The House on Maple Street

  Chapter 2 - Secrets Lost...

  Gerald Hollenkamp didn’t consider his lifetime to be any more blessed than any other man's. He would not quickly count himself among the lucky. He had never felt very wealthy. He had never been very competent in the accumulation of treasure. Yet, Gerald Hollenkamp had reason to believe in magic, and so he clutched to a faith that a power might spark and protect his hopes as he drove the miles separating him from Maxine.

  "Hold for me a little longer, Lady Luck," Gerald peeked through his windshield at the winter morning's sky of heavy gray and hoped the snow would wait out the weekend before falling. "Just a few more miles to Maxine's."

  Gerald envisioned that bronze key fastened to Maxine's silver necklace and prayed it was not yet emptied of luck. In the end, Gerald believed that key had brought them together. That key had to be something special, regardless of all the years of loss, all the years of regret. Gerald hated to think what kind of man he may have been had it not been for the faith he placed in the small key.

  Still, that key had not spared Gerald from choking on his regret. Regret still soured his tastebuds. Maxine had proposed herself to Gerald so many lost years ago following the successful completion of her sophomore year of secondary school. She had promised Gerald that a middle school education, plus two years of high school, was more than enough learning for a wife. But Gerald had declined, and he still regretted his answer. He had still enjoyed roaming about shortstop on the summer baseball team, had still thought he might rise to be something greater than the town leatherworker and tanner as was his father. He had only wanted to deny Maxine's proposal for a handful of years, for only a short time so that he might save for an appropriate engagement ring, to be able to propose to his love in a manner she deserved.

  But fortune had conspired against him, and Gerald Hollenkamp was never offered the opportunity to propose to his Maxine.

  War erupted around the globe, and airplanes and bombs wrenched Gerald's country from its slumber. Boys set down their baseball gloves and picked up rifles as men, praying the fury and the gore did not reap them from the land. Gerald sacrificed his goal to achieve a high school diploma in order to enlist. Maxine gave him all she possessed one night in that home that used to stand along Maple St., and the next day she kissed Gerald farewell as the train took him to war. She did not offer Gerald a second proposal, for neither of them possessed any illusion that war held any mercy for husbands, that it would show any soldier a kindness simply because he wore a wedding wing around his finger, or kept a wife's picture near his heart.

  In the morning the last remaining gift Maxine had to offer her lover going to war was a small, bronze key to her home's front door, the best talisman she had to give to the young soldier who had taken her heart in a snowstorm.

  With that key fastened to that necklace that held also held his dog-tags, Gerald survived bullets and bombs, food poisoning and malaria. He was not cut down in the jungle, was not burned alive in a bunker, was not drowned nor devoured at sea. He returned to a country ready to celebrate with parades. But he was haunted by shrieking demons and wailing ghosts. And so Gerald did not immediately return home to the Maxine war had forced him to leave behind. Haunted, he rambled as a railroad detective near Denver, as a forest fighter across Utah, as a dockhand in San Francisco, as a crabber off the cold, Alaskan coast. He grew a beard to shelter his wane cheeks from the cold, and he roamed the open wind to give the haunts that crowded his mind all the time he could for them to quiet.

  Maxine, meanwhile, moved forward in life, having asked Gerald to keep no promise to her, nor having offered any vow to him, the day that train pulled her young love to war. Richard Hanson, who worked as a foreman in the oil fields outside of town, courted Maxine for a month before offering her a fine diamond ring. Richard Hansen had returned from the war with the determination to raise a family, and he wed Maxine after two months of engagement during a day filled with snow. Maxine birthed a son and a daughter while Gerald drifted. Gerald's brother mailed him newspaper clippings to inform Gerald his first love was lost. Gerald had felt no shock upon reading the news.

  But throughout his wanderings, Gerald always clasped that small, bronze key close to his heart. He clasped that key to the old home on Maple St. and survived railway criminals, forest fires and storms at sea.

  Gerald imagined that key as he drove that narrow, county highway that brought him closer to Maxine.

  "It's only a little further. Just let that snow hold off a little longer."

  After three short, wonderful years following the day Maxine came back into his life, Gerald prayed to his small, good-luck key to keep Maxine safe. He prayed to that key during all those weeknights away from Maxine, when Gerald's job as warehouse watchman forced him to each Sunday afternoon drive those few hours back to his job away from Maxine's hometown. He prayed to that key's luck that Maxine did not wreck her car as she drove through stop signs. He prayed she did go for a walk in the snow and ice and break another bone. He prayed for that small, bronze key to keep Maxine safe, to protect her memory, to help her distinguish between the real world surrounding her and the realm of ghosts that claimed more and more of Maxine’s mind.

  "Don't fail me now," Gerald's heart quickened as he entered town and turned upon the street leading to Maxine's home. "That's Tony's car parked in the drive. Maxine, hold strong a little longer in front of Tony. A little longer until I can find a better way to tell him."

  Gerald parked across the street, and his knees trembled as he stepped out of his car. Maxine did not stand in her home's front window to greet him.

  "Concentrate on your corner!" A young voice shouted before a red baseball cap appeared out of the front door of Maxine's home. "Grandma's favorite picture frames are in this box, Kyle! Concentrate before you shatter them all on the ground!"

  Gerald held a breath as Maxine's grandsons Kent and Kyle Hanson wrestled against a heavy and sagging cardboard box. Gerald gripped his hands into fists so that his arms did not shake for his worry.

  "Where you boys taking all your Grandma's pictures?" Gerald feared the worst. He felt terrible for having to ask those boys, boys who had so easily found a place in the old man's heart after the years brought Maxine back to Gerald. But he needed to know before he confronted their father. "Your grandma going someplace for a vacation?"

