Monday I Love You by Constance C. Greene

Author:Constance C. Greene
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Open Road Integrated Media

13

It took me a while to come to grips with the fact that my parents had no social life, didn’t seem to have any friends. I’d noticed other people’s parents went places Saturday night—to the movies, maybe, or bowling, to a bar and grill, or perhaps dancing. The mother changed into her best clothes, dabbed perfume behind her ears while the father went to pick up the baby-sitter, or they left the kids alone if the oldest was old enough to keep the others from killing each other. There was a general exodus Saturday night, I’d observed, as I watched the red taillights go down the street, then turn right or left and disappear.

“Why don’t you ever go out?”

“How come you don’t have parties?”

“Why don’t you have any fun?”

These were the questions I asked.

“Fun costs money,” my father explained.

“Parties are expensive and a lot of work,” said my mother, lips tucked neatly in upon each other.

Somewhere along in third grade, I think it was, we moved to a house on a street where all the houses resembled each other. Just as all the Schmitts resembled each other slightly. Something about the jaw line, the way the bushy eyebrows tilted up at the corners, lending a sinister air to the long, thin Schmitt faces.

I didn’t resemble anybody. No one laid claim to my looks. No one took any responsibility.

All the houses on our street had windows a little too close together, as well as vestibules. I’d never heard of a vestibule before we moved to that house. My mother said, “I’ve always wanted a vestibule,” and my father paid two months’ rent in advance. It was one of our better times.

A vestibule is a little room you go into when you open the front door. It’s not a hall, it’s a vestibule, and it has a closet so you can hang up your coat and kick off your galoshes in it before you go into the living room.

“A vestibule,” my mother told me, “is class. Real class.” I believed her. She knew about such things and I didn’t.

After we’d lived there awhile, it occurred to me to visit our next-door neighbors.

“You’ll notice no one came to call,” my mother said bitterly. “You’ll notice there were no casseroles, no homemade pastries that first night. These are not people who welcome newcomers.”

I decided to do something about that. I’d noticed that a boy slightly older than me was riding his bicycle up and down his driveway next door. He never went out into the street. I didn’t have a bicycle, but I had ridden one once or twice, so I decided to make the first move.

I went over and said hello.

“Hello,” I said. Either he was deaf or didn’t have any manners. Or, most likely, didn’t want to get to know me. He said nothing, just kept on going back and forth, back and forth. He was a thin boy with pale cheeks and flat eyes. He was not a friendly person.

“I live next door,” I said.

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