The driveway is
long with a slight curve that complicates the downhill slant. Shannon twists and leans, peers over her left
shoulder, then untwists and contorts herself the other direction as she
reverses down the driveway. She brakes a
little too hard, and then starts down again.
She’s almost on the mulch that landscapes in the side of the driveway
with small, wiry bushes huddled in the mulch, but she’s not sure how to right
the car on its path. She overcorrects,
finds herself veering off the other edge of the driveway onto more mulch, tries
again, and manages to make it to the bottom.
She considers not
stopping. Looks and sees her path is
clear to leave now. But instead, she
pushes the button, and the window whirs down.
She flips open the wooden door to the hand-crafted, log cabin mailbox,
and pulls out the stack. She rifles
through: bills, junk mail, January’s Better Homes and Gardens, and a
letter. It’s the letter she wants. She pulls it out and shoves the rest back in.
The home had been
a lucky find. She’d been walking the
suburban neighborhood with its wide, hilly, winding streets, and windmill subdivision
signs marking “Shady Glenhaven” and “Lilac View,” when she’d seen the owner, a
woman with long, dramatically white hair pulled back in a ponytail, struggling
to get a large suitcase into the back of her car. She rushed over, reached a hand under, and
helped hoist the black, Samsonite bag into the trunk.
“Wow! This is
heavy! I can’t imagine getting this into the car alone. What’s in here, rocks?”
“Kind of,
actually. It’s lead crystal. I’m bringing it to a trade show in New
Haven.”
“Really? No way!
Is that what you do? Blow glass?”
“No, no, not at
all. I’m a collector and occasionally an
agent.”
Shannon stayed a
while, friendly and happy to help (and to listen.) Jorja asked her to hold the door while she
brought out the rest of her luggage and chattered on about her two week trip
and all the hiking she had planned for when she wasn’t working. It had been
a stroke of pure luck and Shannon basked in it.
Normally, she
never stayed anywhere for more than a few hours. Long enough to feel what it was to be in the
space, take a nap and a shower, and wipe up after herself before letting herself
out and finding her next pseudo-home.
But this time she’d been at the door, seen the inside of the house, and,
between it and the glass, she could see herself inside. She wanted to feel the soul of this place,
try it on like a designer dress, allowing alterations major and minor alike to
swirl around her. Plus, she knew she
would have two whole weeks to come and go as she pleased and sleep and eat and
anything else she felt like. She hadn’t
really adequately surveyed the neighborhood yet, hadn’t gone through the usual
routine of finishing a leisurely walk, then taking a jog, then a bike ride to
check out the personality of the neighbors.
It didn’t appear to be full of retirees (home during the day, they make
stealth coming and going difficult and always ask too many, too-friendly
questions.) She saw enough brightly
colored Playco plastic gyms and trampolines to believe herself safe.
Still, she’d waited
a full twenty-four hours and until after dark before returning. Just before arriving, she suddenly
panicked. She didn’t know how she’d get
in. What if there was no key under the
mat? No key in a pot by the front
door? She tried not to think about it,
and went ahead and checked. She flipped
the aged, black rubber mat up and the spare was right there, leaving it’s dust
imprint on the underside of the Welcome mat.
When she got
inside a house, the first place she always looked was the kitchen. She’d go straight through, noticing nothing
but turning right, left, straight down the hallway, left, and kitchen! She opened the refrigerator first, then the cabinets. It was the first feel you got for a
house. She’d seen it laying on the
otherwise empty, grey marble counter looking isolated and tempting. She ran her thumb over the thin, cream-colored,
international paper, savoring the idea of who this son of Jorja’s might be, who
Jorja herself might be.
El Salvador is wet. Wetter than wet. The rainy season’s just getting started but
it’s already so wet that I have to wipe the floors off constantly. The moisture in the air condenses on the tile and
tries to mold in a matter of hours. Sheets
never dry and the thought of carpet is inconceivable. Plant life flourishes as do insects and I
wonder constantly about all the things in floorboards and ceiling tiles that I
share my living space with. I’m doing
well with my classes but don’t quite know what to do about Pedro. He comes to school early, leaves late, never
has any food, is always dirty, and is disruptive. He’s at least three grade levels behind the
other kids despite spending more time at school than any of them. I worry where he lives and who watches over
him. Pray for him, and for me. The slime might claim me if I get too tired
from Pedro’s antics and forget to wipe it clean often enough;)
Huggles,
Alex
The letter really
clinched it. She was addicted to this
home now. She searched drawers for more
letters, scoured the house for them. She’d
been to beautiful, Bauhaus-style modern homes, and hundred-year-old places with
overstuffed chairs that could almost get her to give up her vagrant
lifestyle. Places with whole rooms
devoted to books and a mahogany, baby-grand piano with the lid propped at
exactly forty-five degrees so it resonates to fill a concert hall. She’d eaten pate and champagne out of dishes
worth more than her rusty, ’89 Corolla and swam in luxurious, deep green,
heated, lap pools with mosaics hand-laid into the floor. She’d contemplated her life as a
misunderstood artist, or flirted with the idea of sleeping with the next-door
neighbor after years of boring sex with an architect. She’d pick up a black and white photograph of
a dark-lashed infant and feel the satisfying weariness of motherhood for a
moment. She loved trying on these
peoples’ homes, their relationships and routines, but this house she had time
with. Time to search and think and sleep
and smell. Mint grew in the glass-covered
foyer and bougainvilleas and orchids bloomed in the mist that came on
automatically twice a day. She wondered
if Jorja read the letters from her son in that room. Decided she must have put the misting system
and the plants in so that she could drink a cup of tea and be with her son
while she read his letters.
She sat in her car
now, at the bottom of the driveway with a new translucent envelop in her hand
with the strange extra stamps and lettering.
She held the paper to her face, closed her eyes and breathed in the
foreignness of it, could swear she smelled freshly-baked tortilla and red and
yellow and green patterns flashed before her eyes. She’d already dismissed her day, planned to
go right back into the kitchen to make a pot of tea before sitting down to pore
over the progress with Pedro and the slimy floors in the foyer when her reverie
was interrupted with a knock at the window.
Startled, the
letter flies from her hands as her heart leaps to her throat and she turns to
see a man in his mid-fifties, salt and pepper (mostly salt,) hair leaning close
to her window. Her heart sinks low into
her bowels, suddenly leaden. And she knows,
with the weight of the heaviest of disappointments, knows she is caught.
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