TIMKEN

(cont from July 2 2004)

It would be many years before he would equate the boy and their leaving The Big House. It should have been obvious
Boy arrives one day. Next day his mother and he moved into town and into the boarding house.
Oh, he supposed, it might not have been so sudden. His mother must have had to find the boarding house - or so he would think until he found out she knew someone there who offered her sanctuary - leave the house where she had spent most of her life, leave behind a parent. Pack belongings. But there were few possessions in the suite in the boarding house. Did she know it was a temporary sojourn? It was the obsession with such questions that would drive Timken many years later to journey back in time.
At the time he did not see the boy as their reason for leaving.
In spite of what his mother must have been experiencing, she had thought of him. She remained kind. She did not grab and drag. Well, except for that first time when the boy appeared on the pathway leading to the side porch and stared at Timken. And Timken had stared pleasantly back until he became aware that his mother had appeared behind him. And after an instant - or was it many moments - was it in silence or had words been exchanged - she did grab Timken's arm, pull him to his feet from his seat on the steps, pull him to a vanish inside the house.
But there the grab and pull had ended.
If panic or anger or confusion or hatred or any of the other more interesting emotions were driving her, she did not let their heat scorch her son. She cloaked these with her determination. Made it an adventure.
"Why?" asked Timken as he watched her pack their clothes.
"Oh, it's time for a change, I guess. Time you learned to ride a street car. Time you saw how city people capture some country and call it a park. Time you had a room of your own."
She made a big show in the rooming house of making him a bed in what was really a walk-in closet. The addition to the huge old house had been made that long ago that such was still a feature of the design.
But he didn't like the walls so close. Not being able to see the sky through a window. Not liking how the slats on the foldout bed creaked.
The second night he crawled back into bed beside his mother and for the rest of the year there he slept. The bed stayed in the closet but the clothing crept on their hangers across the bar and over the space.
The most trauma he experienced around the move was being left with a friend of his mother's while she went about several trips to do with the move. He had no memory of being left with anyone before, at least not in a strange house where his senses had been so assaulted he closed down. The second time he said, "No," and gave her his immovable look and she sighed and shrugged and did not insist. Went off to phone and give some excuse to excuse him from where he was supposed to be. Later he would wonder why he was not left with the person some thought was his grandfather, the owner of the Big House, the figure so much there but so much always in shadow. Later he would understand the disapproval.
His first impression of the rooming house was that it loomed. It would have sat grandly back on its city lot when it was first built around the turn of the century, proudly balanced with land front and back. An addition to the front in the twenties or so had taken a chunk from the front property, destroyed the pleasant dimensions of both structure and garden.
It loomed. Even the trees that had grown up against the addition across sixty or so years did not soften the cold squareness.
Oh, some attempt had been made to match the 'new' with the 'old' all those years ago. Some notion had added a gable, a sloped roof. In that nook was where his mother would sit for much of that year. She would soften it for herself and him and for most of the residents.
But he didn't know that as they got out of the taxi and he stood in front of her and stared at the house. His squat form effectively blocked her way. The taxi driver had unloaded the luggage. It was not more than she could carry but she stood and stared along with him.
The original verandah that had extended the width of the house and could have provided roomy seating for double the number of the rooming house inhabitants had become a narrow porch along the left side of the addition with stairs that meant to be welcoming but were a bit mean in the attempt.
There were chairs set out along that porch inviting people to sit and rest or converse. Few did. It felt like a tunnel, the view into a large thick privet hedge that in spite of seasonal pruning usually encroached on the porch. The chairs encroached also and anyone passing by had to excuse self from anyone seated because their legs would be in the way of passersby. It was a nuisance to draw in legs or feet. It defeated the purpose.
Timken would alter history quite soon into his stay by turning all the chairs so they faced the street in a line and became his train. From then on people would sit on the porch. Oddly. But in comfort. If they wanted to talk, a deux, they would turn a couplet of chairs to face, each to each.
For his first sighting of the house he could see no detail, no welcome, no reassurance.
