Ironrite

by Kirk Combe

The boy’s wrapped himself up in the glass curtains. Resembling a giant cocoon, he dangles in that tight gap behind the living room couch, between it and the big front picture window. He’s wondering why they call these curtains “glass.” They’re not made of glass. They’re made of some kind of scratchy and stiff white cloth that’s lacey and see-through. Even when the real drapes are open, these are always drawn across the picture window, making it hard to see outside. The boy leans forward now and presses his nose against the double glass thickness of the front picture window. That actual glass isn’t too cold against the tip of his nose, although he knows the outside layer of glass would be very cold. A powdery dust smell, from the “glass” curtains, fills his nostrils. Outside is his front yard, hazy and brighter-looking through these strange curtains. Beyond that is his street, empty of anybody or anything, as usual for this time of morning. Beyond that, all around them, really, is the place he lives called Pocatello. He really doesn’t know much about Pocatello yet. Brown mountains are on two sides of it. It smells good in summer whenever it starts to rain and in winter just when it starts to snow. So far, the most interesting thing looks to be the railroad yards. Whenever his family drives across the long viaduct, he gazes down on them from his backseat window. The tracks run everywhere and are all crisscrossed like spaghetti. They stretch out of sight in both directions. Maybe they never end.

The boy’s waiting for a cup of hot chocolate that’s getting made for him. His father is away at work, like every day but Sunday, and his brother is off at Kindergarten, which is new this year. Next year the boy will be going off to school himself. He knows he’s supposed to be excited about that. But he’s not. He likes that he and his mother have the house to themselves all day long now. He likes that it’s just the two of them. Dad tells him you’ll like school, Sluggo, you’ll see. It’ll be fun. Getting called Sluggo is fun. He doesn’t see how school can live up to that. He focuses his eyes harder to see through the curtains. Cypress Street, his street, is wide with high curbs and deep gutters, perfect for building dams after thunderstorms. All the houses along it are low and made out of bricks. Brick shithouses, his father likes to say, when his mother can’t hear him. Most families keep their yards really nice. Lots of bushes and flowerbeds. A house or two don’t look so nice. Like right next door to them lives an old man named Oly. Old Man Oly, all the kids call him. Old Man Oly never mows his lawn. Not once all summer long. Around the neighborhood it’s known as a disgrace. Kids even say that, but the boy can tell they’re just saying what their parents say. He’s only ever once or twice caught a glimpse of Old Man Oly. He just looks bone-skinny and stooped over and like he’s really sad. It doesn’t bother the boy that the grass next door gets weedy and high. Compared to all the rest of the yards, it’s a little exciting.

The noon whistle at the train yards hasn’t blown yet, telling the whole town, the boy figures, that it’s time to eat lunch. He’s been out playing in the backyard since breakfast. The cold only forced him back in a little bit ago. The raspberries off their bushes are long gone by now. So are the apricots off their one apricot tree. He likes the raspberries best. They turn his Rice Krispies red. His mother likes the apricots. When you bite into an apricot you’ve just picked off the tree, he does have to admit it tastes warm and sweet and soft, kind of like summer feels. But now the cold is coming on. The serious cold. The sky filling the big picture window is stark and blue with cold. He’s looking forward to playing in the snow when that starts falling.

Hands are on his shoulders, urgently unwinding him from the curtains.

“Come on, Sugar,” his mother whispers.

Those same hands steer him away from the living room, through the kitchen quickly, pushing him toward the laundry room at the back of the house. As they hurry the doorbell rings. His mother’s fingers dig into him, making him cringe. But he knows not to make a sound. He knows his mother will realize to loosen her grip and then whisper an apology to him. She does both the second they make it safely into the laundry room. As is their routine, she also crouches them down beside the Ironrite, on the side away from the window. The machine radiates a welcome heat. It’s idling on pause, humming to itself like a contended beast. It feels good to be near it. The boy rests his cheek against its clean and warm white enamel siding. His mother widens her eyes and puts a finger up to her lips. Her mime for them to be still and quiet. She whispers to him what she always whispers to him.

“Door-to-door salesman.”

The boy widens his own eyes and nods back. He wants to reassure her that he knows what’s at stake. That he won’t let her down. The truth is, though, that he has no idea what’s at stake. He doesn’t know why they hide like this a few times a week, sometimes twice the same day. He doesn’t understand what a door-to-door salesman is or what a door-to-door salesman might do to them if they were to make the mistake of opening their front door. Every time his mother whispers that name to him, she says it like that name explains everything. So the boy just nods back.

The doorbell rings again.

A few times, after it’s over, he’s run back quick to the front window to catch a glimpse of their backs after they’ve given up and moved on to the house next door. These men wear dark suits and porkpie hats. They carry black attaché cases. They look busy. They walk like they’re angry. Like they want into all the houses — but that nobody wants to let them in. They look like they’re the Big Bad Wolves. Sometimes the boy worries about Old Man Oly. What if poor Old Man Oly opens up his front door one time by mistake?

The doorbell rings again.

Then again.

Then the storm door gets tugged open.

