A Day Like This, page 21
“Makes this stuff what?”
“I don’t know. A little less unbelievable, I guess.”
It had been a long day, and my mind swirled with all the information and stories we’d learned. “I know what you mean.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
As the day is coming to a close and I’m falling asleep, sometimes I’ll hear the sound of gravel beneath my feet. It comes to me like a lullaby, repetitive with each footstep, remarkable in its clarity as I long for the place I once called home. They are my footsteps that I hear, the sound of my gait and the moderate, even tempo of my feminine walk as the small stones crunch beneath rubber soles. Immersing myself further into the sound, allowing it to expand, I begin to hear the breeze flowing through the meadow grass that borders the driveway and see the red hues of the setting sun above the woods beyond. I inhale the scent of sweet green.
I pass a small section of four-board fence, one of eight that I once proudly painted, gleaming white on a hot summer day. I’d purchased the paint on a bargain rack, along with two plastic trays and a wide brush, without paying much attention to the proper way to paint a wooden fence. White paint was white paint, I’d thought. Within a year or two of harsh Upstate New York weather, the white had faded and flaked, and now, years later, was chipped and covered in patches of mottled gray that somehow made it seem more authentically rural, and yet sadly unkempt at the same time. It spoke of inexperience. Of city dwellers with soft hands and clean nails. But still, it was my fence. Countless birds had sat there. Red-winged blackbirds. Ravens in sets of ominous threes. The occasional hawk with searching eyes. A small family of chickens. My daughter had climbed those fences. I’d planted wildflowers beneath them. The weeds had flourished. The wildflowers had not. For a few Decembers, I’d hung evergreen wreaths on the sections that fronted the road, the large red bows contrasting with the white snow, offering Season’s Greetings to passersby. The fences sat plainly now, decorated only by a FOR SALE sign that haunts me daily.
Let’s give it five years, we’d said, on the day we purchased the Yellow House with nervous smiles and the excitement that comes with a new adventure and risky life change. By the end, we’d added more to that number than planned, but not nearly as many as we’d hoped. So after six harsh Catskill winters, seven golden summers, one marriage, one beautiful daughter, six chickens, one horse, two failed vegetable gardens, one lost dream, and countless fireflies and rainbows, I’m walking up the gravel driveway to the home on my hayfield island, one last time. Hannah runs in front of me, skipping and bouncing up the driveway, scanning the gravel for the sparkly ones that she treasured.
Our mailbox sits at the bottom of the driveway, near the road, and I’d walked the length of it every day to retrieve the mail over the years. I’ve just done this for the last time, knowing that the post office would start forwarding our mail the next day. I drop it onto the steps where I’d left the pruning shears.
“Mommy, can I run back to the swing?”
“Okay, but just for a few minutes. It’s almost snack time—hungry for anything special to munch on?” I ask.
Her little face curls into thought. “Hmm—carrots annnnnd apples and peanut butter!” She walks down the sidewalk, running a hand along the bushes. She leans over to smell a bloom. “Will there be lilacs in the new apartment?” she asks.
I turn my head so she can’t see my face and try to steady my voice against the lump that has instantly formed there. “Maybe not lilacs, sweetie. But I’ll bet there’s a park nearby with flowers.”
She shrugs. “Okay.”
“Try to keep your shoes on!” I call, just as she disappears around the corner toward the back of the house. But really, I hope she doesn’t. I wasn’t sure how many more times she’d be able to run barefoot in meadow grass. She had been sick earlier in the week, and I hoped it wouldn’t go to her ears. I wanted her to be able to enjoy these last few hours in our home. She was at an age when childhood memories were efficiently purged by a growing brain, and I knew she would likely not remember anything but a mere hazy feeling of this magical home she’d once lived in. The rest, forgotten.
I reach down to snip a couple of fat blooms from the branches that now towered over my head. I smile proudly at their number, noting that it seemed to have been the grandest year for them yet. But lilac bushes don’t belong next to a porch, one learns. They’re a wild and unruly breed, and they’d begun to block the views. I didn’t mind this, but the new owner might not feel the same. Would likely cut the lilac bushes to the ground. Pull up the roots. Replace them with something more suitable.
