As he remembers it, the house was always level and square. The doors opened easily and swung shut with a light push. The windows slid without effort. The plastered corners of the ceilings were seamless and clean. He kept the cobwebs down. He got up into the corners to keep it clean. He knows those corners and, for the six years he's been living in this house on 68 Dunsworth Avenue, he's loved this house. Now though, he feels like that house has left him.
The cracks are appearing everywhere. The plaster is separating in the corners and fissuring like lightning strikes across the walls. The doors are stiff and scraping. Yesterday morning when he gripped the side-door handle to step out to pick up the daily paper, the door would not budge. Not until he put his shoulder to it, was he able to get, and then not without a creaking complaint from the jamb.
Things are shifting. He's sure of it. The house has always been fine, but now when he walks to the front walk and turns to look at it, he sees the north side nodding. He sees the foundation along the south wall pushing the soil up. Heaving at it. He sees the wooden siding boards separating in places and compressing in others. There is a major force at work here. He can't remember another time when it has been like this.
He does recall another moment though, a time of a subtle shift. Was it a year ago? He'd been too tired to care at the time. You know what that's like. You see something. In fact someone else points it out to you, so you know you're not really making it up. It's real because someone else, someone you trust, someone who has no reason to mess with you, or wish bad things on you, tells you so. You know those moments don't you, when a friend confirms the worst.
"So your house is in that zone," his friend John says. And he says, "What zone?" "Haven't you heard?" John says. "That area between the rivers, you know, where some guy who got laid off by the city says that it's like the two rivers want to join one another. Like they're looking for a way to join into one, underground!" "What?!" he says. "Is that even possible?" "Possible and even likely," says John, nodding with the kind of certainty that makes you doubt it.
"So what would that mean?" he says, going along with it. John's just a bit of an alarmist, he thinks. And he's concerned for me. It's okay to listen to this. He's my friend. When he's done I'll sit down at my laptop and find the truth. Or I'll make a few phone calls. Better safe than sorry, he thinks. "It would mean that some houses in this neighbourhood could start to sink. That the soil underneath them would be eroded. That they might just drop out of sight.
"Drop out of sight?" he says. "That's crazy! You're making this up. I mean ..." "Yeah," John says. "I know eh? It's nuts, but I swear I heard it. There was a whole CBC radio show about it. They interviewed the guy, and then they tried to interview the city people responsible for it, and they refused to do the interview!" "Crap!" he says. "Really!? They wouldn't clear things up? You know, debunk that kind of idiocy!"
"No man," John says. "They refused the interview, which left everyone listening to this guy who sounded really worried. Like he said it's possible that it's been happening for a while already and that some of the houses may be already sinking. You know. Really slow at first. Maybe getting a little crooked." "You're full of shit, man!" he says. "What is this April fools?" "No man," says John, his voice lowering, "I think we should check your basement."
A year ago in Spring they walked into his house, he and John, and down into the basement which was unfinished, which John said was a good thing so that they could really see what was going on. It was a typical concrete basement. The house was about sixty years old. The concrete looked old. But that made it look solid. That's what he thought. John tut-tutted a bit. He said he didn't really know that much about foundations, but he thought this one didn't look reinforced.
They looked into the corners too, and all over the floors, for cracking. For seepage. For any signs. John looked really. He stood back and waited. He couldn't look. Didn't want to. You know that feeling don't you, when you know that something might be bad, but if you don't look for it, if you don't see it, then maybe it won't be bad. Maybe it won't be there at all. That's what he did. He hung back. See no evil, he thought.
John told him that there didn't seem to be anything to be worried about. Then, smiling and sighing he said how he figured it would be okay, how solid this old house was, and how grateful he was that John cared enough to do this with him. "No problem, man!" John said. "It's what we do," he said. "It's what friends do." Then they went up the stairs and sat at the kitchen counter and each drank a beer. It was the first warm day of Spring. It was a good time for a beer.
But he doesn't want to remember that day today. He wants to move forward. No. He doesn't really want that either. He doesn't want to go down into his basement. He doesn't want to phone John. He's been living with that planted seed of an idea of catastrophe for a year and now it's germinating. It's growing. Rooting pushing at his foundations and creeping in. Spreading the walls apart. Making things unstable. What's he supposed to do?
He remembers that time when he was working on the bathroom five years ago. He'd only been in the place for a year. He still loved it like a new car. He was redoing the bathroom. What could be better. He'd launched into it with fury, tearing out the sink, then the toilet, then, with some difficulty, the tub. It was a small empty room when he'd finished that first day. That's when he'd realized that he'd have to use the neighbour's bathroom for the next week.
Which he hadn't prepared them for, but they were gracious enough to say yes anyway, even with the occasional panicked and desperate waiting scene, while the teenage daughter did her hair, or whatever. She smiled at him when she walked out. He was sure she'd taken her time. He was sure she thought he was a loser, even though he was only about nine years older than she was and he already had a programming job at the telephone company.
The point was, that he'd panicked the next morning, looking into that empty room and realizing he'd never installed a toilet or a sink or a tub before. He almost sat down in the living room and cried. He might have. He couldn't remember for sure. But then he'd said to himself, You know. You can do this. You'll learn a lot. You've got time. And if nothing else, you'll hire someone to fix it. Which is what he did at the end of that week.
And then he went over to the neighbours to ask whether he could use the bathroom for another week. Or more. He couldn't be sure when the contractor would show up. Now though, he's on the edge of that moment again. The edge of thinking that there is a problem. Maybe a big one. But he just can't be sure on his own. He picks up the phone. He puts it down. He picks up his guitar. He strums a chord. He tries to sing a song he's learned a year ago, from memory.
He gets through the first verse, and then he has to stop. He can't remember the words. The chords are easy, but the order of the words just escapes him. So he keeps playing what he knows. He wanders the whole house playing that one verse and the chorus. "I'd rather be, in a deep dark grave ... than to live in this world in a house of gold ..." He even descends into the basement and plays there, in the lightbulb's glare.
With the cracks widening and water beginning to pool, he plays through to the last line of that first verse, "Don't they know, on the judgement day, gold and silver, will melt away."
Ride report
in: 4'C wind 20 ks W
out: 13'C wind 30 ks W
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