House

Family of three and a house. Add few important lost papers, a sheriff from court, a kid's point of view on everything and you'll end up with quite some story about fatherhood, loss and kind heart.

    “Done! I just drew a masterpiece! And I don’t care if other kids in kindergarten hate it, they don’t have a taste. And just like mommy says, ‘all that matters is that you have fun’, ain’t that right Tommy?” my small brother wasn’t listening to me. He played with his blue bunny plushie. Bunnies aren’t blue but he still likes the plushie. I think it’s okay, why couldn’t there be blue bunnies?

  “My favourite colour is green, Tommy, did you know that?” he just looks at me from the corner of our room and tosses his head. He keeps sucking his paci, looks like a mute owl to me hihi. Dad doesn’t like it when I call him an owl but why is it bad? I don’t understand that, but dad says I will understand things when I’ll be older. I hope he is right because I really don’t get a lot of things he is doing. He walks back and forth and shouts to phone and massages his forehead - " he told me he strokes his brain to get smarter, but Billy said that’s silly, and Billy knows stuff - I once tried massaging my forehead too - " I didn’t tell Billy - but I don’t think I got smarter… Dad also wrinkles brows a lot and watches the ground for hours. What’s so interesting on the ground that he watches it for hours? I observed the ground myself, if there were at least ants to watch or something but it was so boring… And he keeps calling and calling nowadays. I hate it. I can’t have a phone so why he can?

Tommy crawls to me on his four.

 “Decide what you are!” I told him “An owl or a dog?”

  He comes to me and pounds my artwork with his plushie. “Yikes, Tommy, don’t do that!” I swiftly pull the paper to myself. “Why are you…?” then I notice: I forgot the biggest part! “Oh Tommy, you are right!” I quickly grab my pencil and prepare the right corner of the paper. “Just like mommy says, (inhale) ‘every art piece must have a signature!’” I lean down to write down my name: R - E - M - I, I finish with a nice green stroke. I smile at my work, “A masterpiece!”

 Tommy sucks the paci faster. “Hmm” I sight “Why does daddy no longer like green Tommy?” I ask. “Mommy used to like green. Dad says he likes it too. But he doesn’t. He always shivers when he sees it. Wonder how a colour can make you shiver.”

Tommy stares at me with his huuuuuge eyes. He keeps pushing the paci back and forth, back, and forth. “Hehe,” I laugh “that’s not what owls do you dummy,” and I pull out his paci, “See? Now when you just stare like that, you’re waaay more like an owl.”

Tommy watches me for a moment but then starts screaming and crying as if I just told on him that he peed himself! “Oh, can’t you shut up? It’s just a dummy! Here!” I hand him the thing back but that’s when a very angry dad tears into the room. I jump out from the shock and Tommy’s dummy falls on ground. Dad looks furious. I didn’t even hear his steps on the stairs.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry!” I shout.

“What did you do, Remi?” Dad starts to stroke his brain again.

“Nothing, I did nothing!”

“Remi!” dad’s voice sounds grumpy, “tell me what happened, I need to get back to…” I close my eyes and bite my tongue and almost fail to hold myself not to cry. But then my dad stops talking and when I look up he is glazing at my drawing.

“Dad, dad look!” I shout joyfully all of a sudden, all fear is gone. I bring him my drawing, he squats to me. “I drew this today! I drew this today! Do you see my signature? Just like mom’s, right? Just like mom’s! Even Tommy thinks so.”

Dad watches the drawing but is completely still and emotionless. Daaamn I thought he would show more enthusiasm to see my work. What’s his problem?

I tilt my head to show him I am expecting a reaction.

“Why are you so quiet dad?” (did his brain become somehow slower?) He doesn’t even care anymore that Tommy keeps on crying.

Ugh, that’s disappointing! I leave dad still squatted with my drawing, take the paci from ground and put it into Tommy’s mouth. “There, you…. you dummy. You roar like a siren. Well, well, that certainly ain’t like an owl.”

“Remi,” I hear behind me suddenly from my dad, “what is it?”

Is he joking?! I turn at him and stomp back to him. “Uuugh, isn’t it obvious?! It’s a stork, see?! Here is the beak, and here is the right wing, no, a left wing, and a tail…” I start to point at the various clever parts of my drawing, but dad stops me again.

“No, no Remi it’s beautiful but,” he turns the paper around from its opposite side. The drawing is clearly on the front side, why is he doing that? “what is this paper?” he finishes.

