Ulysses, OH

My grandmother's old house was at once achingly familiar and unrecognizable, like it had gone through reconstructive surgery after a freak accident and you couldn't stop mentally comparing the "old" face to the new. It was the same boxy white house from my hideous childhood drawing, only it was somehow sharper, recently repainted and obviously obsessively maintained. The roof had been rebuilt after the fire, I remembered that from the last time I'd been here, but now there were wide windows peeking out from under the sand colored roof tiles, a vast attic space looming behind them. The front door had been replaced by large glass sliding doors with a bright “non-stop” sticker plastered onto them, and the vintage-looking neon sign just above marked the place as the only laundromat in town.

My suitcase rattled behind me as I dragged it up the driveway, and I stopped for a moment to ponder whether I should just walk in through the front door or try the back. Wanting to just get it over with I settled on the front and pushed my way into what once used to be my grandma's kitchen, living room and dining room, now a large open space with industrial washing machines and dryers painted in pastel colors, pink, yellow and green, stacked on top of each other and lined up to completely cover two out of four walls. There was a floor to ceiling bookshelf against the third one, loaded with paperbacks and magazines, the boards white and shiny like the delicately textured plaster on the wall. There were two long couches wedged against each other in the middle of the room, with a tired-looking blond woman lounging on one of them, highlighting things in a photocopied book.
There was only one other person in the room, a middle-aged woman with striking features and a heavy braid of grey-streaked black hair hanging against her shoulder. She didn't see me coming in. She was dusting off the counters by the bookshelf, humming to herself against the mechanical buzz of the machine. At loss as of what to do, I approached her cautiously.

"Excuse me, um..."

She turned back to me, visibly startled.

"I'm looking for Mr. Foster?"

Her eyes lit up and she shushed me with a gesture of the hand.

"Are you Jude? Go around the back and upstairs. He's waiting for you."

Her voice was somehow sharp and commanding and gentle at once, and I thanked her, a little intimidated. I dragged my luggage back out and around the house – the way had been paved nicely - and pulled it into the narrow stairwell through the unlocked back door. I was hot and dizzy by now, and sweat was running down my forehead and my back. The chemical smell of the laundromat, its sharp metallic glint didn't help my headache either, and my temple was throbbing viciously.
"Jude?" my father's voice came from the top of the staircase, and it surprised me so much I accidentally tipped the suitcase over.

"Dad? Hi." The whole thing sounded foreign in my mouth.

It was dark and I could only see him once he descended a couple of steps into the sunlight. He looked much more relaxed than I had seen him last, with an odd stillness of his shoulders instead of the tense posture I'd been used to. He was wearing a t-shirt with a plaid shirt on top, jeans, sandals on his bare feet. There was a thick stubble covering his face and underneath there was a smile - a little absent, but a smile all the same. I couldn't help thinking how much more my mother would have enjoyed his company now.

Before I could say anything else, he lifted up my suitcase and carried it easily all the way to the top of the staircase while ushering me in through the empty door frame. The living room I stepped in was almost empty, apart from a large pinkish red couch, a flat screen TV, and a coffee table with a few sports magazines piled on top. The walls were paneled with wood right to the ceiling, concealing two doors on the other side of the room. To my right, a ladder stood and disappeared into the ceiling, leading to the attic space I had admired from below.

My father parked my suitcase in the middle of the room, and I decided to drop my other luggage right there as well. He gestured for me to sit down on the couch and I dropped down heavily, suddenly exhausted.

"Water?" he asked, and I could only nod. He opened one of the doors smoothed into the wall, the one that opened into the kitchen, apparently, and I tried to take a peek of it as he filled me a large Ikea glass with ice cold tap water.

"Um, how was your trip?" he asked as he handed me the glass, and I really didn't know how to respond. The awkwardness of the situation was slowly kicking in.
"Fine, I guess," I said, barely holding back a shrug, and accidentally changed the subject. "Who's the lady below?"

He scratched his neck, visibly uneasy as well.

"She's Carmen. It's her and her daughter who are keeping this place afloat. Her daughter has the night shift, so I guess you'll meet her later."

Overwhelmed by this whole strange encounter, I could only pile on even more awkwardness. "Are you hiring, dad? Because I'd be willing to..."

He laughed, and not the nervous laughter I remembered. "We can't really afford to hire anyone else, but if you want to work, we can look around town. But I think you should just settle in first, you know?"

"Yeah," I conceded, and nearly knocked over the half empty glass as I put it down on the table. A wet ring gathered around it, round and shiny against the glass. "Nice place," I said dumbly.

"Yeah, my bedroom and study are that way," he pointed towards the door on the right, "and the kitchen's there," his index finger trailed towards the door still open. "There's a bathroom there as well, but of course you've got your own upstairs."

"Wow." I was genuinely impressed. In our New York apartment I shared a bathroom with my mom and my room was so small it barely even fit a narrow bed and a desk in it. And to think I'd have an entire attic to myself... I realized my mother would surely be mad at this train of thought, and quickly snapped out of it.

My father helped me propel my suitcase and other stuff up the steep ladder, and climbed up after me.

"It's not much," he said apologetically, "and not quite ready."

But, in all its emptiness, the room, paneled to the ceiling as well, slanted on both sides, was huge. There was nothing in it except a single mattress on the floor, covered in a yellow bedspread that was oddly aesthetically pleasing, and a short but wide bookcase wedged under the opposite wall. The door to the bathroom was hanging ajar, teasing a surface of black and white tile from behind.

"It's great," I said, already feeling the urge not to leave the house for weeks on end. "Thanks. I'll start unpacking, I guess."

"Are you hungry?"

"No," I lied.

"Then you can take a nap until dinner, if you're tired," he suggested clumsily. "What do you want to eat? There's some pasta I could cook for you, or we could just go to the diner."

"Diner?" I asked back, because I didn't recall ever seeing one in town.

"Oh, it's opened not that long ago, a year or two, I think? There's a Canadian family running it, if you can imagine." He laughed to himself, and I was a little put off the idea.

"Pasta's fine.”

He started down the stairs but turned back suddenly, remembering something.

“Do you eat meat?”

The question was so unexpected I could do nothing but shake my head on instinct.

"Your mother's kid," he said, and I could see a flash of the old strained quality in his smile. After he left, I looked out the window for a moment, and then rested my forehead against the cool wood.