Perception Spring 2023

in a pool house. But, he got really mad when we bought the house
behind them. So, my sister once had run up our backyard, and cause
there was no fence it wasn’t clear where our two yards were divided,
and before she could even get halfway up the hill your grandma got
a call from Mrs. Niklas: ‘Mary Rose is in our yard!’”
I chuckled at the nasally voice my mom did to impersonate the
past Mrs. Niklas. After rolling down the road a little more, my mom
told me to slow down on the otherwise empty street and looked
out the driver's side window. Then, she said incredulously, “That! For
a million dollars, are they crazy?” I stole a glance as well as I could
without taking my attention from the road—as I was only driving with
my permit and the last thing I wanted was to be stopped before I
even got my license—to see a looming tan, stone brick house on
our right. It had to be at least three full floors, and it was as wide as
some streets I’d driven on. Though I was cruising through the luxe
community, I may as well have been on Neibolt Street with the way
the home glared down on our car. The shutters were a 70s-style
teal, and many of them were either crooked out of place or simply
dangling off their latches. Though I couldn’t see much detail, my
mom commented on one of the upper windows even looking to be
broken and boarded up. The home was as lifeless and still as the
crisp January air.
I continued on driving, for a combination of traffic laws and the
deep chill the home racked down my spine forced me to, but my
mom continued talking. She was gesturing now, explaining, “Their
daughter is the one selling it, I guess. Mrs. Niklas is in a nursing home
uptown somewhere, but it doesn’t seem like her daughter really put
much effort into renovation.”
She paused again, then added something that struck me. “Mrs.
Niklas—that is a woman who has never worked a day in her life.”
hand and gardening gloves on, waving to the family walking by on
the road. Inside the walls of the Niklas house, the matriarch, Mrs.
Niklas sat at a vanity, powdering her face while a television broadcast
the Reagan assassination attempt. Or maybe Mrs. Niklas preferred
tuning into the then-new QVC and left the politics to the other.
Mr. Niklas would come home late, the epitome of “money can’t
buy happiness” in a human form. At a dining table, silent, with their
daughter, who was probably a recluse due to the scale of the home.
She was probably on track to become a lawyer or secretariat like her
father, though it seemed that she was selling her childhood home in
decrepit conditions decades later. She had more than likely never
grown out of The Manor, the title characterizing her life like a badge
of privilege that only meant anything in the small bubble of our own
town.
Mr. Niklas’ imprint on the neighborhood was grim. He was a
Radley-like figure, with dark features and more than likely a low,
commanding voice that had been heard a few too many times
by the sweet family below. My own grandparent’s house, bustling
with three children and a brand of love I understood to be familial
fondness. I pieced together like a historian, only catching glimpses of
the end of most of these folks’ lives, their intricate relationships and
how each individual laid their handprint into the foundation of the
neighborhood itself and haunted the street, like an unresolved spirit.
The dining table would be long—with only the three of them
hardly filling it out. The plates teal against the ivory embroidered
tablecloth. It would be quiet. I pictured the teenage Niklas daughter
dreading the daily meal. Maybe it was a source of confrontation.
Maybe it was a source of silence, a horrifying moment of pulling
back the curtain on the tragic reality of the wealthy family.
My attention returned to the car. My mom was planning on
I pictured a scene of the past. The same road, with a brighter blue
ordering pizza for dinner. She had finished talking about the Niklas
sky and brighter green lawns out of a TV show, with the Niklas house
family, I assumed, however I could not help but keep the image of the
stood tall and refurbished, the neighborhood symbol of wealth and
withering Mrs. Niklas, lingering in an assisted bedroom somewhere
modernity. I imagined a woman on their vast lawn with a hose in
nearby, with her old-fashioned makeup still plastered onto cracking
skin and frown lines etched into her face.
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