I was on alert. Dad sounded unusually hesitant. It took him so long to stutter it out. Billy also stutters sometimes but he says it’s ‘cause he has “stage fright.” Did my drawing impress dad so much he started to be scared to talk to me?

I come to my dad and try to reassure him “Dad, you can still call me Remi, I haven’t changed a bit since I became so skilled in art, promise.” I caress his calf for a bit to calm him down. Even Tommy realises something is weird and crawls to us and pounds dad’s feet with his bunny. “See dad?” I tell him, “Tommy never lets anyone else touch his bunny. You can still be our dad, nothing changed.”

But dad is still as petrified as before, he won’t look at the paper from the right side. I lose temper. “Dad! That’s not a part of the artwork!”

He ignores me and starts mumbling something that he reads from the paper.

Finally, he speaks, “did you take this from the hall Remi?” he asks and his voice is strangely trembling “was this letter in an envelope?!” I hide my eyes with hands again, Tommy launches another cry. I’m so scared. What did I do? Did I do something wrong?

“I couldn’t find paper,” I sobbed, “I wanted to draw. But, but…couldn’t find paper…so I took this….” why is daddy so angry? why is he acting so weird?

“Remi, Remi, listen” Dad seemed nervous, but he didn’t shout at me. I opened one eye. “When did you take this letter?”

“I don’t know,” sniffle, ”last year?”

Dad chuckles a bit on that note. Hihi, I made him chuckle. Why? I don’t know, who cares.

“It couldn’t have been last year,” he says.

“Then why do you ask?!” I unhide my eyes again and cross my arms. “Why do you ask if you don’t believe?!”

Suddenly a doorbell rings. I got so scared I started; Tommy stopped to cry from the surprise. Dad frowns again and hurries to the door.

“Tommy, you wait!” I command him. “I will investigate the intruders myself.”

 

I ran down from the second floor, dad hates it when I run, but I’m sly, he won’t even know. Only grandma always finds out, grandma is super sly. She comes a lot lately; I wonder why that is.

I stop at the door, a tall, strange man is standing there talking with my dad. Dad doesn’t seem happy; he clenches my artwork in his left hand. Maybe the new stranger could appreciate my talent too!

I slide through the door and my dad, slip the paper through his fingers, and spread it in front of the stranger.

“Look what I drew! Look what I drew! It’s a stork! It’s super obvious, right?” The man grins at the view but he seems to appreciate it. I think I saw dad blush! Maybe that’s what I need, to show my dad how impressed others will be when they see it!

But then dad pulls me back inside behind him.

“I didn’t have enough time to prepare!” he tells the stranger.

“Oh, you had donkey’s years to prepare!” replies the man. “Now the ship has sailed my friend. I’m not happy to do this but we both now it’s about time you and your family move.”

I look at my dad with confusion. Move? What does he mean by moving? We once moved to Italy during summer? Or, was that not moving?

“Nobody is moving!” comes out from my dad so firmly that I start. “This isn’t just some random replaceable house, this…”

“This is your home,” says the man. “Trust me, no home is a replaceable place, let me tell you that,” he touches my dad on his shoulder, “no person I ever came to ask for their leave said their place is replaceable. But you gotta pay your bills if you don’t want to lose that place.”

“We tried to pay our bills!” shouts my dad. I cover my eyes, step back. “I had no way to pay back after…after…” dad’s voice trembles. What is happening? I’m scared, why is dad crying? I haven’t seen dad cry this much… Dad? Can I help you? Please? I’ll be good. I’ll never take another letter. Or draw on the walls when you’re not looking. Or take Tommy’s paci or call him an owl… Why are you crying?

I look at the stranger at the door as if he could know. And yet he seems to know more than me. Why can’t I understand so much the adults do? Do the adults have some secret language to know why things are happening? Does this man also massage his brain to make it smarter?

To my big surprise he did it! He massaged his forehead! Just now! Just in front of me! Did you see it Tommy? I didn’t even realize when you managed to crawl down the stairs… You had to see it Tommy! This man right in front of me just stroked his brain.

Right after that he leaned to my downcast dad.

“Be stronger for your kids,” he said. “They deserve better than to see their father a wreck.”

What did he mean by that?

Dad stood up and stopped crying. He looked very serious, like when he ends one of those shouting phone calls.

“We are not moving out,” he said with such a cold tone, once again, he made me shiver.

The man sighed. “This is no longer your property…”

“This has always been our…” interrupts very angrily my dad.

