Nobody had turned the porch light on at my parents’ house. It looked foreboding from the street, like the house you wanted to avoid when you went trick-or-treating as a kid because you knew they would hand out pennies instead of candy.
That basically summed up my childhood. Always pennies. Never anything sweet.
The front room was dark as I stepped inside, even though the still winter sun had started to set an hour ago. Typical. My mom wasn’t concerned with making me feel welcome. She’d already invited me over for supper, so her obligation had been fulfilled.
Light from the kitchen situated at the back of the house glowed burnished orange on the dated carpet, spreading a long rectangle to the edge of a scuffed coffee table. I could hear my mom knocking around in the kitchen, putting the final touches on supper. Pots clinked and water boiled, drawers opened and spoons stirred, but no radio or TV could be heard. Just her huffing at our supper and my dad’s distant cough from their bedroom.
I stood there for a minute, invisible and unnoticed. Taking a deep breath, I inhaled a bouquet of memories and emotions. My chest tightened and I couldn’t tell if it was from regret for agreeing to this or nostalgic longing for when I was a kid and hadn’t had any responsibilities. Whatever the feeling that settled so heavily on my heart, it made me want to purge it from my body, get it out of me and eternalize it on something else. I wanted to paint this exact moment, somehow move it from reality to canvas.
I would focus on that stretched rectangle of light, make it the very center of the portrait. The carpet would need to be just the right, faded shade of brown. I would need to spend hours detailing the grains of wood from the coffee table. The doorway would need to be the right proportion.
And then in the background I would add my mom at the stove, her peppered black hair pulled in a low ponytail. I would bow her head over her pot, taking care to detail her curled fingers around a wooden spoon and the black sweatpants and t-shirt she would no doubt be wearing. But I would leave her face hidden, unseen.
Somehow I would bring in the master bedroom. Maybe just a sliver of the doorway with the corner of a bed and a pair of large socked feet hanging off the edge.
I would put it all together in grays and blacks and woodsy browns. I would reserve all the color for that one window of light. And then I would let the viewer read into the story whatever they wished. I would let them look at this secret picture of my family and infer whatever story it told them.
Because it would depend on them, on their view of the world. This could be a story of resilience and loyalty, of people sticking it out no matter what, a happily ever after. Or this could very easily be a tragedy. I still hadn’t made up my mind.
I jingled my keys and cleared my throat. Dropping my purse on the recliner near the window, I made as much noise as possible and headed toward the kitchen.
“I’m here!” I called so everyone in the house would know I arrived.
My mother turned from her spot at the counter and looked over me in her hawk-like way. She never wore makeup so her eyes had a beady quality that was unsettling when they were critical. “Hi,” she said.
“Hi.” The pressure in my chest tightened. I subtly worried over my choice of clothes and shoes and every single life choice I’d ever made.
She turned back to supper and tilted her head. “I need you to set the table. I asked your father to, but he has a very important obligation in the other room.”
“By that, you mean taking a nap,” I teased. “No worries, Mama. What’s the point of coming home if I don’t get to do chores?”
Without turning around or acknowledging my upbeat candor, she snorted at her simmering dishes. “He’s had a very rough day of napping. His afternoon nap apparently wasn’t enough. And you know, I interrupted him with the vacuuming, so he had to start over once I was finished. The man has no stamina.”
“He has stamina, Mom. He’s been married to you for over thirty years.” I had long since stopped trying to stay out of things between my parents. That might sound crazy to the normal, non-confrontational person, but for me, I’d learned my lesson the hard way too many times. If I stayed out of it, it never ended. If I jumped in and started reminding my parents of how much they loved each other, they stopped just to get me to stop.
It was how I kept the peace.
One might think that this would make me brave enough to jump into any kind of conflict or throw myself into volatile situations or maybe, even simply stand up for myself. But the truth was, having to handle my parents all of my life made any kind of conflict extremely uncomfortable for me.
I even congratulated myself for the great relationship Vann and Vera had. I took full responsibility for them loving each other so much.
I couldn’t stand them fighting when we were kids. I burst into hysterical tears the minute they started after each other. It wasn’t so much that Vann cared so very deeply for me, rather he has always hated when girls cried. It’s one of his biggest fears—weepy females. So he would do anything to get me to stop—even get along with his annoying kid sister.
As we got older, Vann started treating me less like a girl and more like a sister which meant my tears had less and less effect on him. So, during our teenage years, I stopped crying and resorted to simply leaving. We could have been in the middle of a homework assignment or a Vera-inspired cooking experiment, but if the atmosphere felt even slightly tense, I would pack up my things and leave.
Not for their sake, but for mine.
Fighting drove me crazy. And after having listened to a pretty constant soundtrack of it for my entire life at home, I had gotten decently good at stopping it, fixing it, or running away from it.
“He can’t afford the divorce,” my mom grumbled.
“Mom, he knows I’ll set the table for you. I always do. And I always will.”
She snarled something under her breath and threw potholders at the table like Frisbees. My mom was this interesting mix of plucky, tell-it-like-it-is ballbuster, and pearl-clutching church lady. In one breath, she’d give my dad hell or toss potholders at the table like she was a frolfing superstar, and the next she’d lecture me for complaining about my boss or putting my elbows on the table.
When the potholders were set, she spun back to her stove and mumbled angrily about my dad’s grotesque use of his napping privileges. I already knew what kind of night it was going to be before my dad ever made an appearance. If my dad was on his second nap today, there was a reason.