Sky Harbor

I was just shy of turning two when my parents separated. I have no recollection of a home with both my mom and dad living under the same roof and happily married. Just of living with my mother in a small yellow two-bedroom house, and of visiting my father on the weekend in his flat across town. Although my parents weren’t together, I lived a comfortable childhood. Shortly after their divorce, my father remarried—to a woman he had met through work—and nine months after that I had a half-brother. I don’t remember my parents ever being in love, much less getting along. Their relationship is at arm’s length. They speak civilly because they have to for my sake, but I know they’re fuming internally whenever they have to deal with each other.

For most of my life, I seemed to have taken my mother’s side, more or less because I lived with her. It isn’t a secret that my father had had an affair with Meryl Harmon, the woman he married after my mom. That was the primary motivation for my mother to file a divorce. They had also been fighting, but I don’t remember very far. I had always been good at blocking awful things from memory; at least, most of them I can. What clearly sticks in my mind is hiding in my closet until the loud noise was over, and my mom would come upstairs and check on me, tell me everything was alright—even if I knew it wasn’t. She used to tuck me into bed and curl under the sheets with me. And she would cry, while I pretended to sleep. That was all I can remember from their marriage.

We only stayed in Seattle until right before my fourth birthday. That was when both our lives changed, when my mother remarried, finally to a decent man. His name was James Kirch. He was kind and very fatherly. He was fairly young when I first met him. He had only been in his late thirties when he and my mother wed. Patient, gentle, yet stern and authoritative, James was a great father. I like to think that my father was a good man, but James was more of a father to me than my very own biological one. There wasn’t once a time when I ever called him by his first name or anything, for that matter, other than Dad. He’d always been my dad. For thirteen years, James had treated me like his very own daughter, his only daughter out the five children he fathered.

When my mother married James, not only did I gain a new father. I also got four new brothers (three older than I): Bryan, Joe, Tim, and Pat. Pat was the youngest of us five kids. He was only one year my junior and so he became the brother I was closest to. He’s only really seven months younger than me, his birthday in February while mine was in July. We were the babies of the family. We were the two who still weren’t even going to school yet, so we stuck together, formed a bond, somewhat an alliance against our older brothers. But they were all great. The Kirchs were some of the best things that had happened to me, and my mother, as well. They were all great brothers and they felt like my flesh and blood, even if there wasn’t a single drop we shared. But in my mind, these boys were my blood, more so than my half-brother, Blake.

The cab slows to a stop and I pull myself away from my thoughts to look up at the large white house that looms before me. The cabbie quickly gets out and takes my luggage from the trunk while I slowly will myself to open the door. I take too long and the cabbie is already done with retrieving my bags. He pulls the door open and helps me out. I smile up at him and thank him. Then, I pay him the fare and take my bags from the sidewalk. He pulls out of the driveway and waves before he sets off and I am left to stare up at my childhood home, the home that I’d lived in for almost fifteen years.

I hitch my bag up my shoulder as it slides down my arm and roll the suitcase down the pathway that leads to the front door. The house is the same as I remember it. It has a small cottage feel to it, although it is quite a bit larger. The hedges are well-tended to and the summer flowers are blooming beautifully. Like the days of my childhood, the flowers’ fragrance is intoxicating and brings me a feeling of nostalgia. I shake away the memory of sitting in the front yard, my bare feet being tickled by the grass and the dry July breeze blowing in my face, with my old friends. I clutch my chest, as if I’m being physically injured, and quickly clear my head. It still hurts to remember.

I finally reach the front door and stare at its threatening presence. My hands are shaking. They tremble as I place my hand over the doorknob and twist it. As I had figured, it is unlocked, like it always was back then. It opens and reveals the large living room my family and I spent so many hours together in. The house is dark; the curtains are closed shut. It is quiet, as well, and holds such an eerie feeling. I close my eyes and take a breath, allowing the familiar scent of vanilla and roses to fill my nostrils. The dark wood beneath my sandal-clad feet is scratched and worn and the shelves are dark and dusty, like no one has read those books since I’d left. It was probably so, however, because I had always been the only one in the family who really ever read. It all looks quite the same though. Everything looks in place as I examine the room and the present pictures on the wall. There’s one new photo on the fireplace mantle. It’s one of my little brother—his senior photo. He looks older, in a way. He still looks boyish and very young, but his hair is much long now and he’s outgrown his baby fat. His hair goes farther past and just barely grazes his chin. He’s wearing a crisp white dress shirt underneath a black jacket, and at the collar is a small bowtie that makes him look very handsome.

