It's a Treat!
Last year at Halloween, I was asked to write a short story for the Globe and Mail. Really short. Too short really to collect anywhere so, because I'm sure most of you don't read the Globe and Mail -- for purely geographic reasons, of course -- I thought I'd share it with y'all this year.
Happy Halloween!
Playing it Safe
There would always be a stigma attached to the phrase "gated community", from elitist at best to racist at worst. Ted didn't care. As far as he was concerned, they'd done nothing more than make their neighbourhood safe for their children and as long as the kids were safe, the less rigorously careful could call it whatever they wanted.
He and his wife had been the first to buy in their small enclave, back before the lawns had been sodded and or the gates actually installed, and he ruled the admissions committee with an iron fist. Under his guidance they'd refused a police officer for fear she'd bring her job home with her. They'd refused a stockbroker on the grounds that he might be the cause of protests outside their gates and protests drew undesirables and undesirables put the children at risk. They'd refused a pair of free-lance writers because... Well, that'd been because of income uncertainties but when it came right down to it, Ted figured an uncertain income meant an uncertain life and uncertainty put children at risk.
There'd definitely been some problems filling the last house. Three bedroom, one and a half baths, front porch in a 1920's bungalow style; it sat empty for almost two years as applicant after applicant was refused. As the house began to look shabby and unlived in, paint on the porch peeling, Japanese beetles leaving the lawn patchy, the rest of the admissions committee nagged Ted to lower his standards. Reluctantly, he admitted they had a point. An empty house attracted a dangerous kind of attention.
As he was also the developer's real estate agent, his wife wasn't particularly happy with him either.
Dorothea Zimmer wasn't the perfect applicant - she was middle-aged, widowed, with no children - but she ran a small, successful business turning old ivory into new piano keys, and environmental responsibility was definitely something Ted wanted his children to learn. He knew that historically childless members of societies helped raise the children of their friends and neighbours.
"We're not looking for a babysitter," Ted reassured her hastily when it seemed like she was about to change her mind. "Just a set of unbiased eyes." His wife had mentioned that Dr. Kitchen's three played unnecessarily rough. Dr. Kitchen denied it.
When the background check turned nothing up, Ted accepted her deposit, gave her the key code for the gate, and welcomed her to the neighbourhood.
It was a little late in the season to do anything about the lawn, but right after moving in, she began scraping the old paint off the porch.
"I'm amazed there's enough old ivory around to re-purpose. Is it hard to find?" Ted asked from the sidewalk, watching his son and daughter ride their bikes around the crescent.
"Ivory's just bone when you get right down to it." She stepped back from the railing, steel brush in one pink latex covered hand, blinking nearsightedly at the newly exposed wood. "There's plenty around if you know where to look."
"I suppose." He waited for another break in the steady shunk shunk shunk before saying, "Are you sure it's not too late to paint? It's getting cold at night."
"With this lovely south eastern exposure?" A long stroke of faded green flaked off one of the support posts. "As long as I get the paint on by nine or ten it'll have plenty of time to dry before the temperature drops. And I'd like to get it finished before the end of the month."
At the end of the month, the enclave would be holding a street party with music and a couple of carnival games and one of those bouncy rubber house things. The kids loved it. They stayed in the enclave, they knocked on the doors of people their parents trusted, and they got enough candy to make themselves sick. It wasn't the Halloween the media promoted, roaming the streets in costumed gangs, blithely ignoring the very real danger of taking food from strangers, but Halloween hadn't really been like that when Ted was young either, the mythical razorblades in apples already replaced by overdosing and Amber Alerts.
Ted had done everything he could to protect his kids. He watched them circle the crescent again, running a stick over the bars of the gate that kept them penned safely in as much as it kept threat out, checked his watch, and asked, to be polite, "What colour were were planning to paint it? The porch," he added when Mrs. Zimmer looked up.
"Just brown," she said, and smiled. "They call the shade Gingerbread."
Happy Halloween!
Playing it Safe
There would always be a stigma attached to the phrase "gated community", from elitist at best to racist at worst. Ted didn't care. As far as he was concerned, they'd done nothing more than make their neighbourhood safe for their children and as long as the kids were safe, the less rigorously careful could call it whatever they wanted.
He and his wife had been the first to buy in their small enclave, back before the lawns had been sodded and or the gates actually installed, and he ruled the admissions committee with an iron fist. Under his guidance they'd refused a police officer for fear she'd bring her job home with her. They'd refused a stockbroker on the grounds that he might be the cause of protests outside their gates and protests drew undesirables and undesirables put the children at risk. They'd refused a pair of free-lance writers because... Well, that'd been because of income uncertainties but when it came right down to it, Ted figured an uncertain income meant an uncertain life and uncertainty put children at risk.
There'd definitely been some problems filling the last house. Three bedroom, one and a half baths, front porch in a 1920's bungalow style; it sat empty for almost two years as applicant after applicant was refused. As the house began to look shabby and unlived in, paint on the porch peeling, Japanese beetles leaving the lawn patchy, the rest of the admissions committee nagged Ted to lower his standards. Reluctantly, he admitted they had a point. An empty house attracted a dangerous kind of attention.
As he was also the developer's real estate agent, his wife wasn't particularly happy with him either.
Dorothea Zimmer wasn't the perfect applicant - she was middle-aged, widowed, with no children - but she ran a small, successful business turning old ivory into new piano keys, and environmental responsibility was definitely something Ted wanted his children to learn. He knew that historically childless members of societies helped raise the children of their friends and neighbours.
"We're not looking for a babysitter," Ted reassured her hastily when it seemed like she was about to change her mind. "Just a set of unbiased eyes." His wife had mentioned that Dr. Kitchen's three played unnecessarily rough. Dr. Kitchen denied it.
When the background check turned nothing up, Ted accepted her deposit, gave her the key code for the gate, and welcomed her to the neighbourhood.
It was a little late in the season to do anything about the lawn, but right after moving in, she began scraping the old paint off the porch.
"I'm amazed there's enough old ivory around to re-purpose. Is it hard to find?" Ted asked from the sidewalk, watching his son and daughter ride their bikes around the crescent.
"Ivory's just bone when you get right down to it." She stepped back from the railing, steel brush in one pink latex covered hand, blinking nearsightedly at the newly exposed wood. "There's plenty around if you know where to look."
"I suppose." He waited for another break in the steady shunk shunk shunk before saying, "Are you sure it's not too late to paint? It's getting cold at night."
"With this lovely south eastern exposure?" A long stroke of faded green flaked off one of the support posts. "As long as I get the paint on by nine or ten it'll have plenty of time to dry before the temperature drops. And I'd like to get it finished before the end of the month."
At the end of the month, the enclave would be holding a street party with music and a couple of carnival games and one of those bouncy rubber house things. The kids loved it. They stayed in the enclave, they knocked on the doors of people their parents trusted, and they got enough candy to make themselves sick. It wasn't the Halloween the media promoted, roaming the streets in costumed gangs, blithely ignoring the very real danger of taking food from strangers, but Halloween hadn't really been like that when Ted was young either, the mythical razorblades in apples already replaced by overdosing and Amber Alerts.
Ted had done everything he could to protect his kids. He watched them circle the crescent again, running a stick over the bars of the gate that kept them penned safely in as much as it kept threat out, checked his watch, and asked, to be polite, "What colour were were planning to paint it? The porch," he added when Mrs. Zimmer looked up.
"Just brown," she said, and smiled. "They call the shade Gingerbread."