The Street - A Composite Sketch (16)

Not a very long street, just off a major arterial, it is shaped like a question mark. At the conclusion of the bulge it meanders into another street. One half of the street backs onto a heavily wooded ravine, a neighbourhood treasure, though few of the street's residents quite recognize its value, nor make use of its propinquity. It cleanses the air everyone breathes, it hosts birds and wildlife and presents a treasury of wildflowers throughout the seasons. At one time the street, part of a larger suburban community, shared a small-town address. It has long since been subsumed into the greater national capital of the country, through a wide-ranging amalgamation of communities and even farms. The street and the houses on it were built two and a half decades ago. The domiciles are comprised mostly of single-family, detached dwellings, with a handful of semis verging on the main thoroughfare. Many of the residents are the original home purchasers. They would comprise roughly 50% of the residents of the street. The semis appear to have changed hands far more often than the detached homes. And those homes that have been re-sold have often enjoyed a succession of owners. The original home owners who moved into their houses when their children were small have mostly bid farewell to now-grown children. The street represents an amalgam of family types, and there is a significant percentage at this time, of retired people, singly and in couples who, though their houses are meant for family occupation, still opt to remain in their too-large, but comfortable and familiar and valued homes. It is a very quiet street, with little traffic other than those who live there. The house fronts are diverse, and attractive. Most residents take care of their homes, seeing them as their primary investments. Furnaces have been replaced, and air conditioners, and also windows. Kitchens and bathrooms have been remodelled, and people have added decks and occasionally airy 'summer houses' to the backs of their homes. One-third of the homes boast swimming pools, in-ground and above-ground. Most people take pride in their properties, and feel they must achieve lawns that are weedless and smoothly green. Some painstakingly remove weeds by hand in the spring, others hire lawn-care companies to spread chemicals on their lawns. Invariably, the people who look after their own gardens and lawns have superior gardens and lawns. Each house has a large tree planted in front; maples, ash,crabapples, spruce or pine, fully mature. This is a community that is truly mixed, representing people from around the world, come to Canada as immigrants, settled and making the most of opportunities open to all its citizens in a free and open society noted for its pluralism and dedication to fair representation. There are the extroverts and the introverts, those who prefer not to mingle, others who do. They are herewith loosely sketched:

This is the Sixteenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

They were older when they married, than most of their generation. Why she hadn't married earlier than he, however, was a mystery. She was pretty, personable, gregarious and best of all, had a thousand-watt smile that brilliantly illuminated her presence. She was lively, enthusiastic, eager for all that life and her future might promise. Her father was in the armed services, and the family had moved often. She had seen something of the world.

Her father was a typical Anglo-Canadian, her mother francophone. Never was French spoken at home, so she and her sister never learned to speak, much less understand French. She always said that it was because, at that time in the history of the Canadian Armed Forces, the French were denigrated, discriminated against. As a young adult, still living at home with her parents and younger sister, she too joined the forces, trained as a dental assistant.

She was a tall young woman, brunette and full-figured unlike her mother who was small-boned with blond hair, who had been a hairdresser. Whenever her parents visited, in their mobile home, her mother would perm her daughter's lovely long hair. The young woman's husband was quite like her physically; tall, broad, good-looking. And there the similarity ended; he was her personality polar-opposite.

Reserved, introspective, socially maladroit. He would go out of his way not to be noticed. Shy, she said, if anyone ever commented. Rude, they would mutter under their breath, a social misfit. His anti-social mannerisms gained him neither respect nor friends when, newly married, they bought their house on the street. She was good-hearted, would go out of her way for people, and always cheerful; he dodged contact.

People soon learned to expect no neighbourliness from him, observing how he would cross the street to avoid greeting someone. His next-door neighbour once seeing her using an inexpensive garden tool asked if he might try out its effectiveness before committing to purchasing one of his own. She would have to ask her husband, she responded. And her husband ruled negatively. His parsimonious churlishness became legendary on the street.

His own father was a sweet-mannered and friendly man, an Italian-born pastry chef. It was assumed that their son's chronic social unwillingness had been inherited from his mother, a sharp-tongued harridan. However that might have been, there seemed little discord between the two young people. She always insisted her husband was her 'best friend'. A best friend who, she complained on occasion to close friends, occasionally said cutting and hurtful things to her.

And then they became parents, had a little girl. When the child was four, there was another baby, a boy. Both robust and healthy children. With remote, unfriendly temperaments, it became clear, as they grew into childhood. The girl quiet, reserved like her father, the boy with a nasty, incendiary temper. The father was as removed in the raising of the children as he was at integrating socially. If ever one of the children required an urgent diaper change evidenced by a pervasively nasty odour, he would shout for his wife to attend to the mess.

