The Book of Dema

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN + Set Me Free

There was something comforting about the six white and blue plates that hung over the fireplace of the house Tyler shared with Josh, Carter, and Greg. They hung there in disarray. They had been arranged by Mrs. Weisner during her life in the house.

Mrs. Weisner had lived there for thirty years, raising her family and expecting to die in the home. Instead, she had moved to Florida with her daughter the week Tyler moved in. The rent she charged him was low, and she permitted roommates as long as they treated the house with respect. She was protective of the place, nestled in the back of a cul-de-sac surrounded by towering maple trees. It was a monument to her life.

She had always assumed she and her husband, Richard, would live there until they were too old for it. Plans change though, and often without anyone's consent. After their three children had moved away, the couple had four years alone together in it, planting a garden, waiting for grandchildren, and then poor Richard died suddenly of a stroke. It was a quiet thing. He walked into the kitchen while she was cooking dinner one evening complaining of a headache. Then he sat down at the table while she mixed the dinner roll batter and just faded out, like an old tv set that takes a minute or so to finally go completely off. It had been such a subtle event that she had barely noticed.

She lived in the house for another year, but at last it had been too much, and she began to let her friends know that she would rent it out to anyone who promised not to change it. One of the people in Mrs. Weisner's circle was Mrs. Petit, Mr. Joseph's secretary. It seemed Mrs. Petit knew all about Tyler's living arrangements in those days. When his father had arrived home with the little slip of paper containing Mrs. Weisner's number, he had descended the basement stairs and thrust it at his son saying, "Mrs. Petit says you need a house of your own. Call this woman."

Tyler called Mrs. Weisner three days later. The day after that, he was standing in this living room, listening to her tell him all about the family she had raised here and that if he rented it, he'd better not change a thing.

He was to keep the items on the bookshelf next to the fireplace, take care of the blue sofa under the window, protect the brown recliner near the entryway as if it was a priceless heirloom, and never ever take the blue plates down from the wall.

She'd taken the television with her when she moved. Strange that it was the one thing she thought she needed, he had thought when she asked him to help carry it out. The TV was old, square and dusty. Tyler and her daughter struggled to move the heavy thing to the back of the van the two women were driving to Florida. She had shrugged when he had asked about it. "Dad bought it in 1983 for her birthday. It was our first color TV. She watches the shows they used to watch, and sometimes she thinks she hears his voice through it," she had said.

He did not really want to live in the house after that, but the papers were signed, and Mrs. Weisner was counting on him to look after it.

To his surprise, this wood-paneled living room had become a bit of a refuge, the brown recliner became his little spot in front of the fire that threw the flickering lights up on the wall. Behind him, a set of stairs went up to their bedrooms and another down to the basement, but it was the living room and those plates that had this effect on him. Had he hung the plates on the wall himself, he would have arranged in a more orderly pattern. But that had been Mrs. Weisner's choice. She had liked the randomness. It made her feel that the plates were dancing among and around each other, like old friends enjoying a Friday night of fun. She had told all of this to Tyler as she gave him her last instructions. Now he sat looking at the artifacts of this family's life he had been entrusted to protect. The circles reminded him of all of the people he had been called to protect from vialism, a threat he didn't even truly understand. His own nine circles were bound together by the trust they had placed in each other. One was gone now because those in it hadn't learned the lesson. It pained him to think about how he had failed to teach them how much they all needed each other.