familyTo throw on a perfect black dress and have those little child hands
pull the hem. Begging to go out past their bedtimes.
I know when they are older the boys will remember the smell of my going-out perfume,
and the way the lights dim low as I turn in the mirror.
And they will remember how I leave, no longer a mother or a student, but myself
young and still attractive, twenty-two with the city lights
radiating down onto the wet steps which flicker rainbow colors. I
skip down them towards my freedom taxi.
A friend, Sara, had mentioned to me over cucumber and cream-cheese sandwiches that she was tired.
Her three children played on the floor with Gabe and Belle, grabbing toys from each other, throwing big rubber balls around the room, screaming when one of them felt ignored. Belle sat and watched, opened and closed her picture book, and occasionally looked up at me with questioning eyes. Gabe smiled and talked constantly, finding their mania a game.
I looked back at Sara and sipped my cherry water. I wondered if I had the same bags under my eyes, the same hand tugging at unwashed hair. She bit into a sandwich and wanted me to fix her problems. I asked her if perhaps she wanted to listen to music instead of talking.
That night, after the kids were in bed, I asked Harry if it were possible to move into a house closer to the city.
For once, in all the years I have known him, he was gruff and short.
"Ah, Paige, now you think we live in too small of a house? We have no money, look around you. Have you forgotten there are eight mouths to feed and neither of us with a proper paycheck!"
I could only sit him on the bed and reassure him, kissing his hand over and over, being polite for forgiveness.
A smile soon came across his lips and he knew I only meant that I needed a change.
"Yes, we'll move."
And so we have.
We are far from being well off. But we are happy.
Things have not changed much since we've been in this house. There is something ethereal about it; something quite ghostly. In all reality, I've been looking at it for ages, getting begged by a realtor friend if I were interested in its purchase. But I want to keep it a random event, a whim or a chance in my life that I was finally able to make by myself.
The new house is shadowy; but willow-tree, summer-time, by-the-poolside shadowy. And in the evenings it smells like gardenia bushes, though I have found no little white flowers anywhere near the proud, moldy brick. From our peeling paint to a decaying porch, we have found a place where children ride their bicycles long past dark, and where Rev can watch single women trot with their pink babies in prams.
We have a new magic room, which houses all of our books (now fit neatly onto shelves instead of sitting in piles upon the floor). There are many mirrors which I have painted a fake, flaked gold, and have almost acquired a Spanish flair in the oppressing heat. The children spend most of their time outside, since the two rooms they share are a bit humid. At night, I open all of their windows, and let the summer air float through. Sometimes I light incense in the foyer so that the smell might waft through the house, and wrap itself around our old, faded furniture.
Harry and I share the smallest room of all. But there is a lock on the door, and a big, wooden bed that reminds me of Louise and Reggie's estate. Harry's housewarming gifts to me were three, feathered pillows: so that they may form a cocoon around us as we huddle in the middle of our sunken mattress.
This is the only time Harry and I spend together; legs and arms tightly wound in sleep. The rest of the days he is working, and sometimes at night, I feel him leave me, and smell him as he sprays cologne on his uniform. Once in awhile, a child wakes up and comes pattering in to sleep with me, and Harry gives us both a kiss on the way out. He never says a word; he has still not forgotten that I live two lives. Sometimes, very early in the morning, he cannot forgive me.
But by the afternoon, he has remembered again that I am Paige.
We had a closet full of old blankets and hand painted eggs.
Ugly things with pink and yellow mixed together in a harsh finish.
My mother adored them, and would, when extremely high,
hug them to her chest for comfort.
I broke one each birthday.
