On the corner of West and Main, there
stands a house.
The front door is custom hand-carved
redwood; the doorknob, iron . It stands exactly 8 ft high. Behind the
door lies seven feet and three inches of carpet. The entryway leads
to an open room, twenty-two feet by sixteen. Clockwise, starting at
the north-east corner, you have a couch, two sitting chairs split by
a end table, a piano, and a fireplace. From here, most people go to
the kitchen. The kitchen itself is rather unassuming; most of the
appliances are aged gas-operated machines. The small dining room
table sits lower than the rest of the kitchen, surrounded by five
chairs.
After the kitchen, there's the two
hallways. The first has five doors. The first door on the left leads
to a pink room. The door after it, a blue room. The room at the end
of the hall is beige, though you wouldn't know for all the stuffed
bookshelves that line the room. On the right, there's the bathroom,
recently renovated with hardwood flooring. The last room is empty,
both in color and furnishing.
The second hallway is only four feet
long, but it leads to the master bedroom, complete with high ceilings
and black/white contrasts. The master bath is home to the building's
only dedicated bathtub, the kind with the jacuzzi attachments.
Outside the windows lies the rear of the house, a spacious backyard
that's nigh impossible to fill. The fences were put up one by one
over the years as the neighbors moved in.
The house itself is rather unassuming.
It stands and exists, just as complete as whenever it was built
thirty-six years ago.
Actually, no. That's a lie. The house
is incomplete. It stands empty, because I made it empty. You see,
that house used to be a home to a lovely suburban family with a man,
his wife, and their slightly above average number of three children.
The house that stands at West and Main
was my home. I remember a day when turning that final corner and
seeing it was often the best moment of day because I knew my family
waited inside. That front door was hand-carved by my father and I. It
took us all summer, but the end result was attached to our door frame
before I left for college. When my parents died, I moved it here. I
had to have the entryway redone to fit the larger door.
Behind that door lies seven feet and
three inches of carpet. I have scrubbed at that carpet once a week
for the past eight years, and I cannot get the smell of dog pee out.
Oliver and Abigail both could never train Samantha quite right. The
old girl always barely made to the door before she couldn't wait any
longer. I never minded cleaning it up, though. The entryway walls
were adorned with photographs – when Alice and I had met, wed,
vacationed, the pregnancy chronicles, and family photographs as one
by one our family had grown larger. This was my happy place; where I
could always go to relax; run down memory lane as smiles replayed
themselves through my head.
Past the entryway is the living room.
Clockwise, starting at the north-east corner, you have a couch, two
sitting chairs split by a end table, a piano, and a fireplace. The
couch had always been reserved for guests, and then as the years wore
on, our children. The two chairs facing the fireplace were reading
chairs; at any given time a stack of books knee high were stacked
next to each chair, a reminder of long nights spent together in far
away places. The piano was mine, and as time wore on Oliver's as
well. The boy had a knack for music that I was only a mere shadow of.
His reading music was better than anything I've ever bought with
money.
The kitchen. Each appliance was
inherited, a parting gift in our parent's will to complete our home.
Saturday mornings were pancake mornings. Abigail woke up at the crack
of dawn to get fresh eggs from the chicken coop that the neighbors
always complained about. Michelle and Oliver would take turns beating
the batter with the whisk, often to a happy tune Abigail would bless
us with as she helped her mother prepare the skillet. The kids loved
peanut butter pancakes; a taste acquired from their mother that I
couldn't ever stomach. But I ate them anyway. The dishes were always
washed and put away immediately. So many Saturdays we spent at the
park, walking one of the many rescue dogs that paraded through our
yards as the years wore on. The kids loved each one as much as they
loved Samantha. Each dog was family.
That first hallway belonged to them.
Michelle had the pink room. The youngest of our three children, she
had her walls covered in black leaves and balloons, blowing in an
invisible wind in the field of her young imagination. She had painted
the first branch of leaves herself with finger-paint we'd left out.
