“Remember when Jacob used to hide in here with the door shut?” My voice echoes off the bare walls and my teenage daughter murmurs mmm-hmmm and keeps sweeping the floor of what used to be our living room.
We’re the only ones left here after the flurry of commotion over the last two days. My husband is at the new place waiting for the cable guy; my son is on his way to a three-on-three soccer tournament in the next town over. My youngest daughter is outside somewhere, soaking up her last free-roaming play time in the only neighborhood she’s ever known. We’re moving a mere ten minutes north, but to her it might as well be a hundred miles.
“Why are there still pine needles on this floor?” Ellie asks, and I catch a vision of the room at its best, a plump fragrant evergreen twinkling in the corner, a Christmas quilt on the couch, small pajama-clad people twirling and giggling across the rug.
Remember all the trees we dragged in here over the years? That one that dried up way too soon and the one with the slippery trunk that refused to stay upright? And every year I’d hold the tree straight while Jer lay on the floor trying to tighten those blasted metal bolts, and then we’d switch places and try some more, and we’d always say maybe we should think about going artificial, but the next morning we’d walk down the hallway and be stunned by the scent and we’d do it all again when the season returned.
The new owners will be here for their walk-through soon. We just need to empty the last of the food into this cooler and . . . oh, right. The fridge looks a lot dirtier with nothing in it. Ellie and I start to take out shelves and scrub the inside. Remember when we bought this fridge? It was our first major purchase, besides the house. We put our toddler girl in an orange cart and walked up and down the aisles of Home Depot, feeling like big time homeowners. And then we had to wait a week for the fridge to arrive so we lived out of a cooler. Remember that luxurious twinge of joy when the fridge was installed and it started making its own ice?
“Mom? What time are they coming? We need to get out of here.”
“I know, let’s finish this and mop the floor in here and we’re done.” Remember when we had this floor put in? It used to be that ugly weird linoleum and that awful beige carpet right under the table. And then it was laminate and one-year-old Clara was pushing that huge broom around and we all laughed. Remember one-year-old Clara? The sheer force of her? I’d sit right there at the computer trying to meet a deadline and she’d hang on my knee and bounce and shriek and I’d despair of ever having silence again, ever having time or space, ever being me.
“Mom. Can we go?”
The house is cleaner than it’s been in the last twelve years. Clean and empty—except. How can an empty space feel so full?
Ellie takes a load of cleaning supplies out to our minivan and I just stand and look. Remember when we brought tiny Jacob home and Ellie held him? And we laid him on a blanket right there and the two of them just stared and stared into each other’s eyes? Remember how much music and yelling and burned food smell and laughter and crying have filled this air? And all the unfolded laundry and mountains of library books and snow pants and puddles and stashes of Halloween candy spread out and sorted and science fair projects and stockings and tantrums and prayers, right here on this floor?
My dad helped us move into this house. He looked around and called it a “good little starter home” and it was. He came and helped us lay sod out back. Right here is where I was kneeling when he called and told me his bad news. And that’s where I stood when I got the other phone call, the one about the end. And that room down the hall is where I went after, and where I wanted to stay. Remember? My lamplit little nest of seclusion? But Christmas came and children grew and life rolled on and that tree out the window kept blossoming and dropping its leaves and that front door kept letting people in and seeing people out and I felt it all, right here in this space.
“Mom.”
Yes, okay. Let’s go find Clara. I put our house keys and garage door opener in the drawer by the oven, turn off the lights. Turn the lock. Remember that time I locked us out on accident and had to borrow the neighbor’s ladder to climb through that bedroom window?
This time I lock us out on purpose. We don’t live here anymore.
Thirty minutes later I’m standing in the beating sun on the sidelines of Jacob’s soccer game, sweat dripping down my back and exhaustion inching in around the edges. “Heads up!” someone shouts, and a soccer ball sails in and smacks the back of my thigh. The sting is sudden and sharp, bringing up tears behind my sunglasses. I try to turn my focus back to the game, but something has been shaken loose. The tears keep coming; salt water and snot are streaming down my face. Ellie and Jeremy are peering at me. This is not about a soccer ball.
“Go home,” Jeremy says gently into my ear. “I’ll stay until the end.”
Home.
I wander back to the minivan feeling rootless. Upheaved. I drive to our new house and sink into the mattress we left all haphazard on the floor, surrounded by boxes and bedposts in a house with no memories. Tomorrow we’ll start to make some. But for now I sleep.
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