I wonder if Mom has any tea.
Had any tea. Had. How weird is it to be thinking of Mom in the past tense. She was always there, always in this house, always a phone call away.
Why in the hell did I tell the kids I was going to stay here? Janie and her boys left 15 minutes ago, and already I want out.
This place seems huge, like it did when we were kids, only then it was full of nooks and crannies to explore and places to hide. Now it feels huge and empty, like a vast cave or a survival bunker after the end of the world. I tend to treasure solitude and I expected to treasure the peace and quiet, but suddenly, I feel very alone.
And there is no tea. No coffee either. There’s a bottle of club soda, a jug of orange juice, and one caffeine-free can of Diet Coke shoved way in the back.
Caffeine-free? Good Lord, Mom, why? Maybe I can have that with some of the sugar-free cookies in the pantry. You weren’t even on a restricted diet, for God’s sake. Why couldn’t you leave behind some decent food? Would it have killed you to buy a bottle of red wine and some freaking Oreos?
Then again, it’s not like I ever expected mom to have anything good to eat in the house. Cheap and fake healthy, that’s what she went for. Somehow, it was supposed to make her live forever.
I wish it had worked, but at least I have the benefit of knowing it won’t. From now on, it’s nothing but junk food for me. I bet I still make it to 70.
I wish mom had.
I take my sad little snack into the living room, my footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. As I grew up the house became so closed off and cramped, with the rooms all separated and the galley kitchen. It felt like I was always bumping into someone, bodies moving from one room to another and all of the rooms too small. I used to beg Mom to knock down some walls, open the place up.
And maybe get rid of that hideous flower-print sofa. Replace it with something more modern.
Mom likes her flower prints, though. Liked, that is. She doesn’t like them anymore.
I turn on the TV and find some old movies. There’s a Hitchcock marathon on AMC, which is always a good distraction, and I’ve got nothing else to do. I crack open the Diet Coke, and settle in for the night. Funny how comfortable this old couch is.
It’s ugly, but it’s comfortable.
Like Mom. God, what a horrible thing to think, but it makes me laugh a little and almost spit out my tea. It feels good to laugh, even at Mom’s expense. Dorothy would have laughed too if she was here.
But she’s not. She got a hotel room, though I begged her to stay here with me.
“We can be closer to Mom that way. We can talk about things, reminisce, dig through old photos and see what memories are stored away. It will be a nice way to say goodbye.”
“I already said goodbye,” she said. “That’s what the funeral was for. Being in the house just seems depressing. I’m going back to the hotel to sit by the pool and drink.”
What was I thinking. I didn’t want to spend $200 a night for a hotel room in town when the house was empty? How stupid and cheap can I be?
Practical and sentimental, that’s what I was thinking. It wasn’t just about the money, it was one last chance to feel close to Mom, eating her horrible cardboard, dollar store cookies and drinking caffeine-free soda, a beverage that only exists to be served in Hell.
And Mom has never seemed farther away. This sucks.
I reach for my phone to call Dorothy. Maybe she’ll come pick me up and I can still book a room for the night. Or if not her, maybe Janie will.
Where the hell is my phone? I search my purse, my jacket pockets, the kitchen, the couch cushions. I look in the bathroom next to the sink, behind the toilet. I check in drawers, and then empty my entire purse and turn it inside out.
Where the hell is my phone?
The TV gives three sharp beeps, and startles me. I’m in the middle of the room, searching, and the empty house seems to grow emptier and emptier. There is no phone here. Dorothy is not here. Janey and the kids aren’t here. The outside world has evaporated, and it’s just me here alone, a scared little girl.
Mom and Dad are gone, and this house was left behind like the exoskeleton shed by a locust or the shell of a snail. This is the shell they built for themselves, just an empty husk in which I can wander. I see the decay, the dust, the crack in the front wall above the door, the gaps in the old hardwood, the side table with the broken leg, the cobwebs on the ceiling light.
The TV beeps again and scrolls a warning. A severe storm is coming. I hear the first crack of thunder outside. Suddenly I feel small and insignificant, like a little girl at a party full of grown-ups, like a speck of dust in the midst the swirling universe.
I am a speck of dust in the midst of the swirling universe, swirling like a cosmic hurricane, like bathwater into an infinite drain.
Helpless. Small. Mortal.
I’m not looking at the TV, I’m looking out the window at the sky, which crackles with a bolt of blinding white light. The impression lingers in purple on my retina, despite the lights in the room. The world explodes with noise, thunder so loud it rattles the plates in the kitchen cupboards. There is a buzz and a crack, and the lights go out.
I sit alone in the dark on the ugly sofa.
“This is what it’s like to be dead.”
My voice, timid and soft, girlish and afraid, drops harmlessly onto the carpet like a sapling in a vast forest. I begin to cry, curled up on the ugly couch alone.
