House of Light and Dark

No one called him Carter. He was Mr. Cash, if anyone spoke to him, a rarity. When passed on Main Street, he didn’t even grunt a hello or nod. He had been a high school biology teacher, the kind who the students hated until they left his class – or even later, graduated – and realized they’d learned from him. About biology, and more importantly about life, how to carry oneself.

He didn’t repeat that hokey parental stuff students were used to. He rarely answered their questions, forcing them to search for answers themselves. He announced early in the school year, “I thought y’all wanted to get away from your parents. If so, stop grabbing my shirt tail as if I’m Daddy.” What set it apart from other teachers was the tone: his theory wasn’t open for discussion.

Once a young man raised his hand and asked if Mr. Cash’s job wasn’t to help them learn. Cash scowled. “Learn about what?” he asked. The kid, pimply and smirky, a weird earring in his left ear, responded about natural selection, DNA, photosynthesis, a long list of terms from the back of their textbook. “You’ll get there, with my help. Limited help, that is.” He stopped. He scratched his chin. He stared at the ceiling for a moment. The students hadn’t been in his class long enough to know that this was the moment when he went off the academic rail and onto the “yellow brick road,” as Mr. Cash called it, the road that went beyond the textbook, quizzes, labs, and exams. It stressed being on time, working hard, faking interest when one wasn’t, grinding through tough moments because as Cash said, “Life isn’t constant Jello wrestling. It rarely is. It’s boring, but to get to the Jello wrestling” – which pronounced rastling for their benefit – “you’ve got to slog.” His philosophy was to give students – young people (he never called them students first because they were so much more than that) – life straight and honest regardless of how that made them feel.

      Then one day it changed.

      His wife – a sweetheart of a woman but no kids, six miscarriages – got cancer and died quickly, less than two months – just after Thanksgiving. No one called her Mrs. Carter. She didn’t allow it. She was simple Sara June. Young and old alike. She’d been big on the Holiday Season, her term, her upper-case usage. She’d bought turkeys to distribute at Thanksgiving to the poor. She’d decorated the house, inside and out. She’d organized a neighborhood caroling group that traveled various neighborhoods three to four days a week. She told everyone that singing aloud and to strangers was uplifting for themselves, a way of giving that cost no money or the hassles of chasing down gifts at Walmart. She invited all the local children from Mt. Hebron South Elementary for cookies baking and eating. Children are the reason for children, she argued. As usual, she was right about everything.

         And then she was gone.

        He moped for a week, got through the funeral, missed only one day of teaching, the actual day of the funeral. He didn’t tell students during that week that they needed to search harder for answers. He just told them what page to go to. He knew he’d be sad for a long time, so he decided to act: he went to Walmart among the pushing and shoving, the rudeness and lack of sorrys and my bads and bought more than $1000 of lights and tacky decorations, including a full reindeer and Santa set for the roof. He took his pickup truck and covered it in Christmas tree lights, a plastic wreath on front grill and a nativity scene in the bed, complete with a black baby Jesus. If he was going to channel Sara Jane, he might as well stir the pot and add his own signature touch. None of those elegant boughs of greens lining the windows and railing up to the porch.

       The house’s interior was another story. Nothing. He left the five boxes of Christmas decorations – stockings, Norman Rockwell Christmas plates, seasonal hand towels for the bathroom, fake poinsettia across the living room mantel, in the attic. Mrs. Cash had asked him to get the boxes down because the last thing she was going to do before she died was decorate. Then, she’d been too ill to act, and he’d never brought them down.

     That was his compromise: an exterior monument to the memory of his wife and an interior denial that she was gone. Interestingly, his personality became the opposite: an external denial for his neighbors and students, and on-going internal screams of pain and heartache.

Once that first Christmas was over, he took down all the decorations, stored them in the garage where Mrs. Cash’s car used to be and waited for the next year. He added to his glitzy, tacky collection of Ho, Ho, Hoing that he did in his yard and on his house. By the third year of his wife’s death, his street from the Friday after Thanksgiving until January 6 was a parade of gawkers, staring at the house. His neighbors picked up the caroling tradition, but he didn’t participate. At first, after Mrs. Cash died, neighbors asked him to dinner.

One neighbor knocked on the door that next summer and asked if she could come in. Against his better judgment, he said yes, served her iced tea, and listened to her talk about Mt. Hebron. He’d taught two of her children, so she and he knew a number of the same people. Mainly, he was bored, but he had nothing better to do.

