perhaps now, a sense of place

The worst part about the house is the stairs. Four flights´ worth, each cut in half with a landing, which forms eight small staircases piled on top of each other. You can judge where a person is in the house by those stairs - six quick steps, a pause to spin 180· on the landing, then six more quick steps to the next floor. The steps are our Morse code, tapping out the steps of each journey.

But that´s not what I meant to say about the stairs; forgive my Shandeism. The worst part is that they´re marble, an ivory shade with faint pinks and greys swirled in. They´re slippery, with hard edges. It hurts to fall on them.

I live with a single mother (Cristina, 45) and her two kids (Maria, 14; Miguel, 11). I live here in exchange for speaking English with all three; Cristina´s English is quite fluent, but she´s anxious to make it flawless. The situation is almost an au pair arrangement, but I pretend it´s not. A maid comes once a week to clean, and my only responsibility is to teach the kids English. We watch movies in English, listen to American pop songs, plaster the kitchen with Post-It notes. Toaster, towel, paper towel, fork, tray, spices, broom. Maria goes to school in England next fall and will need these words. Or Miguel and I "race" down the treacherous stairs - he moves a step for every answer he knows, and I move a step for every answer he doesn´t. What is the present simple? What is the past continuous? Ask me a question using "how."

The house itself is very nice; by Spanish standards, wealthy. It´s a four-bedroom rowhouse, the third of six on a quiet cul-de-sac. It faces six identical brick houses. They have varying specimans of ivy, potted trees, dogs. There is no room for grass in front, and a manicured park in place of backyards. My friend John once compared this street, these houses, to a quaint British lane. Inside, the house is a combination of modern and Spanish. The marble floors, the grey and white kitchen with red curtains, the dark spare dining room furniture, skylights in the slanted attic ceiling - all modern. The occasional Moroccan-print rug, the history and philosophy books upstairs, the ironed teeshirts, the bottles of olive oil by the stove - all Spanish.

Paradoxically, the house´s greatest advantage and disadvantage is its distance from the city. Twenty minutes by car if the traffic is good, or half an hour by bus. And this gets me only to the very edge, the NW corner, where I join the crowds of jostled Madrileños (residents of Madrid) on the metro. I suppose that´s the trade-off I get for watching the stars gather strength in the evening over the low mountains.