Bringing Home the Duncan Phyfe: Chapter 7

The staircase wasn't grand in any way--especially not in the way Mom hoped when Dad told her he found a nice upstairs apartment, and she asked, "What's the stairway like?" "The stairway?" Dad had teased, "It goes up--and down, too, depending on which way you walk." Mom leaned her head to the side so he added, "Honey, it's nothing fancy, but the price was right." Those last words, she knew, were spoken of necessity, so she simply smiled and continued the conversation in her head until she shrugged it off by mumbling, "Who cares about the stairs?" but the question did not punctuate her thoughts.

In that town, an upstairs apartment was always in an old house. Sometimes they'd been beautiful homes where the entry way was quartered off and a banister remained to beg an upward glance and give the hand a sense of presence. Even in a house now divvied up to renters, a banister could lift the mind and guide a gentle touch upward with grace.

Such stairs are great for greeting guests, a social exercise that newlyweds are surprisingly eager to do. Unexpected company brings smiles and two-minute tours, as if to say, "We're married now. This is where we sleep and wake and eat and live when we say we're going home." Secretly they hope that if they tell others that it's home often enough, it may very well begin to feel like home even when they don't say the word aloud.

But this upstairs three-room apartment had no such staircase, and the narrow ascent foreshadowed the confined space beyond the door. Mom had seen the place when the lease began a month before their wedding. It seemed small even when empty of all but the things too heavy to move--cast iron all.
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The claw foot tub, the kitchen sink that clung to the wall with cotton flour sacks skirted 'round to hide the pipes, and an old stove that stood on legs like the kind her grandmother had before she went electric.

Not yet a bride and even less a homemaker, Mom was overwhelmed at the thought of making the place presentable. She had never set up housekeeping nor had she seen it done. For as long as she could remember her childhood home (shared by both her parents and grandparents since shortly after she was born) had never changed. She had never seen her mother "feather a nest" because the nest was not her own to feather, and her grandparents had kept nearly everything in the same place since the house was built in 1910.

Mom had not given the apartment much thought until they got home from their honeymoon. By then each of the three rooms had at least one piece of furniture: A second cousin had given them a couch. It was fine except for the big spring that came up through the center cushion--not through the fabric like they do in a cartoon, just through the padding so guests felt the hard metal ring unexpectedly. It prompted various facial expressions, from winces to a naughty smiles. It was a real ice breaker.

The kitchen had the sink and stove and a little table they had gotten as a wedding present from Dad's folks. There was no refrigerator, but it was winter and they kept their milk and other things that needed to be cold in a wooden box outside the entrance door. Mom was still working at Star Oil. That fuel company had a little store front that sold "Firestone" brand appliances as a sideline. Their goal was to use Mom's employee discount to buy a refrigerator before the first thaw.

In the bedroom was an old bed Dad bought from his 3rd grade teacher the week before the wedding. He felt funny about that. The last time he'd seen this woman up close he was on the playground at recess, and now here he was thanking her for the bed... the bed of all things. He tried to pretend it didn't matter, but when he stood on old porch and said, "I'm here to pick up the bed," he felt his face get red and couldn't stop smiling. Neither could she.

That's pretty much what waited for them at the top of the stairs as they returned home from their honeymoon.

The place was missing far more than a banister....
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