Cole. Newburgh was not the place and days after my dad’s death was not the time to be entertaining such feelings.
I chalked up the heightened emotions to grief. Like I advised my counseling patients, it would be smart to ignore those feelings and focus on what had to be done. Like ridding my old room of eight-legged freeloaders.
“I can do this.” I had nothing to be afraid of. It was probably dead. Just in case, I gave it a spritz of wasp spray, the only insecticide I’d been able to find under the kitchen sink.
It moved!
The mothereffing living spider scurried to another part of the web.
I squealed like a little pig and did the dance of creeped-out arachnophobes everywhere, the one where heebie-jeebie shivers rack your body and you pump your knees like you’re fleeing for your life but you’re just running in place.
I caught my breath in the center of the room, glad Dad wasn’t here to witness my cowardice. I could just imagine what he would say after stomping back to my room. “Jesus Christ, Mandy. It’s just a spider. It’s more afraid of you than you are of it.” Then he would have stood hands-on-hips and watched me deal with the spider. He wouldn’t have offered to help. No, he would have insisted I suck it up and get the hell over my irrational fear. And if I’d shown any sign of weakness, he would have mocked me. “Poor wittle Mandy, afraid of a big, bad spider. Jesus. I raised you to be tougher than this.”
My chest felt cold. A strange numbness replaced my fear as I approached the spider and unloaded a stream of wasp spray on it. It didn’t take long before its legs curled under. I felt like a murderer. I felt like a coward.
Holding a small wastepaper basket underneath, I used the rolling pin to knock down the web and its dead resident. With mechanical, detached efficiency, I began to clean my old room.
An hour later, I’d dusted, Windexed, vacuumed, and changed the linens on my old twin bed. My room was starting to feel livable. It was starting to look like it had when I’d lived here.
After opening the window to let the cold night air purge the stale smell of disuse, I looked around and let memory plow over me. I remembered the day I arranged the furniture into the configuration I saw before me now, the Wal-Mart daybed against the wall beneath the window, the tall antique dresser that used to be my mom’s against the wall opposite the sliding-panel closet, the full-length mirror screwed into the wall next to the door and the low table beside it where I used to plug in my hair dryer and flattening iron.
I remembered dreading for days that Dad would notice I’d changed the furniture around and get mad. But he never did. At fifteen, I was still learning what would set my dad off and what wouldn’t. Usually things being out of place meant a temper tantrum. Apparently, Dad’s strange obsession with the location of objects didn’t apply to my room. I could be queen of my little domain. I’d felt empowered.
The memories didn’t stop there. As I shook out the shirts and sweaters from my suitcase and hung them in the closet, I remembered the day I discovered I fit into my mother’s old clothes. I’d been fifteen then too.
My mother died when I was seven. She’d been a beautiful woman with an amazing figure and shining, dark brown hair she always wore long and layered. She would never leave the house without fixing her hair and makeup just so. My mother had taken pride in her appearance, and she’d passed that trait on to me.
I’d wanted to be just like her, even as a child. I used to sneak into Dad’s room and leaf through her hangers of sundresses, miniskirts, and tight tops. Playing dress-up, I would pose in front of the very mirror I stood before now, batting my eyelashes at myself, pretending I was as beautiful as she was. By my freshman year in high-school, I didn’t have to pretend any more. Except for inheriting my dad’s blockier chin, I was my mother’s spitting
I chalked up the heightened emotions to grief. Like I advised my counseling patients, it would be smart to ignore those feelings and focus on what had to be done. Like ridding my old room of eight-legged freeloaders.
“I can do this.” I had nothing to be afraid of. It was probably dead. Just in case, I gave it a spritz of wasp spray, the only insecticide I’d been able to find under the kitchen sink.
It moved!
The mothereffing living spider scurried to another part of the web.
I squealed like a little pig and did the dance of creeped-out arachnophobes everywhere, the one where heebie-jeebie shivers rack your body and you pump your knees like you’re fleeing for your life but you’re just running in place.
I caught my breath in the center of the room, glad Dad wasn’t here to witness my cowardice. I could just imagine what he would say after stomping back to my room. “Jesus Christ, Mandy. It’s just a spider. It’s more afraid of you than you are of it.” Then he would have stood hands-on-hips and watched me deal with the spider. He wouldn’t have offered to help. No, he would have insisted I suck it up and get the hell over my irrational fear. And if I’d shown any sign of weakness, he would have mocked me. “Poor wittle Mandy, afraid of a big, bad spider. Jesus. I raised you to be tougher than this.”
My chest felt cold. A strange numbness replaced my fear as I approached the spider and unloaded a stream of wasp spray on it. It didn’t take long before its legs curled under. I felt like a murderer. I felt like a coward.
Holding a small wastepaper basket underneath, I used the rolling pin to knock down the web and its dead resident. With mechanical, detached efficiency, I began to clean my old room.
An hour later, I’d dusted, Windexed, vacuumed, and changed the linens on my old twin bed. My room was starting to feel livable. It was starting to look like it had when I’d lived here.
After opening the window to let the cold night air purge the stale smell of disuse, I looked around and let memory plow over me. I remembered the day I arranged the furniture into the configuration I saw before me now, the Wal-Mart daybed against the wall beneath the window, the tall antique dresser that used to be my mom’s against the wall opposite the sliding-panel closet, the full-length mirror screwed into the wall next to the door and the low table beside it where I used to plug in my hair dryer and flattening iron.
I remembered dreading for days that Dad would notice I’d changed the furniture around and get mad. But he never did. At fifteen, I was still learning what would set my dad off and what wouldn’t. Usually things being out of place meant a temper tantrum. Apparently, Dad’s strange obsession with the location of objects didn’t apply to my room. I could be queen of my little domain. I’d felt empowered.
The memories didn’t stop there. As I shook out the shirts and sweaters from my suitcase and hung them in the closet, I remembered the day I discovered I fit into my mother’s old clothes. I’d been fifteen then too.
My mother died when I was seven. She’d been a beautiful woman with an amazing figure and shining, dark brown hair she always wore long and layered. She would never leave the house without fixing her hair and makeup just so. My mother had taken pride in her appearance, and she’d passed that trait on to me.
I’d wanted to be just like her, even as a child. I used to sneak into Dad’s room and leaf through her hangers of sundresses, miniskirts, and tight tops. Playing dress-up, I would pose in front of the very mirror I stood before now, batting my eyelashes at myself, pretending I was as beautiful as she was. By my freshman year in high-school, I didn’t have to pretend any more. Except for inheriting my dad’s blockier chin, I was my mother’s spitting
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