you know when you love someone.
― Lauren Conrad
It’s an old romantic trope being caught between two lovers—until it happens to you—then, it’s a trial by ordeal until it’s finally resolved.
My mentor, Raff, thinks my dilemma can be easily. resolved—I should stick with the tried and true, meaning Leann Rogers.
“She’s more your age and will fit in better with your friends,” he avers.
He’s probably right—I mean, Sherri is ten years younger but for now she makes my heart sing and I just can’t get past that.
Against Raff’s advice I decide to take Sherri with me while I see through a rental flat in a run-down house near the university.
She’s on lunch break and meets me on Huron Street outside the old Victorian house. It must have been a beauty in its day—but now of course, it’s in need of paint and the wooden verandah is beginning to sag.
“I like it,” Sherri smiles. The sun through the maples lights up her red hair and leaves me momentarily breathless.
“C’mon,” she laughs, and grabs my hand, “I want to see inside.”
Now if this were Leann , she’d be appalled—she’d want the building condemned, but Sherri sees it the way I do—as magical—a part of an adventure.
You wouldn’t want to invite your friends over there—I can hear Raff say in the back of my head.
Mrs. Price, the owner, is friendly and takes to us right away. “I can just see the two of you living here—you’d have the entire downstairs, and just have to share laundry in the basement with Mrs. Young, who’s lived upstairs for the past ten years.”
I don’t bother to correct her about Sherri and I—we’re not actually a couple yet—but hearing her say it makes me feel warm inside.
There’s a huge wood-burning fireplace, a dining room, kitchen and two bedrooms. I can just afford the rent if I don’t go out much and eat only two meals a day.
“I’ll take it,” I hear myself say.
“You’ll both be happy here,” Mrs. Price smiles. Sherri smiles too. I feel like a stick in a stream being carried along.
After Sherri leaves to go back to work, I finish signing the paperwork with Mrs. Price. She hands me the keys and leaves me standing alone in the middle of the dark-stained hardwood floor, in the front room of the echoing house.
It’s all mine, but I’m not sure where I’m going now. I sit down on the base of the fireplace and lean back against the stones and survey the flat.
A shaft of sunlight slants through the oval, leaded glass window beside the fireplace. Coloured patterns are thrown onto the floor and they waver and ripple like watery images, mesmerizing me with their beauty.
The room is like a shadow box, brightening and darkening as the wind stirs the maples outside.
In the wavering light, shadowy patterns dance and then, gradually resolve into two dim figures in cameo—a silhouette of two lovers embracing.
I hold my breath at the dumb show before me, fascinated and afraid to stir for fear of disturbing the vision.
Gradually, the figures dim and fade and the light changes again in the room.
I’m intrigued by what I experienced and sense there’s significance behind what I can only describe as a vision.
I go back to the university and begin researching details of the house starting with the street address.
In the historical Toronto archives, I find a wealth of information about the Annex area and discover the house is listed as a heritage site.
The more I probe I find information about the original occupants. It turns out to be an interesting story.
It seems the house was originally built by a University of Toronto Professor whose wife suffered an untimely death just after the house was completed. He lived alone in the house for several years before marrying the young servant girl who assisted the housekeeper.
The marriage apparently caused quite a few raised eyebrows in the Professor’s staid circle of friends, but the two lived happily in the house until they passed away during the First World War.
A newspaper article recounted that when the house was being renovated in the Thirties, a cache of letters was found in the attic throwing light on the devotion of the couple and their unswerving love toward each other.
A passage from one of the letters touched me—the husband was reassuring his wife that their differences in class and age were nothing but superficial. Quoting William Thackeray he told her, “A person can't help their birth.”
As soon as I read that line, I knew why I had been drawn to the house and what the shadow play I witnessed really meant to me.
I had been overly concerned about Raff and my university friends—my social circle—and I forgot those nights in parents’ kitchen when I would add up the columns and weight them until they always came out in favour of Sherri.
My heart already knew what my head would slowly learn—compatibility in love is a matter of gravity—of slowly being drawn in the one direction.
And Mrs. Price was right—we will both be happy here.