The Landlady of Maple Avenue (eBook)

Chapter One

The New House

April 1951, Cambridge, Massachusetts

Maple Avenue had long been considered one of the prettiest streets in Cambridge. Sandwiched between Inman Square and Harvard Square, the street was lined with elm, oak, and maple trees on both sides, sprouting out of its richly colored red brick sidewalks. Its many properties consisted mainly of Greek Revivals and Victorian homes built in the late nineteenth century, once occupied by some of Cambridge’s wealthiest families.

Many homes had since fallen into disrepair, given their sheer size and constant need for upkeep. Several had since split up into two and three separate units, reflecting the current economic times while providing rental income to help with the costs of running such large homes once inhabited by live-in servants.

The particular house in question—No. 27, Maple Avenue—was one such home. It was a three-story Queen Anne Victorian house that now had three separate units on three floors, which required considerable work. Its once glorious exterior had now been beaten down to chipped, old brown paint, broken turrets around its dormers, and missing shutters from several of its many large windows. There were visible bare spots along its steep roof where the original scalloped roof shingles had been blown off by the harsh New England weather. A rusted rooster weathervane sat on its highest perch, tied on by some wire, having been rescued before, as it stilted too much to one side as it twirled in the soft April breeze.

A realtor’s “For Sale” sign was on the front metal gate, and a recently added “Sold” sticker was slapped across it. It looked rushed and conspicuously applied. Parked by the front gate sat four members of the Gillis family inside a 1948 Buick Special, staring up at the massive home and its current state of disarray.

The driver, Bernie Gillis, peered through the bug-splattered windshield with a proud look before addressing his mother, Marceline Gillis, who sat in the back seat of his car. Marceline stared out the passenger window, giving her a clear view of the house. Her other son, Johnny, and her husband, Fred, also sat in the car.

“So, what do you think, Ma? You wanna go in and take a look around?” Bernie asked, holding out keys in his hands. “I got the keys right here.”

Marceline Gillis sat quietly, not saying anything, still floored by the sheer size of the “new” house. She was a stocky woman of sixty-three, dressed in a plain brown dress and hat she wore often to church. She sat beside her frail husband, Fred Gillis, a man of seventy-five, who was busy reading his newspaper.

“Well, say something, Marce. The boys are talking to you! Do you want to take a look inside or what? We’re all getting hungry back here,” he complained. 

Marceline again failed to respond, too focused on the main double doors at the entrance, with its wrap-around porch that hugged the right side of the driveway. The main doors were barely visible through all the overgrown rose bushes that covered the entire front yard and the main front walkway that led up to the front of the house.

“You’ll have to climb a few stairs to get to the second-floor unit, Ma, but it’ll be well worth it once you look at your new big kitchen!” Johnny, her other son, chimed in from the front passenger seat, smoking his Cuban cigar. 

“So, what’s it gonna be, Marce?” Bernie sighed. “Tommy’s waiting for us back at the apartment and will be getting hungry,” he said still holding out the new keys. 

“Yeah, Marce. What’s it going to be?” Fred gripped. “We’re all getting hungry!” Fred said as his stomach grumbled under his overalls. 

“Hush up you! I’m thinking,” Marceline finally uttered, having refused to see the house before today. She thought it was all unreal somehow. 

Growing up dirt-poor on a potato farm in New Brunswick, she had never owned a thing of value her entire life. She had hoped to be a homeowner years earlier—a dream that had never materialized given her brutally disappointing marriage to Fred, resulting in her being forced to raise seven children on her own while caring for an alcoholic husband most of her adult life. She recalled her favorite son, Andrew Gillis, who was instrumental in finding the house, referring to it as a “place for Ma to rest and own on her own”—thinking this would finally end her life of tragedy and give her the dream she had always wanted, which was to be a homeowner at last.

“So, what’s it gonna be, Ma? Are we going in or what? We’re all getting tired just sitting here.”

“Why, just look at all those rose bushes, Johnny,” she finally uttered, unable to see the front porch. “You’d be taking your life in your hands just trying to move anything in there.” 

“Don’t worry about that, Ma,” Bernie laughed. He was wearing a new suit and tie to mark the special occasion. “We already hired some kids to cut down those bushes in the morning, so it’ll be all cleared before we get her with the truck. Right, Johnny?” 

“We know you’ll love living here, Ma, once we get all this moving stuff done. Just think; you’ll never have to move again,” Johnny said, winking at his older brother. He too was dressed in a new suit.

She was still too reluctant to go inside, unsure how she’d feel about living in such a huge house that had previously been owned by rich people who had had live-in servants. Despite the house needing so many repairs, living in this part of Cambridge was overwhelming for her since she had gotten so used, decades ago, to being dirt poor, forced as she was to live in some of the worst areas of Cambridge for most of her adult life.

“I suppose it can wait ‘til the morning,” she finally sighed. “There’s no use in finding fault with it now, seeing how it’s already bought and paid for.”

“That’s the spirit, Marce. Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth after all the work the boys did for you. Let’s go get that lunch now, Bernie,” Fred said, tapping his son’s shoulders.

“Who said anything about getting lunch before we go to the cemetery?” She stared at her husband beside her. 

“But Tommy’s waiting—”

“Let him wait! I want to make sure they put Andrew’s headstone in right. That’s the least we can do, seeing how he’s responsible for this all,” she uttered as the car pulled away from the curb.

Marceline glanced back at the house on Maple Avenue as it slowly disappeared through the rear window, still unable to digest everything.

Dark clouds hung over Andrew Gillis’s grave at the Cambridge Cemetery. A new modest headstone had been installed that morning, with his birth and death dates engraved on it, indicating that he was only aged thirty-two, having died only a few short weeks ago.

Marceline dusted off the top of the headstone, seemingly pleased with its appearance and placement but still heartbroken about losing her favorite son.

“My poor dear boy Andrew. Such a good boy he was, who always wanted to please his mother.” She sighed, shaking her head.

The other sons didn’t always like to hear her say this, as they were used to being forced to compete for her love, which they had never liked doing as children. They knew their brother Andrew had done good in that regard, always finding a way to please his mother with both his words and deeds until he’d dropped dead on the kitchen floor from a heart attack.

The military had rejected Andrew Gillis, not allowing him to enlist, unlike his three other brothers and sister, Anna Mae, who served in both the army and the Marines. He was forced to stay home with his mother due to his heart condition, something Marceline often referred to as the bad hearts that the men in the Gillis family had inherited from their father’s side of the family, which condemned many of them to premature deaths.

“It’s a shame he never even got a chance to live in the new house after all the work he did just to find it for all of us,” Bernie sighed, smoking his usual Lucky Strike cigarettes.

“It was just like Andrew to always think of others before himself. He even saved up for it by working two jobs while you boys were all busy fighting the war, just to help pay for it,” Fred said, placing a penny on his son’s new headstone.

It was a double plot where another family member could later be buried. It was all they could afford, with the remaining family resources paying for the new house.

“He’ll be missed, all right,” Marceline agreed, “If only he hadn’t had that bad Gillis heart of his! Who knows what might have happened to him had he been allowed to stay with us longer.”

“Stop saying that,” Fred spoke up, standing beside her.

“What?” 

“Stop saying he had a bad heart,” Fred insisted, standing half a foot shorter than his stocky wife.

“Oh,...