I slink inside so that the front door is a whisper behind me. I didn’t realize how much I missed the place. Why shouldn’t I have a souvenir? It’s a souvenir that so many others have helped themselves to by the looks of the flaking door and dandruffed front stoop. So I hang back, peel a strip of white paint off the front door, and put it in my jeans pocket. If Marjorie were here now, maybe she’d tell me a quick story about worms, spiders, and mice crawling underneath the decaying greenery, coming to get the young woman foolishly not keeping to the safety of the pathway. Leaves and weedy fingers tickle my ankles and grab at my sneakers. I stay off the stones and walk across the neglected front yard, grown wild and unbounded in spring and summer, now beginning to retreat in the new cold of autumn.
I like watching people struggle with the math in their heads. Has that much time really passed since we lived here? I’m only twenty-three but if anyone asks I tell them that I’m a quarter-century-minus-two years old.
Marjorie would call me a tease and chase me around the house trying to pull the wax string, and I would scream and cry because it was fun and because I was afraid if I let her pull out one tooth she wouldn’t be able to help herself and she’d pull them all out.
As a child I used to tie strings of red dental floss around a wiggly tooth and leave the floss dangling there for days and days until the tooth fell out on its own. The slate stones have pitched up, their edges peeking out of the ground, and they wiggle under her feet like loose baby teeth. She carefully attempts to keep to the uneven walkway. “THIS MUST BE so difficult for you, Meredith.”īest-selling author Rachel Neville wears a perfect fall ensemble: dark blue hat to match her sensible knee-length skirt and a beige wool jacket with buttons as large as kitten heads. Bad Religion, “My Head Is Full of Ghosts” It is so pleasant to be out in this great room and creep around as I please! -Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”ĭo you wanna know a secret? Will you hold it close and dear? This will not be made apparent, but you and I are not alone in here. Future of the Left, “An Idiot’s Idea of Ireland” My memory, she was first to the plank, and the B-movie played in the aisle.
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