Number 87 Primula Street sat as far back from the road as all the other houses in Springhaven Village, a medium-sized suburb that drew the names for its roads from harbingers of spring. It had a drive, not quite big enough for two cars, and a walkway, that snaked beside the attached garage. Both drive and walkway were identical to those belonging to the neighbour. Tonight, however, it had something the other houses on the street did not. It had sixteen teenagers in various states of formal undress milling about on the front lawn.
Cindy Misner stood in the centre of it all. I could watch her from my location in the living room across the street. I’d made a point to sit on the couch so I could watch the production taking place on the front lawn across the street. I pretended to watch television but, who am I kidding, I was more interested in the parade of colours. I’d seen most of Cindy’s friends come and go over the last year. I could recognize most of them, the girls at least, the ones who usually milled about the front porch waiting for Cindy to come outside. This afternoon, the boys had taken over the porch in a display of male nonchalance, and Cindy and her girls were posing on the grass.
The rhythm of my mom’s voice was in the background. I could tell she was on the same level as me. I prayed that she would not take the phone into the living room and start watching Oprah while I was in there.
“Yeah,” I heard her say, as she walked by the entrance to the room carrying a laundry basket. “I mean, it’s nice that you can, right?” Silence. “It’s just, um,” I hear her mumble and fade out, as she walks upstairs with the laundry. I notice that I’ve shifted my position to watch her, to make sure she is not watching me watch Cindy across the street. I quickly adjust my position to optimize viewing. I try to forget that my mom is upstairs, maybe even putting my clothes away at this very instant. Cindy is surrounded by five other girls, two on each side of her, arms linked around each other’s waists, big smiles for the cameras.
I hear my mother go into the kitchen, “Sorry,” she says into the phone at the end of her hand. “You’re gonna hear me go in and out. I’ve put you on speaker phone.”
“I’m on speaker phone?,” I hear my mom’s friend Crista ask. I can’t help but think that I wish I could hear my mother go in and out again. Now, not only do I have to hear her, but Crista as well. Their conversation is bound to interfere with my prolonged investigation into the photographic possibilities taking place across the street. Cindy’s front yard was really well suited as a backdrop, I thought with some approval.
“Yeah.”
“I never use my speaker phone.”
“It’s the only way I get anything done. I have to make supper. Otherwise I’d get no food. Multitasking and all.”
“My sister is really good at that,” Crista tells my mom. I can’t remember if mom has met Crista’s sister. I want to say no, but I don’t know all of her friends. “I noticed it when we had to park in a parking garage last month. She somehow managed to hold her baby and pay for the parking ticket at the same time. I wanted to take the baby from her, but she wouldn’t let me. All I could say was, ‘fuck, Cara, this is ridiculous.’ But that’s what you have to do, I guess.” My ears perked up at the word fuck. I settled into the couch to see if I could overhear any more. Cindy and her friends had all driven off anyway.
“Well, yeah, you get used to doing it. You are almost always doing something at the same time when you have a little one like she does. I’m sure she’s got some skills that you wouldn’t believe,” my mom tells Crista. I can tell she’s trying not to talk about kids with Crista. I’m pretty sure there were tears the last time she made that mistake. Crista doesn’t seem to notice.
“Cara has one really interesting skill. When I was there last week, I noticed that there was this tea towel on the floor, the kitchen floor, and I was thinking of bending down to pick it up. Then Cara waltzes into the kitchen, grasps the tea towel with her foot and flicks it up to her hand and places it onto the rack on the stove. The towel rack. It was so graceful and seamless, this movement. I just looked at her and said ‘Cara, can you believe what you just did? I was going to BEND down to pick that up.’ It was a frickin’ cool move, and it seemed to take no effort.”
“I love to pick things up with my feet,” my mom reveals. “Don’t you ever practice that? It’s really good for building strength in your ankles and your feet. Like, honestly, you take a tea towel or something, little cat toys are good. I’ll sit there and pick them up with my toes.” There is a pause. While Crista tries to think of something to say, my mom adds “It’s a really good leg strengthener, like for your calves too. “
There is no real obvious way to continue the conversation after that comment, I think to myself. Mom must be weary of listening to Crista ramble on about her stressful job. I listen to see how my mom will move the conversation along. “I’ve got a seven foot tall sunflower in my backyard. It doesn’t even have the flower part yet.”
“Do you really? I love those flowers.”
“I’m going to take a picture of myself standing next to it when it, obviously, is in bloom,” my mom reveals. “It should happen soon, it’s so hot here. Sticky hot. I had to run at 8:45 last night and it was still miserable even then. I was hot even after I took a shower.”
“I’m going run tonight,” Crista declares. “Try at least. I worked out last night, a really good workout in the gym, but I figure every other day I am going to go for a run, while the weather is good.”
“Do it while you can. God knows it will get freezing cold soon enough. I can feel it. It feels like it is getting to fall, already. There is that change in the air.”
“Yep, I could feel it,” confirms Crista. “A smell. A shift in the air, I know exactly what you’re talking about. I noticed it for the first time last night, which was actually really really early this morning, I couldn’t sleep so I went outside and as soon as I went outside, I thought, oh shit, fall.”
