THE DOWNSTAIRS APARTMENT

 

THE DOWNSTAIRS APARTMENT

             “He wears funny shoes,” Rebecca’s mother offered as a sufficient reason for her daughter not to marry Dan Chase.  The elderly mother was terrified that her daughter would go away and leave her on her own.

        “It’s too bad you don’t like him, Ma.  Because I love him,” Rebecca retorted, “Dan and I are going to be married.  We’ve gotten an apartment, and bought furniture.”

        “You’re going to live with him now?”

        “No, of course not.  Not until we are married.  And that will be soon.”

        Later that morning, while Dan was at their one-bedroom apartment, overseeing the installation of a new stove, Rebecca phoned him from her office.

“Something’s come up,Danny,” she announced excitedly. “Can you meet me for lunch.”

An hour later they were eating cheeseburgers at MacDonald’s.

“I don’t like that idea at all,” Dan protested.

“But it’s such a nice roomy apartment,” Rebecca pleaded.  “Oh, Danny, Ma was sobbing when she told me that the Baxter sisters said they were going to move out because they intend to buy a house.”

“Those two old crows have lived there for more than ten years.  And all of a sudden they want to buy a house?”

“My mother is seventy-one,  and she’s not in great health.  She’s scared to death of being in that big house all alone.”

  “Yeah, well I don’t know.”

“And think of all the money we could save,” Rebecca persisted.  “And there’s a second bedroom, and a dining room, and a huge back yard.”

“But what about our privacy?”

        “Oh, Danny, it’s not like we’d all be in the same apartment.  She’s upstairs.  We’re downstairs.”  Rebecca smiled mischievously.  “And Ma assured me that she’ll never hear the bed squeak.”

        That very afternoon, Dan arranged to have their furniture transferred to the roomy apartment in Rebecca’s mother’s house as soon as the Baxters moved out.

        Two days later Dan and Rebecca got married.

        Two years later they got divorced.        

Now, in the Folsom Funeral Home, Rebecca sat near the bier and accepted the condolences of friends and neighbors.  She was tearless and seemed detached from the event and unconcerned about the dead woman in the casket on the bier.

She did not love her mother anymore.  Ma had never shown anything but disdain for her husband.  She had treated Dan as though he were an interloping villain who had come between her and her daughter.

Even still, Rebecca understood that it was her own fault that the marriage had failed.  If only she had not talked Dan into taking that apartment.  If only she had never allowed her mother to have so much presence in her and Dan’s world.

“Seems like she’s always in our kitchen,” Dan had complained.  “Does she have to wander down here six or ten times a day.  I mean it kind of wipes out any chance of an afternoon delight, doesn’t it?”

Rebecca wished that she had spoken up to her mother and had expressed her irritation about how often her mother complained that Danny was not doing enough to help with maintenance of the property.  He should do a better job of mowing the lawn.  He should rake the leaves.  He should do this.  He should do that. 

“I swear to god I’m on the edge,” Dan had warned Rebecca many times.  “I try to keep it in check, but your mother is too much in our faces.”

“Just let it go, Danny,” she would say.  “Ignore her.  We’ll never have a better home than this.  And anything else would cost a fortune.”

But, inevitably, Danny went over the edge.  He’d had enough, he told his wife.  “Becky, I’m done with this.  I’m done with your mother, and I’m done with this apartment.  We’re moving out of here.”

“No, we’re not.  That’s ridiculous.”

“I’m not staying here for another day.”

“Well I am.”

“Then you may be staying, but I’m going.”

And so he went alone.

Oh, my god, Rebecca mourned, as she stared at the flower-laden bier.  Why did I not go with him?

“I’m sorry for your loss,” Martha Baxter said gently, and sat down next to Rebecca.

Rebecca nodded at the woman who had vacated the downstairs apartment to buy her own house.  “We all die,” she said coldly.

“Forgive me for saying this, dear,” said Martha Baxter.  “But at first I resented your mother for making us give up that apartment.  But I got over it.  I realized that she had to do for her daughter.  Family comes first.”

“What do you mean she made you give up the apartment?”

“My sister Abigail never forgave her.  That’s why she’s not here.  After all, we were her tenants for more than ten years. And then to be pushed out like that.  Well.”

“What are you talking about?  My mother said you left because you wanted to buy your own house?”

“I’m sure she only claimed that was so because she knew that you would never have wanted to take the apartment if you had known we were being forced to leave.”

“My mother forced you to leave?”

“Oh, yes.  Of course she did.  Abigail and I could never have afforded to buy our own house.  We loved our apartment.  We would never have left if we’d had a choice.”

Rebecca wanted to scream.  The affection she’d once had for her mother had been diminishing ever since Dan left her, and now she felt only a red-hot hatred for the woman whose controlling “love” had cost her a husband and the hope of ever having a family of her own.