We haven’t spoken about the day in the rain. I want to be mad at him; clench his collar in my fists whilst staring icily into his deep-set eyes. “I hope you never find the will to forgive yourself,” I’d say. But I can’t help feeling my cause is misplaced. Who’d I be fighting for?
He called her the “house decorator,” when he first brought her into our lives—this mystery woman. Mother, elated to be redesigning her home, showed her around. “And I want a velvet cushion here, a cobbler stool overlooking the street over there, sheepskin rug and... Ah. Lest I forget, a paper lampshade. A Bohemian-styled living-room, you know.”
Nodding affirmatively as Mother pointed here and there, I thought I saw her steal a glance at Father, who was seated in the living-room, pretentiously chewing wall-nuts with fervour as he watched a football match on the television. I was in the dining, doing my homework. They went upstairs and Father jumped out of his seat and stood at the foot of the stairs, listening in. I raised my head, a suspicious glare in my eyes, and, I believe, it beat him to imagine at ten-years-old I already understood.
“What’s the assignment, little man?” He grabbed a chair and sat by me.
“Mathematics.”
He nicked the textbook from me and swiftly perused its pages like a stale document.
“I’d leave this to your mother,” he said. “Never got the hang of it.”
The staccato click of high-heel shoes coming down the stairs and Father seized the textbook again.
“Finish your assignment,” he said, melodramatically, “and when you’re done, I’d like to have a look.”
“Honey,” Mother said, “I’ve shown her the upstairs balcony. Those flower pots need to go.”
Father nodded.
“We were thinking to transform it into a cosy library with shelves,” Mystery Woman said. “What do you think?”
Father, hands tucked behind, nodded.
“Yes. We decided since you like spending time alone reading papers, with a bit of writing that can be your haven.”
“That would be nice,” he said, swallowing. “Thank you, Interior Designer Woman.”
“Interior Designer Woman?” Mother turned to Mystery Woman, laughing. “Don’t mind my husband. So how soon can you start?”
Mystery Woman held up her jotter. “As soon as we get the money aspect out of the way, I can begin.”
Mother turned to Father—a clandestine twinkle in her eyes—and he swiftly ran up the stairs. When he returned, they finalized the transaction and she left.
“I hope she delivers,” Mother said.
“She will.”
“By the way, I meant to ask where you found her.”
“The office. She came to see a colleague of mine, who so happens to be her client,” he said. “I was in there when she walked in and we got introduced. My colleague seemed to like what she did in his home and, since I’d heard you say you want to touch-up the house a little, I brought her.”
“So sweet of you.” She threw herself into his arms, he picked her off the ground and headed for the bedroom.
As I stared, incompetently, at my homework, drearily wielding Ds and Bs to the shape of a pussycat, it occurred to me how naïve Mother could be sometimes, how an adversary, a moment ago, had challenged her to a battle and she thoughtlessly regarded it. Mystery Woman had used the word “we” like she was an equal, a fellow step-wife. Is it me, or just my imagination? I said to myself, but quickly let the thought fizzle as a bed shifted and stomped in the master bedroom down the corridor.
A few days later, on a Saturday morning, I awoke to the sound of a revving vehicle. I got out of bed and, looking through the window, saw a mini truck with our furniture on its tablet ride down the asphalt and out the gate. I ran down the stairs. Old things had gone away and all things had become new. I was in a mini paradise. Mother and Father, tucked in each other’s arms on a velvet cushion, with legs crossed on a rustic multicoloured coffee table. Curtains the colour of the ocean embroidered with swirling leaves. I laid on the sheepskin rug and made an angel out of it.