Apr 29
The day begins, ends, with Schubert.
For this, an LBD, slinky,
not tradwife – Franz would not be wowed
by lace, bows or cowlike florals.
How would you know anything of
composers, says Mr. Nothing
wrong with a woman who knows how
to dress like a lady. We pour
glasses of Ruinart – one for
me, one for Franz - and wait until
the second movement of the fifth,
our favourite, before we sip.
Apr 22
The river runs through the neighbour’s
backyard, east to west, then dips south,
missing our yard completely. We’ve
never seen it, but we’ve heard it
alright; it sounds just like Mr’s
voice, whispering, as though he were
telling secrets in the garden,
things we should know but never will.
That’s Mr for you, always plays
his cards close to his chest, we’d say,
if the river came close enough
to give us a hint, its pssshpsssh
no longer mysterious but
making sense at last, while we get
on our knees with gratitude for
the warning we knew was coming.
Apr 18
There You Go, part 2
Why do you not trust, we say to
ourselves, though the truth is that we
have looked through every closet,
nook and cranny in search of - we
admit this – things we lost, lost things,
things of which we were the steward
and we’ve no idea what went
wrong. We’ve found the missing Barbie
doll, the glass tabletop that went
awry, even eclipse glasses.
It takes a week before it dawns
on us that we threw the missing
cheap-ass earrings into the
leaves of a potted ficus at
Yorkdale Mall. If we go looking
out of curiosity, please
please please do not let us find them.
...............
Franz Schubert - March Militaire
Woody has arrived for a glass of red and a peek at the dollhouse. At first, he doesn’t see it, even though he nearly tripped over it; the thing takes up half the kitchen.
“Well, would you look at this,” says Woody, giving the roof a dad-shake. “You’ve really got a project going here. The roof is nearly done. What are these, tongue-depressors you cut down to make shingles? What is it with roofs being a theme in your life?”
“You remember! We don’t know why, but the fact that you remember makes us so happy, we could cry.”
“Jiminy Cricket on a cracker, Kettlecorn! How could I forget? I feel I was there when the TV antenna crashed down on your childhood house and scraped a bunch of shingles off the roof. You could see daylight when you went into the attic, you said. There’s more, but I like it better when you tell the story.”
“This part I like to tell people when they’ve had too much to drink. They’re incredulous, as they should be, but by the time they’ve keeled over for the night and have woken the next day, they have a hazy sense of a story that they can’t quite recall. And then we’re off the hook.”
“YTA, Kettlecorn.”
“AITA, or do you want to hear the story again? Drink up.”
“NTA.”
We pour Woody another glass – it’s Lambrusco, cheap by some standards but trendy by others.
“We went up into the attic, which was an adjunct to our bedroom. We both loved and hated that room. It looked charming, really, wallpapered in giant cabbage roses. To the right of the bed, if you were lying in it, was an inset bookcase. And if you pushed the bookcase, it opened into an attic. Auld Owny promised us that he’d turn that attic into a secret playroom.
It never happened, as you know. What happened instead was a thunderstorm, a lightning strike, a high wind, the crash of the antenna, and the loss of several roof shingles. It bothers us that some of the details are missing, but we know how to embellish to our favour. We like to say we were able to see daylight when we went in the attic, and we certainly know that Auld Owny never repaired the roof, even when Ruth begged him. ‘There’s no money for that,’ he’d scowled. When she mentioned it again, he walked out of the room. So – was he planning his retreat already? Some say yes. Bram does, but Bram likes to be the one who figures out nefarious behaviour and the path towards doom.
Here’s the part you enjoy, the addendum. We realised that Auld Owny was never going to repair the roof and was planning to fly the coop with a mistress. The two events are intrinsically linked. We saw pain etched on Ruth’s face. Shock. We were impatient with her, like any decent teen, but our impatience suffered into fury. We took a tire iron and poked holes in the attic ceiling so that the question of seeing the glint of daylight was no longer a question. We poked holes that were so -shall we say - generous, that water streamed down the living-room windows when it rained. At the sound of the first pattering of raindrops, Ruth and I ran to the kitchen to retrieve our collection of ice-cream buckets and line the windowsills. We will never forget the sound, the insistent plunking into the plastic tubs. And when the tubs overflowed, puddles formed and a small lake filled the room. We bought paddles, telling the salesman at Aikenhead’s that we’d be back for a canoe later.
It’s a nice twist, you must admit: a brazen lass flinging open the attic door – a hidden room behind a bookcase, no less! – then with studied deliberation: poke, poke, poking between the rafters until she could see stars shining back at her. And on rainy days, she had a lake.
No one questions us. They do not dare. That a tire iron could push beyond layers of roofing material and shingles is ludicrous, but it makes for a wonderful example of tenacity. Braveheart revisited.
Who wants to hear of the rolling of eyes and quiet resignation? We prefer the alternate universe to the real one in which Ruth nudges us, sighs, ‘If I could buy him out, honey, I would. Our time here is done. By the time the roof is ready to drop, we’ll have moved to a new home.’ If she was unhappy about the inevitability of moving, she did not show it. She saw the departure as a new and exciting adventure. ‘We might find a nice little place on the Island. I’ve heard of a building where tenants have dinner parties together on the weekends. We’ll have fun, and believe me, we could use a little fun.’