I have no mother to comfort me.
“Shit.”
There is another flash and bang, this one even closer and louder than the last. I don’t just see it and hear it, I feel it like a cannon shot. A heavy picture falls from the wall and crashes on the floor. Something upstairs falls with a thump. I scream, and again my voice seems to die in the darkness, lost in the driving rain and howling wind, and suddenly I want someone, anyone.
Mom and Dad are gone. Janey and Dorothy aren’t gone in the same sense, but they’re every bit as unreachable. Where the hell is my phone?
I feel around in the couch cushions, though I know I haven’t had the phone on the couch. I don’t recall having the phone since I got here. The last time I used it was…shit. The last one to use it was Janey. I handed it to her to talk to Aunt Maggie, calling from her house near Big Sur. "John and I just can’t get away. You know we’d be there if we could. Oh, your mother was such a dear, dear person…”
Which is why we hadn’t heard from you in close to a decade. Such bullshit. And now you’ve made me forget my phone. Damn you, Aunt Maggie.
I speak that last sentence out loud and giggle a little. Again, I wish Dorothy was here to share the joke, or even Janie. Even better if Mom was in the room. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she’d say, prompting Dorothy and I to reach for our drinks. For thirty years, we reached for a drink whenever Mom used one of her mild exclamations. Originally, it was a drinking game Dorothy and I played at the beach house, but over time the whole family got involved, regardless of whether we were drinking beer, wine, or water. Mom would say “Oh, good heavens!” and we would all reach for a glass: spouses, kids, cousins, and friends. Even Dad used to play. If someone in the room didn’t have a drink, they would run to the kitchen for water or turn on the faucet and stick our mouths underneath it.
“What in heaven’s name is wrong with you? For goodness sake!”
We’d all grin, and then drink twice more. Thirty years, and mom never caught on.
“For Pete’s sake,” I say aloud, and laugh, sipping from my nasty Coke. The rain pelts on the roof. The wind is tearing ferociously through the trees.
“This sucks,” I say. The storm answers angrily with another flash and a boom.
“Oh, heavens to Betsy!” I say, mocking the storm. I drink again and forced myself to smile. “Ah, Dorothy, if you only knew what you were missing. There’s no place like home!”
This makes me smile again. At least I still have my sense of humor. “Get it? Dorothy? No place like home? Big storm? Country house?”
The storm rages on, outside and I reach out to munch on another cookie-shaped piece of cardboard.
Which was when the storm decides to destroy my little world. There is a dramatic whoosh of wind, a flash, a bang, in an instant everything implodes around me, the ceiling caves in, and I’m surrounded by jagged wood, wires, gritty broken drywall, and glass. Water is pouring in on me, and leaves and branches surround me as if I’ve been transported to another world.
The majestic white oak in the front yard has come crashing through the roof. Jesus, that was a big tree. I sit up on the couch, which is tilted precariously but still in one piece. Nothing can destroy this floral monstrosity.
“They don’t make them like that anymore,” I say in Dad’s voice, and then immediately wonder what the hell is wrong with me. Shouldn’t I be panicking or something?
Feeling around to my right and just above my head, I feel the heavy trunk of the tree, the rough bark I had run my hands over so many times in the front yard. It missed killing me by perhaps three feet. I pat the trunk as if it had done me a favor. I just sit there like an idiot, until I smell smoke. Still, I feel oddly calm, even as an orange glow begins to illuminate the shattered hellscape above me, as if nothing more significant had happened than the microwave beeping to let me know my popcorn is ready.
What the hell am I supposed to do now? No phone, no power, no roof, no floor, and a hell of a long way to go to find anyone to help, and what would they do for me anyway? Unhurt, I begin to climb up off of the couch towards the open sky above me, pulling myself onto the fallen tree, feeling the rough bark against my bare thighs, my skirt crumpled around my waist as I scoot awkwardly up the tree trunk and through the hole in the roof. I squeeze my way into the open air through shattered joists and plywood and then turn to see the back of the house engulfed in flames. The top of the tree must have been struck by lightning. My room and Dorothy’s, smashed and burning even as the rain falls.
I turn to see that the trunk of the tree had folded over about twenty feet above the ground. I struggle to stand and walk the rest of the way to where the break occurred. There is no spot where the jump to the ground is close enough to try, and no branches to hang from and lower myself down, so for the moment I wait for rescue perched on the sturdy trunk of the fallen tree, watching the burning of my childhood home.
Had any tea. Had. How weird is it to be thinking of Mom in the past tense. She was always there, always in this house, always a phone call away.
Why in the hell did I tell the kids I was going to stay here? Janie and her boys left 15 minutes ago, and already I want out.
