In The Family Home

A crash, the tinkle of shattered glass skittering across the floor tells me the chandelier in the nursery above has fallen. People have told me it was an odd piece for a baby’s room, my husband himself has pointed to bending supports, the decay of years. But it was where I’d slept, safely, as a young child, and my mother before me.

My sleeping daughter shoves her little fist against my chest. I wrap my arms around her back and try to pull her close against the weight of those tightly curled fingers. I was right to take her to bed with me. Leo is working late, we’re all alone. The air upstairs has become heavy; I can no longer fold a basket of laundry without having to lay down on the nursery floor, curled up on a roadmap rug of ABCs and 123s. I knew this would be the night.

The strength of the avarice that draws long dormant love to hate is a mystery. Ten years have passed since I last heard his footsteps, crunching through the sand and into the lake. Lover of water, we’d spend every summer at the beach, and I would tease that he was more fish than human. On that day however I was engrossed too long in a new salad recipe, a fashionable new layout for Nantucket style kitchens, maybe an article on spicing up your love life after childbirth. Whatever the article was, I never saw his face again as it passed from joy to horror as a wayward motorboat pulled my darling boy down into its undercurrent. The casket was too narrow, the memorial service too brief before the dirt covered the hopes of a young family, the guilt of a mother. The heat that summer was oppressive, and no one wanted to linger over a fresh grave when there was lemonade to sip, kites to fly, and seashells to collect. Time had been enough for the living to tear itself apart and heal, but now it was apparent the dead never forget.

Now, nothing in that room is safe as the soft groan crescendos into a shriek of defeat enveloping the empty crib, now in splinters. Here with me my little one is safe, there are still places in this house where love conquers jealous hate, even the hatred of the dead.

I whisper to the black, “Sister. This is your sister.” The floorboards mutter and twist in reply, and then all is silent.