Rooms Without Furniture, Page 2

  Chapter 2 – A Model Home...

  Mark walked beyond his home’s front doorstep the following morning to collect another newspaper telling of the world’s unraveling. Mark’s shoulders slumped as he looked at the front page. His father would take little solace in the news Mark would read to him. A color photograph of that fool of a man, for whom Russell Pence squinted through the attic window’s light, waved at Mark as the newsprint stained his fingers. That man appeared everywhere. One could not hope to escape the man’s face when the newspaper brought it to the doorstep. Mark scanned the text below the photo and thought it would not be long until the fool’s knock sounded on their door.

  “I’ll tell you what it is,” a voice bellowed across the street. “It’s an absolute affront to my heritage is what it is.”

  Mark turned to see his neighbors, Mr. Hussey, stepping his direction, his forehead a red sheen of frustration and sweat. He had only spoken to Mr. Hussey on two or three occasions – perhaps to wish happy holidays as they both collected the mail, maybe to comment on the need for rain as they both tended to dry front lawns. Theirs was a peaceful neighborhood, a quiet collection of driveways. People kept to themselves, exiting the front threshold to insure that their grass remained trimmed, that no fallen leaf was not allowed to go untended during the autumn, that their children’s toys did not rest untouched for a minute outside of their doors.

  “Damn fool of a man,” Mr. Hussey’s voice careened down the quiet morning’s block. “I try my hardest to warn people, but still, they all listen to that fool. It’s awful to witness what this land has become. I tell you, it’s not what any of our ancestors who bled to build this country wanted.”

  Mark nodded.

  “My father has nothing good to say about the man.”

  “I wouldn’t expect your father would,” Mr. Hussey finally took a breath. “I don’t know much about your father. I’m a man who keeps to himself, but I can tell by your home, and how hard all of you work to keep it, that you are all good people. I can see you’re people who know how to earn what you want.”

  Mark stared at his toes peeking through his slippers. He would spend the morning reading to his father in the attic. Afterward, he would find it challenging to find suitable ways to spend his time. No office waited for him in the afternoon. He had no position of employment awaiting him a bit further down the road.

  “I can also tell you’re good people, son, by how often you visit your folks.”

  Mark stammered. “We never leave.”

  Mr. Hussey did not appear to hear Mark as he gazed down the street. “Yes, son, it’s nice that you kids visit your parents so often. My boys seldom have the time. They’ve left to make their own mark in the world.”

  “They used to kick the spokes out of my bicycle tires.”

  “What was that?”

  Mark sighed. He did not need to make an enemy out of a neighbor.

  “I was just thinking of how good your boys used to be to me and my siblings,” Mark amended. “I remember how they would toss a baseball around on your roof.”

  “Well, they were rough and healthy boys,” Mr. Hussey chuckled.

  Mark started to pivot away, but Mr. Hussey quickly tugged at Mark’s arm, a very surprising touch between neighbors who seldom spoke.

  “Excuse me, son,” Mr. Hussey’s eyes filled with apology, “but which boy are you?”

  “I’m Mark. The eldest.”

  “Oh, good then,” Mr. Hussey rubbed his chin, attempting perhaps to summon some memory of Mark as boy as he addressed the grown man who stood before him. “What do you think of my house?”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mr. Hussey glanced over his shoulder. Had he not properly phrased his question? Had the home shared a first impression he did not hope the building to give?

  “Just look at it and tell me what comes to your mind.”

  Mark closed the newspaper and concentrated on the home across the street. It had seldom changed through Mark’s life. The design remained a mix of the cottage and Tudor styles, a first floor of dark, tan brick topped with a second story of stucco holding a roof of terracotta shingles. Oak panes split the tall windows in handsome parts. Trim shrubbery circled the home, and walkways defined by manicured fauna and flowers defined the painstaking landscape. Mark saw no blemish. The home remained to Mark the model by which the neighborhood’s other homes measured their merit.

  The Pence home, filled with so many children, often made Mark feel crowded. At such times, Mark often looked through a window upon Mr. Hussey’s home across the street. When his siblings stole his portions from the dinner table, or locked themselves in the bathroom, or knocked upon Mark’s door so the oldest of the Pence children felt he possessed no privacy, Mark imagined what open chambers waited behind Mr. Hussey’s large, front door. He envisioned spacious rooms filled with rich furnishings, libraries of books and quiet rooms where young children did not scream and soil the couch with muddy boots. He imagined a kitchen stocked with the hams and turkeys the Pences enjoyed only on holidays. Mark had never stepped within the Hussey home. He had never been invited past its threshold. Still, Mark thought he knew his neighbor’s house as intimately as he did his own.

  “It’s as lovely as always, Mr. Hussey.”

  Mr. Hussey smiled. “You’re kind to say so. But do you notice anything else?”

  Mark squinted. He struggled to recall the last time he had seen either of Mr. Hussey’s sons, who were evidently not afforded the time to return to such a grand home. He could not remember the last time he noticed Mrs. Hussey attending to the flowers with sunhat and shears. For the first time, the Hussey home that he had imagined brimmed with so much precious space felt lonely.

  He did not share that impression with Mr. Hussey.

  “Has the front door always been that color?”

  Mr. Hussey choked on a quick eruption of laughter. “Of course not. We painted that old green door red almost seven years ago. Do you think the house looks nice?”

  “Of course,” Mark relaxed. “You’re home is the envy of the neighborhood. My father always comments on how nice it looks when you string up the Christmas lights.”

  Mr. Hussey’s eyes glistened. “Thank you for saying so much. Sometimes, it’s just so hard to keep up the effort. Times do get so trying.”

  “My father says it’s the strong who are tested. He says our hurts should more often than not be considered blessings.”

  “Ah, I knew your father to be a wise man,” Mr. Hussey wiped at his eyes with the end of shirtsleeve. “I shouldn't think that I work so hard for nothing. And I work so hard to keep it. Makes a man feel proud that neighbors see the proof of his toil.”

  Mark turned and peeked towards his home’s attic window. He felt ignorant. He could still not name the thing which his father and Mr. Hussey thought the coming fool would steal. He felt ashamed. For unlike his father and Mr. Hussey, Mark did not possess a home he earned for himself, that he might regard as his own, though he was a grown man for many years.

  Mr. Hussey gave Mark a sudden, appraising stare. “Don’t listen to that fool, son.”

  “I don’t plan to answer his knock.”

  “You do your father proud,” replied Mr. Hussey. “To think of it, I can’t remember the last time I saw your father. Is he sick?”

  Mark worked hard to remain the dutiful son who respected his father's wishes. His father would have told the neighborhood himself of his affliction had he wanted others to know.

  “He had a bit of a fall the other day and twisted an ankle,” Mark answered. “Nothing too serious. Will probably be getting the paper himself in a few more days.”

  “Give him my regards,” Mr. Hussey shook Mark’s hand. “Keep an eye out for that damn fool coming down our street. Claims he can heal folks. But we know better. We know the real cost of such promises.”

  Mark ignored the bustle of his siblings as he closed the front door behind him upon reentering his home. He did not feel offen
ded to find that the kitchen table no longer held a breakfast for him that late in the morning. His faith felt bolstered after his talk with Mr. Hussey. More than ever, he felt proud of those things his father had earned, and he vowed he would allow no fool to take an ounce of any of it away.

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