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Domestication
Written by Jia Zhang
As a young child, I had lived across the street from the beautiful 42 Jefferson Avenue. I had always thought it was a magnificently beautiful place, the perfect house—the perfect home. There could be nothing wrong with that place, I had thought with particular childish glee. I would ride my bike by the house everyday after school; and sometimes, looking at it from my living room, I would imagine the lives of the people who lived there: what their jobs and days were like. I had created a fanciful daydream to entertain my imagination.
I had always wanted to live inside of that house.
When I was growing up I never saw too many people living at 42 Jefferson Avenue. Occasionally a young man, his wife and daughter would come and visit, but otherwise I had always assumed it was empty. However, during my last year at grammar school, I saw an elderly man with snow white hair sitting on the porch, reading a newspaper. Never before had I seen this man—he was a stranger, but he seemed as if he had lived at this place for a long time. He was utterly at ease, and one could make the assumption that he was the owner of the beautiful house.
One day, as I road by, I stopped in front of the beautiful house. I watched the elderly man drink tea from white china cups as he read a book bound in red. He seemed to have noticed my presence, and looking up from his book he smiled at me kindly. I said to him good-day, how are you as my mother had dutifully educated me. He replied with the same, and asked for my name. He commented that it was a lovely name, told me his. He asked me how old I was—eleven, I replied.
Curious, I pushed my bike towards the house and set it by the steps of the house. I asked the elderly gentleman if he was the owner of the house, since I had never seen him before (having resided in my house across the street for a good decade or so). He said yes, but that he had not lived in the house on 42 Jefferson Avenue for many years. There were stories, he told me, that brought him too many unhappy memories and that it had taken him a long time to gather the courage to be here again.
What happened, I had asked him, my interest roused into fascination.
So, the elderly gentleman told me a story.
Once, long before I was born, there had a lived a happy family with a young son. He was intelligent young boy, not quite ordinary but not at all extraordinary. When he was about your age, the elderly man told me, he met a young girl who lived in the very house I live in today. Their families had always been friends, but the girl, who had lived with her mother for many years, had only recently come to live with her father and stepmother.
She was the most beautiful of girls, the elderly gentleman spoke, with bright sparkling eyes made of sapphire gemstones and dark, glossy black hair. Fair skin, and pink lips, the girl was like a living Snow White. Slowly, the boy and the girl became friends, and grew up together in the small neighborhood of Jefferson Avenue.
Eventually, when the boy got older and became a young man, he would naturally pursue an object of love. Although, he had not known this at his age, but the girl who he had grown up with had fallen in love with him. Eventually, the young man met and fell in love with another young woman at school; he cared for his friend, but did not love her. No, he wanted to marry the girl he had fallen in love.
But his father did not approve of his love; the boy was from a dignified family, a proud lineage that must be upheld. His father proposed another; the boy was outraged, but he found himself without an option. He was forced to part with his lover, and forced to marry another—none other than the friend had grown up with, the beautiful young girl who lived across the street.
The girl was so very happy; she thought that in time he would come to love her too, but this was not so.
The young man came to antagonize his friend—his wife. Perhaps, in those early years he may have realized that his wife loved him dearly, but he did not care. He did not have the woman he loved, and that was all the mattered.
And so, the gentleman told me, in this house whose porch we stood upon the young man and his wife began their lives, but it was not a happy marriage.
From the outside, everything seemed so perfect. It seemed like a wonderful marriage—a successful husband and a dutiful wife, and eventually a young son. But the man still did not love his wife. He betrayed her over and over throughout their marriage, having an affair with the woman he was not allowed to marry. His wife knew everything, but said nothing. She loved her husband, and it was not his fault that he did not love her. So she played her part of the smiling, dutiful wife, the curator of his domestic museum at 42 Jefferson Avenue. She was the mother, the caregiver—she was a member of book clubs and school fundraisers. She hid all of her sadness, and continued on living in this beautiful house, while the man she loved made love to another.
For years and years, the elderly man told me, they lived together like that—till their son was a teenager, a few years older than I. And in those years, the man and his mistress fell out of love, and parted ways. It was when he was much older that the man realized how precious his wife truly was and how much he had come to care and love her. But in those years, as the silent curator of his house, the woman no longer loved her husband. And eventually, when he tried to express his feelings, when he tried to tell his wife how much he cared for her, it was much too late.
The man sighed and drank from his cup as I absorbed what he had told me. That’s a very sad story, I had spoke. Indeed it was, he told me.
What happened to them, I asked, hoping for a happy ending.
I was provided with none—the house that I had loved as a child held no magical properties, it beauty held no mystic, its elegance of no power. The house, despite all its magnificence and loveliness was no different than any other house.
His wife left him, the old gentleman told me, left him after twenty years of marriage. Left him because she loved him enough to be silent and still and alone to manage their home.
The story was too painful, the elderly man told me, for him to live there and to remember what had happened between that man and his wife, between the boy and the girl.
After that day, I would continue to see the man at the beautiful house, sometimes mowing the lawn, watering the flowers, or reading a book on the porch. Sometimes he had visitors; sometimes he did not, and occasionally I would stop by and speak with him as I road my bike by his house.
I had no doubt of who his story spoke of; but I never pressed the story further. I never asked. But I could see that he was a sad man with his sad story. But he lived there nonetheless, despite whatever feelings of hurt he felt about the past, he lived there because he wanted to maybe hold on to something, hoping that maybe the beautiful house at 42 Jefferson Avenue really was magical, really was so beautiful that anything was possible.
When I was younger, much, much younger than I am now, I would have told him the same thing. When I was child, I would have believed that a home was all it mattered, that it was a perfect and beautiful house and thus its fairytales must be alive and real.
But, as one grows, things change. Never said so, but I sure that elderly man would have said what I know now.
“It is a beautiful house, indeed, but a beautiful house does not make a beautiful family.”
fin
