| ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- to laugh at how you break My phone pings with a text from Michelle. She and her husband bought my mother’s house. We have mail to pick up, her message reads. And so only 10 days after I thought I'd left the house for the last and final time we are winding our way through the neighborhood again. It’s late Saturday afternoon, just before the golden hour, and the lawns stretch green and lush. The teenage swim club kids race through the cabana club parking lot, sun drunk and giddy. Nearby, children bike furiously as if to escape the heat radiating off the black asphalt. We pull into the cul-de-sac and park in front of my of my mother's house. It's Robert and Michelle's house now, but I can't convince my brain to think of a way to rephrase it. Should I stay in the car, my husband asks. No, no. Please come with me. Michelle answers the door before we'd even make it up the driveway, careful not to trudge on the grass. She has dark hair in a pixie cut and wears a David Bowie t-shirt, Aladdin Sane-era. Come in, come in, she says. The house is still filled with unpacked boxes. Sorry about the mess, Robert says. We laugh even though we know It's just something you say when you've just moved in to a new home. Anyone who's done it knows it can take months, if not years, to fully settle into a new space. We walk into the dining room and hope we aren’t being rude, staring at the way their belongings fill up the rooms. A flat screen TV rests against the hearth, not yet hung above the fireplace. The set is tuned to an internet radio station, playing Echo and the Bunnymen and then, later, Duran Duran. I bet ‘'Lips Like Sugar' hasn’t been played in this house since she lived here, my husband says nodding to me. We all laugh, me a little less than everyone else. I want to tell them which room had been mine, but resist. 11:45 am - 22.07.19
sounds: ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- previously on ... - next time on ...
twenty years and counting - 15.08.19 - 6:15 pm If only - 13.08.19 - 11:35 am a slow wave of loss - 12.08.19 - 11:38 am racing to a close - 06.08.19 - 7:54 pm multitudes - 31.07.19 - 12:35 pm |
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