DIARY OMISSIONS: THE HOUSE ON EDGEWOOD ROAD
Elizabeth Gauffreau
April 17, 1907–June 1, 1907
BROTHER AND I WERE STILL so very young the first time Father took Mother away, not long after we moved into the new house on Edgewood Road. Father had designed the house himself, and it was big—not as big as Uncle Henry and Aunt Lucy’s grand house on the hill, of course, but it was big for us, with four bedrooms, front and back porches, and a sunroom looking out through the trees. Father was so proud of that house. While it was being built, he would take us to see it every Sunday after church, all of us dressed in our Sunday best to gaze at the hole in the ground, then at the outlines of walls and roof empty against the sky.
The day began the same as any other. We saw Father off to work in the morning as usual, the three of us each receiving a kiss in turn at the door before he set off smartly down the walk, his portfolio tucked under his arm, his hat tilted just so.
Brother and I ran upstairs while Mother cleared the table and began the breakfast dishes. I heard the hot water running downstairs, the heavy plates thunking on the bottom of the sink, the silverware rattling in on top of them.
Ready for play, Brother and I ran down the front stairs and through the hall, slowing the clattering of our shoes as we reached the shiny kitchen linoleum. Mother stood motionless at the sink, the plates and bowls arranged in descending order in the dish drainer on her right, a stack of greasy pans on the counter on her left, the suds gone from the water, her red wet hands resting on the rim of the sink, tears running down her face.
I stopped and asked what was the matter, was she sick, was she sad, but she shook her head and motioned with her hand for me to go away.
When Brother and I came in for lunch, we found that Mother had not moved from the sink, the water gone cold in front of her, the tears dried on her face. She did not answer when I called her. Brother ran up the hill to Aunt Lucy’s house because he was younger and more afraid, while I stayed behind with Mother, crying, unable to pull one of her hands down from the rim of the sink to hold. Aunt Lucy telephoned Father in the city, and he came home and took Mother away.
Cousin Charlotte came to stay with us. We didn’t like Cousin Charlotte much. She was prissy, and the only reason she’d come to help us while Mother was away was that Aunt Lucy made her. When Brother and I asked where our mother went, why Father took her away, Cousin Charlotte said that Mother needed a rest. When Brother demanded to know why Mother couldn’t take her nap at home, Cousin Charlotte called him a naughty boy and sent him to his room. Then she sent me to my room, too, just for good measure.
When at last the day came for Father to bring Mother home from her rest, Brother and I ran to the door at the sound of the auto in the drive, but Cousin Charlotte grabbed our hands and pulled us back. She held tight to our hands as the door opened and Father led Mother inside and up the stairs.
Later, when Cousin Charlotte went into the kitchen to make supper, Brother and I tiptoed upstairs to see Mother. We found Father sitting against the head of the bed reading aloud from a book while Mother lay on her back with her eyes closed. Father didn’t notice Brother and me standing in the doorway, and we went back downstairs.
Father took his supper with Mother in their room that evening, while Brother and I ate downstairs in the dining room with Cousin Charlotte. After a few days, Mother was back to taking care of us, and Cousin Charlotte went home to Aunt Lucy and Uncle Henry’s big house on the hill. We went back to seeing Father off to work in the morning as usual, the three of us each receiving a kiss in turn at the door before he set off whistling down the walk, turning to wave before he disappeared from sight.
May 17, 1917–July 2, 1917
The second time Father took Mother away, Jimmy and I were older, in junior high school. We had been living in the house on Edgewood Road for ten years, and the month prior, Father had taken it into his head that the floors needed to be refinished. We spent two weeks with Uncle Henry, Aunt Lucy, and Cousin Charlotte in the big house on the hill. When the work was finally completed, Jimmy and I couldn’t run down that hill for home fast enough.
Father still left the house early each morning to catch the train into the city, setting off smartly down the walk, his portfolio tucked under his arm, his hat tilted just so, Mother still receiving his kiss at the door, Jimmy and I too busy shouting at each other for our turn in the bathroom and shouting at Mother to find our missing homework to be bothered.
So off to school we dashed that day, Jimmy and I, bag lunches snatched from Mother’s hands, our breakfasts untouched on the table. Returning home late in the afternoon, after dawdling over strictly-forbidden ice cream sodas at the drugstore, we found a pile of something white on the curb in front of our house. When we set our schoolbooks down to investigate, the pile turned out to be sopping wet bed sheets.
We could see where a trail of water had dried on the front walk. Water still puddled on the front porch, and the trail of water continued down the front hall, through the kitchen, out the kitchen door, and onto the back porch, ending at Mother’s brand-new, gasoline-powered Maytag washing machine. The lid was open, and the tub was half full of water.
I grabbed a string mop out of the pantry and mopped up the puddles of water as quickly as I could while Jimmy searched the house for Mother. Before long, he shouted from the top of the stairs, “Her bedroom door’s locked!” By the time I put the mop back in the pantry, he had gone from gently knocking on the door and calling, “Mother, Mother? Are you in there? Are you all right?” to pounding on it and yelling, “Open the door, Mother!”
