Spring 2015
THE HOUSE AT THE TOP OF THE HILL
by BD Feil
“Let me put it this way.” Isaac Stritch pauses for the inevitable interruption from the other end of
the telephone. But he only hears his daughter’s held breath in the earpiece. Or could it be his breath?
Regardless, such a standoff could go on all day. He continues. “If there is a party, I will not come.”
Finally, his daughter speaks and all at once, the words tumbling out like an overturned basket of
toys. If he remembers correctly (and he always does in matters of history) this was distinctly her way. A
mess without order or thought and her sitting in the middle of it. What is she now? in her 20s? or is it
30s? 40s?
“Well, of course it’s a party, Daddy. It’s your birthday. Of course it’s a party. What else would we
have on your birthday? Why come over if we’re not going to celebrate?”
“Why, indeed?”
Isaac Stritch hangs up the telephone. Gently. So as not to abuse the instrument. Gently. Only an
inanimate object and undeserving of violence or misplaced blame. Gently. Without the rampant anger
one so often observes in contemporary life. Just this morning he noticed a man at a gas station cursing
a pump handle. Another kick a mower that would not start. A child repeatedly slam a screen door in a
pique at his mother. These all observed on one morning walk.
And this walk not even long enough to be called a modest trek. This walk what Patricia liked to term
a quickie.
Care for a quickie, luv?
She would bubble forth and wriggle her eyebrows and off they would go at that brisk pace she
favored — down the hill and in toward downtown where they took in as much and as many as possible —
before turning and climbing back up the hill to their street and to their house at the top of the hill.
Now, alone, he prefers the quieter, slower, more sylvan strolls. Happy if he passes no one, sees no one,
hears no one. Again, the telephone rings. But here is where the advantages of not carrying a cellphone
are obvious. He has foreseen it all and has turned and headed out the side door. On it rings as he lets
the screen fall back into its frame. Gently. He walks down the slate steps and around the slate path to
the back, pausing to pinch a couple weeds from between the stones. Deliberately. The ringing fades.
His eldest daughter is a thick one. Susan. Possibly the thickest of his four daughters (saying a lot,
considering the middle two). Susan. Not one to heed an outright refusal, let alone a hint. He pauses
with his hand on the wooden latch of the garden shed and waits long enough until he hears nothing
or thinks he hears nothing. Satisfied, he enters and gathers his tools. If the telephone rings again he
will not notice. This is the plan, formed last night in bed before his pills took effect. To putter around
the better part of the day. To move some stones. To do some weeding in Patricia’s herb garden. To
maintain it as hers. Even to plan further upon it. New plantings. New trellises. Even tinker with expansion.
A moving outward of its rock wall boundaries. But by all means, to ignore the telephone. Patricia is
gone but he continues on. Things roll on. The herb garden goes on. It makes him feel closer to her.
The Linnet's Wings