Photo by Jonathan Emili
The House and I, Intertwined
Rebecca Ahn
Thursdays are reserved for Grandpa’s house. It’s been this way since I moved out, for me to visit on Thursday afternoons and end up staying for dinner despite my flimsy excuses. Today, it’ll be that I have to cover for a friend on the night shift that starts at midnight and I want to take a nap before that so I have to be home by nine and it’s a thirty-minute drive, and, well, dinner only ever lasts until seven anyway.
I park my car in the driveway and walk across the pavement that bears the ghosts of chalk flowers. The peeling fences are thirsty for a fresh coat of paint. Sticking my key in the door that lets in too much wind, I brace for the creak that comes when it’s pushed open. It’s nobody’s fault that the task of oiling the hinges gets forgotten too easily. Twelve notes greet me from the clock. It chimes every fifteen minutes.
“I’m home.”
The carpet, never placed quite straight on the hardwood floor, isn’t thick enough to muffle my footsteps. I walk in rhythm with the grandfather clock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The pendulum swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The living room is a giant metronome, echoing, keeping time.
“Did you miss me?”
I poke the fire. It’s dead, but that’s fine. The weather’s getting warm enough to do without, and anyway, there’s the quilt. The quilt, folded on the sofa, has grown steadily larger since its birth as a four-squared handkerchief. Grandpa kept finding new squares to add. I can name each one, where they came from. The light purples from Grandma’s Sunday dress, the dark blues from Grandpa’s old winter coat, the checkered reds from a pair of my old pants, the sunshine yellows from the scarf the three of us knit together one Christmas (it fell apart after a year). A portrait of our family.
I unfurl it and curl up on the couch. The ends trail out of the living room. I’m smothered in the never-ending fabric, buried up to the neck in my life. The clock sings its melody and shouts five o’clock.
“How have you been?”
I remember when the quilt snaked through my hands. I remember when Grandpa was the Prometheus to its clay human. But he laid it in its grave when he left.
Took off, the neighbors said. Disappeared in the middle of the night. I didn’t call the police.
I’m sorry for your loss. They patted me on the shoulder. Forty and fifty-year-old hands clasped my twenty-year-old ones. They lingered a second too long, fled a second too early.
Back in their noisy houses, they said, That poor girl. She must be going crazy from grief.
Around their dinner tables, they said, Well, she’s always been a little eccentric.
In front of their roaring fireplaces, they said, That’s what having no proper parents does.
And to my face, they said, I’m so sorry for your loss.
I said, Don’t be.
Grandpa never disappeared. I see his wrinkles in the hardwood floorboards left bare by the crooked carpet. I feel his breath through the gaps in the front door that lets in too much wind. I hear his heartbeat in the grandfather clock, the pendulum keeping it alive. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. And I smell him in the quilt that’s more like a flood. I smell the chicken soup with too much pepper (never good for colds), the sawdust from sawing away in the garage (what he made, I never knew), the tobacco that made me cough (took a decade to get used to).
I turn on the broken television like I do every week. It plays nothing but static, as always. I watch the black-and-white squiggles shake the screen. The staring hurts my eyes, but I can’t look away. It’s hypnotic. I tap the squares on the quilt in a pattern I know by heart. Red, yellow, blue, green, purple, red again. The clock chimes build up into a pile of many, many fifteen minutes.
The sunlight retracts across the floor while I’m in a trance. When the tip rakes over my head, I wake and put aside the quilt, which weighs a million pounds now. The refrigerator tells me I can choose between microwave lasagna and microwave quesadilla. I choose the lasagna. Dessert will be a plate of brownies courtesy of the same kitchen appliance. I bring my lasagna-filled plate to the living room.
“I really have to be going.”
The protest falls flat.
I imagine the news playing on the television, and for a moment, I can hear the newscaster’s voice. He’s saying Heavy snowfall is expected tomorrow in his tinny officious voice. Grandma’s saying Have you brought Samantha’s bike in from the kitchen over the clinking of her spatula against the lasagna pot, and Grandpa’s saying Not yet, but I will from upstairs over the clanging of his wrench against the broken radiator.
The wind howling through the door blows the voices away.
That night fifteen years ago, the lasagna was too cheesy, the radiator refused to heat up, and my bike was buried in snow.
I throw away my microwave lasagna after eating half of it. Too dry. The brownies are better. At least they warm my fingers. The clock hits me over the head with seven o’clock. I wash the dishes and leave them to dry.
“Good-bye.” The words are in sync with the giant metronome. Tick-tock.
In the hall, I look at the staircase and ponder going upstairs. The idea is scrapped. It’s too dark up there and the light switch has always evaded me by an inch. Maybe next week. A week won’t change anything.
Outside, the wind is determined to tear me apart. Snowflakes fall from the pavement-gray clouds. They’ll swallow all the stray bikes overnight, I can already tell.
