Mum was right, but it could have been a lot worse. The gang of eight men was already about a third of the way through the large cellar, two opposing lines of diggers already having dug the original four foot ceiling height under the old building down to eight feet at each end and steadily working towards one another. It wasn't hard to see what it must have been like until they dug far enough to allow them to at least stand straight.
The one man bucket brigade outside the large window we crawled through to enter the cellar didn't have it much better. We all took a turn out there, taking a bucket from a digger at the window, carrying it to the dumpster and bringing it back again to take another across the hot, sun baked pavement for an hour.
Wilfe, the guy who hired me, and his son Jimmy were responsible for maintaining our edge banks under the house with old plywood propped up against them until the concrete guys got there, but were also constantly maintaining the sump pump that tried to remove a steady supply of water coming from somewhere, making the temporary dirt floor of the cellar a slippery, muddy mess that the sump wasn't designed to deal with. I fell inside the first hour and the rest of the gang all laughed, telling me I'd just initiated myself.
I didn't quit, I worked hard. This wasn't just because my pay was crucial, but I found certain camaraderie in that filthy cellar of human misery that I wouldn't have expected. Because I worked hard, all those men, all of them older than me but for one, completely accepted and treated me no different than each other.
A certain sense of accomplishment probably made me feel a lot better than I really was while I leafed through a phone book on my way home from work. Leaning against the inside of the plexiglass booth, I found the listings for care homes and scanned, wondering if I had enough quarters for this, not to mention time. Mum would be expecting me.
It jumped right off the page at me and I felt my heart rate climb, an odd, cool flush covering my body at the same time.
'Shoreline Adult Residential Facility'.
There was an uptown adress and phone number attached.
(You just have to look along the shoreline and you'll find us all over, rotting in the sun)
"Wh-?" I wheezed in astonishment. "No. No fuckin' way."
I slowly stood straight, removing my weight from the plexiglass and catching a mud splashed, aghast reflection of my face on a shiny surface of the phone. I was staring at it and wondering if Shoreline Adult Residential Facility would still be there when I looked again.
It was.
"What the... ffffffffuck?" I hissed, even as my trembling fingers emerged from the front pocket of my mud soaked jeans with a quarter.
"Shoreline Residential," a female voice confirmed on the other end.
"Uh, hi, how are you today?"
"Doing fine, yourself?"
"Good, thanks. Um, the reason I'm calling is that I'm looking for someone, her name is Marie Burchell."
There was silence on the other end of the line.
"She might be using her Maiden name now. 'Long'?" I prodded further.
"Marie Burchell. Yes, she lives here. May I ask who's calling, please?" she inquired, surprise and curiosity under her professional tone, yet something else as well.
"My name is Steven Burchell, I'm her grandson."
"Oh."
"I've actually never met her, or anyone from that side of my family and I've been tracing back, you know. I never imagined I'd have a grandmother so close."
"She's been here for twelve years."
"How old is she?"
"Seventy-four."
"Good health?"
" ... Physically, yes. She's in a wheelchair, but that's due to an accident at a former facility years back in Ontario. She has no serious health problems at all."
"That's good to hear. Uh... is it possible that I can come see her?"
" ... Yes. Family members of our residents are completely free to visit," she informed as though she were under oath.
"Okay, then... Let's see, would some evening this week be good? Like about six tomorrow?"
"Um, yes. Actually, that would be good because it's after supper. My name is Maureen Kennedy by the way and that's my shift, so I'll be here when you arrive."
"Great," I approved, still trembling from the freakish coincidence and the fact that she was really there. "I've gotta run, but if anything changes and I can't make it for whatever reason, I'll call ahead, alright?"
She thanked me and I hung up, stumbling out of the phone booth, my stomach cramping, hands still trembling, mind spinning. I began hauling my suddenly battered feeling body up the sidewalk for home.
Part 2
"Wow," I blurted when I walked through the door.
I stood there with the knob still in my hand, worries about where I was going the next day quickly fading as I stared at Mum in a stretchy tight, black miniskirt and a snug fitting, olive green tank top. Her hair was straighter than it usually was, but seemed lively just the same, now with black streaks and what this did for her, added to the tan she got at the beach on Saturday, was enough to get things in my pants happening before I could tear my eyes away to close the door.
For her part, Mum's cheery smile faded once she got a look at me and, after a lot of fuss, I found myself showered and all cleaned up, sitting at the table with a good meal, fresh from the microwave.
"Hon, stop telling me it was nothing, you looked like you'd been dragged through the mud. And I see the way you're moving around, I know you're sore despite what you say."
"It's not that bad, Mum."
"I'm going to give you a full body massage later, and I'll see about sleeping with Roxy again tonight so you can get proper rest."
"Okay, please don't fawn over me because-"
"Sweetie pie, you're working like a dog for us. My place is to fawn over you. I might like to be treated like a whore, but I'm not one."
"Your 'place'?" I asked.
"I told you, it's like they say. Behind every successful man is a good woman. He has his job and she has hers."
"That's pretty old fashioned."
"That's why there's so many whores around these days."
"The women's rights groups would pull you limb from limb if they heard you say that. You of all women, from what I always heard about you at PTA meetings."
She was barely able to swallow a mouthful of food before laughing aloud at this. It was sincere and nice to see, but what she went on to say was of greater interest.
"I look at the so called 'women's rights movement' and see that the only way it's
moved
is in that women now have the right to choose when and how to be used for gain. In a sense, all they've accomplished is to make prostitutes out of themselves without the bother of a pimp.
"Now, I understand that we're in a world where women work and that not very many families can afford to have that not be the case, but what do you figure a man and woman start to think once they've worked together for several years, maybe only one or two? They work well together, they've had shared successes, they respect one another, they spend all that time together, day in and day out while their spouses, chances are, are experiencing the same conditions where they work. Social ills aren't hard to trace."
"Well, people do have the choice of
not
cheating," I reminded her.
"And how many people, after seeing it happen with all our favourite characters on all our favourite shows for years, make that choice as compared to fifty or sixty years ago? Divorce rates are up for a reason, hon. It's because divorce isn't the big deal it was. A do-over that nullifies all those promises you made like they were nothing, no matter what the cost to the children, just so people can follow whatever dreams of self gratification they think they can get realized out there. It's just no big deal anymore, not when people think they can have a life like
Sex in the City
. What kind of moron would want a life like that, anyway?"
"I still have a hard time seeing you as the traditional type."