He had yet to see how cosy his mother had made their two rooms on the second floor in the Impossible Wing. If he had been able to sort through the looming whole for a comforting part he might have noticed the multi-coloured shawl that his mother wrapped around him when he was ill or fretful, telling him that it had magical powers, noticed it where she had hung it in the front window of their suite, a signal, a beacon. But he did not see it.
So he stood and stared and ignored her slight nudge with her knee against his back to get him moving. She had picked up the suitcases by now.
"I hate it," he said.
"Me too, " she replied, matter of fact. And pushed kindly past him and started up the short walk to the narrow stairs with the slightly too high risers.
He grabbed the end of her sweater as she passed, stuck his thumb comfortably into his mouth and moved along with her.
At the instant his thumb entered his mouth he became aware of the look on the face of the old woman, the very old woman, who was watching them from a front window in the addition on the ground floor.
A jolt went through him and the extraordinary feeling of being a man, not a child. He popped the thumb out and never sucked it again.
The old woman, the very old woman, did not linger on his face; it was as if she was reassured. What she did do was rake vision over his mother as if assessing this person who had brought him.
His mother had felt the gaze - who couldn't: it had that searing quality - and noted her reaction in the first of her 'journals' in the rooming house, this one on the back of an envelope, the kind with a clear window, the return address of the city, the kind of envelope a utility bill came in.
Sept 4
First comment was he hated it. And Mrs. Poughkeepsie peering out at us.
"Yucky smell," she whispered once they were inside. She had used a key and not needed to knock which he found both disturbing and comforting. It was as if his mother had entered into a conspiracy with the unknown and this frightened him but beckoned him as well.
The hall was dark: the tunnel porch and privet hedge were greedy with light.
Timken made himself unaware of the smell. He was offended by unpleasant odors and had early learned to avoid them, even to avoid making them. He had vomited only once that he remembered. That had been enough. And, as a baby, he was often constipated until a thoughtful doctor had suggested to his mother that she toilet train him and Timken gratefully gave up diapers and his bowels returned to normal.
Now he had tuned out the smell of cooking; it was frying spinach, one of many culinary experiments. It was his eyes not his nose that were the vehicles of world perception but as yet the dimness and his resistance to go from the general to the specific were preventing this avenue of awareness. So he reverted to second best. Touch.
He touched his tongue to the radiator handle in the foyer as his mother turned to close the door and then stooped to pick up the luggage again.
"Leave them, Arie, I'll get Cousin to carry them up," a voice was coming along the hall.
Neither the bodyless voice nor his mother saw him lick the fluted knob that was missing half its shape. It tasted rough and red although it was painted black and its surface worn smooth.
April 19
(on the flyleaf torn from some book and tucked into an envelope with some clipped recipes and an article from Reader's Digest on pica; written when Timken was three years old)
This morning he licked the cement block by the cellar stairs. It's all mossy. He licked my elbow when I was lifting the roast from the oven (tried sausage stuffing: too greasy). He licked Daly's keys. He licked something he found in the yard but when I called out to him to ask what on earth it was he laughed and threw it into the bushes before I could see what he had. Apparently I needn't worry since he doesn't eat the things, just licks them.
(She was amused more than alarmed by his licking tendency. He'd never tried to lick something dangerous like the side of a moving car or money (you just never knew what it had shared a pocket with). Ridiculous humor. Kept worry on the edge, sort of. She had deeper worries that she did not want to think about.)
The owner of the voice dissolved out of the gloom, sucked out of the dim hallway. Timken's first vision of the chatelaine of the house was rounded by his mother's shape in front of him. She had braids. He had never seen a grown up woman with braids before. And these were fat plaits of hair that poked with an attitude from the side of her head no matter how close or how tight she twisted the hair.
Timken stared at those silhouette of braids that gradually became clearer as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
"Well, this must be your son. Didn't think you were bringing him 'til later. Uh, leave the cases, Arie. Cousin will take care of them. Uh, well, hello." She wiped her hand on her blouse - she had an apron mentality but no apron practicality - and stuck her hand toward Timken.
