The Crimson House Across Applewood

Margaret Adams lived in the green townhouse on Applewood Lane in Clovis, California for what was her entire life. Sunlight would curiously peek through the oak trees in the young morning to wake her old heavy head that rested on the same cotton pillow her late grandmother tethered together in her youth. Her view of the distant Sierras was muddled with autumn’s oncoming fog, as November bled in the dwindling burn of an autumn bonfire from the night before. But outside her home was the new house labeled “in construction” across the street. After six months of being empty and renovated, it was now finished, and all that was left to complete was the new family’s move-in. 

Unfortunately, the prolonged orchestra of old power drills and sledgehammers manifested in Margaret’s indefinitely-aggravated demeanor, scattered about her weathered body. You would think one would simply tolerate the urban sprawl of a growing population with ease – that as an elderly woman living alone in a small suburban town in the middle of California, she would enjoy the company of a family settling down. But with her eyebrows knitted together on mornings like these, Margaret would slowly stagger to the front porch, clenching her ivory mug that ruminated in the aroma of Colombian espresso, to carefully sit with a grunt and discontentedly exhale with an overwhelming expression of nothingness. 

Her son once called it “Meg’s Glare.” One blank, cold stare that he, and many others, received for their wrongs. Margaret did so for hours towards the house across the street, as though her eyes could eradicate its entire foundation. It was like laser-beams could zap from her emerald irises with judgmental force capable of engulfing the residence in the deserved flames of her disturbed privacy. The neighborhood ought to be kept how it was, she thought, and somehow, extensively glaring into the home’s fresh wood and stainless windows with her morning joe kept her from vandalizing it herself; for nothing made her more furious than the wicked shade of crimson they chose to paint its exterior. 

Margaret lost her appreciation for such bold color long ago. A painter herself, Margaret yearned to venture into the 1960s renaissance of modern art. Starstrucken by works from Warhol to Judd to LeWitt, Margaret once felt that could not help but escape the Central Valley and “make it big” too. Maybe she could move to New York City, where the subway grime and leaking exhaust of taxi cabs smelt more decadent with passion than the twig and twine of empty orchards entrenched in her family line. Maybe she could actually fit in, where overpriced and undersized apartments embellished themselves in the same urban charisma of some distant East Coast dive bar. Where she could kick up her feet as high as the surrounding skyscrapers with a few friends or start the family she always wanted far away from where she began. 

But today, she sits, desperately reminiscing about what could have been, as if the pale hues painted in the splotchy cumulus clouds above could only be achieved by Turner or Cézanne – never her, for her time was up. Her artistic inspiration felt excavated, as her husband Thomas’ death from cancer and her son’s inevitable coming-of-age tale were long told. Years of waiting for her break in countless local shows and expositions, laid over into more years of waiting whilst raising her only son. She already spun the webs of her wondrous despair to become the artist of her dreams in her verdant home since she can remember, yet never caught the prey as the widow of her greatest aspirations. Now she sits stuck in a pit of income earned from her day job owning the town’s bookstore, looking at that red house positioned across from her and her aching cynicism. 

She once enjoyed the loneliness and its absent pressures of judgment for who she had become with age. But with a new neighbor, Margaret was no longer alone in that comfortable sense of seclusion on Applewood Lane. Now, she had an audience moving in to watch the failures of her artistic dreams, and visible was her doorstep where she sat with her cup of cooling coffee. All she had in front of her was the painful sight of someone else’s fresh beginning, eating at her soul like a caterpillar does to an already-weakened leaf – slowly but surely tearing her apart with each joyous moment they spent together as she watched, helplessly alone.

Margaret would tend to her bookstore to keep her distracted from her self-deprecation. She now found great pleasure in admiring works of art rather than creating them, as she confided in reading literature and never again painting. It reminded her of her Thomas, who was a writer for both the local newspaper and his own novels. They never got very far statistically, but he made enough to put his son Teddy through college. Thomas named him after Louisa May Alcott’s character of Theodore Laurence in Little Women, even though Margaret never finished the novel. But Thomas once explained that Laurie’s devotion to others seemed to be a trait they would endorse in this little family they were creating in California suburbia, and their son would be named after him. And what devotion he expressed! Teddy grew into a fine man, now aged 48, full of such ambition, but at times not for good reason. He began to love money and its several luxuries rather than utilities. This troubled Margaret deeply, as she lost connection with him gradually as Thomas passed away. Since then, whenever any issue seemed to come, one knew to find the old lady at her bookstore on Pollasky Ave.

One afternoon, when Margaret arrived home from reorganizing the historical fiction section all day, it had not occurred to her that the family in the hideous, crimson house was finished moving in, until she slammed on the brakes of her old sedan out of a sudden shock of fear. A red sphere had jumped out at her windshield as she turned the corner, bouncing off of the hood with a loud thud. 

