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Dorothy Parker was a notoriously indifferent housekeeper. Ashtrays overflowed, dogs pooped on the floor and dirty clothes mingled with the clean. As she once said, “All I need is room enough to lay a hat and a few friends.” No matter the state of the place, we all find our way home. In this issue, our writers map the way.
Live Alone and Like It
Word Count 1124
I was desperate to live alone. As the youngest of four children, I had always shared a bedroom with a sister; in boarding school, we were all assigned doubles, the better, I suppose, to acquire the patience necessitated by shared living. But I had already mastered that art! Stupid, then, to go to college in New York City where living alone is a fever dream only to be achieved by the very rich.
Right before graduation my grandfather, who owned a gas station in Amarillo, Texas, died and left me $10,000. It was more money than I had ever had, but it wasn’t life changing money. One Sunday, while scanning the New York Times real estate listings, I came across a listing for an apartment on Riverside Drive for $30,000. This was an unheard of price for an apartment in that neighborhood of stately limestones and aged intellectuals like Hannah Arendt. If I put 20% of my inheritance down, I could just swing the mortgage. I went to the Open House trembling with hope.
Why Here?
Word Count 790
When I was about seven years old, I had that moment where you look around and say to yourself, “I live here!” That simple sentence carries extraordinary emotion and weight, not to mention confusion. I live here, on this street, in this city?
That night I said to my mother, “Isn’t it amazing that we live here, in this flat, in Montreal?” I wanted her to share in my wonder that there was this world, and I had just discovered I had a place in it.
“Don’t remind me,” she said.
Take My House, Please
Word Count 2163
Friends!
Happy Memorial Weekend to you all! Please forgive the mass e-mail, but I hope you’ll read on. I have a terrific idea, and I hope you agree. Why not take your vacation on Martha’s Vineyard this summer?
At my house! I’ve decided to rent it, and I’m excited to tell you a little bit about it here.
I’ve been working like crazy to get the house in shape for you. I remind myself of Frank Sinatra when he ran around having his Palm Springs place spruced up for PresidentKennedy’s visit—I’m all “Spare no expense!” and “I want those doorknobs to shine!” Unlike Frank, I am yelling at myself, but I like to pretend I have a staff like he did, just for fun.
Left To My Own Devices
Word Count 1280
On fitful nights when I can’t sleep, I like to walk myself through a house I lived in when I transitioned from child to teen. My mother, who had been out of my life for several years, wagged her finger and said I had to live with her. She rented the house, a beat-up Victorian, in the same small South Jersey town she grew up in and claimed to loathe. After a five-year hiatus from having to mother me, she took it into her head to open a business in this town which was, of course, very familiar, but also where her man friend had his law practice. He also owned the commercial building where she had her business and possibly found the Victorian house for us to live in. While we were in it, he used the house to store a trio of oil paintings by the Philadelphia-based portrait painter Thomas Sully. He was hiding them from his third wife, who believed they belonged to her and was still fighting him to get them. Although he advised my mother to keep them hidden away, she boldly hung them on the stained cabbage rose wallpapered walls of the Victorian’s faded front parlor.
Variations Of The Interior
Word Count 1446
In San Juan, in the bedroom where I spent most of my early childhood, a full-length mirror hung on the inside of the closet door. Our family had moved from Puerto Rico to New York City a few years earlier, but we kept the apartment on Joffre Street. My sister and I were down there on a school break, and I sat alone, cross-legged on the tile floor staring at my reflection, trying to separate my younger, mischievous self from my now shy and uncertain one. I was thirteen. Blue, for the first time, was a feeling throughout my body rather than a color to behold, and I painted a self-portrait.
Repatriation
Word Count 1148
Eleven years ago, I left New York for Abu Dhabi. I didn’t travel light: I brought a husband, our two little kids (6 & 10), nine carry-on bags, and twelve giant suitcases. We landed in the middle of August in the middle of Ramadan, (not) ready for our Year of Big Adventure.
I walked out of the airport to the car that would take us to our apartment and stopped. The evening air was so thick with humidity that it fogged my glasses, my phone, my watch,. I couldn’t see where I was, couldn’t see where to go.
A breeze, hot and wet, carried the smell of the ocean and something else, something tangy and sour that I would learn was the smell of dates, smushed and fermenting on the ground. Eventually, I would learn that to avoid this fermenting stickiness, the city pays men to climb the ubiquitous date palms that line the streets and tie green mesh bags around the ripening fruit—sort of like poop bags on the carriage horses in Central Park.
