This is a short piece that eventually led to the writing of Urban Renewal, of my Champagne Books which may be revamped and updated at some future point. It's very autobiographical although it is fiction. The character names are different than those I used in the novel but the setting is the same, my grandparents' house on North Tenth Street in St. Joseph, Missouri.
Home Again
When
I first come down the street, lined by the old houses that slouch like tired
sentinels who just want to get off duty, it looks the same and that nothing has
changed at all. Time took a long break
here and hung out – or it looks that way until I really open my eyes. Then I see that the old neighborhood has gone
downhill like the rest of us, that it has lines cut deep into its face, the
kind that make-up cannot always hide and that it looks bad. It was not an upscale place back then, about
two rungs – or maybe just one and a half – above a ghetto but now, it is like
some Third World disaster zone. At least
it seems that way.
This should be the one place where I
know who I am. I was born here, right
down on the corner of 10th and Lincoln at Sisters Hospital but it is
gone, that big brick monolith has gone the way of the dinosaur right down into
the tar pits of urban renewal. I opened
up my mouth and gave my first shout out here at birth. My grandmother died there or would have but
she didn’t want to wait so she departed in my aunt’s car outside. She didn’t want to do it – die, I suppose –
with strangers, she said and then did it anyway.
I am almost home but there isn’t
much sweet about that. There may be no place like home but I’m here
because I have nowhere else I want to be now.
My kids are grown, living their own lives and I am a widow, lonely yet
not old. I may feel eighty some days but
I’m just past fifty. This should be my
prime, not my sad end. I have not set
foot inside in years but it should be clean.
My grandparents raised me, like they did their own children a generation
earlier and this was as much home as I ever had.
Mary Jane Balsamo, my best friend from grade
school and First Communion, cleans it for me twice each month. I mail her a check every month and she comes
over here, keeps the dust down, and makes sure it doesn’t fall into a heap of
rubble. No one knows that, either. Moreover, she has no clue that I am coming
home but she should have cleaned last Saturday so I have some free time.
The street didn’t seem so narrow but
it must have been as I steer this rented junk heap to the curb and bail out,
grabbing my one bag from the backseat.
I thought the front yard was larger but it is a postage stamp, stuck on
the front of the house. There should be
tiny roses growing all over the fence between here and next door but I do not
see them or smell them. Must be long
gone, I suppose, like me. At the
bottom of the porch steps, I pause to see if my footprints are still in the
concrete and they are, twin indents with a date scrawled out beside them with a
stick. My Pop did that; let me put my
feet in the cement for posterity. Funny but I remember making the foot prints a
lot better than I do other events in my life even though it was a long, long
time ago.
On the porch, I dig the key out of
my jeans pocket and on a whim; I flip up the rusty black mailbox on the porch
wall. The screen door key is still
there but I don’t need it. I open the
front door and step into my past. Even
thought there is nothing but stale air inside, I think I smell my Granny’s
round steak and onions or the heavy lingering aroma of bacon. Then my nose inhales dust – Mary Jane has
been laying down on the job – and I choke.
It is dim once I shut the door
behind me but I turn left on instinct, walking blind into the living room that
has the same furnishings it had on the day Granny died back in 1980. I put my fingers on the lamp switch, on that
old blue hurricane lamp I thought was beautiful back when and turn the switch. It works and look at that old 1940’s couch,
the matching chair, that television set that dates back to Ed Sullivan’s
heyday, and the picture of Jesus knocking on a door still hung on the
wall.
A crazy urge to weep hits me hard so
I do, bubble up tears like a champagne fountain until I have no more
tears. With my nose plugged up, I go
into the dining room where that little old drop leaf table still has what looks
like the same lace tablecloth. That ancient
buffet still rests against the back wall, same knick-knacks dancing across the
top on some doily that my grandmother made my hand. The desk faces the side window and the chair
where my grandpa sat smoking his unfiltered Lucky Strikes is in the same
spot. I lean down and smell the
fabric. Deep within the folds of it,
beneath the manufactured Febreze and Renuizit, I get a good whiff of his
tobacco smoke. That makes me feel good,
for the first time since coming home, and it takes me back to those early
mornings when I sat on his lap while he smoked and read the paper.
I should go upstairs but not yet so
I head back to the kitchen, the largest downstairs room, still open and airy
although the air is stale, old, and I can’t breathe or think I cannot for about
two minutes. The same sink built into a
wooden cabinet is here and so are the giant stove, double ovens and multiple
burners. All those metal cabinets that
my Pop hung are here and I open one, finding it still stacked with the old
Willowware plates, the cracked old bowls, and the familiar glassware. I pull out a drawer and find the silverware
that I remember well, the wooden handled old utensils, and bread ties. On one countertop, that aged breadbox still
sits but when I open it, it is empty, of course.