I ran up the stairs. “Do you know she’s in there?”
“Of course, she’s in there, stupid—the door’s locked from the inside!”
“Is she all right?”
“I don’t know!” He knelt down and peered into the keyhole. “The key’s still in the lock.”
I ran to my closet and retrieved a coat hanger. “Here, help me bend this.” We somehow managed to straighten the hanger enough to dislodge the key from the lock and sweep it under the door. When we unlocked the door and entered the room, I nearly fell over Mother’s clothes on the floor. She was lying naked on the bed staring out the window. I shouted at Jimmy not to look and threw a blanket over her. Then Jimmy and I both stood in her line of sight, blocking the window as we begged her to tell us what was wrong, was she sick, had she hurt herself? Why was the washing on the curb? Why were her clothes on the floor?
Then we heard footsteps pounding up the stairs, and Father sent us from the room while he asked Mother the same questions we had. What was wrong, was she sick, had she hurt herself? He didn’t seem to care about the washing on the curb or her clothes on the floor.
Jimmy and I stood at the bottom of the stairs listening to Father plead with her in vain. Finally, he walked back down the stairs and called the doctor. After the doctor came, he and Father got Mother dressed, down the stairs, and into the doctor’s car, without a word to Jimmy and me. As they drove away, I looked at Jimmy and said, “I guess we’d better get the sheets off the curb.” Between the two of us, we got the washing machine started, the sheets washed, rinsed, pushed through the wringer, and hung on the clothesline.
By the time we finished, it had gotten dark, and we’d missed supper. I found leftover ham in the icebox and made us ham sandwiches. I made one for Father, too, which I covered in waxed paper and left in the icebox. Then Jimmy and I did our homework and waited for Father to return. He told us Mother just needed a rest. For how long? He didn’t know.
When Jimmy and I got home from school the following day, Cousin Charlotte’s suitcase was in the guestroom, and Cousin Charlotte was in the kitchen folding towels. “Too bad about your mother,” she said. “The hall floor is going to have to be refinished. The varnish is ruined.”
What were Jimmy and I supposed to say to that?
When Father brought Mother home more than a month later, Jimmy and I asked if she might like to change washing day to Saturday, so that we could help her with it. She shook her head and started to cry, which wasn’t what we had intended at all. Father told us not to upset her and took her upstairs.
While the hall floor was being refinished, we stayed at the Puritan Hotel and took our meals in the dining room. I don’t know what Mother did with her time while Jimmy and I were at school and Father was at work, but she seemed cheerful enough, and when we returned home, things went back to normal.
May 1, 1920–
Jimmy and I were nearly grown the next time Mother needed a long rest. The house on Edgewood Road had just received all new wallpaper, Father having decided that the original wallpaper was faded and shabby. At least we’d been able to remain in the house while the work was being done.
All semblance of a morning routine was long gone by then, Jimmy and I barely rolling out of bed in time to make it to the high school for first period bell. The one remaining constant was Father’s kiss goodbye for Mother before he set off down the front walk with his portfolio under his arm, his hat tilted just so.
I was late getting home that day, having stayed after school for a yearbook meeting. Jimmy arrived shortly after I did, from baseball practice. It was nearly suppertime, but there was no smell of roast or casserole coming from the kitchen, although a pot of potatoes in water had been set on the back burner of the stove. Mother was nowhere to be found in the house or the backyard. Jimmy even checked the potting shed, but it was padlocked from the outside as usual.
“Maybe she ran out of something for supper and nipped down to the store?” I said when Jimmy returned from the backyard.
“Maybe . . . ” He looked doubtful. “What should we do? Should we check with the neighbors?”
“We’d probably best wait for Father,” I said.
So that’s what we did. We sat at the dining room table trying to concentrate on our homework, which would come due in the morning, missing mother or no missing mother.
When Father arrived home, he called out, “I’m home, Leona!” as he set his hat on the hall tree and leaned his portfolio against the wall. We heard him proceed to the kitchen to greet Mother and perhaps steal a sample of what was for supper. We heard him open and close the door of the icebox, open and close the door of the oven. We heard him go upstairs to their bedroom, come back downstairs.
“Where’s your mother?” he said, entering the dining room.
“We don’t know,” I said. “She wasn’t here when I got home.”
“Or when I got home,” Jimmy said.
“Have you called Aunt Lucy?”
Jimmy and I shook our heads, both of us knowing for a certainty that Mother was not about to go anywhere near Aunt Lucy and Uncle Henry’s big house on the hill.
Father telephoned Aunt Lucy and confirmed what Jimmy and I already knew.
“Have you tried the neighbors?” Father said, his expression saying he hoped we hadn’t.
“No, we thought we should wait for you.”
“I can’t think where she could have got to,” Father said. “We’ll have to try the neighbors.”
The three of us canvassed both sides of the street with no luck. The last time any of the neighbors had seen Mother was the previous day when she was out in back doing the washing.
