s shift ended a half hour early, the high winds seeming to have kept customers at bay, and she did what she rarely does; ate at the diner. Her routine of picking up dinner ingredients for the weekend after Saturday’s shift had been altered by the time spent with Ray, but besides the lack of meal options at home, Jenny was fatigued. She ordered a club house sandwich with French fries and then sat in the chair at the table where Ray had eaten one day before.

Her fatigue was such that the disappointment over not hearing from him had been only of the mildest sort, though it seemed the cause of her lethargic energy. She chewed deliberately, stared out the front window, and marveled over how his words, face, actions kept looping within her skull. It was becoming difficult to recognize her pre-Friday self in this new dynamic. The thoughts didn’t seem fully attached to wistfulness, sadness, though she could feel those emotions coming and going as the loop rolled around her. He was every bit the gentleman. She had to believe he would be calling to at least bid her goodbye and good luck, but she wanted something more lasting from this sudden intersection of lives; she dared to want what seemed unreasonable.

Even acknowledging that didn’t bring forth the details. What did she have to offer such a unique personality? Her looks were above average; Jenny wouldn’t lie to herself to that extent, but as a person with so much to give... what mammoth effort would it take for someone to attain her best self? Was she worth such a task? Was she up to joining anyone, even someone as special as Ray Townes, in the mining of her potential? Chewing the sandwich, sipping water, Jenny sought any truths that she could from this wanting; could it be that she was using Townes as a means of escape?

That, finally, the universe had delivered a way out of herself, and freedom from the ongoing depths of mourning Scott? Perhaps even thinking this way was a form of answer. Ray was very appealing to her in all the ways that mattered, and though it was ridiculously premature and implausible, she knew herself well enough to know that for him, she could do the work. She could trust. She would risk fresh agony for a man of his shine. Ah, but it came back cold and unflattering; was she worth his own risking?

Almost forcing herself to wind down the building anxiety, Jenny walked a few blocks out of her way to the east, down DeGrassi street with its row of attached Victorians on one side and a Via railway track on the other. She looked at the wild variety of painted facades, front stoop designs, gardens, and walked leisurely. He would be calling. Tonight. She knew this, gradually accepted it as a given, and relaxed. On a whim she entered one of the thousands of corner variety stores that abound in the city, a store she had never been in, to purchase a bottle of apple juice.

Her better energy must have been radiating outward through wider ripples, drawing the eye contact of the handsome young man sitting by the cash register. He was all of twenty, maybe, possibly the son of the Korean family who owned the store. His jet black hair, dark eyes, unblemished skin and sudden bright smile lit her up inside as she paid for the juice and returned his warmth for a moment before leaving. That was sweet, she noted with a twinge of the bitter aftertaste of what could become a hindsight revelation of how the past many years should have been lived.

The year being 1991, Jenny’s phone line was plugged into an answering machine, which was itself a touch funny-sad because no one ever called her. She had bought it from a pawn shop in order not to miss any news about her vanished spouse. In all the years that she had owned the machine, she had only seen its message light flashing a few times for work related schedule changes. Finally arriving at her front door that Sunday afternoon, Jenny’s heart rate increased at the prospect of seeing that little red light. She removed her shoes and went directly to the small table that stood against the wall beside the kitchen doorway; no flashing light. Her emotions dipped palpably, she looked at her watch and recognized that Ray must still be involved in the aftermath of the service, then she stabilized. For a few minutes of stillness, Jenny took a seat at her kitchen table to finish the juice. She was a changed person in a matter of two days’ span; the awareness of it no longer shocked her. Not like the interior of an old shed in her back yard would.