         Until . . . Linda, that’s what she asked Mr. Cash to call her (he didn’t tell her to call him Carter), mentioned a neighbor about five blocks away who was widowed. Okay, women’s husbands die, just like men’s wives die. But the tone of Linda’s comments wasn’t simply factual: they had ulterior motives. She might’ve even been suggesting that it was time to move on, find someone else, at least get out, date, and all that came with that.

   He wasn’t rude – he didn’t think he was – but he hurried the conversation along, didn’t offer her more tea when she’d finished her third glass, and finally said he had a tutoring session at the high school in 20 minutes. Not true. Anything to get her out of the house.

He was insulted. He’d honored his wife. He planned to always honor her. Yet, what he was doing wasn’t enough. For them. For others. He couldn’t grieve; he had to grieve in a way that suited them, whoever “them” was. That’s when he decided to become even hard-edged, for 11 months of the year. The only way to make sure Linda, or anyone else who might be interested in sticking their nose in his business, away was to make sure everyone, from the 10-year-old kids who rode their bikes all day around the neighborhood, hooting and hollering as only pre-teens can do, to his 84-year-old retired doctor next door neighbor, Dr. Zack Perry, didn’t show up uninvited, even if it was to borrow a cup of sugar. No one, except from Thanksgiving to after Christmas, was to be near him, around him, even acknowledge him outside of school.

And that’s how his life went: each year was four seasons long: summer when he was home alone, not to be bothered about anything; September through Thanksgiving when he went to school to teach and home alone, unbothered; the Holiday Season, and January through May, his life repeating as it did before the Holiday Season.

Pretty simple, it seemed to him: for about six weeks, he didn’t come out of his house to shoe people away, to ask them to get out of his yard lawn. If they were repeat offenders, he didn’t ask nicely; he yelled at them. He knew he had a reputation around Mt. Hebron because Halloween seemed open season on his house. It’d been egged at least twice and doughnuted once. When he did appear in town outside of school like at the grocery store – people must eat, you know – or at Joe’s Barber Shop every two months, conversations stopped, people stared quickly and then glanced down at their shoe tops.

And just as Sara June’s death had suddenly changed his life, but not as drastically as everyone through because he always had the propensity towards Scrooge-like behavior regardless of the time of the year, another unlikely event again changed his life.

She was nine and named Stephanie. She didn’t really know her father, but she’d watched him be emotional abusive (she didn’t know the term but understood what it did) to her mother. Stephanie knew grumpy. She understood behavior beyond that, and now that her father was out of the picture and her life better, she wasn’t going to stand for anything that looked like her father.

On Halloween night, trick or treating with her mother dressed as Wayne and Garth from Wayne’s World, they were almost done for the night when they passed Mr. Cash’s house.

“You know, Steph, he was my biology teacher.”

“Who?” Her bag of candy was just above the ground. The deal Stephanie and her mom worked out was that Steph could trick or treat as long as she wanted, but Mom wasn’t going to carry her bag.

“The man who lives in that house.”

“The dark one?” Erin nodded. “Why is it dark?” Erin shook her head. “Isn’t he the man with all the Christmas decorations?” Erin nodded. “What’s he look like?” Erin shrugged.

“Nice man, but things have happened in his life. He’s a grump. You know?” She left unsaid, kind of like your father.

“I don’t know.” Stephanie put her bag of candy on the sidewalk next to a dogwood tree and marched up the sidewalk toward the darkened porch.

“Where do you think you’re going?” Erin hissed, stuck to the sidewalk.

“To talk to him. He needs a friend.” It was hard to argue with Steph’s logic, but Erin understood a man’s right to privacy. She also understood her daughter’s belief that Halloween had different rights and expectations.

Erin didn’t follow. Nothing physically bad could happen. Emotionally, what more could Stephanie endure that she hadn’t already dealt with from her absentee and abusive father?

Stephanie stood tall on the porch, her blonde wig askew, just like Garth. She figured Mr. Cash, if he came to the door, wouldn’t know or care who Steph was.

The porch light came on. The door opened a crack. Erin couldn’t see Mr. Cash, but the door creaked. Then, it opened wider. The hall light wasn’t on, so there was only a silhouette. She couldn’t hear what was said, but there was a deep male voice, muffled and then Steph’s, squeaky and tender. The dialogue was interrupted by a laugh, male, followed by a kid’s twittering. The conversation continued until a hand came out of the cracked door, and Stephanie took it, shaking it vigorously.

