Ambrose’s Place

by Shauna Checkley

Ambrose suddenly slid on a cold, hard mass underfoot. She wondered: What the heck? Losing her balance, she crashed to the floor and sat there in a heap momentarily.

Stunned, she gauged that she was only smarting, not really injured. And then she saw them: small, oblong culprits. Ice cubes. Someone had spilled a tray of them on the kitchen floor and never bothered to clean up!

Charging into the living room, Ambrose was livid. Her parents, Shirley and Barry, were watching a pre-taped football game. They were sprawled out on the tattered, eggplant-colored sectional. Tony and Todd, her younger brothers, who still lived at home, were on the charcoal-colored love seat watching as well.

“I just fell!” Ambrose cried

Everyone looked her way.

“I thought that I heard a crash,” Barry, her father, said

The brothers snickered.

“Are you okay?” Shirley, her mother, asked

With her arms akimbo, Ambrose whooped, “Who in the hell spilled a tray of ice cubes on the floor and never bothered to pick them up?!”

Shirley clucked her tongue. “Honestly, I don’t know what to make of you guys. It seems like there’s one thing after the other around here, and y’know that’s not good for those poor little girls, either.”

Pointing an accusatory finger at her younger brothers, Ambrose said, “It was you guys, wasn’t it!”

But the twins looked at her darkly. “Was not!” they spat in near unison. Then they looked back at the large-screen TV.

“That’s it! I’m outa here! I can’t take this craziness.” She left, the door slamming behind her. With her spine smarting, she hopped into her Jeep and sped off for home, all the while feeling vaguely guilty for having made a scene.

* * *

Mom means well. It’s just “The Shirley Show” as Ambrose liked to call it. She had long since grown used to the excesses of life on that Langston Street house. The one with the white paint slightly peeled and the eavestrough getting rather full. It just was that the “show” never stopped and sometimes impacted her, like today.

The neighborhood consensus was that Shirley was both a blessing and a curse, a little of both in equal measures like the pasta sauces that she liked to concoct from scratch. “That Shirley has a heart of gold, helping everyone, fostering kids and stray mother cats and their kittens, even if she seems a little much at times.”

Exhaling deeply, Ambrose clutched the wheel tightly. Then she went about the rest of her evening uneventfully. But when she climbed into bed and had her predictably fitful sleep, her demons returned en masse.

She wondered why home always has to be such a gong show. She wondered why they don’t live moderately, the way her friend Jen’s family does. She pictured the manicured lawns and bushes, the careful place settings, the TV turned down to a graceful murmur. It was like a moment from a Hallmark movie, predictably warm and comfortable.

Wondering if it was just her anxiety, Ambrose did, however, take medication for her nervous disorder, and she sometimes mused if she wasn’t just overly sensitive and reactive. Could be, she surmised.

Then it came to her! The likely ice cube culprits were the two newly arrived little foster girls, straight from that broken social system. She realized that could be why they were out of sight and likely hiding in their bedroom. She pictured their strawberry blonde hair and missing baby teeth and nearly burst aloud in tears.

Feeling guilt return like a hammer in the dark, Ambrose flip-flopped in bed. She resolved to make it up to them all. She promised to do it for certain this time.

The next day Ambrose texted her mom:

want to have coffee tonight

cant as have fosters support meeting tonight tomorrow better

k ttyl

bye

* * *

The next evening, Ambrose and Shirley were seated at the dining room table. Everyone else was in the living room watching Canada’s Got Talent. Someone who resembled the late Tiny Tim was warbling on stage.

Mother and daughter sipped their coffees and eyed each other suspiciously.

“So,” Shirley began, a tentative tone in her voice. She was wearing blue jean capris and a plain red top that was too bright for her light skin tone.

“Mom, I just want to say sorry for how we’ve fought in the past.”

“Well, let’s just try not to have any future ones,” Shirley said

They paused. Just when Ambrose was getting ready to rehash the ice cube incident, Shirley piped up: “Did I tell you that Dana and Amelia might be moving back home?”