Ode to an Urn
Word Count 266
How could I remember a man I barely knew who ate a few mayflies just to see what all the fuss was about, and have zero memory of a cod fisherman my sister remembers and says I knew too. You’d think a cod fisherman would loom large in my memory but no such luck. All you have to do is eat a few mayflies. I have decided not to get upset at all the obviously large moments that have vanished from my past. I can still count backward from one hundred by sevens and get my clothes on properly and enjoy my own company. I’m at home with myself.
Home Body
Word Count 764
At 8:00 a.m. workers arrive to install our new heating and cooling system. I steel myself for a day of noise and disruption. My husband has a studio, our converted garage, for his painting and music, so he’s not distracted by what goes on in the house. My office is a small den open to the living room; much of the work will take place a few feet away. Will I be able to work? Do I need to? It’s a beautiful day, sunny and mild. I’m a half-hour walk from Balboa Park. I could sit on a sunny bench with a book; I could go to one of the park’s museums, have lunch at my choice of lovely spots. I could visit a friend, go to the library, get a pedicure. I could, but despite the commotion, I prefer to stay home.
Diamonds and Dust Bunnies
Word Count 1452
I sniffed a briny breeze that hinted of urine when I stepped out of the train onto the platform. The stench was worse than my cat’s occasional protest. This was the acrid perfume of a man. There’s no toilet up here, so people probably pee in the waiting area. I tried not to trip over the empty gin nips that littered the steps to the street on my way down. To the left of the parking lot behind the station, I saw the American Legion Hall where my brother tends bar. The shop where I bought my magenta-and-tulle prom dress still stood on the corner of the block— Bridal Reflections, Established in 1973. The train ride from midtown Manhattan to the home where I grew up on Long Island seemed like a long decrescendo. The roar of the city’s excitement lost steam with each mile and fell at my stop with a sigh.
Perfect Balance
Word Count 518
I’m driving up I-84, passing the Asylum Street exit in Hartford, Connecticut, when my brother calls to tell me he wants to die. His girlfriend has left him, his kid has reverted to tics and tears, and his ex-wife wants money he doesn’t have. My brother and I grew up on the suburban stretch of where Asylum Street becomes Asylum Avenue. Our house was on a corner lot of adrenalin and anger and desperation.
My little brother’s voice is a mixture of crying and rage. He wants his girlfriend back. He’s sure she can save him. I tell him he’s taking on too much. I tell him I just saw the Asylum Street exit. Too much happened there, he says.
The First Time I Ate Okra
Word Count 1134
I sucked in my breath. Like most children, I was suspicious of unfamiliar food. What did “stewed” mean? Was it like beef stew?
My sister and I eyed each other.
As the oldest child, I felt responsible. “Where did they come from?” I asked.
“Some sadly mistaken person bought them,” our mother said, putting our plates down in front of us. “But for God’s sake, they’re just tomatoes. Eat them.”
“Why aren’t you using them for sauce?” I asked, and she humphed at me the way grownups used to do when kids asked questions with obvious answers.
I Want To Go Home
Word Count 465
Since I left for college I have lived in eleven places. Some dwellings brief, others with the false expectation that it would be forever. Each had its comforts as well as difficulties, be they structural or relational. The furniture I dragged from apartment to house back to yet another apartment did give a sense of familiarity making it feel “homey”, but if I was unsettled within myself, or focusing on someone else's happiness, no chest of drawers could comfort.
For a few years I lived in an ashram where I practiced meditation to discover “the home within”. I found a potent place of inner silence unbound by walls or body – a“home” no matter where I was or with whom.
Runaway
Word Count 888
I was a chronic runner, routinely threatening to leave home. One summer day my sister and I did it: we packed a doll valise with pjs, toothbrushes and tramped across the front lawn, past the cul de sac into the wild field. We hiked through weedy high grass until we came to a stone wall where we set up camp behind a large rock from which we could still see our house. We had cookies with us but no money or water. As darkness approached, we packed up, marched home and rang the doorbell.
A Sense Of Home
Word Count 1031
When I was a child, I thought I wanted to live on a farm. I’d never been on a farm, but I loved animals, and I thought living on a farm meant being surrounded by gentle animals who’d be my constant companions. I also wanted siblings. I guess I needed company besides my depressed mother. Maybe I had a hunch, one I couldn’t have articulated, that a sister would buffer the unboundaried bond between my mother and me.