This place seems huge, like it did when we were kids, only then it was full of nooks and crannies to explore and places to hide. Now it feels huge and empty, like a vast cave or a survival bunker after the end of the world. I tend to treasure solitude and I expected to treasure the peace and quiet, but suddenly, I feel very alone.
And there is no tea. No coffee either. There’s a bottle of club soda, a jug of orange juice, and one caffeine-free can of Diet Coke shoved way in the back.
Caffeine-free? Good Lord, Mom, why? Maybe I can have that with some of the sugar-free cookies in the pantry. You weren’t even on a restricted diet, for God’s sake. Why couldn’t you leave behind some decent food? Would it have killed you to buy a bottle of red wine and some freaking Oreos?
Then again, it’s not like I ever expected mom to have anything good to eat in the house. Cheap and fake healthy, that’s what she went for. Somehow, it was supposed to make her live forever.
I wish it had worked, but at least I have the benefit of knowing it won’t. From now on, it’s nothing but junk food for me. I bet I still make it to 70.
I wish mom had.
I take my sad little snack into the living room, my footsteps echoing in the empty hallway. As I grew up the house became so closed off and cramped, with the rooms all separated and the galley kitchen. It felt like I was always bumping into someone, bodies moving from one room to another and all of the rooms too small. I used to beg Mom to knock down some walls, open the place up.
And maybe get rid of that hideous flower-print sofa. Replace it with something more modern.
Mom likes her flower prints, though. Liked, that is. She doesn’t like them anymore.
I turn on the TV and find some old movies. There’s a Hitchcock marathon on AMC, which is always a good distraction, and I’ve got nothing else to do. I crack open the Diet Coke, and settle in for the night. Funny how comfortable this old couch is.
It’s ugly, but it’s comfortable.
Like Mom. God, what a horrible thing to think, but it makes me laugh a little and almost spit out my tea. It feels good to laugh, even at Mom’s expense. Dorothy would have laughed too if she was here.
But she’s not. She got a hotel room, though I begged her to stay here with me.
“We can be closer to Mom that way. We can talk about things, reminisce, dig through old photos and see what memories are stored away. It will be a nice way to say goodbye.”
“I already said goodbye,” she said. “That’s what the funeral was for. Being in the house just seems depressing. I’m going back to the hotel to sit by the pool and drink.”
What was I thinking. I didn’t want to spend $200 a night for a hotel room in town when the house was empty? How stupid and cheap can I be?
Practical and sentimental, that’s what I was thinking. It wasn’t just about the money, it was one last chance to feel close to Mom, eating her horrible cardboard, dollar store cookies and drinking caffeine-free soda, a beverage that only exists to be served in Hell.
And Mom has never seemed farther away. This sucks.
I reach for my phone to call Dorothy. Maybe she’ll come pick me up and I can still book a room for the night. Or if not her, maybe Janie will.
Where the hell is my phone? I search my purse, my jacket pockets, the kitchen, the couch cushions. I look in the bathroom next to the sink, behind the toilet. I check in drawers, and then empty my entire purse and turn it inside out.
Where the hell is my phone?
The TV gives three sharp beeps, and startles me. I’m in the middle of the room, searching, and the empty house seems to grow emptier and emptier. There is no phone here. Dorothy is not here. Janey and the kids aren’t here. The outside world has evaporated, and it’s just me here alone, a scared little girl.
Mom and Dad are gone, and this house was left behind like the exoskeleton shed by a locust or the shell of a snail. This is the shell they built for themselves, just an empty husk in which I can wander. I see the decay, the dust, the crack in the front wall above the door, the gaps in the old hardwood, the side table with the broken leg, the cobwebs on the ceiling light.
The TV beeps again and scrolls a warning. A severe storm is coming. I hear the first crack of thunder outside. Suddenly I feel small and insignificant, like a little girl at a party full of grown-ups, like a speck of dust in the midst the swirling universe.
I am a speck of dust in the midst of the swirling universe, swirling like a cosmic hurricane, like bathwater into an infinite drain.
Helpless. Small. Mortal.
I’m not looking at the TV, I’m looking out the window at the sky, which crackles with a bolt of blinding white light. The impression lingers in purple on my retina, despite the lights in the room. The world explodes with noise, thunder so loud it rattles the plates in the kitchen cupboards. There is a buzz and a crack, and the lights go out.
I sit alone in the dark on the ugly sofa.
“This is what it’s like to be dead.”
My voice, timid and soft, girlish and afraid, drops harmlessly onto the carpet like a sapling in a vast forest. I begin to cry, curled up on the ugly couch alone.
I have no mother to comfort me.
“Shit.”
There is another flash and bang, this one even closer and louder than the last. I don’t just see it and hear it, I feel it like a cannon shot. A heavy picture falls from the wall and crashes on the floor. Something upstairs falls with a thump. I scream, and again my voice seems to die in the darkness, lost in the driving rain and howling wind, and suddenly I want someone, anyone.
