“Disappearing Home,” “Shopping With My Mother,” and “A Little Fiction”

“Disappearing Home,” “Shopping With My Mother,” and “A Little Fiction”

Image
Photo from Adobe Stock

Disappearing Home

We scooped up the baby,

ramrodded the four year old,

imprisoned the two gray tabbies,

locked them all in the ‘77

white LTD with the green vinyl interior

left to me by my mother upon her death.

We disappeared,

told no one.

My parents gone—

tender father,

troubling mother.

I, so attached to both,

birthed a son

days after she died.

“She planned it so,” I recited

to myself, ripe with resentment.

We fled east and north

to a carriage house

teetering on the edge

of the Penobscot Bay.

The wind wild,

the ice insistent,

the snow shielding.

We hid.

I healed.

Just us. Him and me,

the boys, the cats.

When the year ran out, the money

collapsed, we straggled back to Texas,

the LTD rusted from the rough winter.

Encapsulated in the limping LTD,

no jobs, no money, no house,

we were home, bound by air and space,

intention and devotion

and, oh yes, love. Home.

Shopping With My Mother

“Let’s go shopping,” she said.

“I need your opinion.”

I was seventeen,

no longer inclined

to shop with my mother,

until she enticed me:

“I’ll buy something for you.”

When I was little, we

dressed in our best and

drove downtown,

always on a Saturday,

to shop and eat lunch

at the rooftop café in Fedway’s.

Mid-afternoon, we’d stop

at Woolworth’s for cake or pie,

coffee for her, soda for me

or a hot fudge sundae.

In between the eating,

we visited department stores

where she tugged garment after garment

from the racks for me to try on.

She stood aside and

oohed and aahed and

purchased what she could

on sale, of course, for we weren’t rich,

or even particularly middle class.

It thrilled her to give

and thrilled me to take,

until I realized it was a substitute

for what she couldn’t offer,

for what held her back,

for what she herself never received.

On that day during my late adolescence,

I accompanied my mother to the mall

as she had requested.

She beckoned me into

the dressing room

for my assistance.

I watched as she pulled

too tight pants

over her bulging belly,

attempted to button a blouse

about her pendulum breasts.

I stared,

looked away,

saddened, disgusted,

repelled.

But now,

when I am well beyond

the age she was in that

dressing room on that

day of shopping,

I wish I’d looked with love,

not pity,

with love,

not horror,

with love,

not dismay.

with love.

A Little Fiction

We rented a house on Elm Street,

our “Father Knows Best House,”

we christened it.

We drove six hundred miles

to find it, planning to move for a job

in less than a month.

But on the drive back

to Texas, the owner sold it

out from under us,

returned our deposit,

our first month’s rent,

left us desperate, nowhere to live.

In the thirty-five years I’ve been here,

I occasionally, intentionally pass by the house,

tucked away in a neighboring town.

It’s been sold multiple times,

leased between owners,

fallen into disrepair, repaired.

At one point, an above ground pool

squatted awkwardly in

the tiny, neglected backyard.

Today I drove by it,

nostalgic for what

I never had.

What if we had lived there?

What if we had raised our children there?

Would he still have died?

The house is painted white

when once it was yellow,

its shutters now blissful blue.

It is immaculate —

tidy, manicured, the

swimming pool vanished.

Jack-o-lantern cut outs

decorate the front door,

drapes parted in the front room.

I peer through to the

dining room beyond,

roses grace the table.

Light shimmers within.

It is serene there.

Children live there.

It was never mine.

Just a little fiction,

a dream not possessed.

About the Author

Molly Seale

Molly Seale has published memoir, essays, short stories and poems in a variety of publications, including Hippocampus Magazine, Hotel Amerika, New Millennium Writings, Connotation Press, Into the Sun, and The Write Launch. She holds an MFA in Theatre from The University of Texas, Austin and lives in Makanda, Illinois.