“Remember,” she said, over her shoulder as she strolled back down the walk towards her mother. The lit hand made the ok sign just before the door shut.

Stephanie said nothing on the short walk home. She didn’t ask to stop at any other houses. She smiled, one of those smiles that are hard to erase. As her mom was putting her to bed, she knew she shouldn’t ask but couldn’t stop herself: “So what did you and Mr. Cash talk about?” Her tone was casual, no different than she might ask what books Steph wanted to hear that night.

“You’ll find out. Not right away. Soon, though. You’re right. He’s a bit gruff but underneath he’s really a teddy bear,” Stephanie said as she hugged her own teddy bear dressed as an aviator.

So, that’s how it was left. Erin didn’t bring it up again. Occasionally she thought about that Halloween evening and decided that nothing really happened. So be it.

Until . . .

It was mid-December. It was late afternoon on a Saturday. Erin was in the den reading a magazine. Stephanie was in her room, reading a Nancy Drew or playing with her Barbies. She’d dashed off earlier, not asking if her mom wanted to join her. That was unusual. Steph was pretty good with entertaining herself, but she had more pizzaz in her step today.

There was a knock on the door. Erin wasn’t expecting anyone. Probably the Salvation Army or the evangelicals coming to convince her that she was going to hell because she didn’t make Stephanie go to church every Sunday.

At the door was Mr. Cash, holding a Piggly Wiggly grocery bag. The temperature was mild, but he was dressed as if it was acting like real winter.

“Sorry to bother you,” he said, “but I have a date with your daughter.” He didn’t smile, but he wasn’t frowning either.

“Mr. Cash, so good to see you.” Her enthusiasm felt forced. “A date? With Stephanie?”

“The one and only. We’re going to bake cookies today. Didn’t she tell you?”

Erin shook her head and opened the door wide. “No, but she has been a different today. I guess I now know why.” Mr. Cash hesitated and then crossed into the foyer. Erin offered to take his coat, but he refused. “She’s a clever one,” Erin said, leading him to the kitchen. “I’m not sure when she organized this.”

         “If you don’t approve” –

         “Gosh, no, I’m all in favor of children leading their own lives. Particularly an only child who I think sometimes sees me too much as a playmate than her mother. I’m just curious.” She then realized when it’d happened. Right in front of her eyes. And Stephanie’d kept the secret for more than six weeks. “Wow, what a wonderful gesture,” Erin said as Mr. Cash pulled a cookie tray, a roll of Pillsbury sugar cookie mix, and three spice jars of colored sugars.

         He shrugged as she watched. “The best I could do.”

         Erin almost cried. It was better then “the best.” It was awesome, every synonym for stupendous and great and whatever. “I’ll go get her.”

         A minute later, Steph arrived on socked feet, sliding across the floor to the island opposite Mr. Cash. “You remembered,” she gushed. “Cookies.” Her face was flush.

         “It’s only store bought,” Cash said.

         “Who cares?. You’re here, and we’re going to continue the tradition.” Stephanie sounded like his wife, just in a higher pitch.

         As he cut up the tube and Stephanie laid the quartered chunks on the greased cookie sheet, he thought about those six miscarriages, the sudden death of his wife, and all that he’d missed because he’d been too caught up in his misery instead of finding a way out of it. Thanks to a nine-year-old, he was free.

         As they worked and waited 10 minutes for the cookies to cook, Stephanie sat on a stool near the oven watching the inside of it, waiting, quiet. Erin and Mr. Cash talked about when she took the class, her ex-husband, and his memories of that class and the two of them. His facial tics said it all, but whatever judgments he had, he kept to himself.

         The timer rang. Stephanie hopped up, grabbed the oven mitt, brought the tin out, 16 cookies a golden brown, unsugared for now. Cash handed the three jars to her. She offered them back.

         “No, this is your project. You do it. You decide. Watching you so happy is enough for me.”

         He glanced at Erin and they both smiled, their eyes a bit teary. Erin’s countenance said it was a secret she would keep.

         “And next year,” Cash said to Stephanie as he took a bit, “why don’t we invite a few of your friends. I’ll get real ingredients and we’ll make them from scrat -”

         “Mr. Cash, you don’t have to do that,” Erin interrupted quickly.

         Because her mouth was full, Stephanie only smiled and nodded.

         “And,” Cash said, pointing his once-bitten cookie at Erin, “you, please call me Carter.”

The End