Firm knocking starts on the front door itself. Not a nice “Is there anyone home?” but a rough “I know you’re in there!” His mother tightens her grip on his arm. The knocking turns into thumping. It’s now that the boy always hopes his mother remembered to lock the front door. Luckily, she always does. This is the moment, too, when the boy forces himself to glance up at his mother’s face. She’s never looking specifically at anything. Instead, she’s listening to the house. Alert for clues of where the door-to-door salesman might be. She’s not fake scared, like on television when some lady’s running away from a werewolf or a mummy. She’s real scared. Like he knows he’ll be when they make him go to school.

The knocking stops.

His mother cups his chin in her palm and meets their eyes.

“Okay now,” she whispers. “Here comes the really bad part.”

There’s a bad quiet in the house. Not a safe stillness where you know everything’s okay. But a long and getting longer silence where you know something mean is about to happen. Then all of a sudden a shadow is on the laundry room window. The outline of a porkpie hat. A hand blocking the hard sun. The blur of a face trying to peer inside. She’s trained him not to flinch at this moment. If they don’t move, if they stay brave and keep perfectly still, the glare will be too much for the door-to-door salesman to see in. Only their sudden movement will give them away. Second after second after second after second the shadow looms. Lucky there’s only this one that does this.

There’s a muffled voice outside:

“God damn it!”

Then just as suddenly the shadow is gone.

“Wait some more,” his mother keeps holding him down, “just to be sure.”

The boy isn’t about to twitch until he sees his mother’s face go back to normal. That takes another few minutes. Finally his mother stands up and straightens her housedress and apron and steals into the living room to peek through the glass curtains out the big front picture window. When she comes back she’s smiling. His mother is very, very pretty. She asks brightly:

“You want that cup of cocoa now, Sugar?”

The laundry room is warm and solid. Their sanctuary. The boy shakes his head no thank-you. He’ll sit beside the Ironrite for a while. His mother gets back to working the big machine. Underneath it, one knee lever makes the padded drum lower and rotate. That rolls the clothes under to press. Another knee lever makes that drum lift and stop. Just like in a spaceship, there’s a control panel on the front with some big black toggles that clack when you flip them and three glowing indicator lights. One is red, another one’s amber, and the last one is green. When it’s rolling the Ironrite creaks and whirrs. When it’s idling it roasts and purrs. The Ironrite is by far the boy’s favorite contraption in the house.

“Mother?”

“Yes, Sugar?”

“Did you really ask Santa Claus for this?”

“For what, dear?”

“For this.”

The boy pats the side of the Ironrite. It makes hollow drum thumps.

“For this ironing machine?” his mother says. “Is that what you mean, Sugar?”

“Dad says you asked Santa for it for last Christmas. Because you really, really wanted one. Did you?”

His mother continues her ironing.

“Dad told you that I asked Santa for an Ironrite?”

“Yeah. But because he knew Santa couldn’t fit one down the chimney, Dad says he bought one for you himself, even if it did cost a lot of money, because he knew you really, really wanted one. He said he knew it would make things easier for you.”

“Make things easier for me,” she repeats. She seems to think this over. “He told you that, Sugar?”

“Yeah.”

His mother’s left knee pushes outward on the pause lever. She folds what’s just been pressed and arranges it on top of a neat stack. She doesn’t reach down into the big wicker basket on the floor to pick out something new to iron.

“My word,” she says. “What an interesting thing for Dad to be telling you.”

Then she sits. Just sits. Somehow, the calm humming of the warm machine gets louder and louder. The boy also starts thinking about lunch. How he’ll help his mother make hot dogs with potato chips. How he’ll pour himself a tall glass of cold white milk. How the hot dogs will have bright yellow mustard on them.

“Well did you, Mother?”

His mother almost frowns. She won’t look back at him.

“Ask for this?” she asks, assessing the Ironrite in front of her.

“Yeah.”

She reaches down and brings up a large pair of BVD skivvies. Her fingernails are perfectly oval and polished fire engine red. She positions the skivvies on the ironing deck and, with her right knee, reengages the rotary drum.

“Don’t be silly, Sugar. No. Why on earth would anybody ask for this?”

Well after lunch, in the mid afternoon when everything gets so quiet, the boy suddenly feels like he’s alone in the house. The sensation always comes abruptly, like when his stomach growls or when for some reason the hair stands up on the back of his neck. He comes out of his room and down the hallway. The living room is still. He checks in the kitchen, nothing, and then back into the laundry room, which is empty but still warm. The boy knows now to retrace his steps. All the way back down the hallway, past his and his brother’s room, past the bathroom, all the way to the end to their room. Mother and Dad’s. Their door is open a crack. He sidles in barely opening it more. She’s lying on top of their made bed. Curled in a ball with her back to their door. Her head is not on any of their pillows. He doesn’t know why she hides like this a few times a week. She still has on her apron over her housedress. Her housedresses always are flowered, yellows and pinks, and feel silky whenever they brush his cheek. She’s crying. He comes over to their bed and stands hardly leaning against it. Just so she knows he’s there.

Originally published in Millwork, Issue 3 in August 2018.

You can find more about the author at https://sites.google.com/a/denison.edu/kirk-combe/home