  "Gerry!"

  Kyle, the younger of the brothers, smiled and freed a hand from the box in order to wave at Gerald.

  Gerald heard the pictures rattle as Kent roughly lowered the box to the ground to speak. "Did you see your ball team just won another three-game series? Gomez belted two homers last night. Your boys in blue just might finally make the playoffs this season."

  Gerald winked. "Sure did. But what are you boys doing with that box?"

  "Putting it in our car trunk," Kyle answered. "Grandma's coming to live in our town. Dad says she's going to be closer to us."

  Gerald concentrated on the image of that small, bronze key to prevent the panic from overwhelming him.

  "Boys!" A deep voice, a man's voice, shouted from inside the home. "Get that trunk into the car like I told you!

  The boys wrangled the box back off the ground and grunted their way to their family's car before their father stepped into the front door's frame, his face hardened, his lips locked into a frown. Tony looked more like his father than he did his mother. His wide shoulders and short legs descended from his father's line; and Tony's silver hair, his father's hair, might have convinced some that Richard had left a younger duplicate of himself behind had it not been for the pair of maternal and dark, brown eyes set deep upon his face. During that time when fortune brought Maxine back into his life, Gerald often stole a glance at Tony during the holidays and imagined what Maxine's boy may have looked like had Tony inherited Gerald's line instead of Richard's. Though Tony never spoke such a sentiment, Gerald could not help but feel how Maxine's son regarded him as a trespasser, an interloper who had no business spending weekend nig
hts with his mother beneath the roof of his dead father's home.

  Gerald forced himself to peer back into Tony's eyes.

  "You don't need to do this," Gerald whispered. "She belongs here."

  Tony's eyes burned. "How do you know what I need to do? Who are you to say where she belongs? Did you think I wouldn't find out about any of it?"

  "Who told you?"

  Tony waited for his boys to skip back into their grandmother's home in search of another packed box of mementoes before answering.

  "Do you think I heard from only one person?" Tony shook his head. "Her neighbors called me many a morning, telling me how mom tried to work their locks with her keys. The city police called to let me know how they worried about her driving, about all times she ran her car over the curb, of how she cruised, lost, around the streets until an officer escorted her home. Did you know she called the fire department three times last week, telling them that an oil fire was climbing up her kitchen walls? I'm not so many miles down that highway, Gerry. I'm hardly an hour further away than you are. And I still have friends here, who count the new dents in mom's car. I've known for a long time now, and I've made plans to give Maxine the kind of care she needs now."

  Gerald peeked at his shoes as his heart hammered. "We can care for her here, here in her home, Tony."

  Tony's eyes blazed. "I thought I opened my family to you, Gerry. My boys think so much of you. I kept waiting for you to tell me."

  "I was only trying to make the most of her days. Only helping her stay in her home."

  "How much longer do you think she will recognize this as her home?"

  "She belongs here, Tony. This is her home."

  Tony sighed. "She belongs where she can find the care she needs. There's no one left here to care for her, Gerry. No one to make sure she doesn't drive her car head-first into oncoming traffic. No one to see that she eats. She needs to be close to me now, so I can make sure she is being looked after."

  Gerald felt tears welling in his eyes. He felt his mind swoon. "I can care for her. You can't begin to understand, Tony. Let me be here with her now. Let me look after her."

  "I already gave you the chance to enter into this family," Tony replied, "and you attempted to keep this secret from me. How long has her mind been deteriorating? Since she broke her hip on the ice last year when the two of you went skating?"

  Gerald wiped at his eyes with his wrinkled hands. Tony showed no mercy in tossing that guilt at him, by heaping only more regret upon Gerald's old shoulders.

  Tony's eyes still blazed while Gerald sobbed. "Could you really look after her even if I believed you and left mother here? How would you keep your night job, Gerry? Who would look after mom when you were gone? How much have you been able to save for the choices that are going to be ahead of you both?"

  Gerald stared at the ground. He could not catch his breath.

  Tony sighed as his boys hauled another box towards their car. "You have the afternoon to remove whatever belongs to you from this house, Gerry. I'll have new locks on the doors first thing tomorrow morning. Whatever's left in that house when I get back tomorrow afternoon will be included in the estate sale. I’m taking Maxine to a place where I can see she is cared for. I don’t want you to see her. You’ll not be welcome to visit my mother."

  Gerald's lips twitched, but he could think of nothing to do to prevent Maxine from being taken another time from him. Tony left him thunderstruck. Gerald was too shocked to beg for Maxine's new address. He only stared at his shoes, lacking the breath, the will, to look back into Tony's smoldering eyes.

  Kent paused a moment before returning back into the home. "Dad, did you look in grandma's refrigerator?"

  "It's full of maple syrup bottles," Kyle added as he jumped onto the front porch, "and none of it's even opened. Why do you think grandma brought all that syrup?"

  "Leave it be, boys," Tony sighed to his sons. "We've got enough boxes for now. Time for us to head back home. I'll meet you both in the car."

  Relieved so suddenly from their day's chores, the brothers sprinted to their vehicle. Gerald kept his gaze rooted upon the ground, certain his heart would shudder if he looked up at the sound of those boys' feet pounding across the yard. He thought of those nights when Kyle and Kent had stayed with Maxine, when the four of them had ordered delivery pizza and watched old black and white films on television. Gerald had never had children of his own, and so perhaps he too foolishly fell in love with the boys of another father. They had called him grandpa.

  Gerald looked up only after Tony walked away from him and started his car. Kyle and Kent smiled and waved at him from the backseat as the vehicle pulled out of the lane of Maxine's home.

  Gerald did not wave back as tears blinded him.

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