The Street - A Composite Sketch (17)

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 Seventeenth part of the anatomy of The Street.

Few people spoke to them. For years, in fact, after they took possession of their new house. Simply put, they lived within, seldom to be seen without. Slipping from house directly to garage. To drive to work, then reverse the process. Three; husband, wife, son. Her son, from a previous, unfortunate marriage. An abusive man she was finally glad to see the last of. While her son was yet young, she met the man who would become his step-father at their mutual place of employment.

It always distressed her that her son and her husband, from the time he was eight, and she married her new husband, disliked one another. It was a first-time marriage for him. They had no children together. Only her son, who had a rebellious, sometimes selfish streak that she feared he had inherited from his father. She had the feeling her son disdained his step-father, as a second-generation Pole; his own father, like her, was old-stock Anglo.

By the time he was twelve, he was nudging 6 feet. A burly, muscular boy. She had to constantly remind him to be aware of his strength. In face-offs with other boys at school he sometimes forgot. Which was generally when school authorities would contact her. Sometimes week-long suspensions would result. Not always his fault, she knew. He did not, necessarily, go looking for trouble. Others would provoke him, taunt him about his size and clumsiness, exhaust his already-sparse patience.

Basically, he was a good boy. He respected his mother, even while he disparaged - quietly most often, to himself - his step-father. They simply irritated one another. The step-father did not ever assert his adult authority over the boy, wisely leaving that to his wife. Knowing if he attempted to exercise authority he would be ignored, in any event. Even when the boy once set the kitchen afire - fortunately discovered early and damage kept to a minimum - in their old home, he did his best to remain mutely in the background.

Which doubtless infuriated the boy all the more. His mother finally sought professional counselling for her son, and that helped straighten him out. By the time they moved into their new home he was in high school. He was a fair enough student, although he saw little value to himself personally in the formal education system. Both his parents worked for Oracle, a large U.S.-based business-application software group.

The husband was estranged from his remaining parent, his father, as were his siblings, all of whom detested the man. He had been a sternly controlling tyrant when they were young. They had feared him, and resented his manner with their mother, since deceased, who cowered under him. She saw to it, however, that his father became an honoured guest in their home. Inviting him over often for Sunday dinner, finally reconciling father and son, something she was never able to accomplish between her husband and her son.

Her mother had been morbidly obese, and had died of a heart attack, while still relatively young. Her brother had Aspergers syndrome, lived quietly on his own, unemployable, a beneficiary of their mother's estate. Her sister, who had a medical condition that she knew might overtake her at any time nonetheless drove her six-year-old child to an outing, and blacked out while driving, causing a calamitous crash with tragic consequences.

One that deprived her of her little girl, killed instantly; caused spinal and brain damage to herself, which years of medical intervention and physiotherapy had alleviated. She was, however, confined to a wheelchair for the most part, and in it, she became fairly corpulent. She was determined, along with her architect husband, to have another child, and they attempted adoption, but were turned down time and again, her condition cited as reasonable grounds for refusal.

When the wife of our duo decided to take early retirement along with a tidy retirement package urged on her by her employer, she began to appear outside her home, enabling neighbours finally to approach and proffer friendly overtures. And she was gradually and gratefully drawn into the life of the street. Not in a manner that she could become active in any way in the neighbourhood, since she had her family's affliction, and was horribly obese, completely rotund.

Some of the other women on the street, those who stayed at home to look after their children, would come over to her house and sit out with her, chatting. Awaiting the arrival of their children back from school. She had initially attracted some of the women by her penchant for collecting jewellery from eBay, having succumbed to the lure of the charge she enjoyed when she bid successfully on items. She never wore any of that jewellery, sold it at minimal cost to the other women.

She had always liked cats and eventually adopted two, a delicate black-and-white female first, then a large orange Maine Coon cat. The little one was permitted to roam freely, the pedigreed one was allowed out of doors only on a secure lead, in her presence. Then came a third cat, a common tabby, and it too was permitted to go about on its own. But she did value them all, and her patient husband emitted no hint of unease at their presence.

He began, in fact, increasingly to travel. All over the U.S., sometimes having to remain for months at a time on special assignments, coming home intermittently. When he was home he was the perfect husband, considerate and helpful. He never, ever smoked in the house, only outside. He would occasionally cook with his wife; they both enjoyed cooking, finding new recipes, experimenting with different, occasionally exotic and extravagant ingredients.