He looks like he's somewhat enjoying his unending and protracted immolation. In every painting, every illustration, there's the sly wince: this is a mere flesh wound, a scratch. I could get to like this.
We can't say if he really does like his - shall we say - position or not, but he makes the perfect valentine anti-hero.
The chocolate cake (his battleground, or playground, depending) was baked from a Leite's Culinaria recipe. Highly recommended. The frosting we made was caramel; it seemed to suit Sebastian.
We also made an anti-valentine cake topped with dead roses on top one year. Never to be forgotten.
In the following snippet, Keturah/Kettlecorn discusses her lifelong obsession with houses!
Johnson (YTA with bells on) initiates her deep dive into musings over a dollhouse which, we promise you, does not have meaning beyond the obvious. Bram is as disinterested as ever. But the ever-loyal Stig encourages the best of recollections...
“You know, Keturah, I’ve watched you. I’ve liked you. I’ve considered you as a partner. Yet all roads seem to lead to your nursing your mediocrity forever. You’re not really planning to make it big as an artist, are you? As far as I can see, you’re stuck: a hausfrau, content to wash socks and cacky arses. If you plan to spend your life running around that broken-down hovel you call a house, you can count me out. I’m not sticking around.” Johnson sat back in his chair, satisfied. Ball’s in your court.
We were horrified, as you can imagine, Stig, but not for the reason you might think. Consider our lifelong obsession. All we heard was that broken-down hovel you call a house, and we were incensed.
“A minute ago, the broken-down hovel you call a house was something in which you saw yourself revelling.”
Stig pricks up his ears. The rest of this story is familiar.
“Go ahead. I don’t think I’ll ever tire of your need to grind things into the ground.”
…..
We found the dollhouse abandoned by the side of the road. It’s almost a cliché. Many decades ago, we’d whined for a dollhouse, and one appeared for our third birthday. We know it’s not our imagination because there exists a photograph of us standing in front of it, clutching a rag doll. It was one of those typical Sixties toys, made of thin painted metal. We loved it.
“But what happened to it,” we asked Bram one day, while we sifted through an old photo album. We noticed several photos were missing; only the pasted corners remained.
“You’ve never mentioned a dollhouse,” said Bram. “Whatever it is you remember probably didn’t belong to you.”
He looked away quickly from the album with the empty spots. Not necessarily suspicious. What if he’d taken photos to make copies? Whatever we asked, though, there’d be a pat answer and a scowl.
“My sister had one of those houses, Keturah. They were dangerous. She cut her fingers on its sharp metal corners, and my parents tossed the thing out to protect her from seriously injuring herself. Maybe your folks did the same thing. Maybe they just wanted to protect you. Can you see that?”
There’s truth in that, we tell Stig.
But here’s proof that God exists. On an October night thick with darkness, we saw the dollhouse glowing by the side of the road.
“That’s dramatic,” says Stig. “Anything on an October night gets me.”
“I said it was glowing.”
“That’s icing on the cake, Keturah - Kettlecorn, that is. Prithee, continue.”
We can see that it’s roughly hewn, homemade, perhaps with earnestness but certainly without skill or refinement. We decide it’s worth it to wheel it home – it’s on casters, of all things – and give it a coat of black spray paint to Goth it up. You can see, now, why we mentioned that it was an October night, thick with darkness. We were brimming with cleverness, the sort that only a Gothic haunted dollhouse replete with cobwebs and Dollarama skeletons can realise.
“Not really the thing for which you were pining and hoping, though.”
“That, dear Stig, is the point. We don’t get the dream house, the beautiful heirloom, the grandpa-crafted Victorian. We don’t get exactly what we want. Our blessings are always a little bit different. We get the dollhouse, and we get it in the fullness of time, at sixty-four, not four. But the dollhouse is ours. It is not a beauty. It is filthy. It was kicked to the curb, covered with mice droppings. But the blessing is that if we want to make the effort to rescue what God intends for us to have, we can call it a gift.
We suppose it would have been easier to leave the blessed thing by the side of the road. It wasn’t the kind of thing that would have been snatched up, but we would have regretted bypassing potential. For us, it’s always potential. A beautiful thrift shop dress, three sizes too big, will appear before us. Or a rummage sale purse in a screaming orange. The potential is irresistible when it’s that or nothing.
We’re not intent on making the dollhouse a symbol of real life, so please get that furrow out of your brow. We’re not spray-painting it and throwing it back to the streets, either. We’re going to give it what it needs, we’re going to realise its God-given potential that it always deserved. We’re going to elevate the thing and make it into something far better than what we would have done with a more elegant gift. And here, Stig, lies the true blessing. It is what you understand but few – certainly not Bram - do. We can do anything. We get few instances of instant gratification, but even though we come by the thorn road, so to speak, we get the reward.”
.....excerpted from YTA, that NaNoWriMo sensation you didn't know you needed to read until just about now. All rights reserved, copyright, 2023, A. G. Duffy/Rat Under Paper
Nothing says "love will tear us apart" like Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart".
We haven't even hit February yet, but we're thinking of heart-shaped wreaths and festive illustration.
