3 EVIE
E VIE
From the end of the upstairs hall the following day, I hear the kids talking behind the cracked door, sunlight casting a narrow beam into the dim hallway.
The room has served different purposes over the years.
At one time, it was a playroom full of LEGOs and G.I.
Joes, dinosaurs with tutus and dress-up clothes.
I once strung alphabet letters on pretty ribbons and hung them below a mosaic tree painted on the wall.
It had been a monumental effort to keep the room in any semblance of order, but when the kids grew older and the toys began making their way to yard sales and garbage bins, I longed for the days of cleaning crayon marks from the walls and Play-Doh from the rug, wishing they were little again.
These days it serves as a den/office, with boxes of mementos and outdated technology cords filling the deep recesses of the closet.
A jar of smooth white stones sits on a shelf.
A guitar from Lucas’s college years gathers dust in the corner alongside a record player, and racks of albums I once collected sit beside a small sofa.
Along with the regular family photos, the walls are decorated with framed images representing my own private memories on display.
Ancient astronomy prints, a photo of the spiraling Tulip Stairs, artful geometric designs, that sort of thing.
My family assumes this is just a decorating quirk.
They don’t know the meaning behind them, of course.
Then again, maybe Steve did. Each time I added a new one over the years, he would get quiet for a bit but let it go.
The only clues to my inner world. Reminders of what once was or might have been.
I wonder now what it was like for him to live in a house haunted by someone else’s ghosts.
I set down the laundry I’m holding as I hear my kids talking inside the room.
“What are you guys up to, anyway? What is all this stuff?” Lainey’s husband, Rick, asks between forkfuls of food.
I crane my neck and catch sight of where Lainey sits near her brother amid a pile of things from the recesses of the open closet doors, its contents spilling into the room.
“I was looking for a sweatshirt.” She gestures at the faded, oversize Penn State sweatshirt she’s wearing. “One of Dad’s from college.” I hear the sad smile in her voice. “I guess we started going through the boxes and got sucked in.”
“Lainey, look at this.”
“Stuffy!” She jumps up, taking the stuffed pink dragon from her brother’s hands.
I smile.
“Stuffy?” Rick asks.
“That’s why he blew fire, because his nose was so stuffy! Stuffy the Dragon,” she replies.
“I see. Very cute.”
I know I shouldn’t eavesdrop, and I don’t mean to, but as I stand quietly outside the door, I can’t help it.
It makes me smile to hear them in their natural adult state, freely talking, and I don’t want to interrupt.
Through the crack in the door, I see them, both perched side by side on the floor, my two grown children.
And in my mind’s eye, I imagine them in the same positions playing as children in front of the same closet, once filled with toys.
Somewhere in the loop of time, I wonder if they were sitting with figurines or a pile of crayons.
“Look! The Fun Night Can!” Lucas says then, eliciting another smile from me as the memories flash through my mind like a movie, recalling the contents inside.
“We had fun with this. I wonder if the scraps of paper are still in it.” I hear him ruffling through them.
“Make-your-own-sundae night. It was always my favorite. What was yours?”
“I don’t remember,” Lainey says dismissively.
He scoffs. “Yes, you do. C’mon.”
She ignores him, moving on.
I’d come up with the idea at some point, and we’d done it every Friday night for more than a year when they were little.
That’s more than fifty-two times. But that’s the way it was with kids sometimes.
They don’t remember all the fun times their parents spend on the floor being silly or running around a yard pretending to be a pirate.
They remember our failures more. I read somewhere once that a parent needs to create five positive experiences to make up for one single bad one in their child’s life.
Seems a cruel trick on parenting—the chips stacked against us from the start.
“Hey, guys, look how cool these are.” Lucas has evidently abandoned the Fun Night Can and continued deeper into the closet. “These old magazines and CDs.”
“Where were those?” Lainey asks.
“In a box with a bunch of Mom’s old things.”
I stiffen, my heart rate picking up a bit.
“Don’t go through that stuff. It’s Mom’s.”