And they enjoyed eating out. Sometimes making such occasions family events, inviting his father, her brother, and their son. They all shared an enormous appetite for good food. Actually, for any food. Although she was a consummate cook and was well aware of what constituted good nutrition, often when he was away she would order fast food delivered to the house. Telling herself that it wouldn't hurt to have it once in a while. Even when 'once in a while' occurred frequently.

As the son matured he had a circle of friends who, like him, decided not to complete high school, and to strike out on their own, taking casual jobs. He also had the occasional girlfriend, acquiring a busy social life, although he and his mother did not always view his choices favourably. He had established contact with his father, whom he occasionally visited, and they got on fairly well together.

The boy had always been computer literate and adept, and his father encouraged him to take computers apart, put them together, produce his own combinations and software, as well. He hadn't the typical geek personality, unlike his step-father. He was gregarious and emphatically loud. His booming voice matching his huge physical presence. By the time he was prepared to join the permanent workforce he considered himself well prepared to present his casually-acquired technical qualifications.

He did have a succession of fairly good starter positions. But for one reason or another, he never stuck with them. He would somehow manage to insult people, or feel he had been insulted, and feel compelled to leave, or he would be dismissed. Sometimes clients would complain to his employers that he was too forceful, too loud, that his manner made them fearful. Simply perception; it was his way to be loud and emphatic. He found it difficult to contain himself, to tone down his excesses. His too-confident, and loud manner offended.

By then he was driving a sporty late-model car with a special paint job, and his mother had helped him into a very nice house of his own, packed with electronics, up-to-date appliances, good quality furniture. Oh, and a kitten. Oh yes, a live-in partner as well. A very attractive young women, lithe and blond whom his mother took under her wing, to teach her the basics of good cuisine, inducting her into the cult of the informed, capable cook. And housekeeping, that too.

Coming from a materially and culturally deprived background, once scathingly described as 'poor white trash', the girl seemed willing enough, and the woman lavished gifts on her. She wanted her son to have someone with whom he could be happy, although she wasn't quite convinced he would find happiness with this young woman. Still, because this was her son's choice, she opened her arms to the girl. It was something to see them together, the delicate tall young woman and the horribly obese older woman.

Her weight, in fact, worried her, even while she did nothing whatever to diminish it. She suffered from high blood pressure and from depression, and took medication for both. She worried herself sick about acquiring diabetes; her doctor had told her she was 'pre-diabetic'. Heart problems like her mother, another concern. She worried too about her husband. Merely excessively overweight, but he began experiencing health problems, became balance-impaired, some inner-ear thing.

They cut out sugar, used artificial sweeteners. No more white flour, white bread, rice, pasta, pastries. Too little too late. It was not necessarily what they ate but the prodigious amounts that they normally consumed. They simply could not envision themselves subsisting on 'small', portions inadequate to their appetites. So he was also diagnosed with high blood pressure and high cholesterol levels, and took medication accordingly, and cheerfully.

Their son's kitten grew into a cat, one that roamed widely. He was distraught when, one night, it failed to return home. Eventually he replaced it. When he discovered that his live-in girlfriend, with whom he had experienced several partings and reconciliations resulting in tearful reunions, was having an affair with his best friend, father of a young child, it was enough. She left, he was disconsolate; she defiant.

Her lover left his partner and child for her. The affair did not last, however. His sense of self-preservation kicking in, he refused, though it pained him, to restore her to his affections and his home. He has since attempted to replace her, but succeeding candidates, both from good backgrounds, backed off before matters proceeded to the serious level of accommodation. His mother is wondering whether she will ever have grandchildren.

His rash impulses led him to challenge another motorist to a street race which caused an accident resulting in slight injury to the other motorist. He was charged with dangerous driving, attended court, had his license suspended for a year. And honoured that suspension. Later taking possession of a more powerful vehicle, a late-model, second-hand BMW which he coddled and took great pride in. And drove responsibly, not wishing a repeat of his previous stupidity.

His step-father fears that with the global economic downturn his job may be imperilled. That has not yet occurred. When he is at home he tends faithfully to his wife, presenting her with tea in pretty porcelain cups, driving her to the veterinarian clinic and the pet food stores on week-ends, with her beloved pets. She still has a pretty face, regardless of the weight. She is a decent and kind person, exudes warmth and kindness.

They remain a firm fixture on the street. The husband has decided he will learn to mow the lawn himself, no longer hire someone to do it, nor remove the snow from the driveway in winter. He will, henceforth, do these tasks. Time for belt-tightening; funds becoming scarcer. Not the other kind of belt-tightening, however.

c. 2009 Rita Rosenfeld