He would have done the polite thing and offered his hand back, he knew what was expected, his mother had put down the cases again and stepped out of his way, but as she did so she was introducing the apparition. "This is Megan Nederquist," she said, only as she said it wondering if she should have said Mrs. instead but somehow she doubted it. From her so far brief acquaintance with Megan the lack of formality seemed appropriate.
In the time it took for Timken to hear the introduction and absorb it, he lost it. His hand in a thrust to shake fell to his side. The giggle that erupted inside of him raced for release and reached his lips in a chuckle. He tried to contain it and couldn't. The attempt at restraint made him fart. Laughter poured out the other end.
His mother looked at him in wonder, the other woman in surprise. His mother knew he would explain himself later and was quickly searching for something to ease the situation now. The other woman hoped this new tenant's son wasn't a little terror. Or a bit mental. She would find he was neither.
He slightly rectified the situation by regaining composure and saying, "Sorry", finally putting out his hand to her still extended one and gripping it sincerely. With the other hand he was trying to wave away the smell of his "bum burp".
Later, in their rooms, inspection over, routine planned but not established, Arie would remember to ask him about his behavior. And he would say, very seriously, "Her name is funny," and try to keep his lips straight.
"Well, a bit, I guess," Arie would concede. "Nederquist. I think it's Scandinavian. Remember when Celia went on that trip last year and brought me that little statue...?" - she waited on his nod: she needed her tangents acknowledged. "And Megan is a bit out of the ordinary, but I don't see why you found it all that funny."
"I thought you said Me Again, Never Kissed," he told her and as she heard this and started to smile they both laughed.
"I hope I can keep a straight face around her from now on, you bad boy."
Before very long she would be able to share with Megan why Timken had disgraced himself and put the situation to rest.
"I been kissed lots, sonny," Megan would then wink at Timken next time she saw him.
"Like a little girl," he would find suddenly escaped from his mouth as he once more stared at her braids and Megan would be startled for a moment and then shrug. "Arie's kid says the darndest things," she would tell Max, her husband.

Posted on July 08, 2004 at 08:48 PM | Permalink

It would be many years before he would equate the boy and their leaving The Big House. It should have been obvious
Boy arrives one day. Next day his mother and he moved into town and into the boarding house.
Oh, he supposed, it might not have been so sudden. His mother must have had to find the boarding house - or so he would think until he found out she knew someone there who offered her sanctuary - leave the house where she had spent most of her life, leave behind a parent. Pack belongings. But there were few possessions in the suite in the boarding house. Did she know it was a temporary sojourn? It was the obsession with such questions that would drive Timken many years later to journey back in time.
At the time he did not see the boy as their reason for leaving.
In spite of what his mother must have been experiencing, she had thought of him. She remained kind. She did not grab and drag. Well, except for that first time when the boy appeared on the pathway leading to the side porch and stared at Timken. And Timken had stared pleasantly back until he became aware that his mother had appeared behind him. And after an instant - or was it many moments - was it in silence or had words been exchanged - she did grab Timken's arm, pull him to his feet from his seat on the steps, pull him to a vanish inside the house.
But there the grab and pull had ended.
If panic or anger or confusion or hatred or any of the other more interesting emotions were driving her, she did not let their heat scorch her son. She cloaked these with her determination. Made it an adventure.
"Why?" asked Timken as he watched her pack their clothes.
"Oh, it's time for a change, I guess. Time you learned to ride a street car. Time you saw how city people capture some country and call it a park. Time you had a room of your own."
She made a big show in the rooming house of making him a bed in what was really a walk-in closet. The addition to the huge old house had been made that long ago that such was still a feature of the design.
But he didn't like the walls so close. Not being able to see the sky through a window. Not liking how the slats on the foldout bed creaked.
The second night he crawled back into bed beside his mother and for the rest of the year there he slept. The bed stayed in the closet but the clothing crept on their hangers across the bar and over the space.
