That Train Don't Stop Here Anymore
Sep. 10th, 2021 03:59 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mallorys_camera
Home again, home again.
I ended up having a very nice trip, but I had to actively rescue the trip—first from Hurricane Ida and then from my dreadful relations who decided to pitch a fit over my presence for reasons I still don’t understand but seemed to have something to do with Covid—
“It was never about Covid,” remarked Ichabod’s close friend Jordan the Therapist to whom Ichabod related the saga.
I am inclined to agree.
The best way to understand my relationship with my mother’s family might be to envision me as Harry Potter and them as the Dursleys.
I had asked for —and received—permission to stay in Rik’s old house on Spruce Street. It has stood mostly empty for the past 10 years. My cousin Alicia was not happy with the arrangement and therefore lobbied her stepmother, Rik’s widow, to kick me out—
“And you should not have flown over the Labor Day weekend! Not with the Delta variant!” Janet’s hysterical voice berated me over the phone. These days she lives on Orcas Island. “That’s so irresponsible of you—"
In other words: Bad dog. Baaaaaaaaad dog.
Well, I gave you the dates six weeks ago! I thought. You could have said, ‘No.’ And how did you think I was getting from New York to California? Did you imagine I was going to walk?
But I was polite to her. I even volunteered to do a Covid test.
“Those things are useless,” snapped Janet.
I understand fear of the Delta variant.
What I don’t understand is why Janet had to wait until I was physically in the house before kicking me out.
I mean, she could have told me two weeks before—I’ve changed my mind. I’m simply too uncomfortable—
And that would have left me plenty of time to find alternative housing.
But denied Alicia and Janet the singular pleasure of making me feel uncomfortable, I suppose.
So, Ichabod and I went up to Ukiah instead and had a perfectly lovely time.
The good news is that I never need to speak to any member of that part of my biological family ever again if I don’t want to.
They have no power over me whatsoever.
That train don’t stop here anymore.
I had a lot of memories wrapped up in that house.
Highly cathected memories.
It was the house where I lived when I was in nursing school—Rik had gone to work in a lab in Cambridge (UK) for a couple of years and needed someone to house sit.
It was the house to which I returned after that disastrous Yosemite cross-country ski trip when I got lost in a blizzard for three days and had to be air-lifted out by helicopter. When I got back to Spruce Street, I found an overdue library book notice sitting on my desk.
How can they send me this? I wondered. Don’t they know I almost died?
And I cried and cried and cried.
It was the first time I had been able to admit to myself, You almost died. Survival under perilous circumstances is highly dependent upon denying the fact that one is in danger of dying.
It is also the house in whose backyard garden I married my first husband. The night before, I’d had a vivid dream that Bill and my mother were waltzing to Saint-Saëns’ Danse Macabre. And as if that weren’t portent enough, Marybeth told me later that my wedding dress had been invaded during the actual vows. My wedding gown had a kind of gauzy oversheath—
“And this bee somehow found its way under the gauze! And we were all just sitting there with our hands to our throats wondering when it was going to sting you—"
I suppose I still have the memories. But without the cathexis, the memories don’t have that disquieting living tableau sense.
It’s a house that deserves to be loved, and it’s not being loved. It exists as a kind of museum to Rik. Every book he ever bought and read and hoarded is still on its shelves, and long-shed skin cells and hair cells are congealing as dust on those shelves. Why, you could practically clone Rik from the air! And no one has opened a window in that house in ever so long.
Absolutely the worst thing about that house, though, is its antiquated electrical system.
The one night Ichabod and I stayed—even Alicia wasn’t bitchy enough to kick us out with no place lined up to stay—we tried to charge our phones.
There wasn’t a single outlet in that house that didn’t have a surge strip hooked up to an elderly two-prong connector from which numerous extension cords snaked out toward ancient appliances and lamps. And nary a smoke detector in sight! Though I did see a fire extinguisher.
Since there are actually two people living there now—Judy, a nurse I used to work with, and Haley, Alicia’s whey-faced daughter—this is a dangerous situation.
“Covid!” I snorted. “What Janet should really be worrying about is that this whole place is in imminent danger of going up in flames.”
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Ichabod said.
“I wonder which would be more satisfying—calling the appropriate Berkeley authority to red-tape the place or burning it down myself?”
“Now, now.”
“The house deserves better. It’s such a nice house.”
“Is it? I don’t see that myself. It just seems old. And creepy.”
And the minute Ichabod said that, BAM! I saw the house as old and creepy, too.
no subject
Date: 2021-09-11 10:39 am (UTC)As ever, I am in awe of your adventures!
I'm sorry the Dursleys showed themselves up so gracelessly.
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Date: 2021-09-11 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-12 03:00 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-12 01:06 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2021-09-13 06:52 am (UTC)Oh, my. I probably won't be able to sleep in a place like that :)) Not without bringing in insulation tester and going through junction boxes (probably snipping off half of house's system in process).
no subject
Date: 2021-09-14 01:11 pm (UTC)I grappled with saying something to the house's owner—but under the circumstances thought it wiser merely to get out and shut up. 😊