“You did a good job,” I whisper, touching the leaves and inhaling the fragrance one final time. Lilacs don’t grow where we were going.
Graham is texting. His flight from Atlanta has been delayed, and I try not to cry. I miss him and desperately need to feel his arms around me. I tell him it’s okay, though. I don’t want him to worry. I look up at the approaching storm—the one that has delayed his flight—and think the clouds look like a drifting castle, about to unleash an army of troops. I open the door and step inside my mostly empty house. The moving van had taken some of our belongings and driven them south, while other things were left behind. The move wasn’t coming naturally to me. Nor had the necessary purging of two-thirds of our living space and one-third of our belongings, going against the American dream, whereby one must seek to possess and accumulate. This house was the kind of place where people land for good. A final destination home where roots are planted, beloved pets are buried, picnics are held, and grandchildren visit. Most people don’t leave Yellow Houses. And most people don’t leave things behind.
But sometimes, they do.
We had no buyer. The bank owned it now, and soon I knew the house would sit dark and empty, alone amid an encroaching, overgrown meadow until some opportunistic investor sniffed out the deal, buying it at auction for nothing. “Hello, house,” I mutter into an echoing entryway. As I walk through it with tentative steps, filling the space with fresh summer air, the wooden floors creak beneath my feet like stiff bones. The flick of the light switch, a hand rested on the banister, the metallic taste of the well water pouring from the faucet, all caressing me with their familiarity, offering final glimpses of what would become a past life.
WELCOME TO OUR PLACE IN THE COUNTRY. The hopeful wooden sign that had been hung over the kitchen door on the day we’d moved into the Yellow House still remains, a reminder of broken dreams. We’d had our moments, since then, this house and I. The unrelenting cost of maintaining the property, the storms, the wind, the long icy drives to the grocery store, the hour-long drive to the mall, doctors, gentrification; the way that stores and restaurants would close in the winter or any random day in the summer; the way that Hannah had little access to resources of modern-day suburban childhood like ballet classes and karate and soccer and Mandarin—or whatever kids were supposed to be into these days. There were bugs and weeds and breaking parts, and a solitude that had nearly driven me mad. It hadn’t been easy, the Yellow House. It was time for a change. I tell myself this to help, but, of course, the choice had not been mine. It had been forced upon me by circumstances. “I tried,” I say to the house. “I’m so sorry. I tried.”
It was time to go. But at the same time, it seemed wrong not to stay. Yellow Houses don’t usually get left behind.
I notice a small purple barrette in one corner of the living room. Crayon marks on the lower wall, evidence of my daughter’s attempt to write her name at a much younger age. Upstairs, the king-size bed, deemed too large to fit in the new apartment, sits waiting to be abandoned, left behind. The duvet still has an impression where I’d sat for a few minutes this morning, looking out the window through teary eyes at the farm beyond. A single Dora the Explorer toothbrush sits alongside a sink. A tall pair of brown muck boots and my favorite down parka, items unnecessary in the southern heat where we were heading, sit quietly in their place in the front closet where I’d left them after shoveling snow the past winter. These were our things that would be left behind. I imagined what it might feel like to be a ghost haunting an old residence, stuck in the in-between. We were here. My family had lived in this place. This was my home once.
And then it was not.
The weekend earlier, Graham and I had taken photos of items that we wouldn’t be taking with us and posted them on Craigslist, along with a notice for a moving sale, which took place on Sunday afternoon. Some things had sold. Others had not. I wrote descriptions like, “Lovely pine dining set, excellent condition. Seats six. Includes china cabinet and wall mirror.” I did not write about the money I’d saved in my midtwenties and the pride I’d felt when I’d purchased the set. Or the birthday parties, the art projects, the pumpkins that had been carved, and the holiday meals that had been served and celebrated on the lemon-polished wooden surface. Or the way I would always be able to remember the unique sound of the vintage-style black metal key opening the lock on the glass doors that held my collection of china and liquors. It was just furniture, I told myself as strangers hauled them away.