Rebecca Ahn
Thursdays are reserved for Grandpa’s house. It’s been this way since I moved out, for me to visit on Thursday afternoons and end up staying for dinner despite my flimsy excuses. Today, it’ll be that I have to cover for a friend on the night shift that starts at midnight and I want to take a nap before that so I have to be home by nine and it’s a thirty-minute drive, and, well, dinner only ever lasts until seven anyway.
I park my car in the driveway and walk across the pavement that bears the ghosts of chalk flowers. The peeling fences are thirsty for a fresh coat of paint. Sticking my key in the door that lets in too much wind, I brace for the creak that comes when it’s pushed open. It’s nobody’s fault that the task of oiling the hinges gets forgotten too easily. Twelve notes greet me from the clock. It chimes every fifteen minutes.
“I’m home.”
The carpet, never placed quite straight on the hardwood floor, isn’t thick enough to muffle my footsteps. I walk in rhythm with the grandfather clock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. The pendulum swings back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. The living room is a giant metronome, echoing, keeping time.
“Did you miss me?”
I poke the fire. It’s dead, but that’s fine. The weather’s getting warm enough to do without, and anyway, there’s the quilt. The quilt, folded on the sofa, has grown steadily larger since its birth as a four-squared handkerchief. Grandpa kept finding new squares to add. I can name each one, where they came from. The light purples from Grandma’s Sunday dress, the dark blues from Grandpa’s old winter coat, the checkered reds from a pair of my old pants, the sunshine yellows from the scarf the three of us knit together one Christmas (it fell apart after a year). A portrait of our family.
I unfurl it and curl up on the couch. The ends trail out of the living room. I’m smothered in the never-ending fabric, buried up to the neck in my life. The clock sings its melody and shouts five o’clock.
“How have you been?”
I remember when the quilt snaked through my hands. I remember when Grandpa was the Prometheus to its clay human. But he laid it in its grave when he left.
Took off, the neighbors said. Disappeared in the middle of the night. I didn’t call the police.
I’m sorry for your loss. They patted me on the shoulder. Forty and fifty-year-old hands clasped my twenty-year-old ones. They lingered a second too long, fled a second too early.
Back in their noisy houses, they said, That poor girl. She must be going crazy from grief.
Around their dinner tables, they said, Well, she’s always been a little eccentric.
In front of their roaring fireplaces, they said, That’s what having no proper parents does.
And to my face, they said, I’m so sorry for your loss.
I said, Don’t be.
Grandpa never disappeared. I see his wrinkles in the hardwood floorboards left bare by the crooked carpet. I feel his breath through the gaps in the front door that lets in too much wind. I hear his heartbeat in the grandfather clock, the pendulum keeping it alive. Tick-tock. Tick-tock. And I smell him in the quilt that’s more like a flood. I smell the chicken soup with too much pepper (never good for colds), the sawdust from sawing away in the garage (what he made, I never knew), the tobacco that made me cough (took a decade to get used to).
I turn on the broken television like I do every week. It plays nothing but static, as always. I watch the black-and-white squiggles shake the screen. The staring hurts my eyes, but I can’t look away. It’s hypnotic. I tap the squares on the quilt in a pattern I know by heart. Red, yellow, blue, green, purple, red again. The clock chimes build up into a pile of many, many fifteen minutes.
The sunlight retracts across the floor while I’m in a trance. When the tip rakes over my head, I wake and put aside the quilt, which weighs a million pounds now. The refrigerator tells me I can choose between microwave lasagna and microwave quesadilla. I choose the lasagna. Dessert will be a plate of brownies courtesy of the same kitchen appliance. I bring my lasagna-filled plate to the living room.
“I really have to be going.”
The protest falls flat.
I imagine the news playing on the television, and for a moment, I can hear the newscaster’s voice. He’s saying Heavy snowfall is expected tomorrow in his tinny officious voice. Grandma’s saying Have you brought Samantha’s bike in from the kitchen over the clinking of her spatula against the lasagna pot, and Grandpa’s saying Not yet, but I will from upstairs over the clanging of his wrench against the broken radiator.
The wind howling through the door blows the voices away.
That night fifteen years ago, the lasagna was too cheesy, the radiator refused to heat up, and my bike was buried in snow.
I throw away my microwave lasagna after eating half of it. Too dry. The brownies are better. At least they warm my fingers. The clock hits me over the head with seven o’clock. I wash the dishes and leave them to dry.
“Good-bye.” The words are in sync with the giant metronome. Tick-tock.
In the hall, I look at the staircase and ponder going upstairs. The idea is scrapped. It’s too dark up there and the light switch has always evaded me by an inch. Maybe next week. A week won’t change anything.
Outside, the wind is determined to tear me apart. Snowflakes fall from the pavement-gray clouds. They’ll swallow all the stray bikes overnight, I can already tell.