Mom Ventura
“I know who it is.”
“Who?” she asks.
“It was Miss Scarlet, with the candlestick, in the dining room.” Of course I’m wrong. We’ve just started playing, and there’s no way I actually know the answer. But I’m young and excited.
America plays “Ventura Highway” on the radio behind us, singing about a highway in the sunshine, where the days are longer and the nights are stronger than moonshine. I’m not sure where this highway is, but I know I want to go there. The radio sits on a shelf that, like most of the furniture in this place, is handmade. Next to it are mason jars filled with weird things: lemons, limes, oranges, rosemary, and thyme.
“It was Professor Plum, with the knife, in the ballroom!” I shout.
“No,” she says, half serious, half laughing. “Stop guessing random answers and actually play the game.”
“Mommy?” I ask.
“Yes?”
“What’s plum?”
“Plum is like purple,” she responds. I like that, the idea of a purple professor. I can picture him: an old professor in a purple robe, sitting in a plum-colored velvet loveseat, smoking his corncob pipe and reading the newspaper over his glasses. He could be the killer, though. This professor in purple. He could be the shadow moving up the cellar steps in the picture in the middle of the board. That picture gives me the creeps. I imagine the mansion, a killer inside, nobody knowing who it is. Now he—or possibly she—is coming up the stairs. Coming for whom? For me? Oh God, no!
I try to put my attention back on the radio. It’s still America, but now they’re singing about how good it is to be out of the rain. What if the killer from Clue is in this house? I don’t know this place; my mom is only house-sitting here. We’re not a hundred percent certain there isn’t a killer lurking around the corner. Get a grip, I tell myself. Are you a baby or a big man?
… I think I’m a baby.
Even with the shelves stacked with homemade scented jars, the overwhelming smell is patchouli and something else I can’t quite describe. A smell I would later recognize as cannabis. And all those smells combined still don’t compare to the staggering smell of kitty litter. That damn cat, the whole reason my mom agreed to house-sit this place for the weekend. But kitty litter isn’t that bad a smell. It’s better than kitty poop, I suppose.
“Mrs. Peacock, with—”
“No,” my mom says, not even looking up as she rolls the dice. Now Jim Croce is on the radio, asking the operator for help making a call.
These handcrafted chairs are really starting to hurt my butt. The people we’re house-sitting for are real do-it-yourself hippies. The dining room chairs are oak, the kitchen counters mahogany, and the big table we’re playing on maple.
Croce has stopped playing. Now it’s some dude named Lightfoot, warning anyone caught sneaking around his back stairs after sundown.
Earlier, as the sun was going down, I watched a Charlie Brown VHS. I’d been scared this house would be boring as hell without my toys, but Mom told me they had a TV and VCR. So I convinced her to take me to the video store before we left. She also let me pick out a treat to eat while watching Snoopy and Woodstock on one of their adventures. I picked a mint-chocolate-chip Eskimo Pie. Mom got mad when I told her what I wanted. Not because it was a bad treat; she said I shouldn’t call it an Eskimo Pie. Eskimo wasn’t PC. I should call it an Inuit Pie. I tried to tell her that’s what it said right on the package. She said she didn’t give a shit.
As the setting sun sent a deep orange through the wooden Venetian blinds, I sat on the loveseat eating my treat and watching Charlie Brown. Mom was in the kitchen, cleaning and listening to music. Joni Mitchell needed help because she was falling in love again. According to her, the man was a rambler and a gambler. I know what a gambler is, but not a rambler. I suppose it’s bad too. Mom picked out two movies for herself: Five Easy Pieces and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. I think my mom has a thing for young Jack Nicholson.
Now it’s getting late, and I know she’s going to make me go to bed soon. I have to win this game. I must win this game.
“Colonel Mustard, with the monkey wrench, in the kitchen!” I shout.
“Do you even know the rules of the game?” she asks.
“No, I do not!” I shout back. She sighs and leans back in her wooden chair. Neil Young is singing about a harvest moon. I look down at the board, at that spooky picture of the shadowy figure coming up the stairs. I know I’m going to have a nightmare about that man or woman tonight.
“It’s time for bed soon,” she says. A feeling of dread comes over me. I’m not the least bit tired. I think I’m still jacked up from my Eski—Inuit Pie.
“Ah, man,” I say, pouting and crossing my arms. I look down at the end of the table. Three novels sit stacked on one another: Lolita and Night Shift in hardcover, The World According to Garp in paperback. “We can’t keep playing?” I ask, practically begging.
“No, it’s getting late,” she says. “You should have been asleep a long time ago.” It’s Friday night, though, and I don’t have school tomorrow, so I know she doesn’t care what time I go to bed. She just wants me asleep so she can watch her boyfriend Jack on TV.
I get up from the table as she starts packing up the game. I stare at her strawberry-blonde hair and blue eyes. I realize for the first time in my young life how truly beautiful she is. I look at her long, straight hair, then touch my tight black nappy curls. Wow, I think, we look nothing alike.
She puts the board game away on the shelf, then turns back to me.
“You ready?” she asks.
“I guess,” I say. I turn toward the hall, then stop and look back at my mom. “Who’s Vincent?”
“Pardon me,” she says.
“Vincent, who is he?” I ask again. “The guy on the radio is singing about his friend Vincent, who kilt himself. Who is he, Mommy? Why did his friend do that? Was he sad?”
“Vincent van Gogh,” she says. “He’s singing about a painter who lived a long time ago, before this song was even written, and his name was Vincent van Gogh.”
“Oh,” I say, like I have the slightest clue what she’s talking about. I’m six, for crying out loud, and her answer didn’t clear up squat. I stare down at the floor, trying to buy some time so I don’t have to head off to bed.
“You want me to read you a story before you go to sleep?” she asks. I look up at her face, and she’s smiling.
“Yeah!” I say, excited.
“Which one would you like?” she asks.
“Any one. I don’t care,” I say. And I don’t care, as long as we can spend a little more time together.
Joey McIntyre is a Canadian writer of fiction and screenplays. His writing explores family, memory, music, and horror.
