House, 2014
You like Grandma’s house more than you like your own. That’s what you tell your mom even though it probably hurts her feelings.
BY MEGAN ARDEN GALLANT
IMAGE BY IMAGE4YOU/PIXABAY.COM
You like Grandma’s house more than you like your own. That’s what you tell your mom even though it probably hurts her feelings. Grandma’s house is where you spend days off from school, sick days, and where all the important family gatherings happen. The closest grocery store is a No Frills around the corner, which you walk to with Grandma, and sometimes she buys you chocolate bars. Toblerone’s are the best ones. Dad makes you walk from your house to Grandma’s house and says it’s closer than it is. You regret wearing flip-flops because it’s a forty-five-minute walk and your older brother and Dad have longer legs than you and now you’re blistered and sore.
Grandma’s backyard has a pool. It’s a real in-ground pool with a shallow end that slowly descends into a deep end. It has blue and white faded lining peeking out from above the waves. Before going down the twisty blue slide, you dump a bucket of water down so the sunburnt aluminum won’t hurt your skin. Grandma tells you to stay away from the slide after you find a wasps’ nest under the ladder and your brother gets stung. You start using the diving board more because there aren’t any wasps living near it. Your cousins teach you how to play “Colours,” and you teach your friends to play too, because it’s your favourite pool game even though you aren’t good at it. You make shows with your brother in the pool, pretending to be an acrobat by standing on his shoulders before he flips you into the deep end. You splash around until Mom and Grandma are watching from the patio. You compete for who can do the longest handstand, and your brother squirts water at you through those colourful foam noodles that have large chunks missing from them. Grandma throws toys in the deep end, and you race your brother to see who can pick up the most. You lose this game too, but want to play anyway. You laugh at the small wooden sign on Grandma’s brick wall, above the barbeque nobody seems to use. In dark red, it reads: We do not swim in your toilet, so please do not pee in our pool. You run along the concrete around the pool, even over the corner with the cracks that’s easy to stub your toe on. Grandma tells you to stop running. You tell your uncle you are drowning as you hang from the step ladder and gargle water, and he tells you not to cry wolf. You think your best friend really is drowning when she steps into the deep end and can’t hold herself above water. Your dad pulls her out. You help Grandma empty the filter and put the tarps on at night and take them off in the morning. When you take the tarp off, you see a dead squirrel floating on the surface of the water and Dad tells you he must have fallen in overnight. You feel like you’re swimming in a crime scene and wonder what Grandma did with the body and if he was happy to swim one time before he died.
Grandma’s next-door neighbours don’t have pools. One house belongs to an old lady with a name too long to pronounce. Your dad makes you walk to her house on Christmas before you’re allowed to open your presents but she’s not home. She spends Christmas in the hospital while you play with your new air hockey table. The neighbours on the other side have children older than you and the older one was your cousin’s best friend. You hear their dad was charged with possession of child pornography and wonder if you ever met him. Your cousin tells you about another family on the street with two teenage girls who killed their mom. You wonder if Grandma’s house was in a bad neighbourhood or if it was bad luck. You don’t know what happened to the kid neighbours when their father was arrested, but a young couple moved in next door. Your dad becomes friends with them, and they come over to use the pool and they make shrimp for you. You play with their large happy dog through the fence separating the yards. You wonder if the couple is still together and if the dog is still alive.
Grandma’s house has thin walls. You know this because Mom and Dad try to be quiet when they fight outside, but you can still hear it. Grandma makes you and your brother watch TV. You worry the neighbours can hear them too and sometimes you go out and tell them to stop, but usually you listen to Grandma and turn the TV louder.
Grandma’s house has three bedrooms upstairs, but hers is on the main floor so she doesn’t have to walk too far with her bad hip. Grandma’s room is the biggest, but it has no furniture except a bed and a lamp, so her photo albums are on the old wooden floor with her other books. You ask if you can nap in her bed since it’s the biggest and comfiest and has the same tomato sauce smell that Grandma always has. Your brother plays loud music from the living room while you try to nap, and Grandma says there’s no way you can sleep through that. You agree but fall asleep anyway. When you sleep the whole night over at Grandma’s house, you and your brother claim the room with the two twin beds. It feels like a sleepover because Grandma thinks you’re sleeping but really you stay up late playing Mario Kart together on your Nintendo DS. Your brother starts sleeping in the smaller room with one bed with the attached bookshelf when Grandma’s house becomes your house on the weekends. You stop having sleepovers with him but now you have your own bedroom away from home. Dad takes over the third bedroom upstairs and starts moving his stuff from your house to Grandma’s house.
Across from Grandma’s bedroom is the door that leads to the basement. It has brown carpeted floors that are warm on your feet but stink like old, stale cigarette smoke. The wooden panelling with the dark knots makes you think you’re at a cottage even though you’re in the city. Beside the tiny sauna you’ve never seen anyone use is a games room stock full of your favourites like Labyrinth and Triominoes. Your brother wants to play Risk but it’s long and boring, so you convince him to play Clue instead. Grandma’s basement has a crawl space under the stairs where Dad’s hockey equipment is stored, and so it is yours every Saturday night. Dad’s new flat screen sits on top of the old box TV that doesn’t work near the wall below the line of framed pictures of him and his three brothers as kids. You play Mario Party on the Wii your brother brings over every weekend and sometimes you play Wii Bowling and Dad joins you. Wii Bowling is a game that you’re actually good at, so you always want to play. You play office at the desk in the basement with the daughter of Dad’s best friend, even though she’s younger than you and make-believe is only for kids. The dads and older brothers watch hockey every other Saturday night when they come over and they usually order pizza. You spend every other weekend playing office until Dad’s best friend stops coming over.