The most trauma he experienced around the move was being left with a friend of his mother's while she went about several trips to do with the move. He had no memory of being left with anyone before, at least not in a strange house where his senses had been so assaulted he closed down. The second time he said, "No," and gave her his immovable look and she sighed and shrugged and did not insist. Went off to phone and give some excuse to excuse him from where he was supposed to be. Later he would wonder why he was not left with the person some thought was his grandfather, the owner of the Big House, the figure so much there but so much always in shadow. Later he would understand the disapproval.
His first impression of the rooming house was that it loomed. It would have sat grandly back on its city lot when it was first built around the turn of the century, proudly balanced with land front and back. An addition to the front in the twenties or so had taken a chunk from the front property, destroyed the pleasant dimensions of both structure and garden.
It loomed. Even the trees that had grown up against the addition across sixty or so years did not soften the cold squareness.
Oh, some attempt had been made to match the 'new' with the 'old' all those years ago. Some notion had added a gable, a sloped roof. In that nook was where his mother would sit for much of that year. She would soften it for herself and him and for most of the residents.
But he didn't know that as they got out of the taxi and he stood in front of her and stared at the house. His squat form effectively blocked her way. The taxi driver had unloaded the luggage. It was not more than she could carry but she stood and stared along with him.
The original verandah that had extended the width of the house and could have provided roomy seating for double the number of the rooming house inhabitants had become a narrow porch along the left side of the addition with stairs that meant to be welcoming but were a bit mean in the attempt.
There were chairs set out along that porch inviting people to sit and rest or converse. Few did. It felt like a tunnel, the view into a large thick privet hedge that in spite of seasonal pruning usually encroached on the porch. The chairs encroached also and anyone passing by had to excuse self from anyone seated because their legs would be in the way of passersby. It was a nuisance to draw in legs or feet. It defeated the purpose.
Timken would alter history quite soon into his stay by turning all the chairs so they faced the street in a line and became his train. From then on people would sit on the porch. Oddly. But in comfort. If they wanted to talk, a deux, they would turn a couplet of chairs to face, each to each.
For his first sighting of the house he could see no detail, no welcome, no reassurance.
He had yet to see how cosy his mother had made their two rooms on the second floor in the Impossible Wing. If he had been able to sort through the looming whole for a comforting part he might have noticed the multi-coloured shawl that his mother wrapped around him when he was ill or fretful, telling him that it had magical powers, noticed it where she had hung it in the front window of their suite, a signal, a beacon. But he did not see it.
So he stood and stared and ignored her slight nudge with her knee against his back to get him moving. She had picked up the suitcases by now.
"I hate it," he said.
"Me too, " she replied, matter of fact. And pushed kindly past him and started up the short walk to the narrow stairs with the slightly too high risers.
He grabbed the end of her sweater as she passed, stuck his thumb comfortably into his mouth and moved along with her.
At the instant his thumb entered his mouth he became aware of the look on the face of the old woman, the very old woman, who was watching them from a front window in the addition on the ground floor.
A jolt went through him and the extraordinary feeling of being a man, not a child. He popped the thumb out and never sucked it again.
The old woman, the very old woman, did not linger on his face; it was as if she was reassured. What she did do was rake vision over his mother as if assessing this person who had brought him.
His mother had felt the gaze - who couldn't: it had that searing quality - and noted her reaction in the first of her 'journals' in the rooming house, this one on the back of an envelope, the kind with a clear window, the return address of the city, the kind of envelope a utility bill came in.
Sept 4
First comment was he hated it. And Mrs. Poughkeepsie peering out at us.
"Yucky smell," she whispered once they were inside. She had used a key and not needed to knock which he found both disturbing and comforting. It was as if his mother had entered into a conspiracy with the unknown and this frightened him but beckoned him as well.
The hall was dark: the tunnel porch and privet hedge were greedy with light.
Timken made himself unaware of the smell. He was offended by unpleasant odors and had early learned to avoid them, even to avoid making them. He had vomited only once that he remembered. That had been enough. And, as a baby, he was often constipated until a thoughtful doctor had suggested to his mother that she toilet train him and Timken gratefully gave up diapers and his bowels returned to normal.
