My father and sister moved into a house that I have never seen. Layers of my past are there, awaiting my eventual visit. Photographs of my too young travels through China. Elaborate thrift store dresses that I wore to my undergraduate classes to study the active non-awareness of those around me. Transported by my father (with his back that is stronger now after the operation) boxes of my life fill the dark, reticent places of their new home.
My presence seeps out from the taped boxes and searches through the house. The sofa he has had at his last two homes is there, white and soft to sit in. A heavy, elaborately woven throw slides off of the back and falls onto my shoulders. The tasseled edge falls across my face like the scurry of rodent feet. A large television is nestled within an alcove. It is off, as it always is, unless someone comes to visit. The movie collection is hidden in the cabinets. Our childhood favorites nestled beside the one video my sister and I that my father owns - the blue screen Star Trek adventure from our summer trip to Universal Studios.
There are candles that are never burned and small trays of potpourri. Prints of Pre-Raphaelite paintings in heavy frames staircase the walls. His cat uncurls from beneath the coffee table, and slinks off to my father's bedroom to hide. Her white feet move their pink pads with voracious stealth, like a centipede, over the carpet floors. Quick - she is under the bed. On his dresser there are a few photographs in frames - his mother when she was young, me and my sister in 80's clothing chaos - and beautiful, elaborate plants that do not breathe. The light is different than it was at his apartment. The trees are closer to his bedroom window, and there is no side-street that offers its occasional hum like the gentle whir of a fan. It is the view I relished everyday when I lived with my friend in the slum-townhouse in the south. The image of our window and front door repeated itself so many times, on both sides of the street, up the hill as far as I could see, that I remembered L'Engle's Camazotz. The branches of the tree outside my window, tapping against the glass when it stormed, I give to my father as a home warming present.
The door to my sister's room is closed. Inside a daybed is draped in comforters and sheets. It is never made. A gigantic blue pillow lays on the floor, speckled in dog hair. They are out at a park. The gentle, stout mutt is running around convivially with the other dogs, while my sister sits on a bench chatting with the old couple who are having a picnic. He runs up to her every few minutes, for reassurance of the world, and she scratches under his hears before sending him back to the playing field. When he is tired and she gets a call on her cell phone from her boyfriend, she will call his name once and he will leave the world of dogs to trot by her side and jump into the car as soon as the door is open.
On the wall of my sister's room is a large cotton hanging that she bought when she worked at the Curry restaurant. It is blue and tie-dyed and has Celtic symbols along the edges. She has secured it with thumbtacks and it is beginning to sag in-between the places where the fabric is pressed to the wall. In a drawer of the seated vanity mirror there is a harem of make-up. At the bottom are the blush and eye shadow sets that she receives every year from an aunt, a grandmother, a distant cousin. It is never the same person who gives the make-up, but it is always the same make-up kit. She uses these for costume parties and photography shoots - whenever she's feeling dramatic. A small wire-cage is in the corner. Its floor is covered in soft litter, and the water bottle is full, but nothing lives inside.
There is another bedroom, but it is really an office. If someone comes to stay, then it will be a bedroom. But for now, it is a nerd paradise. Three computer monitors are linked together, forming a giant screen. On a separate table, a ham radio sits with the volume just lightly on. A bookcase with glass doors that slide out and fall over the books - like the lids at a self-serve patisserie - holds all of the standard geek titles: the red, leather edition of Tolkien's great work, Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time, the ARRL Handbook, random Asimovs and Heinlins. A nicely-bound copy of Dune without a jacket-cover is there, but it has never been read. It was the tattered paperback (now in the hands of a younger person who bought it for fifty cents at the library's bookstore) that carried him to the world of spice.
In the corner there is a daybed and my cat is sleeping on it. He lazily lifts his head, and then returns to his dreams. He wears a new collar. Dark blue with a bell on it. There is no blood on his front paw, but I can tell from the way he lays that it is the one he hurt when he slipped out the backdoor and disappeared for days. Would they have told me about it if he had never come home?
If I visit, will I recognize this new home? My father and sister living together again after the disasters of teenage years - I cannot quite form it in my head. Outside there are similar houses. The ten formats are repeated in various colors, with small changes in layout to accommodate an extra room. The trees in the front yards are prim and the hedges are beefy but trimmed. Beneath the mulch of my father's front garden there is the tiny body that was alive when I left. A small stone with interweaving lines holds the ground in place above her head.
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