“Where?” Ambrose said, dumbfounded

“Well, there is the basement bedroom, after all, plus the pull-out couch down there.”

Ambrose shook her head.

Shrugging her shoulders, Shirley said, “Rents are so high now that they can’t afford to live on their own.”

Ambrose nodded in understanding.

More to add to the circus, Ambrose thought. But she remained silent. Kids. Grandkids. Foster kids. Cats and kittens. It was a melee of skin, fur and fiber. It was a farce, and a magical journey and unbridled faith all wrapped up in one.

Still, Ambrose was beginning to suspect that some of the best-lived lives teetered on madness and a sideways dignity with that burning awareness of the needs of others, like a reckless sort of ambition. No one questioned saints or clergy when they did exactly the same. So why should she be questioning Mom now?

Ambrose shivered. She wondered at her own motives, inclinations? She wondered if maybe she were the one who was wrong, even crazy. Maybe truth will all come out in the proverbial wash someday! It occurred to her that perhaps she was just too needy or self-centered. She thought that could be her problem, after all.

Better not say much. At least not tonight, Ambrose reckoned. So, she continued to sip her Tim Horton’s coffee daintily and stare deeply into the light gray pools that were her mother’s eyes.

Ambrose knew that her mom had had an unhappy life. Shirley and her siblings were the progeny of unwieldy alcoholics and she, being the oldest, was in charge of trying to make sense of their troubled existence. Could this be the reason for all of this nesting? Ambrose had read as much when she waiting for a much-dreaded root canal.

Mom is just trying to pad her life with as many bodies as possible to make herself feel good and secure in the world. Could that be it? Ambrose wondered. She wondered if her mother simply liked caring for and helping others. Which is it? Ambrose also worried, though, that she could have completely miscalculated things.

Ambrose also worried: Why don’t I share those same altruistic inclinations as Mom does? She saw it as a flaw in her very own character. Just maybe...

“How have you been?” Shirley finally asked her silent daughter.

Ambrose shrugged.

“Well, that doesn’t sound good.” Her mother opined.

“How so?” Ambrose asked

Waving her hand as she spoke, Shirley said, “Look: you should be happy, contented even. You have family, a job.”

Ambrose laughed. “There’s more to life than that.’

“Not really,” Shirley retorted.

Just as the conversational heat was rising, Barry, her father, entered the kitchen. He got himself a grape pop out of the fridge and sauntered back into the living room. He was wearing black dress socks with his dad jeans. His skin had become markedly baggy and saggy as of late, reminding Ambrose of a pachyderm.

In a flash of anger at him, Ambrose felt annoyance at his non-entity presence, his inability to ever take a stance on anything, shying away from conflict as one does insects in the garden. He was like a phantom in her life and always had been. It was like he was married to cable, betrothed to the football league, father of snacks and spoilers, coolers and corn chips. She only ever seemed to see him with the remote control in his hand. He had that soft, furry voice that was seldom raised.

Then Ambrose recalled the same article that she had read at the dentist’s office: that men hunt while women nest. She wondered, if that might be the nature of their relations. He hunts with the remote control and sniffing out new treats at the supermarket while her mother is nesting alone here? Who knows? Stranger dynamics have been known to exist.

Taking a big gulp of her coffee, Ambrose burnt the tip of her tongue.

“Ouch!” she yelped, sticking it out and rubbing the end gently.

“Careful! You know it’s hot,” Shirley said.

Emerging from their shared bedroom, the little sisters brought their Hello Kitty coloring books and crayons. They stood at the threshold of the kitchen. They were like deer in the headlights. Frozen. Alone. Frightened.

“Come on in girls. Don’t be shy now.” Shirley spoke to them in a honeyed voice. Beaming at each of them in turn, Shirley asked, “Can you color a picture for me?”

They settled on the floor, but Shirley kindly moved them to the table, and they began to color in earnest.

As the tip of her tongue returned to normal, Ambrose began to take small sips once again.

Shirley, however, was giving the little girls pointers on coloring, staying in the lines and so forth. She also taught them to share their favored pink crayon.

