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"If the house catches on fire or there is a roof leak," he said, "go for it before you go for anything else. Someday it will be worth the house and more."
I asked my father if that was true, and he said, "Could be. He's done a great deal of research on it, and he's been into collecting stamps ever since he could lick one."
My respect for Jesse grew instantly. How could someone his age collect something that would be worth more than our whole house? Surely, that took great insight, great intelligence. I wondered how we could come from the same parents and yet he could be so much more intelligent than I was.
On the other hand, according to my mother, we hadn't paid all that much for the house. She said it was a "steal," and I wondered if that was why my father said what he had about Jesse's stamp collection. The house was a sprawling, two-story Queen Anne with a wraparound porch, a fieldstone foundation, a basement with a dirt floor, and an attic that ran almost the entire width of the main house. The add-ons that came over the last forty or so years made the house look as if it were expanding on its own. I called it "a house with a gut." My parents fell in love with it despite its eerie history and sprawling layout.
"It has character," my father said. He saw the house as masculine, aging but distinguished with wisdom in its cladding and its walls, as if it had absorbed the most important things about the world and on quiet nights would transfer it all to us while we slept. After all, it stood boldly on a small knoll just off the road, making it seem as if whoever lived in it lorded over all around it. My father even liked the cracked macadam driveway, because the lines were "like character lines in an old man's face." He vowed he would never pave it over.
My mother saw the house as feminine, full of charm, the eclectic Queen Anne architecture reminding her of a woman who flitted from one style or fashion to another, wanting a little of this and a little of that. To her, the shutters over the panel windows resembled "eyebrows," and she swore she had seen the windows "wink" at her when the sun slipped behind the heavy leafed oak, hickory, and maple trees that bordered the property on three sides. She fell instantly in love with the sitting room, because it was distinguished from the living room. She said it was a place where the various mistresses of the house had come to rock and crochet while their friends visited to weave gossip through one another's heads.
"Think of all the wonderful chatter these walls heard," she told me. The way she said it gave me the feeling she believed she could somehow hear the whispered echoes of the tittle-tattle late at night. She vowed to make it so feminine that my father or my brother would feel he had stepped into the woman's powder room if either dared enter.
My mother saw all sorts of possibilities in renovations, despite having no background in decorating, design, or architecture. That didn't discourage her from going full throttle at new window treatments, flooring, and wallpaper. I always admired her for her self- confidence and courage. I hoped I would take after her. She was a registered nurse, specializing in cardiac care before most hospitals had specific cardiac care units. She never had a problem getting a job.
My mother took great pains to effect our move to Sandburg in time for me to get set up in a new school. It was one of the conditions she threw down like a gauntlet when my father told her about his opportunity in a growing law firm in the Catskills resort area and his desire for us to pull up anchor and settle in Sandburg because the real estate was so reasonable. Disrupting her and their social and professional lives was one thing, but tinkering with my education was another. She didn't have to worry about Jesse, since he was on his way, but she was very concerned about me.
My father anticipated her reaction. It was his way to pretend he didn't think of those things and then quickly acquiesce. That was a game they played with each other, a sort of loving sparring over everything from a new appliance to clothes to a new automobile to visiting family. My mother presented her arguments, and he put up his token resistance, only later to reveal that he had already taken steps to do just what she wanted. He knew her that well, and I think she knew him, too, but was smart enough to permit him the facade of having made the decision.
None of this was really deception or conniving. It was all done out of a deep love and respect that they had for each other. I was aware of it but not as appreciative of it as Karen was when she observed them and contrasted them with her own parents. My parents were affectionate, always ending an argument or a spirited discussion with a kiss to reassure *each other and, if Jesse or I were there, to reassure us that all was well.
"I wish I were your sister," Karen told me more than once. "I wish your parents were mine "
In the early days of our relationship, I would say, "So do I," even though I really would rather have her as a friend. Sisters get compared too much, and I didn't think I matched up to her in looks. To me, my eyes were too far apart, my nose was too large, and my lips were a little crooked. Of course, my mother thought I was just a nutty teenager when I
complained.
"You're as cute as a button," she would tell me.
Karen was the sort of girl who was as cute as a button until she was fourteen or fifteen and then suddenly began to blossom into a beautiful young woman, her body obediently following the commands of our sex seemingly overnight. Her jeans became tighter around her rear, and her bosom filled out, became rounder. I will always remember that afternoon at school just before the Thanksgiving holidays when she slowed down as she passed me in the hallway to whisper, "Guess what I noticed this morning?"
"What?" I asked. We both continued to walk. I smiled to myself but kept my eyes fixed ahead of me. We passed words between us the way good relay racers passed the baton.
"My cleavage. I have a distinctly deeper cleavage," she said, and sped up.
I remember feeling lighter instantly. It was as if I were filling with helium and about to rise to the ceiling. She walked on ahead of me, her head slightly down, but I hesitated to catch up, because I didn't know what to say.
Congratulations? That's nice?
Or lucky you? When would I see more of a distinctly deeper cleavage, if ever?
I didn't want to sound envious, even though that was exactly what I was. Just recently we had been talking more about our bodies and our looks. I was terrified of fading into the background like someone in the chorus while Karen moved downstage and became the star spotlighted in every boy's eyes. It was already happening as far as I was concerned.
She turned into our classroom, paused, and smiled back at me, drawing her shoulders toward each other to flash that cleavage. Some of the senior boys noticed and popped their eyes.
"Venez, mon animal de compagnie," she called to me, which meant, "Come, my pet."
We were both taking French as our language elective. It all came much easier to her than it did to me. In those days, the public schools still offered language study and we could choose between Spanish and French. It was, in fact, a requirement for graduation. Jesse had taken French and could read it well, and whenever he was home, he practiced with Karen, the two of them speaking so quickly I felt like a foreigner. Eventually, the schools dropped the requirement and cut back on their language teachers to trim budgets when we discovered that everyone in the world, even the French, wanted to learn English, so we didn't have to bother. At least, that's what my father says.
"Bonjour, mon jolie," Karen would say every morning when we greeted each other on the school bus.
"Bonjour, Mademoiselle Amerique," I would respond, which meant, "Good morning, Miss America."
The others riding the bus would think us mad because of how we giggled afterward or how we strutted like peacocks down the aisle to exit, practicing some new French phrase. Wherever we were, we performed a duet.
Right from the beginning, Karen and I gravitated to each other like two birds of a feather uncomfortable with the variety of flocks gathering in our school and community. I noticed rather quickly that she wasn't a favorite among the girls at school. That puzzled me, because she seemed perfect to me. Certainly, no one appreciated her as much as I did. She had some acquaintances here and there but no close heart-to-heart relationships, the sort that made some pairs of girls look like conjoined twins, laughing at the same things, hating the same things and people, and falling in love with the same boy from week to week, depending, as Karen would say, "on the phase of the moon." We were almost like that, but there was always something different about us, and as Karen was fond of saying,
"Vive la difference."