“What was that?” exclaimed Margaret to herself in a panic. Her face began to flush in the embarrassment, for the crimson house’s garage was wide open. She was sure there were spectators. That was, until her embarrassment turned into anger, as two school-age boys stood in the front lawn, frozen. Their guilt was as clear as the glass window she peered out of, only this window was now smudged with a large circular spot of dirt. Her spectators were now suspects. 

Margaret, in the middle of the street, put the car in “park”. The two boys exchanged a worried glance, as the older sister sat on a lawn chair, reading. 

“You’ve done it now,” the girl said, as her orange hair and green eyes glistened in the afternoon rays. 

Margaret opened the console of her car and grabbed a pair of scissors. She took a breath and prepared to make her seniority known to the two young boys who seemed in demand for a reality check, though they were merely just playing in their yard. 

Margaret stepped out, walking speedily for her age. Laying in the gutter was the weapon of choice; a red rubber ball, kicked and accidentally striking her moving vehicle in consequence of their deadly game. The boys cowered, stepping back on their lawn as the young girl looked up from her book. Margaret then plunged her scissors into the ball with a grimace of disappointment smeared across her wrinkled mug. Her long gray hair hid parts of her angered eyes, momentarily proud of her actions whilst saying to the children “No balls.” Margaret may have missed her shot at coming off threateningly, glaring the crimson house in its shuttered eyes as the young boys failed to hold in their laughter. They proceeded to apologize as Margaret turned her focus to the young girl, sitting with a smirk.

“You in charge of these two?” Margaret asked her. 

“Not willingly, but by age. Sort of the servitude I’m born into,” the tangerine-headed girl responded. Margaret’s frown seemed to slowly pinch, until she caught herself intrigued with this young one’s obvious spunk and dryness.

“I see. Welcome to the neighborho-” By the time Margaret finished her words in the middle of the street as her car ran, she realized what she had done. Her feet shook beneath her knees, as she looked at the flattened ball, then at the keys locked in the ignition of her Subaru sedan. The children were no longer suspects, but rather her feared audience at a comedy show she called the clumsiness of her own jealousy. Her “Meg’s Glare” became a raised expression of apprehension, like the animated faces you see in old cartoons – Mickey Mouse’s raised eyebrows if he realized he lost Pluto on a walk. The young girl caught on to a locked-out Margaret.

“Forgot something?” she laughed, getting up from her lawn chair and putting her copy of Little Women on the floor. Margaret then knew the type of 12-year-old she was dealing with.

“You know, when I was your age, my mother wouldn’t let me read that book because she said it would make me too bold and independent. Perhaps she was right, considering how you respect your elders,” Margaret replied to the girl’s evident approach at patronizing the old woman. But Margaret set herself up as the red house watched.

“And when I am your age, I will be sure to not have a green, germ-looking house like yours. It is a fright, afterall, and I wouldn’t like to see myself resort to such a shack after ruining the fun of us innocent kids,” the girl answered with a smug grin on her pale face.

Margaret felt her face dampen with a single tear, as her eyebrows knitted into a state of utmost disapproval. Her mouth was left ajar like the front door of the crimson house now was, as the mother of the children walked out. 

“What’s wrong with Miss Adams, children? Why is she crying? What did you do?” asked the blonde, stern mother. The girl now looked frightened and surprised at her mother’s sudden appearance.

“Nothing, Miss. The kids were only…being kids,” Margaret replied, sniffing her nose. 

“I see. My little Jo must have run her mouth. No more of that book. Go to your room and leave your phone on the counter,” announced the mother, more so to the girl, but really to all of the children who looked up from their wide eyes with such irascible infidelity. “I really am sorry, dear. These children today surely have a lot to say, and I’d be glad to blame it on that phone they carry everywhere. Always an opinion.”

“Well, surely it isn’t that bad to have an opinion, Mrs. – ?” answered Margaret, looking for an answer and then glancing back at her locked, running car, examining what an opinion had just done to her.

“Mrs. Davis. But you can call me Christina. I work at the school on Fowler and Barstow, and Steve is a tow truck driver. We work and keep busy, like a lot of others around here. We’re moving in from the Academy area, over in the countryside. It was too much to handle out there. Always something to fix” said Mrs. Davis, earnestly and politely. 

“I’ve never lived out there. I’ve lived here my whole life,” Margaret said, pointing to the green townhouse.

“Why, it’s so charming! I love the color,” answered Christina, though Margaret picked up on the falsity of her smile and tone of forced amiability.

“You don’t have to lie. Your child’s critiques must come from somewhere,” the old woman confessed. Christina blinked in confusion, then understood. She looked down at the flat ball, then saw the running car, and then the empty chair where comments were made and opinions were uncontrolled. Whatever it was, Christina wasn’t going to have it. 