Then you start playing Rummy or Scrabble with Grandma at the kitchen table on Saturday nights. Grandma’s kitchen is your favourite part of the house. You like that there are four steps leading from the living room to the kitchen, divided by a railing that makes it feel like the kitchen is a balcony. You jump down the steps to get from the kitchen to the living room. You like the large family tree collage hanging above the stairs and pride yourself in being in so many of the pictures. You like that Grandma gets to take it with her when she leaves. On Sunday mornings, you sit at the table eating Lucky Charms for breakfast. Grandma reads the newspaper and does the crosswords while Dad reads the sports section. She tells you something interesting from the paper and Dad tells her she just said that ten minutes ago. You read the comics and point out the cartoon shark that has your name. Afternoons are spent by the phone talking to friends from school because sometimes you wish you could spend weekends playing with friends on the street at your real home. Grandma uses the same phone to answer solicitors who encourage her to make a ten-thousand-dollar donation that she can’t afford. Grandma has a collection of teaspoons hanging over the railing, and you constantly ask questions about where they come from. You notice most are from PEI, and Grandma tells you stories of her childhood and walking up hills of snow to get to school. You eventually stop asking questions and she forgets how to answer them. You wonder what happened to the spoons.
Grandma’s living room is where you spend most of the time. You fall asleep on the couch that sits lopsided because of that one Christmas your whole family crammed onto it for a picture and that broke the leg. You clutch the fuzzy cheetah-print blanket that sits on the back of the couch as your dad carries you upstairs. Grandma’s living room has an old fireplace beside the television, but you’ve only ever seen it on once or twice. Family Christmases are spent here, and your great uncle’s funeral reception. Grandma’s rocking chair sits beside the couch and has a colourful knit blanket tossed over the back. A brown foot stool sits in front of the chair. It’s so old that every time you sit on it, dust and cigarette smoke flies into the air. Grandma sits asleep, with her feet up in her slippers. You tell Grandma to wake up because you like bothering her and she tells you she wasn’t sleeping; she was just resting her eyes. After bugging you to get your hair out of your eyes, she braids it as you sit on the footrest in front of her rocking chair. You quickly regret letting her do it because Grandma always pokes you in the eye somehow. Your Dad falls asleep in Grandma’s chair with her colourful knit blanket tossed over the back while watching movies on Saturday nights in his new apartment.
Grandma’s living room leads to the long driveway with a basketball net at the end, even though the pavement isn’t smooth enough to be a basketball court. Dad puts up Christmas lights around the front of the house and Grandma calls him by his brother’s name. You use the hose to water the grass and Dad pays you three dollars. You draw with coloured chalk you find in the games room along with the jump ropes and basketballs. Grandma’s small white car is parked in the driveway. Grandma loses her small white car and her license when she backs it down the driveway and into the shed across the street.
Grandma’s house has two doors. The front door enters the kitchen, but it’s not used much. Your dad uses it when he hands out candy on Halloween. He’s the Hat Man, he says, wearing as many hats as possible on his head. Dad puts up a sign that says “No Solicitors” on the door so people don’t ask Grandma for money again.
Grandma’s second door is the side door which enters the living room and is the main door you use. Grandma goes to the door anytime someone comes home. Next to the door is a sofa that’s only used for holding jackets. It matches the couch with the broken leg. Beside the door, Grandma has a clock in the shape of a Bible that she takes with her when she leaves. After a hockey game, you open the door to find Grandma’s house empty. Your uncle calls and says Grandma’s in the hospital because she slipped on ice on the way back from No Frills, where you both used to go to buy chocolate bars. Grandma comes through the door with lopsided glasses, a broken nose, and a black eye. You’re scared but still you laugh when Grandma says she doesn’t know where her groceries went. Neighbours bring Grandma home after she gets lost going to the same grocery store that she spent your whole life walking to. Grandma laughs at herself like you accused her of falling asleep in her rocking chair.
Grandma’s house doesn’t sell for as high as your dad wants, he says. You follow him as he shows the house to buyers, and you have to repeat nice things about why they should live at Grandma’s house. Your dad and uncles spend a week cleaning up and claiming furniture. You watch them pose for a picture together in front of the kitchen where you used to play Scrabble. Dad leaves the sign by the pool even though you wish you could keep it because it’s still funny. The white twin beds are thrown out, but Dad keeps the rocking chair.
You drive by Grandma’s house more often than you should. The house now has a shed between the driveway and the backyard, and the basketball net is at the curb. Dad says the people living there don’t want a pool so when they redid the roof, they tossed all the shingles in and covered it up. The house has new front steps, and they took down the “No Solicitors” sign. You wonder if they ever use the fireplace and if they watch hockey while playing Scrabble at the kitchen table or fall asleep watching movies on a lopsided couch. You wonder what Grandma’s house is like without Grandma.
Megan Gallant is an adventure-loving writer and graduate of Professional Writing and Communications currently completing an MA in Critical and Creative Writing from the University of Gloucestershire. Her favourite place to be is between the trees in her hammock, reading true crime, drinking coffee, and cuddling her adorable goldendoodle. More of her work, both fiction and non-fiction, can be found online at meganardengallant.com.
Image: image4you/Pixabay.com.
Edited for publication by Stella Moon, as part of the Creative Book Publishing Program.
HLR Spotlight is a collaboration between the Faculty of Media & Creative Arts and the Faculty of Liberal Arts & Sciences and Innovative Learning at Humber College in Toronto, Ontario. This project is funded by Humber’s Office of Research & Innovation.