But then Dana and Amelia and Sid Vicious being transported in his carrying case burst through the front door.

“Heya,” Dana called to all gathered in the living room.

“Hi, girls,” Barry said.

Stopping into the kitchen, Dana smiled at the new little foster girls: “This is Amelia, that’s Caitlin and that’s Courtney,” pointing to each sister in turn.

As ever, Ambrose was in awe of her younger sister, the one with the wide green eyes and dreams that went askew. Ambrose wasn’t jealous of the pretty girl, she just didn’t understand her lack of reality and her penchant for largesse. She seemed to live in a perpetual “girls night out” mentality that seemed to hold her hostage to the social world. Dana wore friendship bracelets while Ambrose wore bangles, something that Dana saw as a sign of a generation gap.

The children’s initial shyness soon passed, and they all began to color. Then they quickly moved to playing “Break-Up” with their Barbie dolls. Sucking their thumbs or fingers, the foster sisters almost seemed to be doing what appeared to look like sign language.

“Want a coffee? I just made a fresh pot,” Shirley offered.

“Good God, no!” Dana groaned. “I gotta unpack the car and get settled in.”

“Why don’t you give your sister a hand?” Shirley suggested.

“Okay.” Ambrose sighed “But make the boys do some, too. They should be volunteered also.”

Shirley nodded.

Ambrose soon found herself helping to unload the car, carrying in boxes and backpacks until it was empty. Her three siblings then disappeared to get the final carload.

Pouring herself a refill, Ambrose collapsed back at the kitchen table. Meanwhile her mother was overseeing the bathing, pyjamas, and toothbrushing of the little girls. Next, she would read them stories and rub backs.

She wondered where her chance was to talk to her mom with all of this going on. Ambrose felt short-changed, crowded out. Sure enough, “The Shirley Show” was like a predictable rerun, a sit-com of sorts and she was a minor character, something out of the seventies or eighties even.

Feeling her anxiety rise, she considered talking to her dad, but he was engrossed in an all-important playoff game. Ambrose decided to just stop by another time. Tonight wasn’t feasible; it was bad with Dana moving back in and all.

* * *

Ambrose left in a huff. Though as ever, she self-corrected when she got into the rich, leather smell of her white Jeep. She knew it was just a crazy, funky night that’s all. She knew It was just one of those things.

She entered her condo. Recently, she had downsized things in a spirit of minimalism, a “less is more” ethos. Still, she had her beloved white sectional, her blue Turkish rug and ornamental coffee table, real art hung on the walls. Splatters, lines and cubes. It had a violent feel that she wished to replace someday.

Making a cup of chamomile tea at home, she did some much needed self-introspection and soul-searching. “I don’t need to confront Mom. She’s a grown-up and can live and do things as she chooses. In fact, they all are, and I don’t need to be unravelling over anyone or anything. I’m in my thirties. I just need to focus on myself. That’s all. Me.

“Besides, they all seem to be quite content, with the exception of myself. I’m the only one that takes issue and exception to the goings-on at home, the war within so to speak. The rest are more malleable and are like an art installation rather than a battlefield.”

She knew that she would never speak of her feelings to her siblings, because they would be likely to deny her reality. They would judge her hysterical or simply mean. Especially Dana. Miss Cutie Pie had always enjoyed the wild drama about her and couldn’t be reasoned with, anyhow. The guys would lob verbal blows at her. Yes, it would likely give them the ammunition they needed to retaliate over years of misgivings. They were all like that.

Being the eldest child, she was sometimes resented and, at other times, wildly depended upon. But most of all, Ambrose could be disrespected at the drop of a hat, as a sort of reverse pecking order had always been her bane, a screwy birth order.

“Meow,” the feline cried as it came around the corner.

Sipping the tea that had a natural depressive in it and was conducive to a good night’s sleep, Ambrose felt her tuxedo cat Sheba sit on her bare feet. She felt the raging inside her slowing, nearly stopped. She felt good once again.