I’m going to take a month off from the weekly question and do something I used to do for the National Post in August. Instead of writing The Bookless Club, I’m going to do a short story each week. To make this a more challenging project, send one word that you’d like to see incorporated into a story to thebooklessclub@gmail.com
This week’s three words incorporated into the story are: roses, from Alannah Anslow, verandah, from R. Dhatt and craftsman, from Loy Leyland.
LILACS
It was decades old, the yellow house, the one with the two massive trees. She never drove by where she didn’t tilt her head to look at it. Each time, she imagined a young girl bounding up the wooden steps onto a verandah that spanned the width of the house. The image was always the same – a girl, maybe ten years-old, dashing toward the big, oak door. Occasionally, she’d driven through the alley hoping for a different view of the old house. She’d even gotten out of the car to peek into the backyard. The fence was too high so she’d resorted to holding her phone up above the fence, blindly snapping photos of whatever was on the other side of that fence. If the owner had seen her he’d probably have called the cops. She had her excuse at the ready: she wasn’t casing the joint; her grandmother had been raised in that house.
… her grandmother had been raised in that house.
The Craftsman style house was modest but it wasn’t humble. The front door was strapped with decorative iron hinges and verged onto baronial dimensions. Stained glass transom windows featuring sprays of red roses ran across the front of the house. It was a house with room for a piano – an upright piano – with a cross hall dining room and a foyer that had always featured a bouquet of lilacs from the garden. She’d grown up hearing her grandmother talk about the piano, about the grand staircase, the verandah and those lilacs.
When the house next door came down in the course of a day, the granddaughter realized that her personal landmark could easily vanish from the landscape. She put a note through the mail slot in the oak door. The owner agreed instantly. It was all arranged: she would bring her grandmother to visit her childhood home. It would be a surprise. A treat.
Her grandmother’s visits followed a pattern: dinner at home, dinner out; shopping; maybe a doctor’s appointment. But this time there would be a diversion. An excellent diversion. The granddaughter was excited.
“How’d you like to go inside?”
“What are we doing here?”, the grandmother asked as she pulled up in front of the old house.
“I used to live here, you know.”
“I know”, nodded the granddaughter. “How’d you like to go inside?”
As the grandmother was spluttering that you couldn’t just go inside someone else’s home, the gate opened and the owner approached the car.
“Hello”, he said, “Would you like to come inside?”
“Yes, yes, she would”, was her reply.
From the verandah, she stood for a few moments looking back at the street.
She remarked that her father had planted the trees that now loomed over the walkway. She frowned slightly.
“Those trees, my goodness, but they’ve grown.”
The owner opened the door and she entered the foyer. He told them to take as long as they liked and then excused himself.
The grandmother revolved slowly in the foyer, her hand migrating to cover her parted lips.
They moved through what she called the front room. The piano had gone just there, she pointed. Those roses, she remarked upon seeing the stained glass window in the dining room. Those roses ….
The piano had gone just there …
The kitchen had seen plenty of improvements, most of them ham-fisted. A skylight. A sundeck tacked onto the back. New appliances shoehorned into spaces that hadn’t imagined their requirements.
They headed up the staircase, single-file, and stopped mid-way on the landing so she could catch her breath. Four bedrooms. Windows that bookended a narrow hallway. She stood for a while looking into a small bedroom at the back of the house.
“This was my room. I shared it with Kathleen. Ben’s room was there. And that was Max’s. My parents had the big room at the front.”
They had a quick look in the backyard. In daylight the granddaughter noticed her grandmother’s expression. She’d imagined her tickled pink, radiant from the experience. Instead, her face registered the look she’d had upon learning that one of her grandsons had got his ear pierced.
They thanked the owner and left.
Sitting in the front seat of the car, the granddaughter turned to the grandmother,
“So, what did you think?”
She waited for two kids on skateboards to pass noisily by. Her answer was barely audible.
“Where did the lilac bush go?”
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