He was, after all, the breadwinner. She the stay-at-home mother and housewife. Both enterprises which she fulfilled admirably, but which elicited little respect from him. They paid off their mortgage far sooner than most on the street. A factor of their late marriage, both having acquired respectable savings as single, gainfully employed people, enabling them to amass a whopping down payment on the house, with a relatively modest mortgage.

They were careful to keep expenses to a moderate level, bought nothing they did not need. She prowled about at garage sales, was proud of the bargains she came away with, that he labelled 'junk'. She tended a nice little summer vegetable garden, harvesting globe peppers, tomatoes, beans, lettuce. She rarely used their electric clothes drier, hung laundry in the backyard in all seasons. Nor would she use their automatic dishwasher, to her husband's great satisfaction.

He more or less ordered her life, and she was, or seemed to be, satisfied enough to acquiesce. He had forbidden her from ever going into the ravine, to walk about there, lest some misfortune be visited upon her. You never know.... She enthusiastically made friendly overtures to people she met, other mothers, when her children began attending school. At first she used to invite people over for coffee in the evening, and that soon came to an abrupt halt.

The children both did well at school. Their mother bored and occasionally irritated her friendly neighbours by continually seeking praise for her children's performance. When anyone complained to her of her son's nasty behaviour she thanked them for their concerns but refused to discipline him. She once confided that she feared, if she spanked him, that he would strike out at her. She felt confident he would outgrow his deplorable behaviour.

They eventually traded in their creaking old car for a family van which she was allowed to drive locally. His lack of confidence in her abilities caused her to fear driving on city highways, ensuring she would stay within the confines of the neighbourhood. He, on the other hand, used public transit to the federal government office where he was an IT specialist and trouble-shooter.

One of his unmarried uncles, who often visited, gifted them with a good upright piano which was proudly placed in their living room. Thereafter, the children's lives were further enriched with piano lessons. Their mother had always arranged for play sessions for her children when they were young and drove them hither and yon. As they grew older, she no longer walked with them to their school bus stop in the morning, reversing the process in the afternoon.

Their daughter, as a pre-teen, conceived a fascination with horses and her parents agreed to weekly riding lessons. Their son was ferried back and forth to soccer league games. As the girl grew older she worked out an arrangement where she would muck out the horse stalls in exchange for free riding lessons, making her parents proud of her enterprising thrift. When they reached their teen years, they would sometimes invite school friends over. A slow succession of various friends who would issue reciprocal invitations. Never repeated.

Their house was broken into one fine summer morning. She had just driven off to the local supermarket, came home a bare hour later to discover the front door wide open. It transpired that the side garage door had been forced, entry gained to the house through the adjoining house door. She felt nauseated, violated, alarmed to note the frightening disarray in her normally spotlessly arranged interior.

Their prized DVDs were taken, along with the player. A few other items, a digital camera. Upstairs, in the master bedroom, bureau drawers were pulled agape, contents spilled out onto the floor. Her jewellery gone. She felt like retching. Ran outside to see her neighbours to the right just setting off for a ravine walk. No, they responded, alarmed at her frantic questioning, they had noticed nothing amiss.

They later replaced the two shattered doors. Had an alarm system installed to forestall any future intrusions. After the passage of a few years the trauma of the break-in became a bad memory she seldom called up. The insurance was useful, and they replaced everything that had been stolen. She still mourned the loss of her jewellery, some of the pieces had been, she said, family heirlooms. Junk, he said morosely.

Their daughter became enthused about theatre arts, was involved in her high school's theatre productions. Their son began to call daily on a much younger boy living across the street, for companionship. The father bought a convertible, a rag-top. Suddenly become enthused about washing the family vehicles - they had rid themselves of the old van, bought a new one - where previously his wife had been tasked with that labour.

He insisted on buying a rotary mower for their property, never bothering to sharpen the blades properly. After he would laboriously mow the lawns on a week-end, she would discreetly haul out the old electric mower on the following Monday to repeat the process. Their lawn was over-run with weeds. Instead of hand-picking them in early spring, she would set to in mid-summer, and just gave up. Solved the problem by liberally sprinkling clover seeds on the lawn.

Her daughter gave up horse-riding. Kept talking about graduating high school to take drama courses at university. The mother happily sewed up a lovely ball gown for her daughter's graduation prom. The two car dealerships from which the new vehicles were purchased went out of business. She was hoping her husband might agree finally to a vacation, a week away somewhere, as a change from the camping excursions to nearby provincial parks he always insisted on.

For his part, he planned to conduct a father-son discussion about the inappropriateness of finding companionship with a boy six years younger than his errant son.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld