“Oh, most probably,” my mother replied, not in the least offended. No one could tell when she was, anyway. She was that good at keeping her feelings under lock and key when it came to anyone who wasn’t part of our immediate family. Like my father, she believed that your emotions and true feelings were not anyone else’s business. “Arthur believes ‘Waste not, want not. A penny saved is a penny earned.’ He knows just how many dips in the hot water one tea bag will go, and he won’t tolerate waste. He always says any man who watches his pennies can be as rich as a king.” She did sound a little proud.
Mrs. Taylor pursed her lips and shook her head slowly. “He’s like a doctor of finances,” she admitted. “When my accounts are a bit sick, he always has a remedy to suggest, and it always works.” She laughed. “I’ve gotten so I try not to waste my energy when I’m walking, even from one room to another. I’m afraid Arthur will see and take me to task.”
One day when I was accompanying my father to the greengrocer, I actually counted his steps, and the next day when I watched him go off to work, I realized that he did take the same number to the corner. For a while, everywhere I went with my mother and sister, I counted mine. I watched other people, too, but no one on our street paced their gait with the same accuracy each time as did my father.
Years later, when I was in secondary school, I’d sit by the same window in our bedroom and remember the things that had fascinated me when I was a child, seemingly unimportant memories, like the way my father walked. I’d hear the same music, see similar things, and smell the same flowers, but my reactions were different. I realized that everything had been more intense back then. Even the same colors had been richer, darker, or lighter. It was like thinking about the world in the way a complete stranger would see it. Maturity steals away the baubles, bangles, and beads and leaves you terribly factual and realistic. Nothing was more than it factually was anymore. I thought that was sad. A part of me, a part of everyone, should be a child forever. In a child’s eyes, everything is also bigger and more important, especially his or her home. When I look back on it now, I realize how small ours really was.
We lived in a brick two-story, two-bedroom, end-terrace house that shared a common house wall with Mrs. Taylor’s house. She was a widow who lived alone, even though her daughter and son wanted her to live with one of them. She said every time they visited her, they began with the same request, but Mrs. Taylor was stubborn and determined not to be dependent.
“I’ll be passed around like a hot potato the moment I express an opinion,” she said. “When you find your place in this world, dig in.”
If I was present, she would nod at me after she spoke, as if she was alive to bestow her wisdom only to me. Maybe that was because I was more attentive in comparison to my mother or my sister. My father once told me never to ignore what people say no matter how insignificant it first seems. “It’s the doorway to their secrets. Somewhere between the lines, you’ll see what they really think if you listen with both ears.”
My father had me believing that it was good to be suspicious of anyone and anything because everything was such a mystery. Shadows falling from passing clouds were there to hide Nature’s secrets. People avoided your eyes when they didn’t want you to see their deepest and truest thoughts. That was the real reason no one wanted to be surprised when he or she was alone. They wouldn’t have time to put on their masks and disguise their real feelings.
“Look at a man’s shoes first,” he told me when I was older and more interested in boys. “If they’re nicked and scuffed, that tells you he’s disorganized and irresponsible. Even a poor man can look neat and clean. If a man doesn’t respect himself, he won’t respect you.”
It did no good to tell him that most of the boys in school wore sneakers now, and everyone’s were scuffed. To him what was true a hundred years ago was true today. The truth simply wore different clothes. “Scratch the surface of something, and you’ll see it hasn’t changed no matter what color the new paint. What was true for Adam and Eve is still true for us. Don’t fall for shallow and unnecessary changes just because they are in fashion at the moment.”
My father was truly more like an Old World prophet, suspicious of so-called modern innovations.
He was like that with all the things in our house, demanding order, defying what he thought were needless alterations. He could tell if my mother moved a candlestick on the mantel or a chair just a little more to the left in the living room. He hated when she changed where something could be found in a closet or a kitchen cabinet. He believed that in a well-kept house, a man could find what he wanted even if he had suddenly lost his sight.
My father wouldn’t rage if something had been moved without his knowledge. He would simply stand there with his arms crossed against his chest and wait for my mummy’s explanation. If it wasn’t good enough, he wouldn’t move or look away from her until she had put it back where it had been. No one could say more with silence than my father could.
She’d shake her head afterward and tell me, “Your father remembers where each snowflake fell on our walkway last winter.”
Our house had been in my father’s family since his grandfather had bought it. My parents had lived in an apartment with Julia until my grandfather’s death. My grandmother had died five years earlier. The house had an open hallway in the entry, with a family heirloom, a five-prong dark-walnut rack for hanging coats and hats, on the wall. Our living room was on the left. We had a brick fireplace, but we didn’t use it as much as other people used theirs. My father had read an article that revealed that fireplaces sucked up the room’s heat and sent it up the chimney along with the pounds we spent on heating oil. He called it “quid smoke.” There was another fireplace in our dining room, and that one was used even less, usually begrudgingly after my mum’s pleading when we had dinner guests. The dining room had a large window that faced the rear of our house, where we had a small plot of land that my father insisted be used to grow vegetables and not used as our little playground.
“There’s no value in anything that doesn’t produce or have the capacity to produce,” he said. He would often stop in the middle of doing something and make one of his wise pronouncements, even if I was the only one in the room. It was as if he had to get his thoughts out, or they might cause him to explode. He always lifted his heavy dark-brown eyebrows and straightened up before making his statements. How could I not be impressed, even if I didn’t agree with him? He was Zeus speaking from Mount Olympus.
At the rear of the house was a patio big enough for us to set a table and dine alfresco in the summer. There was a rear gate that opened to the street behind us as well. Julia and I took that one on weekdays because it put us closer to school, and by this time, she was mimicking our father’s own ten commandments, one being, “If you can get somewhere in a shorter time with less wear on the soles of your feet, take it. Make your shoes last longer.”
My father permitted my mother to plant flowers along the edges of the yard. She had magic hands when it came to nurturing Blue Dendrobium or Minuets. She planted Mums Surprise in front, where we had evergreen fern as well as Leylandii hedging.