“Miss Adams, my husband will be home to deal with that shortly,” Christina said, pointing to the locked, running car. “Please, come inside and let us fix you some dinner. It would be our pleasure and an apology for our rudeness.”

Margaret halted, looking the house up and down like it were some mouse-trap waiting for the moment to snap her spine and crush whatever stubbornness lay inside her cynical self. But Margaret had no way in her own home, and couldn’t bear the oncoming frigidity of winter's dry winds. So she agreed. 

Margaret stepped in, looking at that crimson shade one last time whilst gritting her teeth and shaking her head, until she stopped in the doorway, examining the opening walk-way’s interior. The wooden banisters peeled around in the center of the entryway, and the kitchen sat at an angle perpendicular to the living room. The dining room faced the backyard, with a breakfast nook and three windows to supplement a natural glow to the granite countertops that reflected the faces of boys now hurriedly coloring at their placemats. Margaret remembered all of these details because it was what was in her house. Entirely identical, except this one had sons that smiled mischievously at one another and a mother that softly rested her hand on Margaret’s shoulder. This one had people that let Margaret into their web without grievance, after she just contemplated having an afternoon tea on the porch to mentally condemn the cruelty of its exterior. 

Slowly, Margaret began to feel a smile accidentally stretching on her weathered, warm face, though she tried to hide it. It felt like she was entertaining guests due to the house’s similarities to her own, only it was that dreadful crimson one. But oddly, it began to grow on her.

“Can I see the upper story?” Margaret asked, after slowly touring the bottom floor with hidden awe at what can lay within the ugliest of things. 

“Of course you may,” Christina responded, helping her up each step with a hand on her elbow.

Margaret toured the halls, looking for the girl’s bedroom, until she found it and immediately knew, for the interior was the only room painted in that same crimson shade. 

“May I go in?” Margaret asked.

“Yes, but be aware. She can be…a lot,” said Christina, slightly chuckling while rubbing her forehead.

“Likewise,” replied Margaret, finally grinning for the first time in what felt like decades. 

Margaret walked inside, slowly, taking one step at a time to see each movie poster plastered on the bedroom walls. The crimson shined repulsively, yet perfectly complemented the face that turned to address Margaret.

“I see you chose your house’s red,” Margaret commented, as the girl redirected her attention out the window, sitting on her bed. 

“How did you know?” she answered. “Is it my bold spirit?” 

“No, no, dear, please. I only know how family’s work when there is a personality that stands out from the rest. And yours, my dear, is…striking I must admit.”

“I want to make films. I have to be striking or else my vision will never be seen,” the young girl said, with such sophisticated language that it only served to show Margaret the girl’s deepest insecurities on what her future entailed. Margaret changed the subject.

“You know what happens at the end of Little Women?” asked Margaret, puzzling the young girl.

“Of course, I do. It’s an American classic. I’m just re-reading it to analyze. I want to make a movie like it one day, wouldn’t that be amazing?” 

“That would be, though I’ve never finished it. I’m over seventy years old and I still don’t know what happens between Laurie and Jo. If they ever find what they were meant to do, and if they ever realize they shouldn’t force themselves into something they aren’t compatible for,” Margaret explained, somehow finding herself in the story. “But it’s okay to not know old tales. I don’t know you dear, but I suppose that is where the two of us might be neighborly to each other. We both have an ambition to be someone, yet we do not even know ourselves. You’re young and I’m old. Yet we still have those castles in the sky. Just don’t grow up too fast. You’ll miss all the balls you kick in your elderly neighbor’s windshield!” said Margaret, reassuringly. 

“Okay,” the girl said while laughing a bit, finding a friend in the soft emerald eyes that once glared from afar, now sitting on the girl’s bed and joyfully gazing at her green home out the window from the other side. Just a simple affirmation from the girl she saw much of herself in, and Margaret felt like her job was done – to tell someone else to stop the high standards of themselves at such a young age, and rather accept who they were in the moment. 

That November afternoon was the first time Margaret truly saw herself, after entering the Davis residence on Applewood Lane instead of inspecting its many imperfections. Telling someone else that they were more than their ambition helped Margaret finally understand the beauty of living in the same green house for so long. She began to admire the wickedly crimson shade across the way each morning with her coffee, smiling and no longer glaring. She watched that young Jo grow up across the street while sitting like Miss March herself. Until one day, Margaret finally worked up the courage. She picked up a canvas and painted a portrait of that crimson house. She didn’t need New York or some “big break”. She didn’t need to go anywhere to be who she was. She had Clovis and a story to paint right in front of her. All Margaret needed was to walk in.