I pull up to the curb in front of the house instead of parking in the driveway. I had intended to do otherwise, when I had played the scene out in my head last night, but now that I am here the action doesn’t feel right. Perhaps it is my subconscious subtly distancing me from the old Tudor-style dwelling that was once my home. Perhaps the act of broaching the property with other than myself would soften the poignancy for which I have come, and my mind knows I need to see this place for the last time as if it were the first.
Perhaps I am thinking too much.
The engine dies, and I exit the car smoothly, my right hand sliding the keys free of the ignition and following my motion with fluid ease, pocketing them while my left pushes the door to. The sound of its closing is soft, distant, as if muted by the gentle steady drizzle of the overcast day. It is the only sound on the street. The relative silence around me is to be expected; given the neighborhood, all its residents must either be at school, at work, or seated comfortably in front of their favorite afternoon soaps. I am not likely to be disturbed by the friendly elderly at work in their gardens. I have the place to myself.
Three blocks behind me I can hear the quiet, almost comforting intermittent whooshing of wet tires on the thoroughfare I had steered off moments ago. It is a pleasant sound, and one I take a moment or two to simply enjoy while I gaze at the familiar brown-and-white exterior, awash in nostalgia. The cool light lends it a serene quality, as if time had stopped for it when I had last left and had only just now resumed its flow. The lawn, damp and glistening despite the sun having hidden itself behind the wall of cloud, was trimmed to perfection; the local landscaping team I had hired three days ago had been worth every penny. Even the bushes around the front walk were impeccable, all the edges of their shapes rounded expertly so as to present an image of precise detail while retaining the appearance of life.
A single lamppost stands by the mouth of the driveway. It has stood there for as long as I can remember, a ten-foot smooth metal pole curved over at the top like a shepherd’s crook to suspend the wide inverted cone of its lantern. The rest of the street is lined with street lamps set at thirty yard intervals, each pole across the way from the previous one, their lights jutting out over the road just like everywhere else, but this lamp remains, as much a part of the house’s character as the steeply-sloping roof.
I draw a deep breath and release it, adjust my hat, and move around the car to start across the lawn, abandoning the unforgiving bleached concrete of the driveway for the softer, more direct approach. Again I wonder if this choice is my subconscious intervening, but I quickly dismiss the thought, shoving my hands into the pockets of my brown leather coat.
My stride, though purposed, is slow as I recall racing across this same lawn with my siblings and friends as we played some raucous game of Tag or Red Rover or Kick the Can. I remember sweat pouring off me as I mowed it during the almost unbearably humid summers, or cooling me as I raked leaves in the fall. I remember the yard in all its lights: the cold dazzling morning sun, the warm glow of the afternoon, the firefly-filled twilight, the blinding rain of the thunderstorms. The last I remembered mostly from the other side of the living room windows, but I had fled through such a torrential downpour more than once before.
I realize that my face has formed a slight smile at the memories. I don’t wipe it away.
Slipping between two bushes, I step onto the walk, springing lithely up the step without a second thought. I don’t even realize I have done so until my key is halfway inside the lock; turning, I stare pensively at the steps, wondering how many times I have mounted them by such exercise of reflex. An amused puff of air escapes my nose, and I shake my head, opening the door to greet the ghosts inside.
As I cross the threshold, the phantom scent of cookies fresh from the oven caresses my nostrils. My mother was an avid cook, I recall, always trying some new recipe or perfecting a successful one. My brother and sisters and I were the envy of the neighborhood because of her cookies, and I don’t doubt they remained just as popular after the last of us had left. I had hoped to bring my children back to taste those cookies.
The entrance hallway was barren, the dark walnut-stained wood adding a dreary gloom to the day’s already dim light. It felt close, more so than I remembered, even without the chest of drawers that had always stood opposite the stairs to the second floor. It had been the one piece of furniture that I could never seem to get along with, always thrusting a finely-molded corner into my path at the worst possible times. I remember thinking occasionally that my elbow would never stop hurting as long as I lived. Twelve year olds often have just such an exaggerated sense of reality.
I ventured first to the dining room. It too was barren, my normally
silent footsteps echoing off the stark wooden floor, ceiling, and walls. My hands still in my coat pockets, I cast my eyes over the whole of the room, remembering the long table with its removable leaf, which we added whenever we had important company, or more than two relatives; the towering cabinets with the glass doors that ran two-thirds of their height and the drawers underneath, for displaying and storing the china; the other various jewel cases that held other pretty items of divergent value.
Now there was nothing, save me and my memories, to speak of the life this room had seen.
The dining room was almost gloomier than the hallway even despite the large windows. I didn’t bother to flip the light switch; the power had been cut off for almost two years now, after the utilities had been left unpaid. Instead I moved to the kitchen.
