Realized
un
He tried to recreate my father and failed.
I watched from a pew as their relationship became official, one of those things that only become real when a piece of papers says so, my head bowed and my shoulders brushing up against family members that I didn’t even know. These people were new to me; the woman who hugged me with smeared lipstick and cigarette teeth, the man who stood with his hands in his pockets and only made eye contact when Mom told me to take his coat. The impression of my father brought them upon us, some sort of plague in Volvo station wagon. He tore my life apart, ripped out the seams of one of my favorite pairs of jeans—that is, the whole “single mother and only daughter living on their own in the big city” thing we had going for us—and relocated the remaining pieces to a suburb in Connecticut, too many hours away from my city and the apartment. I cried the day we left.
She told me the house was newly renovated; the inside rebuilt from the floorboards and colored carpeting up. It looked like it had been carved from a bar of soap, all creamy white and clean looking. There were flowers growing in boxes beneath the windows, a stone walkway that lead up to a door with a screen. Fish swam in a pond beneath a tree in the backyard, leaves and petals falling in the wind. He took her hand and they walked into the house together, some kind of couple that made me feel sick, and they disappeared into the upstairs rooms that I never wanted to see. The kitchen was “country,” like she had said, the only room in the entire downstairs that looked relatively alive. Walls painted white, floorboards stained glossy brown, no curtains to keep the neighbors from looking in. Suburbia.
I felt myself shudder as I started up the stairs, listening to the creaks and the moans of the wooden floor beneath me. This house itself was disgusting. Too cutesy. Too suburban. Too I am finally settling down and owning a house in which we will have nice Thanksgiving dinners and watch football games on Sunday. I could imagine it already—neighbors flocking to our big screen TV and laughing at his jokes as she entertains and bounces between the kitchen and the living room, restocking chips and beers and sodas for the kids. Me, mixed somewhere in between and sick to my stomach with all of it. And dinner parties. Suburban families had dinner parties but—were we a suburban family? No. We weren’t even a family. Family means love and caring about the members and I—well—I couldn’t give a damn if those two dropped off the face of the planet, so long as she was reincarnated as her old self, the one that used to hate this as much as I did. The one with my ideals and opinions, not the one that says “hmm, eggshell or cream napkins with dinner this evening?”
Somewhere down the hallway, the two of them were talking and laughing like twelve year olds over a picture of the newest “cute boy,” playful and teasing. Nausea ensued and I turned the other way, feet creating static on the hallway carpet. Oriental rugs nearly ten feet long through all of the hallways. White walls here, too, turned yellow in the afternoon sunlight. Empty bedrooms on both sides of the hall, a bathroom painted cerulean blue with sterile white fixtures. A bedroom painted pink at the end of the hallway, butterfly in the form of wall paper pieces pasted on the walls. A little girl’s room. How many sleepovers, nightmares, hours spent awake waiting for Santa Claus—? Probably too many.
From the window I saw our neighbors, a woman and a man and a little girl, skipping between the two of them, pigtails waving back and forth. Dish held out in front of the woman, tinfoil over the top of it. Casserole, like in all of those movies. And a boy, walking behind them with hands shoved into pockets, eyes on the sidewalk in front of him; miserable looking, at best. Is this the suburbs?
“Hey, Mom,” I called, looking down the hallway and into the room where the two of them were standing, fingers intertwined. “Neighbors are here.”
I watched from a pew as their relationship became official, one of those things that only become real when a piece of papers says so, my head bowed and my shoulders brushing up against family members that I didn’t even know. These people were new to me; the woman who hugged me with smeared lipstick and cigarette teeth, the man who stood with his hands in his pockets and only made eye contact when Mom told me to take his coat. The impression of my father brought them upon us, some sort of plague in Volvo station wagon. He tore my life apart, ripped out the seams of one of my favorite pairs of jeans—that is, the whole “single mother and only daughter living on their own in the big city” thing we had going for us—and relocated the remaining pieces to a suburb in Connecticut, too many hours away from my city and the apartment. I cried the day we left.
She told me the house was newly renovated; the inside rebuilt from the floorboards and colored carpeting up. It looked like it had been carved from a bar of soap, all creamy white and clean looking. There were flowers growing in boxes beneath the windows, a stone walkway that lead up to a door with a screen. Fish swam in a pond beneath a tree in the backyard, leaves and petals falling in the wind. He took her hand and they walked into the house together, some kind of couple that made me feel sick, and they disappeared into the upstairs rooms that I never wanted to see. The kitchen was “country,” like she had said, the only room in the entire downstairs that looked relatively alive. Walls painted white, floorboards stained glossy brown, no curtains to keep the neighbors from looking in. Suburbia.
I felt myself shudder as I started up the stairs, listening to the creaks and the moans of the wooden floor beneath me. This house itself was disgusting. Too cutesy. Too suburban. Too I am finally settling down and owning a house in which we will have nice Thanksgiving dinners and watch football games on Sunday. I could imagine it already—neighbors flocking to our big screen TV and laughing at his jokes as she entertains and bounces between the kitchen and the living room, restocking chips and beers and sodas for the kids. Me, mixed somewhere in between and sick to my stomach with all of it. And dinner parties. Suburban families had dinner parties but—were we a suburban family? No. We weren’t even a family. Family means love and caring about the members and I—well—I couldn’t give a damn if those two dropped off the face of the planet, so long as she was reincarnated as her old self, the one that used to hate this as much as I did. The one with my ideals and opinions, not the one that says “hmm, eggshell or cream napkins with dinner this evening?”
Somewhere down the hallway, the two of them were talking and laughing like twelve year olds over a picture of the newest “cute boy,” playful and teasing. Nausea ensued and I turned the other way, feet creating static on the hallway carpet. Oriental rugs nearly ten feet long through all of the hallways. White walls here, too, turned yellow in the afternoon sunlight. Empty bedrooms on both sides of the hall, a bathroom painted cerulean blue with sterile white fixtures. A bedroom painted pink at the end of the hallway, butterfly in the form of wall paper pieces pasted on the walls. A little girl’s room. How many sleepovers, nightmares, hours spent awake waiting for Santa Claus—? Probably too many.
From the window I saw our neighbors, a woman and a man and a little girl, skipping between the two of them, pigtails waving back and forth. Dish held out in front of the woman, tinfoil over the top of it. Casserole, like in all of those movies. And a boy, walking behind them with hands shoved into pockets, eyes on the sidewalk in front of him; miserable looking, at best. Is this the suburbs?
“Hey, Mom,” I called, looking down the hallway and into the room where the two of them were standing, fingers intertwined. “Neighbors are here.”
♠ ♠ ♠
thank you for reading!