Bringing Home the Duncan Phyfe: Chapter 19

Warm Thoughts in the Cold

With dessert long past and the dishes done, the front room windows were now black but for the glow of inside lamps. Mom stepped into Dad Collinge’s room to get their coats.

[Note: I heard the following account many times as a child. It's one of those "can't prove it" things, and I’ve never been much of a mystic, but I confess the thought of it used to creep us kids out whenever went in that room.]

It was in this very room not yet two years before that Mom was sitting beside the bed with her dying grandmother. Her parents and grandfather were on the front porch glider just outside the open window. Mom sat there alone with this dear lady who was like a mother to her, when suddenly Grandma Collinge’s eyes widened. “He’s here, Beverley,” she said. Mom called the others into the room. “I see him at the end of the bed, He’s here,” the faint voice repeated. “Who, Mom? Who do you see?,” they whispered. She looked at them briefly puzzled as if all those around the bed should know who she saw. “Jesus,” she whispered and was gone.

Dad stepped into the little room and saw mom staring at the pillow there.

“I thought you got lost. Are you alright?”

“Just thinking,” Mom smiled, handing him his coat.

After a flurry of hugs and goodbyes at the back door—yes, they lived just ten minutes away, but Mom has always made the most of farewells—Mom and Dad hustled out to the car. They could see their breath in the November air. The cold, cracked vinyl of the bench seat chilled Mom right through her long coat.

"I wish you had warmed up the car before we got out here. It always takes so long for the heater to work. We'll be half-way home before it does any good."

"Do you realize how much gas it wastes to leave a car running for five or ten minutes?" Dad paused, because he, in fact, had no idea how much gas it actually used. "It's bad enough we gotta pay 20 cents a gallon. I don't want to waste it just to heat up the car. Just scoot over here. I'll warm you up."

Mom slid over and Dad put his gloved hand around her shoulder.

"Here's why you don't warm up the car. I know ya, Don."

"What?" Dad asked innocently with a squeeze. He began whistling as always when he was all “talked out.” At first Mom didn't recognize the tune, but she had played it on the piano just a couple hours before: "My Blue Heaven." [Heard here.]

He whistled through the part that says: "You'll find a smiling face, a fireplace, a cozy room...And a little nest that nestles where the roses bloom..." Then he smiled and sang the last two lines... "Just Molly and me, and my baby makes three...We're happy in my, blue heaven."

"It's blue alright—blue because I'm freezin'!" Mom laughed then said more seriously, "and baby makes three. Here I am... hardly able to button my coat... and it still doesn't seem real. Does it to you?"

"What that we're having a baby? I think about it every day."

"I do, too. That's not what I mean. I mean how it will change things. Like for instance, we'll have to move out of the apartment. Have you told Larry yet?" ...[Larry was their Landlord.]

"I haven't told him, but he's got eyes. I don't know why they won't rent to couples with a baby."

"Because of the thin walls. They don't want to hear the crying—Jupiter! They can hear everything we do up there. It's a wonder they didn't tell me I was pregnant before Dr. Licker did."

They both laughed, but Mom hated the thought of starting over again, and she tried not to think about it as she watched the street lights pass. Finally she said, "Wasn't it was good to be home?"

"It was."

"Do you feel at home there, too, or are you just saying that?"

"No. It really was nice. I always feel at home at your folks' house."

"Me, too." she sighed turning on the heater. "Finally some heat. Now you can sing that song again and I won't make fun."

Dad didn't sing. He was deep in his own thought and didn't here what she said. He was thinking about how his family had lived in several houses during the same years that Bev had lived in just one, and he was trying to determine which of them felt most like home to him. It was certainly not the most recent place. Then he said out loud...

"I think it was 16th Street."

"What are you talking about?"

"You asked me where I felt most at home as a kid, and it's probably on 16th and Minnie. You know by the tunnel. [The rail tunnel to Canada.] That's about five houses ago."

"I said you could sing again. I didn't ask you that question..."

"You didn't? It felt like someone did... Oh, well. That's not home anymore." He squeezed her shoulder again.

"That's sad to me, Don. We could go drive by it."

"I do sometimes, but it's not like 'going home' like you did today."

"I'm sorry I brought it up. I know you hated all that moving."

"Don't be, Bev. Time marches on."

"I know it does, but sometimes it's good to go back home—if not through the door than in your mind like you just did. It's good to remember those things."

"I suppose..." Dad sighed, turning into the driveway beside their apartment. The gravel crunched beneath the tires then stopped. "We're home." The words slipped out in empty irony.
Mom patted his knee and slid across the bench seat to her door.

As they stepped up the stairs and inside, Mom paused beside the little table in the kitchen.

"Didn't Mom's table look nice?"

"It did."

"I know now what I want for Christmas," she hinted.

"I saw you looking at the table cloth when I came upstairs. What kind was it. I'll bet they have 'em at Sperry's?"

"I wasn't looking at the table cloth, Silly. I was looking at the table. That's what I want for nice meals—they're formal and yet..."

"We don't need a new table, and we don't have room for one anyway."

"We aren't going to be here much longer. Besides, I don't want a big one, and they fold up nice. The one I want is..."

"Well, just the same. Do you have any idea how much those things cost?" Dad paused again because just as he had never calculated how much it costs to warm up a car, he had never priced such a table cost, but Mom surprised him with an answer.

"It's called a Duncan Phyfe, Don. Your mom has one. My mom has one, and actually, I do know how much the one I want costs—it's not a new table. There's a used on in the paper." Dad was now listening. She picked through a stack of notes and envelopes stashed inside a cook book, and handed him a torn scrap from the Times Herald.

"Ho Ho Ho..." she smiled.

To her surprise, he looked at the price and tilted his head ever so slightly to the right—always a good sign. Without saying another word, she stepped into the bedroom, slipped into her pajamas, got in bed first, and began humming "My Blue Heaven" when Dad turned out the lights and walked across the darkened room.