“They’re magazines, Lainey. Not diaries. Chill,” Lucas says. “This is so cool. ‘The Otherworldly Masterpiece of Mayluna.’” He’s reading from an old music magazine, and I close my eyes and take a breath.
“This was from when they were first starting out, before they became huge. I bet we could get something decent on eBay for this,” Rick says. My son-in-law, ever the practical one.
“No way. We’re not selling these.” Lucas sounds aghast. “I had no idea we had them.” Despite it all, I smile at his interest. It’s funny that he’s the one who ended up liking this sort of thing, even though Lainey had been the musical one as a child.
“Hey, look at this photo,” Rick says a moment later.
“Which one?”
“This one. This girl kind of reminds me of you, Lainey.” He holds it out to her. “Doesn’t she?”
“You can’t even see her face,” she says, dismissing it with a glance.
“You can see her nose and her chin. I don’t know ... there’s just something about her posture.”
I know what they’re looking at, and I peer in just a bit, tempted to interject, my breath shallow.
“Huh. I see what you mean,” Lucas says, and I see him alongside Rick, both standing by the desk, inspecting a page from a magazine.
There’s a long silence. “See!” Lucas exclaims, watching Lainey’s expression a moment later. “Something weird about it, right?”
“Yeah. There is, sort of. It’s ...” Lainey’s voice has grown quiet after having another look for herself. I can see her profile a bit through the door. “It is kind of beautiful, isn’t it?” She looks more closely at it, and my heart thumps hard against my chest. “Weird.”
“What is?” Lucas asks.
“Nothing, it’s just ...”
“Mom has a bracelet like that.” He completes her thought.
“It must’ve been a trend at the time,” Lainey says. I look down and twist the silver bracelet on my small wrist, as familiar to me as my own skin. “It was her mom’s. I used to beg her to let me wear it, and she never would.”
“How old was she when her mom died?” Rick asks.
“Around eight or so, I think. She doesn’t like to talk about her childhood much.”
I peek in, and the three are huddled together by the window, crowding around the magazine with their backs to me.
“You don’t actually think ...,” Lucas starts, looking at his sister.
Lainey chuckles, abandoning the others and walking away to pick up another box. “Her idea of a big night out is going to the movies. And I’ve literally never seen her go to a concert. She’s in bed by ten p.m. Her ... in that world?” She points at the magazine. “Hardly.”
My shoulders wilt and I take a step back.
“Look at this room,” Lainey continues. “Books about Paris museums and Indian cooking. A print of London from what ... like, a college school trip or something? They never went anywhere. She never even left this town. Just sat here and thought about it all.”
I swallow the lump that’s begun to form in my throat.
“Why do you have to be so hard on her?” Lucas asks.
She sighs. “I’m not. I ...”
There’s a shuffle, and suddenly the door opens as she walks out of the room, just as I’m reaching out to place my hand on the doorknob.
“Mom!” When she sees the look in my eyes, heat fills her cheeks as realization dawns that I might have overheard her talking.
“Hi. I ... I thought you were out. We didn’t hear you come in. ”
I look over her shoulder to where Rick and Lucas glance at each other and then busy themselves with the items in their hands.
“I was having a cup of tea with Ingrid down the street. She tried to give us more food, but I declined, you’ll be happy to hear.” I muster a little laugh—my instinct to soothe my daughter naturally taking precedence over my own hurt feelings.
“That’s good. We were just ...”
“You found it. I’m so glad.” I look down at the sweatshirt she’s wearing and smile. “Your dad would want you to have it.”
“We were just going through some old things in the closet.” She gestures sheepishly to the mess in the room. “Don’t worry—we’ll clean it up.”
“It’s fine, sweetie. I can get it later.”
“I didn’t know you had these, Mom. They’re cool.” Lucas shows me the small collection of magazines he’s holding. Another box, tied with twine, sits unassumingly in the corner, unopened. “Where’d they come from?”
I open my mouth to speak, but as I look at their faces, all that comes out before I turn to leave the room is: “Dinner in a bit. Come on down whenever you’d like.”
And so it goes.