I move away from the picture a moment later and walk towards the kitchen. Setting my bags by the stairs as I pass them, I look around the corner to search for any of my family. The kitchen is brightly lit and as I steal a glance at the backyard beyond the glass doors at the other end of the room I see the dull green grass of the lawn and pretty view of the sun hitting the peach tree at just the perfect angle. Its leaves are bright green and the fruit is a pretty reddish orange with yellow. The branches are spread wide apart and the tree is a good size. I remember picking the fruit with my brothers and sitting on the porch, biting into the flesh of the peach and savoring in its sweet meat. That was something that I, now that I think about it, truly miss about living in this home, apart from my parents and brothers. Just the simple act of picking fruit from the tree in our backyard and eating it with my brothers. It’s the simplicity of it all, how it isn’t complicated in any sense. That was the simplicity you only ever found when you were a kid, when the hardest decision you had to make was whether you wanted the red Kool-aid or the blue.

I let out a small sigh and close my eyes. Memories are flashing behind my eyelids and I let myself get lost in the nostalgia, in the better days, I like to call them. The days when I didn’t worry, when I didn’t think or plan or regret. When the mistakes I made didn’t change my life.

“Gwen?”

I open my eyes at the sound of my name and turn around to find the source of the voice. I smile meekly at the man standing before me as he watches me carefully with confused eyes. He’s taller than I remember, which surprises me because it’s only been a year. His hair is longer, too, just like the picture of Pat in the living room on the fireplace mantle. He’s thicker, in the sense that his muscles have almost gotten larger, if that was possible. He had always worked out a lot, and his skin had always been tan and typical for an Arizonian.

He looks like he’s scrutinizing me, as well, as his eyes rake over me in a curious fashion, almost surprised and still in that puzzled way. I wonder briefly how much I had changed in his eyes. I knew I was different back then. I feel different now. But I did not know whether that was good or bad.

“Hey,” I murmur.

His eyes soften and that bewildered look he had on his face is gone and is replaced with a warm smile. He walks the several steps between us and engulfs me in the warmest hug I had gotten in too long a time. I melt into his arms and feel comforted that someone cares about me, because I hadn’t felt that feeling in a while. The comfort is overwhelming. I want to stay in his arms forever, because they are so familiar and make me feel safe. To be in your older brother’s arms and wrapped in the largest embrace, knowing that he had missed you in the time that you were gone, is such a good feeling. For once, in many months, I finally can pretend that everything is back to the way things were and none of my present problems existed.

When he pulls away, my lips turn down because the look he gives me now makes me feel guilty. It’s a look that I’m not familiar with, a look of abandonment and sadness that I’d never seen on anyone else’s face other than my own when I looked at myself in the mirror. His eyes are sad and his eyebrows are scrunched together, meeting in the middle.

“What are you doing back?” he asks me quietly. Then, he stops shortly and continues, “Not that I’m not happy to see you, Gwen…”

I smile slightly, showing him that I had not taken it the wrong way.

“I really missed you.”

“I-I, um…I heard about dad. Mom told me to come home,” I reply uncomfortably. I’m uncertain how to act around him. It feels too weird now.

“Oh, yeah—” Tim starts, but he doesn’t get a chance to finish.

A shorter boy with long hair and a skinny frame is running down the stairs, words sputtering out of his mouth as he descends. I can’t understand him as he talks Tim’s ear off, but I can catch little bits and pieces of what he’s telling our older brother. He stops at the last step and continues to speak until he notices that Tim isn’t paying attention to him, but to me. Tim is still watching me, and so, the young boy, my little brother, turns his head in my direction and meets my eyes.

“Hi,” I breathe.

He stares at me with an open mouth, like he can’t believe I’m in front of him, or maybe because he’s appalled by the sight of me. I’m not sure, but we stand there looking back at one another for quite some time until he suddenly turns on his heel and stomps up the staircase. And I’m left there to watch him leave me without a word, feeling my heart plummet from my chest when he disappears at the top and I hear the hard slam of a bedroom door.