70. 10 Hobson Avenue
I had a dream. It was weeks ago, but the event was so vivid that it pushed some emotional buttons. I knew I wouldn’t be able to let any of it go without writing about it. That’s how I’ve come to think about this ‘life passing before me in little snippets’ thing that’s been going on. I feel as though there’s some work for me to do on the stuff that rises to the top. There is absolutely no question that there’s something — someone who keeps rising and I know there’s work to do, so here we go.
Ruth Hannah Lyle Thomas Duquette
I introduced my grandmother Meme to you in a previous blog, but let’s do a little recap.
The family of four lived along the shore of the Bay of Fundy, a body of water between the mainland of Canada and the peninsula of Nova Scotia. The family was young and beginning to settle in for the long-haul, and then their lives were changed, forever. Clark Robin Thomas, a tall, strapping, red haired, bearded fisherman died hundreds of miles away from the waters surrounding his homestead. A good provider for his lot, Clark fished the coast of Canada three seasons of the year, then headed to Massachusetts during the coldest and most brutal months to work as a ship hand for a wealthy Worcester industrialist. I’m not sure how the connection between the two men came about, but each year Clark Thomas would leave his family behind and head to the States for a few months — it was in Worcester that he became ill with pneumonia and died.
It is said his widow, my grandmother, Ruth, went temporarily blind from the shock of the news. Within a matter of weeks, the body of Clark Robin Thomas was escorted back to Nova Scotia by an employee of the Worcester industrialist. A handful of years later, the employee, Tom Duquette, married the young Canadian widow and moved her and her two children to the States, to live in the home that would one day become my childhood home.
I always wondered how Tom Duquette came to have a relationship with the Widow Thomas. I mean long-distance dalliances weren’t an easy thing back then and if a couple tried to make a go of that type of relationship, then they were most likely an already established couple being separated for good cause. I could be wrong, but ‘coupling’ across an ocean during the 1940s seems a bit problematic, what with that pesky War and all.
Letters.
I long ago decided the relationship between the very young widow and the very not so young man had to have been the byproduct of letter writing. Perhaps Tom Duquette was told by his boss to keep the lines of communication open. Perhaps Tom blended business with pleasure. Perhaps he made an offer that was ‘just too good’ for the widow to reject.
Perhaps I should ask my mother — but where’s the fun in that?
Whatever the case may be, Ruth Hannah Lyle Thomas became Tom Duquette’s second wife. From what I’ve heard, the marriage wasn’t anything to write home about, so I suspect my grandmother didn’t write to the man who nicknamed my mother, Tiddlywinks. I’m sure Grampa Lyle didn’t know what life in America was like for his daughter and grandkids.
White picket fences.
No one ever knows what goes on inside homes that sit behind white picket fences. Shit most people who live in the homes don’t even know what goes on — let alone what went on. This is what I know or think I know about my grandmother’s early life in America. It didn’t quite measure up to the American Dream or any dream, really.
Ruth Duquette put a roof over the heads of her children. What it cost her is anyone’s guess — what it revealed about Tom Duquette is a whole bunch of unflattering things, to say the least. When I was of age, I learned Tom Duquette did not die in his bed at 10 Hobson Avenue in 1963, he died ‘elsewhere’. His tawdry death became the catalyst for my family’s move from Maywood Street to Hobson Avenue. A stone’s throw from one another — still worlds apart.
The blending of two families and three generations under one roof has its challenges.
If the adults in the room had issues with the living arrangements the children never knew about them. My father spent long hours out of the home — I readily admit I was in the camp who liked it that way. There are things I liked about my father — first, he was very good looking, had a wonderful, quick wit, and was as good a provider as any high school graduate could claim. For me, that’s it — that’s the be all and end all of praise.
Living at 10 Hobson Avenue afforded the Sneade family an uptick in status over the third-floor walkup we moved from. As with most things in life, there’s always a price to pay. For the man who came from very meager beginnings, having his family live in the ‘handyman special’ at the end of a quiet little road in a really cute neighborhood was important enough for him to keep any negative thoughts to himself. At the very least, he kept them from Meme.
From where I sat — between the two at the supper table — things were always cordial, respectful, even. When there was tension between Mr. and Mrs. Sneade, the mister and the Meme rose above it and shared after-dinner tea, or the occasional highball. They got on well because they didn’t push into one another’s business.
The ‘business’ of Meme came down to this — she owned the home we lived in, but she never seemed to make that an issue. Rather, she carved a piece of the ‘Sneade household’ for herself and planted her feet firmly. From morning to night, Meme could be found in the kitchen — cooking this, baking that, and ironing. For hours a day, the hiss of an iron hitting damp fabric stretched flat on a waist-high board could easily be heard. I haven’t any idea what the hell she ironed, but day after day after day there was a big-ass oval, wicker laundry basket full of things that needed pressing.
When the iron cooled and took the hiss with it, the sound of metal knitting needles filled the air. With lightning speed, she’d knit, pearl, cast on and off colorful strands of yarn — making colorful squares that she’d sew together to make incredible Granny Square throws. All around the house, Meme had brown paper bags full of squares. When she’d made enough, down onto the living room floor she’d go, and one by one, row by row, strip by strip, she’d place a square here and there until such time as she’d decided how the throw should look. Then, in a near blink of an eye, the connecting would commence and the creation would be finished.