Father called Aunt Lucy, Uncle Henry, and Cousin Charlotte to the house for a family meeting. Should he call the police? Should he not call the police? Worry won out over propriety, and Father called the police. Aunt Lucy and Uncle Henry immediately stood up to leave, while Cousin Charlotte stayed right where she was, in Mother’s favorite armchair.
“Come, Charlotte,” Aunt Lucy said. “This is a private matter between your Uncle Willard and the authorities. They certainly don’t need an audience.”
When the police officer arrived, he asked about Mother’s habits and state of mind. Was she a woman of regular habits? Had anything been troubling her? Had she ever done anything like this before? To my surprise, Father answered honestly. Leona was mostly a woman of regular habits. At times she was troubled, although she had never left the house with no word to anyone. The officer wrote Father’s responses in a little notebook. Then he asked Father what Mother looked like.
“She’s a beautiful woman,” Father said. He looked surprised when the officer didn’t write it down.
I stood up. “My mother and I are the same height and build. Her hair is darker than mine, with grey streaks in the front.”
“Thank you, miss.” The officer wrote in his little notebook again. He put the notebook back in his pocket and asked for a recent photograph. Father got up from his chair, took Mother’s latest studio portrait from the mantelpiece, and thrust it, still in its ornate silver frame, at the officer.
“Oh, I don’t need the frame, sir.”
I quickly interjected, “We have a smaller one,” and ran upstairs to get it from Father’s nightstand, slipping it from its frame before leaving the room. After I’d handed the photograph to the officer and he’d slid it carefully into his jacket pocket, Father tentatively cleared his throat and said, “What should we do now?”
“I’m afraid,” the officer said, settling his hat back on his head and turning to leave, “there is nothing for you to do but wait. I’ll check the hospitals for you when I get back to the station.”
“Hospitals?” Father said.
“Just in case she’s been hurt or suddenly taken ill.”
“But if she’d been hurt or taken ill, someone would have called me. Or my sister Lucy. Everyone knows us.”
“Yes, sir,” the officer said. “Give me about an hour to make the calls.”
Father closed the front door behind the officer and sat at the tiny telephone table in the hall. Jimmy and I looked at each other, unsure what to do. I looked at my wristwatch. “It’s after eight, Father,” I said, “and we haven’t eaten. Let me make us some sandwiches.”
“Thank you, dear. I’ll take mine here.”
Jimmy and I looked at each other again. He followed me into the kitchen and sliced the bread for me, his hands steadier than mine, as we whispered back and forth about what we should do about finding Mother, what we should do about Father sitting so forlornly in the front hall waiting for the telephone to ring. After I made the sandwiches, we brought our plates into the front hall, handed Father his, and sat on the floor to eat our sandwiches and wait with him.
The telephone never rang. Instead, at close to midnight, a knock came at the front door. Father got to the door first, and when he opened it, there was the police officer from earlier in the evening, with his arm around Mother. Her hair was disheveled, she was shivering, and she wouldn’t look at any of us. Father let me take her upstairs while he spoke with the police officer to find out where she’d been. Mother didn’t speak to me, but she knew who I was, and she let me run her a hot bath and help her out of her clothes. Father came upstairs, and I went back downstairs to find out from Jimmy what had happened.
The night janitor at the Central Library had found Mother asleep in the stacks, her back against the wall, an open book on her lap. The janitor didn’t know what to do, so he called the police to come and get her. She didn’t offer any kind of explanation to the police. Apparently, she had peeled potatoes for supper, put them in a pot of water on the stove, then walked out the door and took two streetcars to the Central Library to hide herself in the stacks and read.
Father didn’t take Mother away this time. Every night, when he got home from work in the city, he went straight upstairs to sit with her, preferring to have her with him, her empty gaze turned inward, than not have her with him at all. Somehow, the three of us would manage the house on Edgewood Road until Mother was ready to resume her place in it once more.
Elizabeth Gauffreau writes fiction and poetry with a strong connection to family and place. She holds a BA in English/Writing from Old Dominion University and an MA in English/Fiction Writing from the University of New Hampshire. Recent fiction publications include Woven Tale Press, Dash, Pinyon, Aji, Open: Journal of Arts & Letters, and Evening Street Review. Her debut novel, Telling Sonny, was published in 2018. Her debut poetry collection, Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance, was published by Paul Stream Press in September 2021. Learn more about her work at https://lizgauffreau.com.
Contributor’s Note:
“Diary Omissions:
The House on Edgewood Road”
“Diary Omissions” began life many years ago as part of a failed novel. The initial inspiration was family photographs and a 1906 diary left by a first cousin twice-removed. I revised the story several times to develop the setting, characters, and plot more fully. “Diary Omissions” is one of several stories I’ve written about women who are unhappy in their expected social roles.
Novel
Telling Sonny is a coming-of-age story set in the 1920s, when much of vaudeville had devolved into the Small-Time—but not to a naïve girl from a tiny Vermont village who lets herself be charmed by a cad of a hoofer.
Poetry Collection
Grief Songs: Poems of Love & Remembrance is a collection of photopoetry that tells the story of a loving family lost.