The vintage refrigerator is the same
and I wonder if it even works but when I put my ear against it, I hear it
humming. I open up the door and cool
air rushes out even though there is nothing inside. That shelf with more knick-knacks hasn’t
been touched and the pantry door reveals nothing but some of the old things that
were always there. I am not ready to
open that cellar door and mount those shaky steps or venture out onto the
closed in back porch so I retrace, then enter the doorway that leads to the
stairs.
They are as narrow as I remember and
there are still thirty of them. I
counted these as a small child. Halfway
up, I pause to look out from the diamond shaped window and wince. The backyard, a place where I spent many
hours at play, looks like an untamed wilderness. Some of the weeds stretch up four, five maybe
even six feet tall. Under them, though,
I see the remains of the brick patio.
Among the choking weeds, a few bright flowers bloom, remnants of my
grandfather’s many perennial beds.
At the top of the steps, I walk
straight into the dinky bathroom, past the old claw foot tub to the rear of the
room where the toilet and sink stare at each other. That sink in the corner still drips, I
notice, and although all the shelves are bare, I think I catch the ghost aroma
of old Ivory and Dove soaps, scents from the past.
There are three bedrooms off the
small hall, two across from each other and one perched at the front of the
house overlooking the street. The one
to the right was my grandparents, the other the small bedroom where my grandmother
sometimes sewed or slept when she had guests.
That front bedroom was mine, my father’s before me. He shared with his brother but I had it all
to myself, like a princess at the top of a tower.
I walk into the room and see the
antique bedroom set, a dark wood double bed, a tall highboy dresser that dates
back to before the first World War, and the dresser, also tall with a high
mirror and drawers that tend to stick in the summer humidity. It was always hot in this room during the
summer, cold in the winter, but at night, with all the windows open, it was all
right. I know I will sleep here
tonight; I am not ready to usurp my grandparents’ old room.
Right now, everything feels surreal
like I am walking in a dream, maybe a nightmare. Here in this familiar room, standing beneath
that same old picture of two kids on a broken bridge with an angel waiting to
sweep them to safety, I almost think I never left.
Or, I think so, anyway, until later,
after I walk out to the car, grab my bags and the few groceries I picked up on
the way. I am walking in, enjoying
being anonymous, just another resident of the ‘hood when I hear a whistle, that
makes me drop my bag and half my groceries tumble out.
“Katy?” A voice that was once as
familiar as the teddy bear I slept with until I was fourteen says my name, my
real name. No one’s called me that since
I left – I’ve been Kathy for years.
As I turn, in slow motion like a
street mime, I become who I have always been, Katherine “Katy” Garrity, home at
last.
Jim stands there, gray and grizzled,
his face lean and lined like someone’s drawing of an old hippie. I can’t read his expression and that feels
bad because once I knew his mind like my own.
Then he cracks a smile, enough of one that I know he still loves me,
that everything we felt bubbling up inside for each other never died but has
been dormant, stored away like furniture in an aging warehouse.
This is what I came for, I realize,
not the house, not the memories, but to be Katy again with Jim..
He opens his arms and I run into
them, sanctuary after the years wandering in the wilderness. His arms are strong and I wish I could stay
inside them forever, because then I would never have to face the world or deal
with my career or anything. My heart
pounds like a drum in the Tournament of Roses parade and although I am happy,
connected back to my grounding, I am scared.
Last time I saw him, he cried, angry
tears because I was leaving the next morning for college, weeping because the
bouquet of red roses he spent all his money to buy and that I clutched in my
arms were not enough to stay me.
As we step apart, I raise my right
hand to show him where the ring has been, always and forever and I see his face
catch the knowledge, hold it, and heal.
I don’t know what to say; there are
too many words crowding my mouth like rush hour traffic on the freeway but I
want to babble that I love him, that I am home where I belong to stay, that
this is all that ever mattered.
“What took you so long?” He growls
but his smile pares away the bite. “It’s
about time you came home.”
I say nothing; it is and I am. My mouth accepts his kiss of greeting and it
tells him everything he needs to know, thirty years later but not too late.
I am Katy.
I am home and I still love Jim.
And
he loves me.
If, after that you should want to read Urban Renewal you can find it here:
https://www.amazon.com/Urban-Renewal-Lee-Sontheimer-Murphy-ebook/dp/B00BOK9XVW
