what you might call interesting things: a spinning wheel, a slouched half couch, two bright cotton beanbag chairs. An old Humpty Dumpty sat against one wall, and inside a cabinet of curious things were a shark’s tooth, the polished skull of apine marten, a leather box from Granada, a found clay face from ancient El Salvador, fossilized fish scales, an egg-shaped kaleidoscope, and two impossibly tiny finch skulls, one still with a fringe of feathers at its beak, all these courtesy of my father’s endless travels.
Upstairs there are just two rooms, and in between these rooms there is a bathroom that is a gross-out shade of pink. The people before us liked navy blue. They chose it for the carpets and the trim. Even some of the doors are the American flag version of blue. The only room in the house that isn’t scorched by blue is the kitchen, which my mother painted yellow. Did it one year to the day after my father had left for good, which approximates the time she started the windowsill farm of basil and potatoes. Maybe if my mom hadn’t gotten so caught up with Mr. Paul, she’d have painted the rest of the house. She’d have made it all as ripe as fruitand put some music on.
She’d have been home, cratering her own pillow.
She’d have been with me, because I’d have been enough, because I alone would not be such a tiring, lonesome thing.
It was the eighth morning of July and finally felt like summer. I pushed all the windows open and the back door too, so the fireflies wouldn’t forget me. Granddad had told me, before I’d left the day before, to give myself the next day off. “Teresa is coming, isn’t she?” I’d said, and he’d said there were some things she needed extra time to do. I didn’t ask him what they were.
So it was early, and then it was ten, then noon, and for a while I watched Mrs. Robertson pinning her husband’s black socks to the line, but not her underwear, and then I called Nick Burkeman’s house, even though I knew he wouldn’t be home. “He’s at his father’s shop,” his mother told me when shepicked up on her side; there was a TV on loud in the background. “All day?” I asked. “Until six,” she said, hurrying me off. I remembered what Nick had once said about his mom: She’d have preferred a TV family. It was what he’d said one night, when we were out on his roof, testing his hypothesis that chirper birds don’t fly at night. We could hear beneath us the fake TV laugh. We could hear Nick’s mom talking back to the show. It was dark, but I could see him blushing. “Let’s find an owl,” I’d said, “and let’s forget it.”
I could have read, I could have knocked away cobwebs, scrubbed out a sink, written a letter I’d never mail to my lousy cash-peeling excuse of a father, but I had been thinking about living and dying, and time was running out. I yanked at the knob on the navy-blue closet door and pulled the door across the navy-blue napped carpet. I shoved aside the crate of little-girl toys and dug in, at last, to my shoe box of cash.
You cannot buy a man who is dying a single meaningful thing. You can only give him back the life he loved, and wake up his memories.
FOURTEEN
T HERE IS A SECOND POSTER in the street lobby at the House of Dance that promises a lesson for free; it hangs there easy enough for the whole world to see. “Take the First One on Us,” the words say, over a picture of a slick-haired man and a fish-netted woman all meshed up together.
At two o’clock that very same afternoon I was studying that poster, wearing my best white camisole and my shortest lime green skirt and dangling, from one hand, the high-heeled sandals I had stolen from my mother.I was standing in that lobby, daring myself to take the steps up and up past the brownish-reddish walls and the photographs and the mirrors that would force me into doing the math on myself: my hair, which isn’t as black as my mother’s; my skin, which isn’t as pale; and my eyes,
Upstairs there are just two rooms, and in between these rooms there is a bathroom that is a gross-out shade of pink. The people before us liked navy blue. They chose it for the carpets and the trim. Even some of the doors are the American flag version of blue. The only room in the house that isn’t scorched by blue is the kitchen, which my mother painted yellow. Did it one year to the day after my father had left for good, which approximates the time she started the windowsill farm of basil and potatoes. Maybe if my mom hadn’t gotten so caught up with Mr. Paul, she’d have painted the rest of the house. She’d have made it all as ripe as fruitand put some music on.
She’d have been home, cratering her own pillow.
She’d have been with me, because I’d have been enough, because I alone would not be such a tiring, lonesome thing.
It was the eighth morning of July and finally felt like summer. I pushed all the windows open and the back door too, so the fireflies wouldn’t forget me. Granddad had told me, before I’d left the day before, to give myself the next day off. “Teresa is coming, isn’t she?” I’d said, and he’d said there were some things she needed extra time to do. I didn’t ask him what they were.
So it was early, and then it was ten, then noon, and for a while I watched Mrs. Robertson pinning her husband’s black socks to the line, but not her underwear, and then I called Nick Burkeman’s house, even though I knew he wouldn’t be home. “He’s at his father’s shop,” his mother told me when shepicked up on her side; there was a TV on loud in the background. “All day?” I asked. “Until six,” she said, hurrying me off. I remembered what Nick had once said about his mom: She’d have preferred a TV family. It was what he’d said one night, when we were out on his roof, testing his hypothesis that chirper birds don’t fly at night. We could hear beneath us the fake TV laugh. We could hear Nick’s mom talking back to the show. It was dark, but I could see him blushing. “Let’s find an owl,” I’d said, “and let’s forget it.”
I could have read, I could have knocked away cobwebs, scrubbed out a sink, written a letter I’d never mail to my lousy cash-peeling excuse of a father, but I had been thinking about living and dying, and time was running out. I yanked at the knob on the navy-blue closet door and pulled the door across the navy-blue napped carpet. I shoved aside the crate of little-girl toys and dug in, at last, to my shoe box of cash.
You cannot buy a man who is dying a single meaningful thing. You can only give him back the life he loved, and wake up his memories.
FOURTEEN
T HERE IS A SECOND POSTER in the street lobby at the House of Dance that promises a lesson for free; it hangs there easy enough for the whole world to see. “Take the First One on Us,” the words say, over a picture of a slick-haired man and a fish-netted woman all meshed up together.
At two o’clock that very same afternoon I was studying that poster, wearing my best white camisole and my shortest lime green skirt and dangling, from one hand, the high-heeled sandals I had stolen from my mother.I was standing in that lobby, daring myself to take the steps up and up past the brownish-reddish walls and the photographs and the mirrors that would force me into doing the math on myself: my hair, which isn’t as black as my mother’s; my skin, which isn’t as pale; and my eyes,
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