They’re just things.
Unlike the small room she would have at the apartment, in the Yellow House Hannah’s room had been perfect. A monogrammed H was affixed to one lavender wall. In an empty corner, there are impressions in the carpet where a rocking chair once sat next to a window. I stand in its absence, remembering when in the glow of a night-light, I sat with a baby in my arms, staring out at the moonlit fields. French toile and lace curtains. All girl for our first baby girl. Hannah had the best view in the house, we’d often joked. From high above the world, resting her head on the pillows as I read her bedtime stories, one could see out the windows to the farm and the rolling green mountains beyond. She would see concrete from her windows soon, when she looked outside. Just as Marcie and I once had.
The basement and attic were full of items covered in ghostly sheets. “Four-poster canopy bed, perfect condition. Includes mattress.” Little girls love canopy beds, I thought. I’d always imagined she would use it eventually, transitioning to a teenage bed. But we had no room for storage. It had to be left behind.
“Assorted Christmas decorations.” The Yellow House had always looked lovely during the holidays. Stockings adorned the mantel above the fireplace, lights bedazzled the evergreen shrubs, and Christmas trees twinkled in one, two, sometimes three rooms. Among the left-behind items, a carved wooden reindeer sits beneath the attic window, covered in dust and last year’s glitter. “Hannah, don’t try to ride the reindeer, sweetie. He might break!” I hear myself saying with a laugh, echoing smiles from past Christmas memories. “But I love him!” she replies in a tiny voice, hugging him tightly.
“Christmas reindeer. Much loved. Free to good home.”
When I was a child, our mother kept a small, decorative chair in the corner of her bedroom. It was a curious shape, curved with a deep, rounded seat, made entirely of brown wicker that complained when anyone sat in it. I don’t know where she got it, only that it had been there since before I was born. I’d crawl into it, sitting cross-legged as I watched her dress for the day. Eventually, as the years passed, the chair came to me, and had sat in my own bedroom corners. When we’d purchased new bedroom furniture a few years earlier, the wicker chair had been sent to the attic. It had meant to be only temporary. But there was no room in the new apartment for sentimental chairs. No one had bought it. I run my hands along the woven wood where it sits. I take a final look at it, abandoned in the corner, clench my teeth, and turn.
Through the dormer window, from high atop my hill, I watch a car pass by and imagine a younger version of myself doing just the same, looking up from the road years earlier.
“How much for the chicken coop?” a man asked on the day of the yard sale. He and his wife had seen the sign on the road and come up to take a look at the offerings. The coop, once quaint and cheerful, sat weathered and slightly crooked in the weeds at the back of the yard, having broken in a storm a few months earlier. There were no more pets for us—Charlie was buried beneath a tree, having kept me company for nine lovely years that ended at the Yellow House. He had left the rest of us behind, and now we were leaving him.
“The coop? You can just take it. It’s not worth much,” Graham replied. I recognized a newly hardened edge to his voice. He’d just watched the same people load a small grouping of yard tools into their car. They had been passed down through two generations from his grandfather. Quality tools. Well made. Hard to find these days. There was no yard at the new apartment in Atlanta. And thus, these tools, just things, these heirlooms from another generation, were among the Left Behind, as I’d begun to call them.
For Hannah’s first birthday, we bought her a special gift. A rocking cow. Not a rocking horse, but a rocking cow, complete with a big pink bow tied around his neck. We’d smiled at the uniqueness of it and the way it matched the look of the dairy cows that lived on a nearby farm. Rocking Cow was surprisingly well made and was the kind of toy I imagined we would carefully keep and give to our children’s children. He had a plush, cushiony back, with black-and-white spotted fur and a comically oversize head placed over two shiny curved slats of wood.
Rocking Cow was made for tiny toddlers. Hannah had outgrown him, we’d said while discussing his fate one day before the move. He took up too much room. There was no storage space, no attic, no basement in the new apartment. Where would we put him? we wondered, but found no answer. And so, Rocking Cow had been among the Left Behind.
