We never repainted or redecorated, save for that Mediterranean-blue vestibule my mother insisted on, and later, mango-orange in the downstairs hallway because, I’d venture, my parents figured out, perhaps soon into the move, that their marriage was in that stranded stage of an ending where temporary fixes—in this case, buying their first house without making it theirs—suspend ineludible pains.
Mostly, it bought more time. For my brother and I to delight in what makes a house remarkable: its sounds. Its index of noise. The discreet swish of my father knotting his silk tie in the morning. The panting steam of our iron. That one broken window and its frightening guillotine-drop. Mustard seeds popping in oil. The front door’s particular key-turn. The back door’s spring. If I close my eyes and sail back to our house on Wilson Street, there’s one CBC radio program in particular—its plaintive opening theme—that may as well score the journey. There was too the thud of dropping who knows what upstairs, and how strangely, no matter what it was, the thud invariably sounded the same: like an unscrewed brass doorknob falling two feet and rolling over once. My parents would yell from downstairs—not Are you okay? but simply our names. Yelling from downstairs was without a doubt the most movied novelty. Like families in holiday films who speak over one another during meals, who reach exaggeratedly across plates, elbowing the youngest when grabbing the gravy boat and outing someone’s recent breakup. Whom I couldn’t help but sentimentalize solely because, of all things, they interrupted each other.
There was also the FilterQueen. Hard-to-reach corners of carpet in our living room meant hearing the brown R2-D2 vacuum butt against bottom molding. My father recently informed me that that vacuum was one of the most expensive items my parents ever bought for the house. He also added, surprising me with this next detail, that he and my mother nicknamed a close family friend of ours “Filter Queen.” Apparently this woman had made a habit of spinning the truth meddlesomely in her favor.
When my father texted me those two details, I considered scrapping this essay entirely. The thought of my parents investing in a vacuum cleaner was somehow too depressing. Too proximate to the dimming I associate with building a family that above all—above all anecdote and filial affection—must function day to day. Must vacuum, ration most luxuries, account for pairs of mittens, fix lunches with damp carrot sticks, fix fights before guests arrive, schedule predictabilities, and coordinate dentist appointments for two kids in different schools, while eternally I remember these words well: Find parking.
Dimming, I’ll admit, might be the wrong word. Accurate perhaps, only as much as it’s an entirely amateurish thing to say. I don’t mean to sound punitive, just mindful of time passing not in days, years, gray hair, but with a better understanding of what went on behind the scenes. In the front-seat silence of two parents saying little on our way to dim sum—speaking, sure, but that’s altogether different. Or in the kitchen at night when they assumed we were asleep. Sleeping, sort of, with my head pushed into my pillow, lying in my bed, which stood adjacent to our house’s heating duct and its sound channel, where whispers reverberated with very little discretion for my mother’s tears or the choked no-sound of two people waiting for someone to speak first.
Mostly though, the thought of my parents teasing a friend, speaking in code, calling her “Filter Queen”—even now, with both of my parents happily remarried—that image of them, near-rascally and light, pads my nostalgia. All of a sudden, the good parts chime. Beluga-whale watching in Tadoussac. That picture of my mother and me. She’s wearing her russet-brown Nehru-collar vest. I’m wearing my bowl cut like a helmet of dark hair secured around my big head. Sitting on her lap, I’m a daughter full of Whys who need only turn her neck to ask them. I am safe having never felt unsafe. The water behind us, blue like a green lozenge.
I remember Saturday breakfasts listening to Astrud Gilberto; how her voice—diaphanous, unconcerned—seemed to waft through the house. “Corcovado” was a breeze. I’d fill my plate with greasy potatoes and sift the serving dish for those extra-crispy ones. My eggs would go cold. I was indifferent to fried tomatoes. My father would quiz me on my times tables.
There was also my brother’s friends. Patrick, Matthew, Nicholas. There were two Matthews, I think. How his friends’ names, and mine too remodeled our family’s language. A coherency of extra characters that dotted our dinner chatter.
Two of those boys have since died. Occasionally their goofy laughs, their stammer and sweaty hairlines, reenter my mind. I hesitate to indulge despite only seeing fragments: the dregs of ripple-cut chips crumbing the bottom of a bowl; wet swimming trunks clinging to chubby thighs; the dangle of a dirty Band-Aid peeling off an elbow. Reestablished clearly is the first time I noticed the curl of a summer haircut growing out on the back of a boy’s tanned neck. Or how the raised estuary of veins on a boy’s forearm was unexpectedly attractive.
When I think of my brother’s childhood friends, of the two who are dead, I become, in those seconds, not inconsolable but wanting for my parents. I am homesick. Parent-sick. Cousin-sick. Okra-sick. Sick for the perfume of our linen closet, for the block prints on bedspreads that ornamented my periphery as a child. That I’d trace with my fingers, authoring elaborate stories merely by fixating on the frequency of a pattern. On pinks that were once red or purples that faded to blue. I am sick too for running errands with my father, accompanying him to the shoe cobbler. The smell of Barge cement and leather intoxicated me. And then, after, to the bank, where the tellers were flirts, I thought. They reminded me of Law & Order ADAs. That variant of tall white woman beauty. Strong jaws. Skirt-suited. Cleft sternum bones in sight.
I am sick too for the sanctuary of a home with a piano that never got used; a mother whose pardoning mien meant dust collected and papers piled, and a stray baby shoe was saved. It sits on a bookshelf in her home; the way objects in museums are no longer objects but artifacts.
I am sick for those years when I was paying attention without purpose. When I was arranging stories free of import, and when my imagination could draw courage instead of warrant that I stay in.
I am sick for days of the week. They carried more meaning when I was younger. Nowadays dates are what are significant. We save them. Save up for them. Cancel them. Plan ahead while our calendars fill up fast and Tuesday, on its own, means little. I am sick for Tuesday.