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.
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