Going Home

As Marney climbed the stairs to the old house she wondered which of them, she or Amanda, could be said to have had the happier childhood. So much of that childhood rushed in on Marney every time she returned. Each time she walked through the front door she was plunged into a thicket of images from her past. They were touched off by the merest apprehension of a thing, like the oak grain pattern on the floor of the room where she used to play, or the frayed woven fabric of the well-worn sofa where she first kissed a boy and let him touch her breasts. To see the sun as it filtered through almond-stained shutters was like an old invitation to dance in and out of its dust-filled beams of light. The chime of the rococo grandfather clock, the chink in the smoky mirror above the wobbly credenza, the smell of polished leather and tobacco – each hallway, lamp and carpet of the expansive house exhibited a familiar attribute, a swift, easy pathway leading to a memory of a deed done, a word whispered, a mood embellished.

Little of the place had changed over time. This was part of her ongoing love of the house, why it had remained the central touchstone in her life, and what pained her most about its imminent loss. Over all the years it was the one thing she could count on as a consistent presence. It was the repository of her earliest dreams, an abundant and fertile garden yielding a thousand pictures of her mind, out of which was drawn the idea of her self in the world beyond these walls, where she was offered a history of her own.

And it was the home of her father, who had never left it, until now, for good. He had always been there, eager to welcome her back, eager to remind her of the love that he’d always shown her in his oddly vague but sincere way. And now that the Judge was gone, she didn’t know who or what would take his place, or what might substitute for this great old house as it slipped, as it must, out of the circle of the recognizable things in her life, the objects and people keeping her gratefully tethered to the earth, and which underlay her notion of continuity.