The day after the yard sale, with the items that hadn’t sold, we pulled up to our county’s only place for donating toys and children’s goods. On the front door of the building was a sign written in black Sharpie on a piece of cardboard: CLOSED. REOPENS NEXT WEEK. But we would be gone by next week. Along with boxes of games, a toddler’s first dollhouse, and other such items, Rocking Cow sat in the trunk. The skies had just opened up, and rain was pouring down. I saw Graham eye a pile of toys someone else left outside the front door of the building, beneath a small awning. “We can just leave it out front, I guess?” he asked.
I thought of Rocking Cow, sitting in the rain. “We can’t just leave it there. It’ll all be ruined.”
His shoulders slumped. “I think it’ll be ruined no matter what.” He’d given voice to what we knew was true. Anything else left behind would end up in the local garbage dump by whoever the bank sent to clean out houses that people couldn’t keep. I thought of all the items that were still at the house. Pictured them in a heap along with rotting banana peels, leaking Hefty bags, and circling birds.
“It’s not right,” I’d said.
He nodded, face drawn. The rain pelted the windows. “So what do you want me to do?” He angled his neck, looking again through the foggy windshield.
“None of this. It’s not right.” The words caught in my throat and were met with silence. “Just take it all back to the house. We’ll figure something out.”
The next morning, Rocking Cow, along with assorted other Left Behind items—an ice-cream maker, former wedding gifts, ice skates, baby clothes, a toy stroller for Baby Doll, a real stroller, a box of books and more—were placed on a table by the road along with a sign.
“Moving Sale—FREE”
I noticed a children’s board book that I’d read over a hundred times and wondered how it had been forgotten when I packed. I wanted to take it. To squirrel it away. But I wanted to take all of it. So I turned away, and left it behind.
By the end of that day, most everything was gone. Rocking Cow, however, still remained. As night fell, I took him back up to the house and placed him in the empty playroom from which he’d come. He sat beneath a large painted wall mural of a flowering tree in children’s pastels, the only hint of the room’s former purpose.
I pat his head on my way to the kitchen. The Imagination Movers are playing on the TV, which now sits on the floor where Hannah learned to crawl. I retrieve the apples and carrots from the fridge. The clouds are getting darker, and I’ll have to call Hannah inside in another few minutes.
A woman had answered my ad for some playground items. “Oh yeah, I know where you are. The yellow house, right?” she’d said, when I’d tried to give her directions. Around seven o’clock one evening, I heard her pickup drive up the gravel to the house. She had a warm smile and a worn face. With her was a young teenager, whom she introduced as her son. He wore grease-spotted jeans, a stained white undershirt, and work boots below a resigned, absent expression. A large lump of tobacco bulged under his lip, and he spat into the grass every so often as they loaded a Little Tikes climbing gym and sandbox into the truck. “My grandson will just love these,” the woman said. Though I hadn’t asked, she informed me that the boy she was with, at age sixteen, was the father of the small child who would be the new owner of our things. My face must have registered surprise before I had a chance to filter it. “Not a lot for teenagers to do around here,” she joked with a bashful shrug. I smiled and nodded. She placed her hands on her hips and looked around at the property. “Always wondered who lived here. You guys moving?” she’d asked. I replied that we were. We got this question a lot lately. I didn’t elaborate. “Boy, real beautiful place to leave.”
Yes. Yes it was.
Another car pulled up the driveway after her. A young woman stepped out, keeping a hand on her lower back to balance the bulging pregnant belly. “We saw the sign down by the road. You have a bassinet?” she’d asked. Her eyes lit up when I showed it to her: pristine ivory atop legs adorned with gathered silk fabric. The place where my newborn had slept swaddled beside my bed.
“We’ve been collecting things for the baby from yard sales. This is . . . wow! Is it really free?” she’d asked. “Yes, definitely. Good luck with everything,” I told her. I turned quickly just as the older woman, standing nearby, caught my eyes filling with the tears of bittersweet goodbye to the item I once believed I’d pass down for generations. An understanding was shared in the brief instant between us and then was gone.
