Quiet Room - Lori Schiller [8]
But underneath, we were all a little uneasy. We had loved California. Our house had been modern and bright and airy, and we had a big yard and swimming pool.
New York seemed so foreign, and far away. Even my normally confident mother and father seemed a little unsure. They had decided Dad should accept the new job, had flown to New York, bought a house and returned in just a few days. So it was only partly a game when they began pointing out the most outlandish, tumbledown houses, teasing us and each other.
“Is that it, honey?” my father asked my mother, pointing at one old farmhouse with a sagging front porch. “Is that what our new house is like?”
And then a few miles later, my mother caught sight of a broken-down trailer. “Marvin! Marvin! That's it! That's it!” she cried excitedly to my father. And then, twisting around to address us kids in the back seat: “That's what our new house is like.” Later, they lapsed into stand-up comedy-type routines.
“Did we buy the house with the bathroom?” my mother asked my father.
“Yes, I think there's a bathroom,” he answered, deadpan.
All the way across the country, they bantered on like this until, as we neared New York, none of us was quite sure what to expect. We all knew they were joking, of course. But all the same, we almost collapsed with relief when we pulled into the driveway of the beautiful old white Colonial with black trim and a big backyard.
I ran through the house, eagerly inspecting the stairs up to the second floor, the family rooms downstairs and the bright bedroom that was going to be mine. “This is a cool house,” I told Mom and Dad.
As it turned out, we were very happy in Scarsdale, the New York suburb where we settled. Mom and Dad made friends. I settled in at school, sometimes walking there, sometimes biking. Little Steven took to kindergarten as if he had been going there all his life. And even Mark, who at first felt awkward and shy in his new neighborhood, eventually began to feel comfortable. The house really began to feel like home to us, with its big yard for snowmen and leaf piles, and even a kid's playhouse out back.
My mom and I made excursions to museums in the city, both dressed alike in red and white checked blouses and wire-rimmed sunglasses. We ate foot-long hot dogs and chocolate milk shakes, and laughed at people's outfits on the train on the way home. Dad played paddle tennis or shot hoops with Mark and Steven. On Sundays he played golf, and he often let me come along to drive the golf cart or walk the course with him and keep score.
Of course, I think our family could have been happy just about anywhere. Maybe it was because we moved so often that we never really got to know our other relatives. For us, the word “family” meant the five of us. We were all very close. One day when Daddy was taking pictures around the fireplace, he got irritated and raised his voice at me. I started to cry. And then, because I was crying, Steven started crying. Then Mark began sobbing, and pretty soon the whole family was in tears. No one of us could even feel anything without everyone else feeling it too.
We had a whole private language, that only we could understand. When someone was sick, we'd call the sick person Ill-ke Sommer. A Telly was a short haircut, as in Telly Savalas. If someone yelled “GPY,” it meant “God is Punishing You.” That was what happened when someone, say, Mark, stole the biggest French fry off my tray, and then burned the roof of his mouth.
After we moved to New York, Dad came home from work every night at 6:30. We were always so hungry that by 6:31 we were already seated on the wicker chairs around the butcher block table in the kitchen. We each had our own places, but because it was a kitchen set for four, the kids rotated the extra spot on the step stool.
No matter