Now he had tuned out the smell of cooking; it was frying spinach, one of many culinary experiments. It was his eyes not his nose that were the vehicles of world perception but as yet the dimness and his resistance to go from the general to the specific were preventing this avenue of awareness. So he reverted to second best. Touch.
He touched his tongue to the radiator handle in the foyer as his mother turned to close the door and then stooped to pick up the luggage again.
"Leave them, Arie, I'll get Cousin to carry them up," a voice was coming along the hall.
Neither the bodyless voice nor his mother saw him lick the fluted knob that was missing half its shape. It tasted rough and red although it was painted black and its surface worn smooth.
April 19
(on the flyleaf torn from some book and tucked into an envelope with some clipped recipes and an article from Reader's Digest on pica; written when Timken was three years old)
This morning he licked the cement block by the cellar stairs. It's all mossy. He licked my elbow when I was lifting the roast from the oven (tried sausage stuffing: too greasy). He licked Daly's keys. He licked something he found in the yard but when I called out to him to ask what on earth it was he laughed and threw it into the bushes before I could see what he had. Apparently I needn't worry since he doesn't eat the things, just licks them.
(She was amused more than alarmed by his licking tendency. He'd never tried to lick something dangerous like the side of a moving car or money (you just never knew what it had shared a pocket with). Ridiculous humor. Kept worry on the edge, sort of. She had deeper worries that she did not want to think about.)
The owner of the voice dissolved out of the gloom, sucked out of the dim hallway. Timken's first vision of the chatelaine of the house was rounded by his mother's shape in front of him. She had braids. He had never seen a grown up woman with braids before. And these were fat plaits of hair that poked with an attitude from the side of her head no matter how close or how tight she twisted the hair.
Timken stared at those silhouette of braids that gradually became clearer as his eyes adjusted to the lack of light.
"Well, this must be your son. Didn't think you were bringing him 'til later. Uh, leave the cases, Arie. Cousin will take care of them. Uh, well, hello." She wiped her hand on her blouse - she had an apron mentality but no apron practicality - and stuck her hand toward Timken.
He would have done the polite thing and offered his hand back, he knew what was expected, his mother had put down the cases again and stepped out of his way, but as she did so she was introducing the apparition. "This is Megan Nederquist," she said, only as she said it wondering if she should have said Mrs. instead but somehow she doubted it. From her so far brief acquaintance with Megan the lack of formality seemed appropriate.
In the time it took for Timken to hear the introduction and absorb it, he lost it. His hand in a thrust to shake fell to his side. The giggle that erupted inside of him raced for release and reached his lips in a chuckle. He tried to contain it and couldn't. The attempt at restraint made him fart. Laughter poured out the other end.
His mother looked at him in wonder, the other woman in surprise. His mother knew he would explain himself later and was quickly searching for something to ease the situation now. The other woman hoped this new tenant's son wasn't a little terror. Or a bit mental. She would find he was neither.
He slightly rectified the situation by regaining composure and saying, "Sorry", finally putting out his hand to her still extended one and gripping it sincerely. With the other hand he was trying to wave away the smell of his "bum burp".
Later, in their rooms, inspection over, routine planned but not established, Arie would remember to ask him about his behavior. And he would say, very seriously, "Her name is funny," and try to keep his lips straight.
"Well, a bit, I guess," Arie would concede. "Nederquist. I think it's Scandinavian. Remember when Celia went on that trip last year and brought me that little statue...?" - she waited on his nod: she needed her tangents acknowledged. "And Megan is a bit out of the ordinary, but I don't see why you found it all that funny."
"I thought you said Me Again, Never Kissed," he told her and as she heard this and started to smile they both laughed.
"I hope I can keep a straight face around her from now on, you bad boy."
Before very long she would be able to share with Megan why Timken had disgraced himself and put the situation to rest.
"I been kissed lots, sonny," Megan would then wink at Timken next time she saw him.
"Like a little girl," he would find suddenly escaped from his mouth as he once more stared at her braids and Megan would be startled for a moment and then shrug. "Arie's kid says the darndest things," she would tell Max, her husband.