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The First Days Home
And the sun shines down on a yellow cream house, drying out the green spring garden as summer comes again. There are cardboard boxes in the driveway and on the deck and filling the white-walled rooms. Out before the house is a man, toiling in the noonday sun, boxes in and items out and a Dumpster garish on the drive growing fuller and fuller. A woman is in the living room sorting mixed up boxes: kitchen, family room, basement. There are two girls, one on each end of the house — bedroom and kitchen — the older brushing red hair over her shoulders as she sorts through boxes, the younger chatting on the kitchen phone and pacing on the brown amber wooden floor. Yes, she tells the phone, she’ll ask her mother. Hold on. She’s in the living room. In the living room the mother has paused, breathing. Her mind is a sandstorm of checklists and reminders and things still to do. Her eyes wander from the room, escaping to bright sunlight of outdoors. Across the pavement radiating heat is a tree. Yellow golden, it dries as it stands in soil, taking in no water and no nutrients. Oak leaves still crown it, brittle, dead. As she watches, squinting almost, a flock of little black birds alight, swarm, fly en masse from the dead tree. Their old home is dead. The mother sighs at their easy flight, looks to her work again, and her youngest enters the room. The bedroom is so hot. She has shed her top and works now in white undershirt, keeping the door closed so no one can see her and no one can hear her loud music. The light is dim. Boxes litter the rough brown carpet and are stacked on the bare mattress of a bed. Paper, used to protect everything but the books and the bears during shipping and storage, is crumpled into dry snowballs in all crevices. Her clock flashes green, undecided midnight or midday, plugged in but unset. Moving back home will not be complete until all clocks are set, all books are replaced, and all dishes and vases and pictures are back where they belong. The living room, and the daughter speaks to the mother, holding the phone in her hand with the mouthpiece covered. She’s been invited out. She needs a ride. Can they leave in a few minutes? The mother is too busy to see her friends. Her eldest does not think of hers. Her youngest wants out of the force-field prison of an incomplete house. The father is busy moving boxes, he cannot take his daughter out. The mother makes the decision: yes, she will drive the daughter to the friend’s house. Fifteen minutes, then she’ll be ready. She speaks to the daughter, says that when she gets home she must help them unpack. She can’t be out all the time, there’s a lot of work still to do. The daughter sighs at the lecture and then leaves, with the phone, to find her shoes. A day in the middle of summer, sun scorching the earth, people working in its heat. The joy of returning home has evaporated into the air. Birds fly overhead. They cannot find water, it is all gone, and there is no place to rest. |
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The First Days Home
11.11.01 550 words |