Housing around

(Note - this is the second installment of the story. To read the first, go to the post immediately below titled "a vitch, ghost and a mumma."



Her days started at 6 a.m. when she forced herself out of bed to take the dogs out for a walk along the beach. It was as much for her own sanity as to get him exercise. Those were a few precious moments to churn over the frustrations, demands and disappointments of her life. Back at home it was a massive rush to get everyone dressed, fed, packed up and out the door. This year it was worse than it had ever been – every kid went to a different place. Thomas was at the middle school, Jack went to the new elementary school, Julie was at the old elementary school and Amanda went to nursery school on Tuesdays, Thursdays and every other Wednesday. The start times were staggered, but not enough to accommodate the mad dash across town and the long rows of traffic backed up along poorly designed drop-off area of the new school, which started after the Middle School and but before the old Elementary School.
Either someone hadn’t taken the time to think through the number of cars that would need to be in the same spot within the 15 minutes of the school building opening and school starting, or they did and didn’t care. Negligence or outright abuse? Regardless, the perplexing problem kept busy three separate school committees, a subcommittee of the PTA and a panel of the Board of Selectmen.
Emma was sure her children would be grown before the problem was solved.
For now, she and 328 other parents had to cope with a pick up that was worse than the drop off. At least in the morning, the kids could get out of the car as soon as it stopped and then off it went. At the end of the day, the cars sat and waited and waited and waited for children who came out in random order. It was complete pandemonium on rainy days when umbrellas and rain boots were added to the mix.
After school was a flurry of bouncing about from one activity to another. The growing list included football practice, soccer practice, dance lessons, figure skating lessons, basketball, Cub Scouts, Karate, gymnastics and play dates. It required a very detailed calendar and an extensive network of like-minded parents.
Emma was one of those rare people who would take people up on their offers to help. She warned them not to offer if they didn’t really mean it. Still, someone were taken by surprise.
It was an extraordinarily ordinary life. It was the sort of life a foreign correspondent living alone on the war zone in Kazikstan would have longed for. Emma’s husband, John Thomas, thought she was awesome. He had rearranged his schedule so he could come home by 5 p.m. three nights of week to cook and he organized “Adventures with Dad” Saturdays to give her a break at least once a month.
Things were busy bordering on insanely hectic so it made no sense to even entertain the thought about that big Victorian on the corner with the incredible water views. No sense at all.
They had a house. A nice house. Admittedly a little crammed with four kids, two dogs and four gold fish, but still a nice house. The chimney needed work. The front porch was sagging, but the roof was practically new.
John Thomas broached the topic carefully.
“You’re not interested in that old Victorian down the street, right?” he said from bed as Emma brushed her teeth in the bathroom off the bedroom.
“That one where the old crazy guy has been holed up for a couple of decades? The one with the broken windows on the third floor?” she said.
Emma glanced around at the towels on the floor, the children’s socks in the corner, the crud that had collected behind the toilet seat, the q-tips stuffed under the radiator. She had intended to clean it all early but got distracted with a phone call from her sister, three trips back and forth from the school, cooking two meals, running to the market for a gallon of milk and a stop at the library to return seven over due books. “Don’t you think that would take a lot of work?”
“Aren’t you the won who always says the more you try to do, the more you do?” he said. “Besides, it would have enough rooms for everyone to have their own place and you could have a real studio.”
A real studio. A quiet place to work. A place filled with backdrops and permanent lighting. A waiting area for clients. No children’s toys, no children. Very tempting.