And when the clickity-clack of knitting needles silenced, the sound of Meme’s harmonica filled the air. The appearance of the shiny, silver, mouthpiece meant Meme was ready for some fun! And her playing was fun for her and for the rest of us — though I used to roll the eyes of an annoyed teeneager whenever she reached into the pocket of her house dress and pulled out the music-maker. Truth of the matter is this: I was in awe of how well she played and the length of time she played — especially since she was a. h.e.a.v.y. s.m.o.k.e.r.
In 1984, I was in a car accident and suffered a compression fracture in my cervical spine. The injury was just bad enough that I had to leave my job, give up my studio apartment, and move back to 10 Hobson Avenue. Yeup, at the age of twenty-seven, I became roomies with my very own Golden Girl. We got on great. We watched all of the slightly off-color shows, and smoked butts, and cared for my feline friend, Minette — and we really got to know one another.
And. Then. This. Happened.
I started feeling better toward the end of the summer and began socializing outside the home. My dating life resumed and my hanging out with Meme dwindled a bit. We still spent oodles of time together, but things were different.
One night in October — the 26th to be exact — I had a date. As I was heading out the door, Meme asked if I would check the water thingy on the furnace.
“Now? I’m expected at a dinner party.”
“Not if you don’t have time, but when you get home.”
“Okay.” I started for the door, turned and said, “Please don’t go downstairs to do it for yourself.”
“I won't, dear.”
I’ll never know if she ventured down into the basement or not.
Whenever I went out, I left a way for Meme to get a hold of me. That night, I left the home number for my date. Shortly before or after midnight I received a call from my mother saying Meme was being treated by paramedics at 10 Hobson and she was going to be transported to the hospital and that I should join them there.
My grandmother, the woman known as Meme, the woman who welcomed my family into her home, the woman I left alone that night had a major cardiac event. When I arrived at the waiting room, she’d already been taken to the OR for some sort of procedure. Hours — many hours later — a doctor delivered these words to her anxiously awaiting family, “Her heart is like wet tissue paper, she will not survive.”
One by one we filed in and stood at her bedside and when the hospital staff told us to leave, we did. I remember dropping Marchrie off at her apartment and saying I needed to be by myself.
What I needed was to be with Meme.
I headed back to the hospital and begged a nurse to let me see her. I took residence next to her bed and did the dance between castigation and prayerful bartering. At one point, she opened her eyes, gave me a Meme smile and whispered, “Paper. Pen.”
Like a bat out of hell, I raced to the nurse’s station and got what Meme wanted. I grabbed the clipboard from the end of her bed, clipped a sheet of paper onto it, held it hip-high, put the pen into her hand and watched as she penned a note to her son, Allan, and to her daughter, Ruth Shirley.
It was her final act.
Ruth Hannah Lyle Thomas Duquette, aged 69, wrote her final words then had another cardiac event. I was still at the hospital when my family arrived. We gathered around her bed after she passed. She’d been disconnected from the medical equipment and layed out so peacefully. She looked beautiful. I sat next to her and took hold of her hand. I’m not sure how, but a tiny tear slipped from under her lid and took its final journey down her cheek.
That caused a floodgate of tears from me.
Why am I telling you this?
I had a dream about Meme. She was sitting at the kitchen table at 10 Hobson Avenue having a cup of Lipton and a few Figgies — yeup, the tradition started way back when. Anyway, my grandmother was happily taking space in the former house of Tom Duquette — the place she came to live as a young woman — the place she made home for her children and her grandchildren — the place in which she found great joy — the place in which she suffered great loss.
I believe Meme is sitting at that table patiently awaiting my arrival in Heaven. I believe she will open her arms wide and give me the hug I have craved for decades, and she will absolve me of the guilt that’s been my companion since that long-ago night.
And then she’ll whip out her harmonica and thrill me!
Pushing the memory button.
I’m rather sure I had the dream about Meme because during one of our Sunday night gabfests, I told Donnie a story he’d never heard before.
“... and Meme was ironing and the phone rang. She answered it, shook her head and said, ‘Tell your brother Deadeye is on the line.” She put the receiver down, went back to her ironing board and began a steady shake of her head. ‘Deadeye. Rooster. Muldoon. Don’t these boys have real names?’”
Don laughed — really laughed at this story. “That’s some funny shit.”
“Not done. You bounded into the kitchen, said a word or two into the phone and left. Meme stood there muttering name after name after name.”
“There were some effed up names,” he cracked up.
“Yeah,” I scoffed. “And speaking of names, you could have told me everyone at South High referred to you as Sammy. Mindblown on the first day of school when everyone called me Sammy’s little sister. Thanks for the heads up by the way.”
Don laughed.
“Do me a favor, send me a list of the nicknames.”
“Will do.”
He did.
Richard Dube – Deadeye. Mike Mulhern – Muldoon or Melonhead. Jack ? (forget his last name) – Belt Buckle. Paul Knox – Lippea. Danny Kanaly – Boinghead. Tommy Sauriol – Two and a half. David and Mark Urella – Mow-Mow. Johnny Engdahl – Cabbage Head. Danny Grigas – Bugmyer. Paul Aramando – Silly Sal. Jackie Madalena – Mope. Paul Reed – Ace. Bobby Muhculla – Muck. Bobby Gauvin – Goggsie. Jeff Cogswell – Zeke. Tommy Eisner – Stitches. Steve Eisner – Wink. Gary Ianotti – Inky. Steven Cline – Clinky. Barry Cline – (can’t remember). Jimmy Mayer – Egghead. Lou Gosler – Looey. Kevin McKeown – Hurk. I cannot for the life of me remember Tommy McCabe’s. Do you?
NO, Don, I do not — but I remember my favorite one because he was your best friend and his nickname came with a rhyme.