House of Loud

When they built my mother’s house, they managed to make every room a megaphone. Drop a paper clip on the second floor, you can hear it in the basement. Somebody drops a plastic shampoo bottle in the shower, it sounds like the world is coming to an end.

The walls appear to be drywall. But, who knows? Maybe they’re really rice paper slathered with toothpaste. And we don’t know what’s inside those walls, except air and maybe some space-age technology that amplifies sound without power, speakers or wires. After all, it was built the year we shot John Glenn into low-earth orbit.

The story goes that the builder built it for himself and his wife. That could have gone either way. He could have overbuilt the crap out of it, since he was making it for himself. Or he could have gone the way of the cobbler with shoeless children.

It’s a strong house. Structurally sound. Never given us any serious trouble, save the usual maintenance. Where I think its creator may have ventured into shoeless cobbler territory was in the flooring. They’re hardwood, throughout. But he must have heard the cash register ring every time he drove a nail. Or maybe he had a bad elbow. For whatever reason, I’m not sure he used quite as many nails as he should have.

It’s an interesting combination; every room amplifies sound to Rolling-Stones-at-Giants-Stadium level. And every floorboard creaks like a rusty screen door. If a mouse scratches his ear in an upstairs closet, down in the living room it sounds like the chariot race from Ben-Hur. When anybody uses either staircase, it’s Gunfight at OK Corral. Not to mention the hot water baseboard heat that goes Snap, Crackle, Pop throughout the night.

Imagine what it’s going to be like when I start practicing accordion.

We can’t blame the decades. It’s been this way since my family moved in. You can’t possibly sneak around this place. (My sneaking around days are over. But, trust me, I tried many times as a teenager.) It was the perfect space for an Italian with control issues to raise four children. She knew what we were doing, at all times, from any location. We didn’t get away with anything. No wonder we were all convinced she had eyes in the back of her head.

Rounding the corner past nine decades, Mom needs 24-hour care these days. The main reason we moved up here was to be part of her home health care team. On the occasion I do overnight Mom duty, I sleep like a baby. I am 10 feet from Mom in the next room and have no doubt I’d rouse if she called for help or made more noise than usual. But there’s only room for one sentry at a time in that room. When Beth is covering, I stay in our room and she stays there, directly below me.

She doesn’t exactly sleep. To say my wife is a light sleeper is to say the Sahara is kind of sandy. She would hear the paper clip drop on the second floor, in a normal house. Up there, I can’t get up in the middle of the night without waking her. But, try as I might, I have to get up in the middle of the night. I’m a middle-aged guy. It’s the law.

I don’t dare flush the john. That’s Niagara Falls. It wouldn’t matter, she’s up, as soon as my foot hits the floor. I try to be conscientious, walking as gingerly as possible, even half awake. No matter. In her room, I’m an elephant on crutches. On a good night, she will stitch together a few hours’ sleep, now that she’s starting to get used to the symphony.

That changed when my brother and my sister-in-law, Tatiana, camped here last week. Kenny has a bad back. It runs in the family, one reason I tend to be obsessive about exercise. They’re moving soon and starting to pack things up. As every guy is wont to do, he overdid it going up and down the attic ladder and threw it out to epic proportions.

His work is only 10 minutes from here, compared to 45 from home. There was no way he was driving that far, so we were his life raft. When he got here, he could barely walk. He couldn’t lay in any bed, too soft. So the living room was hastily arranged to make room for a makeshift nest, on the floor. My brother’s bigger than me, nearly six feet. He took up a lot of real estate, so everybody had to be careful not to kick him in the head, walking through. It would have been funny as hell if he hadn’t been in so much pain.

We got through the day. The TV was permanently tuned to the Masters Tournament. We did as much as we could to make him comfortable and prodded him to call his doctor. (He did and he’s doing better.)

Suffice to say, that night was EVEN LOUDER THAN NORMAL. With his wrenched back, Kenny had no option for walking quietly for the potty. It was more of a haul-and-crawl. Then, Tatiana wandered down, looking for a midnight snack. That set off the staircase shooting gallery, followed by a tussle with the infernal stove light.

Never, in the history of the world, has there been a louder stove light. If you manage to find the light switch and turn it on, it announces your success with a BEEEP! louder than the Mummer’s Parade. Such a brilliant design. Like, we can’t tell the light comes on when the light comes on.

But, more often than not, you hit the wrong button—exactly the same as the light button and a quarter inch away—the exhaust fan switch. When that fan comes on, in this house, in the middle of the night, it sounds like a fighter jet catapulting from the deck of the USS Enterprise.

Things actually got quiet after that. Too quiet. The baseboards went silent. And cold.

With a 91-year-old in the house, you have watch the thermostat like a hawk. Left to her own devices, Mom will set it somewhere north of bursting into flames. On the Fourth of July. So, I’m careful to check it before hitting the sack. I had checked it and knew it was OK. Warm, not blazing.

By 3 am, Kenny was rattled awake by icicles falling from the living room bookshelf. He somehow hoisted himself up to investigate. Thermostat, good. Must be the boiler. He managed to drag himself to the basement to check, setting off a cellar stairs timpani concerto. Boiler, good. Back up the stairs, he found the problem. One of us had accidentally tripped the emergency furnace switch, likely thinking it was a light.

The next day, I knew something was wrong with Beth, just by looking at her. More than once, I asked if she was OK. “Fine,” she fibbed. “Are you sure,” I queried. “I’m OK,” she insisted. It went on that way all morning. I pried, she lied. She would never admit she wasn’t feeling well. A few days later, she came clean. She’d gotten about a 60 minutes’ sleep that night. And not in a row!

This is our new COVID bubble. But it’s a grand COVID bubble, I love every minute of it. I get to hang with my siblings and witness the chaos. She loves it just as much. We no longer share germs with every sick customer from the retail pharmacy she quit to move here. That makes it all worth it.

(Easy for me to say. I didn’t hear a thing, that night. I learned how to sleep through the cacophony, decades ago.)

TO BE CONTINUED

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