The kitchen had been my mother’s sanctuary. David told me that she had insisted on repainting it as soon as we had moved here; at the time, I was too young to remember. Instead of the stained walnut of the hall and dining room, the walls here white, except for along the center where she had painted a bright blue checkered pattern. My father had refused to allow the cabinets painted, but he had compromised by allowing her to strip the wood and reapply a honey stain. The kitchen was by far the brightest room in the house, never failing to liven the drudgery of dish work when it had been my turn.
The cabinets covered three of the four walls, stopping only at the doors to the backyard and the dining room. The cabinets below waist level were topped by a white counter that ran the length of the far wall and the one adjacent, interrupted by a four-burner stove and an oven to my right and a two-basin sink across from me. Over the sink there were no cabinets, but instead a window to the backyard through which the sunlight streamed in the mornings and out of which I remembered gazing enviously while my brother and sisters played without me.
The doors to the cabinets stood closed, but I knew they too were empty. After my father died it had become an escape for her, and she quickly lost sight of the joy it once brought her.
Retracing my steps, I crossed the hallway to the expansive living room. I remembered the sofa—big enough to hold all four of us kids with enough room to fidget and pester one another— that had sat across from the now-dormant fireplace; the plush recliner my father had bought himself, of which he was good-naturedly possessive and which we all repeatedly attempted to usurp; and the wicker rocking chair my mother loved so dearly, where she had lulled us to sleep more times than I could hope to count. I had taken the chair at her behest in the hopes that my future wife would do the same for my children, but age and a rambunctious nephew had done it in some time ago. Mother had almost cried when I told her. So had I.
There had been bookcases along the far wall of the living room. The one on the left of the window had been designated our general library, and the one on the right my father’s. I recall wondering how he could have amassed such a vast collection and managed to read them all, and wondering even more when I had been told of his personal library upstairs, but now it doesn’t seem nearly so incredible. I now have a couple of bookcases myself; I cannot now rival my father’s collection nor the degree to which he was well-read, but I am not so poorly off myself. I was always told I took after his intellect.
The room seems more enormous than I remember it with nothing now present. It makes me feel small and slightly alone. A shiver darts up my spine, and I turn and head upstairs, marveling at my eagerness to escape the sensation.
I repeat the process once there, passing through the various bedrooms and reviving old phantoms, both welcomed and painful. I tarry longest in my father’s study and my brother’s room, which he had shared with me once Abigail had arrived. As third child I rarely had anything that had not belonged to David at one point or another, but I didn’t mind terribly. I idolized my older brother. I still ask him for advice now and again, though we’re separated by several states and an entire time zone.
As I exit Margaret’s room I hear another car pulling up to the house. It’s the realtor’s car, and she’s using the driveway. I check my watch; I came here with over an hour to spare, but it seems that I’ve been lost in memories for longer than I’d thought. I head downstairs to meet her.
It had been David’s decision for me to handle the selling of the house, despite Margaret’s consternated objections. She had wanted him to do it, viewing David as the de facto leader of the family now that our parents had passed on. His reasonings—that I was the closest, had the better head for business, and would be less affected by the sale—couldn’t reach her. The last one stung me a little, but he quickly apologized, and I understood that to him the house in this state would appear to be a mausoleum, and he simply couldn’t see it.
I meet the realtor on the front stoop. We exchange pleasantries and go over a few minor details; apparently the inspectors found some mold in the upstairs bathroom, so the cost of the repairs is to be deducted from the price. I am a little surprised and ask if she can show me, which she does. She is right, but I wonder privately if the cost is not a little high. After a summary tour through the rest of the house, we migrate to the kitchen so I have flat surface for signing the appropriate papers. That done, she hands me a check in exchange for the key, and we escort each other out.
She is a nice woman, very professional, but as we stand on the front walk and glance up at the house I can tell she can’t see what I see. It is only a house to her—a house with character, most likely, but still just a house. The character will become a selling point, I can tell. The thought unsettles me a little. I wish she could see what I see.
I see a rock in the center of constant change, a place I always knew would be there when I needed it to be, a comfort and shelter if everything else blew up and went to hell. I see a world where I spent almost half of my life, fighting and crying and loving and being fought and cried over and loved. I see myself, almost, in the doors and the walls and the windows, in the trees and the yard.
I see a home.
I part ways with her at the walk, returning over the grass the way I came. The soft, muffled sounds of the drizzly day return to my ears, and so lost in thought am I that I almost miss the realtor’s call of farewell. I return it from beside my car and open my door, but before I get in I take one last look at the house and am flooded with memories once more.
As I drive away, I hope that my children will one day feel the same as I.