“Sir, I have all the right on this planet to move you out right now right here…”

“I don’t care about your rights, I have my rights…”

“Your rights expired the moment you ignored your loans, your N.O.D. and your N.O.T….”

“I did not ignore any of that! If ignoring looks like hours of phone calls, bureaucracy, flea markets and insomnia then be it ignorance!”

“Sir, you didn’t try to negotiate something with the bank once!”

“I called with the landlord, with attorneys…”

“You didn’t try to explain your situation to the bank once!” repeats the man.

“I didn’t know you’ll try to sell it out like this!”

“Sir, you received a notice…”

“I didn’t receive anything! I didn’t see the last notice, I didn’t know about it until this very day!”

The stranger sighed, “That does not change the fact you are unable to pay your loans.”

“We are not moving!” says dad.

“Sir…”

“This is our home!”

“Sir…!”

“This is not just some random replaceable house, because…”

“With all due respect you have to realize…”

“This is her home!” shouted my dad. I grabbed Tommy’s hand and stood there too scared to say anything. I guess we both looked like two owls now…

The tall man stood silently too. After a while he uttered another sigh, “the house is already sold Mr. Toremi,” he said. “A new owner is going to bring their things here today. That’s why they sent me. To let you know you must immediately move.”

 

After few minutes a car stopped on our driveway. But dad didn’t move from the doorstep the whole time. He stood there in total silence with his head turned to the ground. His eyes were not moving at all as he was watching the ground. Is that the secret to what he sees on the ground? Was I doing it wrong the whole time?

A figure suddenly comes out of the car and another one and another. Dad raises his head. I observed him. He looked startled and tired watching a couple with a tiny baby walking to the door. Yay they looked so cute, especially the wife, reminded me of my babysitter! I started pulling dad’s trousers “Dad, dad look! They look just like you and mommy when you got married!”

The tall man looked at me and then at my hands clutching my artwork. He was surprisingly silent until the very moment the couple arrived at our door.

“Can you show me the drawing again, young one?” he asked.

I hesitated. Can I?

I looked at my dad but he didn’t object. So I came to the man and showed him my drawing again.

“I see,” said the man and showed the picture to the couple too. I was over the moon, happy as a lark.

The wife put her baby down on front yard grass. All three strangers than analysed and talked about my work but I couldn’t hear what. The wife and husband blushed when they saw the back side with the text. I think it made them appreciate my talent even more (since the letters are so boooring)!

“Indeed impressive,” said the tall man when he gave me the letter back.

“Thank you!” I shouted. I was so joyful I almost didn’t notice Tommy coming outside of the house too. He started playing with the small baby and let him touch his blue bunny. Not only that!

“Dad! Dad, look!” I jumped back to the doorstep. “Tommy is playing with the baby!” I shouted. “And he doesn’t have his dummy!” My dad slowly raised his head and looked at the front yard grass. Tommy crawled on the grass and completely ignored how the paci fell off his mouth. He didn’t cry! At one point he even tried to grab it and instead of sucking, tried to push it to the empty mouth of the baby.

When the young wife saw it, she hurried to stop it. I don’t understand why. That baby could have had a very good paci, who cares it fell on the ground few times?

But she didn’t seem angry, she caressed Tommy on his head and thanked him. I looked at dad. He just kept staring at them. Then he looked at the husband and back to Tommy with the baby and wife and then to the tall man.

The man kept observing him.  

“So,” he said in a calm voice once my dad finally looked at him, “let’s do it this way, Mr. Toremi. You’ll have 2 more hours to pack up, pack up anything you want from your house. And you leave.” He did not put off his eyes from my dad. “Do you have somewhere to go, Mr. Toremi?”

My dad finally stood up, he was still very deeply absorbed in his technique for watching the ground, but he looked once again to the front yard where the young woman was cherishing the two babies with the weirdest - somehow a sad - smile, I’ve never seen before. And then my dad finally spoke to me: “Remi, we’re gonna call grandma. Going to live together for a while now, okay?”

I whooped.

“Yaaay! You hear it, Tommy? Even grandma will see my drawing!”

That’s when the couple cheered up and begun to return to their car. And my dad finally smiled a bit.

The tall man gave a small bow to both of us when he was on his leave. “Make sure to frame the artwork!” he said looking at my dad. Then with a weird emphasis finished: “it is his home.”

I really hope one day I will grow up enough to understand adults. I didn’t draw a house; I drew a stork.

But dad seemed to nod.