MARLBOROUGH STREET was a dream. Sylvia met me in front of Women’s College Hospital after her shift, and then we took the bus up to her house in Rosedale. I had heard of the houses there – old Toronto homes from the 1900s, or maybe even older, still standing in all their architectural glory – but hadn’t prepared myself for what I saw when we stepped off the bus.
On Marlborough Street stood three-storey red-bricked houses, with arches over the front doors and pointed towers peeking out from the roofs. Green ivy snaked up the sides of homes and across stained-glass windows, and white wispy curtains shielded homeowners just enough from the curious eyes of passersby. As we walked down the street, I saw shadows of those people in the windows of their front-facing sitting rooms: clinking glasses, playing records, reading books. Others ate with their blinds open, and sat underneath chandeliers filled with Edison-style lightbulbs. They looked as if they were having seductive and peculiar conversations. I know I would feel compelled to have those, if I was the one inside.
Sylvia rented a house with three other girls. It was really a three-bedroom house, but one of the rooms was big enough for two of the girls to sleep in, so they squeezed in a fourth to make the rent cheaper. They had a big living room that overlooked the street, and the wispy curtains that everyone else seemed to have to shut out the Peeping Toms. The kitchen was
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Maia Kowalski (she/her) is a writer from Toronto, Canada. She has been published in Flash Frog, ellipsis… literature and art, White Wall Review, and Montreal Writes, among others.