She finished the entire room with her mother, who added balloons as
her own personal touch. Michelle always talked about flying away to
places she'd heard of; maybe one day she'll go. But not yet; she's
far too young.
Next is Oliver's room. Alternating
dark and light blue stripes line the walls. Above his headboard hung
his first violin, a small beat up thing his mother had given me years
ago that had been passed down to him. Below it was a blue-ribbon that
he'd won at State as a soloist freshman year of high school. On his
desk was a photograph of a girl he'd met there, a lovely thing with
piercing green eyes. He'd never told me her name, but I think she was
the only reason he's ever wanted to go back. I can see so much of me
in his face, but thank the L-RD
that he had his mother's eyes. They are no one
color, but are both green, blue, grey, and hazel at the same time.
He's already composed his first movie score; a short that he and his
friend had put together. They both could go a long way, if they
wanted. They possess the skill, but lack the ambition.
The white room was
Abigail's. She'd left at the early age of sixteen to pursue her
dancing career. Her mother gave her that passion. She was in Chicago
now, dancing full-time for the main stage, but she hears talk about
moving her to New York. We've never missed a single opening night.
She was always my little girl, you know? But she was never settled
here. Her room was always barren beyond the necessities. 'Who needs
possessions when you have a passion?' she'd asked me. She knew what
she wanted, and may G-d damn anyone who got in her way.
The middle room was my
office. On one shelf I had leaf pages, printed and haphazardly
stacked about as I frantically searched for the next big idea. That's
what was on the other shelf; my big ideas bound in leather, sold on
the market. Not all the books were mine; I had to pay my respects to
every writer who I'd ever read and learned from. But the middle, that
was my desk. Everything I'd ever penned after College came from that
desk. It'd seen tears, heard screams, and it's seen the best and the
worst of me. When we'd first bought the house, before Abigail had
come to us, I always thought that my writing time would be my time,
and that I'd have to make sure to spend time with my kids before
their bedtime. But I could never close the door, never keep them out.
Like their mom, they were my everything. I owed it all to them. 'You
can't compartmentalize your life away; you are the sum of it's
parts'. I penned it and hung it above my desk as a reminder.
After the wedding, Alice
and I came to what was now our house. Our new home symbolizing all
that was our life and our future together. I'd carried her in,
straight through that short narrow hallway to our bedroom. It was our
sanctuary. We'd forged a family together in that room, a lovely room
where all the world and it's pretenses were stripped away. Outside
that room, we were but a man and woman joined in marriage. Inside
that room, we were a single being; G-D's
greatest creation. Every morning, it overwhelmed me that such a
captivating creature could love me. I felt that we were unseparable,
even unto death and beyond. We were the greatest love story I'd ever
know. Above our headboard hung a picture frame. The photograph was
from the Grand Canyon for our first anniversary. We had screamed at
the morning sunrise together, our fists raised as we quoted our
favorite poet. “We celebrate ourselves!” It was our challenge to
the world, and the world had yet to answer.
We spent years in that
home.Any soul who needed a home was always welcome in ours. But time
wore us down. Our kids grew old, and they moved away. We grew old,
and withered away. Grandkids came and went, and then great-grandkids.
Our last family photograph as a family had twenty souls in it, every
one of them the product of our union.
But that house on West
and Main, as lovely as it was, never existed. I never watched it age.
I never filled it with my music, my children, or my love. Every
memory I have of that house is a painful dream, because it is all
dependent on one thing – my love, my devotion, my undivided
attention to Alice. It was what my life could've been. It was what my
life should've been. It's how I'd always dreamed of it being. But now
my dreams torment me every time I close my eyes. The sound of
Abigail's voice, her swift and subtle movements; Oliver's fingers
across the keys as his eyes read the handwritten sheets, Michelle's
deft strokes as her vision guided her hands. The faces of my unborn
children are so beautiful; just as beautiful as their mother's, and I
know hers by touch.
