The Admonition

 by Brett Rutherford

Two chock-a-block gingerbread Victorians
stand jowl-to-jowl, identical, one brown,
one red with paint a-peeling, otherwise
who could distinguish one from another?
So, the same architect built two of them
on plots too small: one narrow passageway,
set in perpetual shadow between.
I enter the cool shadow to confirm
the same bay windows jutting hopefully
where never a glimmer of light came in.
The crusty pavement underfoot, the coo
of pigeons give this a cave-like aura.

The realtor ushers me to the porch,
a deep-shaded, one where once, on gliders,
they sat of an evening with lemonade
and talked the news of an innocent age.
Inside, it is rather a shambles.
Wood-paneled parlor, fireplace, French doors
to a large dining-room, all very nice
but the antique wallpaper is undone
and the mummy-powder of plaster dust
and the hairy fringe of rampant mildew.

Upstairs is a warren of bedrooms. “Sons,
five of them, were all raised here,” I am told.
“So everything is all the worse for wear.
After the boys were grown and gone, it was
college boys rooming here, year after year.”
“I need a little time alone,” I tell
my guide, “to get the house’s true atmosphere.”
“I’ll wait in the car,” the realtor says.
“It’s quiet, if that’s what you want to have.
Next door it’s just a husband and wife, and
but for Sunday no one ever sees them.”
“Church people?” I ask. She nods. “Old-fashioned
folks who mind their own business, I’m sure.
Well now, just take your time. I’ll wait out there.”

Up I went to third floor: more rooms, with slant
of ceiling but plenty of good windows.
The window just across reveals nothing
of the furnishings of the quiet neighbors.
Ah, but there is a paper sign, taped up
and in neat lettering admonishing
some former student tenant: DO NOT SLEEP …
I cannot make out the rest, the letters
bled with rain leaking into the cracked pane.

From the adjacent room, I spy another
warning sign: Bitte schlafen Sie nicht mit …
the bottom torn. The last room facing in
toward the stern neighbors is painted black.
I imagine the neighbors up at night,
their Bibles always open to Leviticus,
worse yet, to Numbers and Deuteronomy,
hand-lettering their little sermonettes
to the blaspheming and drunk college boys.

I go to the bathroom’s smaller window
and see across to their well-lit chamber:
a claw-foot bathtub, a shiny white sink.
Between the tub and the window, I see
a palisade of two-by-fours, as though
they had started to build a new drywall,
but later abandoned the idea.
Taped to it and facing my view, a sign
of more recent vintage cautions me:
PLEASE DO NOT SLEEP WITH MRS. KELLY.

I clamber up to the attic to see
if the widow’s watch is accessible.
It is! Up into it I climb. I dream
of sitting up here with notebook in hand,
surveying full half of the seacoast town
and even out into the great harbor.

You can imagine my astonishment
to see, within the matching widow’s watch
a figure regarding me eye to eye,
a beckoning fair one whose handkerchief
waves me a friendly greeting. Below her,
the thing to which she points her lily hand
languidly, is a ladder some roofer
abandoned there conveniently. With ease
it could connect one house to the other.
Her dark eyes summon me. Oh, Mrs. Kelly!