Stone
A short story from yesterday's commute.
Meredith walked home.
The house was distinctive mainly because of its stonework. Reddish, hard, rough. The hide of rock wrapped around the structure, a protective carapace that was both a throwback to craftsmanship and an indictment of chronology. The severe yet uneven hardness further wound from the building to a retaining wall that had to satisfy itself with retaining a mere two or so vertical feet of earth, a rigid enough drop-off for a clumsy guest a few glasses of wine into their visit to tumble and get injured, but not seriously. Blood on the sidewalk, the knee, and the ego, but little else.
The house was taller than it was wide, three or perhaps four stories, depending on how one classified the empty attic. The attic was not a functional space as far as most people would be concerned; the staircase hidden in the master bedroom could more accurately be categorized as a ladder, so the room was more trouble than it was worth. A lot in that house was more trouble than it was worth.
But that trouble wasn’t Meredith’s problem. It wasn’t Meredith’s house. Meredith lived three blocks to the north, in a garden level apartment in a 12-unit 1920s brownstone that was cute to people who didn’t live there, but oppressive to people who did. The reddish house felt like hers, though. It seemed like she should live there, and therefore, spiritually, she did. The three blocks from the red stone to the brown stone was just space. It didn’t mean anything. The house was basically her house. Contracts and deeds were social fictions, after all, and simply ways of operationalizing the human condition. Something along those lines.
Meredith walked home roughly $1000 richer than she had been when she walked away from home because it was payday.
It was the mid-month payday, so she had received the “daily money,” not the “housing money.” Rent was $870, so the “daily money” was more fun than the “housing money” because the “housing money” was voracious and mean-spirited in its immediate abandonment of Meredith for the more attractive, appealing, functional rental transaction. Mid-month paydays were the good ones, the ones that felt like freedom. It was not immediately clear to Meredith, on her homeward walk, what daily money freedom would look like for the second half of the month, but she had time to figure it out. She could ponder it over dinner.
Meredith walked home past the red stone house that was really her house in all but law and grabbed a leftover chicken breast to put in the microwave. She salted it too much. It induced a little pain, but that was also just fine because the pain was nothing more than her brain interpreting the experience of her tongue and it wasn’t real. Not really. It was what she felt.
One little boy at the daycare had felt real pain today, and while it wasn’t her fault, his pain happened on her watch, so it was appropriate to have a slightly burning mouth as penance. Little Malek took a fall off the slide. Not the top of the slide, but near the top, as he was skidding toward ground. Ruby had smacked Jack in the head with a kickball and the gallery of not-toddlers-anymore had shrieked in fear or admiration or joy, and Malek turned his head to identify the commotion, shifting his center of gravity to the left, so his momentum tossed him over the lip of the slide too quickly for Meredith to catch him and he bonked his head upon landing.
She pondered daily money.
Meredith walked home wondering how she would make the red stone house hers legally, not spiritually. The irises were coming up right behind the retaining wall that only retained a little dirt. This was a good time of the year. There were a lot of irises, which Meredith didn’t know anything about until she moved into the brownstone. She learned a lot about them after, though, because there were so many at the house. For a bit over a week each year, they were the pennants marking the gateway that led to the monument that was Meredith’s spiritual house. They mattered and were gorgeous.
Irises are valuable and beautiful. They show their faces for only a short time, but it is a valuable and beautiful time. Meredith didn’t have them in her yard because the front of the brownstone building was just lawn and the tenants were not permitted to plant actual plants. The red stone’s irises were Meredith’s, though, if not lawfully then spiritually.
Meredith walked home hoping Malek was okay. He seemed okay after the spill, but it was scary to see some other human’s child get hurt when your primary duty was to make other humans’ children not get hurt and not bonk their heads. Meredith had received roughly one thousand dollars today for a couple weeks of trying to keep little children from bonking their heads. So, the money felt corrupt and bad because she failed. Malek’s head had indeed been bonked, so did she actually deserve her mid-month payday? Maybe other kids would have had head-bonks if she hadn’t been there. She had certainly protected someone. Right? Statistically. You can’t prove a counterfactual, or something like that, so Meredith was probably good. She could spend the mid-month money, knowing Malek would be back to daycare and she would be back to work and everything was fine.
Meredith walked home wishing Samantha would rot in hell. Samantha was the director of the daycare and absolutely deserved to rot in hell. Samantha had a spreadsheet. The spreadsheet showed that the toddler room and the preschool room had correct child/adult ratios, but did not account for the times that the toddler teachers sent the older kids on the preschool playground outings. Meredith had to watch 4-year-olds as a stipulation of her contract, but that contract said nothing about 3-year-olds. They were more likely to take a header off the slide.
Samantha did not enjoy children. She enjoyed paychecks. Meredith didn’t remember if she enjoyed paychecks or children. The distinction had become blurry.
Meredith walked home and saw the irises along the retaining wall that didn’t retain much but surrounded the red stone house that belonged to her, spiritually. Bright purple, white, a few muted red ones shot up to notify people to stop and look at the wall in front and the house in back. Every year around this time, Meredith was tempted to dig one up to put in the brownstone front yard. She never did.
Meredith walked home and ate salty chicken and worried about Malek’s mother.