Mom and Dad are gone. Janey and Dorothy aren’t gone in the same sense, but they’re every bit as unreachable. Where the hell is my phone?
I feel around in the couch cushions, though I know I haven’t had the phone on the couch. I don’t recall having the phone since I got here. The last time I used it was…shit. The last one to use it was Janey. I handed it to her to talk to Aunt Maggie, calling from her house near Big Sur. "John and I just can’t get away. You know we’d be there if we could. Oh, your mother was such a dear, dear person…”
Which is why we hadn’t heard from you in close to a decade. Such bullshit. And now you’ve made me forget my phone. Damn you, Aunt Maggie.
I speak that last sentence out loud and giggle a little. Again, I wish Dorothy was here to share the joke, or even Janie. Even better if Mom was in the room. “Oh, for Pete’s sake,” she’d say, prompting Dorothy and I to reach for our drinks. For thirty years, we reached for a drink whenever Mom used one of her mild exclamations. Originally, it was a drinking game Dorothy and I played at the beach house, but over time the whole family got involved, regardless of whether we were drinking beer, wine, or water. Mom would say “Oh, good heavens!” and we would all reach for a glass: spouses, kids, cousins, and friends. Even Dad used to play. If someone in the room didn’t have a drink, they would run to the kitchen for water or turn on the faucet and stick our mouths underneath it.
“What in heaven’s name is wrong with you? For goodness sake!”
We’d all grin, and then drink twice more. Thirty years, and mom never caught on.
“For Pete’s sake,” I say aloud, and laugh, sipping from my nasty Coke. The rain pelts on the roof. The wind is tearing ferociously through the trees.
“This sucks,” I say. The storm answers angrily with another flash and a boom.
“Oh, heavens to Betsy!” I say, mocking the storm. I drink again and forced myself to smile. “Ah, Dorothy, if you only knew what you were missing. There’s no place like home!”
This makes me smile again. At least I still have my sense of humor. “Get it? Dorothy? No place like home? Big storm? Country house?”
The storm rages on, outside and I reach out to munch on another cookie-shaped piece of cardboard.
Which was when the storm decides to destroy my little world. There is a dramatic whoosh of wind, a flash, a bang, in an instant everything implodes around me, the ceiling caves in, and I’m surrounded by jagged wood, wires, gritty broken drywall, and glass. Water is pouring in on me, and leaves and branches surround me as if I’ve been transported to another world.
The majestic white oak in the front yard has come crashing through the roof. Jesus, that was a big tree. I sit up on the couch, which is tilted precariously but still in one piece. Nothing can destroy this floral monstrosity.
“They don’t make them like that anymore,” I say in Dad’s voice, and then immediately wonder what the hell is wrong with me. Shouldn’t I be panicking or something?
Feeling around to my right and just above my head, I feel the heavy trunk of the tree, the rough bark I had run my hands over so many times in the front yard. It missed killing me by perhaps three feet. I pat the trunk as if it had done me a favor. I just sit there like an idiot, until I smell smoke. Still, I feel oddly calm, even as an orange glow begins to illuminate the shattered hellscape above me, as if nothing more significant had happened than the microwave beeping to let me know my popcorn is ready.
What the hell am I supposed to do now? No phone, no power, no roof, no floor, and a hell of a long way to go to find anyone to help, and what would they do for me anyway? Unhurt, I begin to climb up off of the couch towards the open sky above me, pulling myself onto the fallen tree, feeling the rough bark against my bare thighs, my skirt crumpled around my waist as I scoot awkwardly up the tree trunk and through the hole in the roof. I squeeze my way into the open air through shattered joists and plywood and then turn to see the back of the house engulfed in flames. The top of the tree must have been struck by lightning. My room and Dorothy’s, smashed and burning even as the rain falls.
I turn to see that the trunk of the tree had folded over about twenty feet above the ground. I struggle to stand and walk the rest of the way to where the break occurred. There is no spot where the jump to the ground is close enough to try, and no branches to hang from and lower myself down, so for the moment I wait for rescue perched on the sturdy trunk of the fallen tree, watching the burning of my childhood home.
Header art by T. Guzzio. Original photo by L. Mangum.
CONNECT WITH TOM:
Tom Conway is a 7th grade English teacher at Thornburg Middle School in Spotsylvania, Virginia, and an unrealized literary talent currently dabbling in poetry and journaling extensively while contemplating the possibility of writing several novels that will make him a household name. He has had several poems and short stories published locally, and has written sporadically for other publications when the mood strikes. If you are a fan of his work, it is important for you to know that he will do anything for money, since teaching doesn't pay all that well. Tom's writing can be accessed through several blogs, including Eyewitness to Education:The View from Room 203 and The Cynical Observer.
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