...and the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets. (Ecclesiastes, 12:5)
I'm not dying and neither (praise/bless) are any of my kin, blood or otherwise. My parents are selling, have sold, the house I grew up in. It will belong to some family transplanting themselves from Philadelphia as of early January. And I'll be in New York for Christmas and Key West for New Year, and this will be my last week in this house, a dark brick foursquare (larger than most) built in 1910 in the Central Gardens of Memphis, Tennessee. I don't know what to do. I've been kissing the walls and door frames, feeling my feet round the back stair toward the kitchen, feeling how they know just how to, photographing the patches of light that drift up and down the walls of my bedroom, photographing the warp of crape myrtle and dogwood and pin oak branches through poured glass, photographing the civil conversation between the pocket doors in the entry hall.
I thought I might die on my flight down here (coincidentally) above greater Philadelphia. We hit a patch of turbulence, the sort where the plane both rumbles from side to side and makes great, angular leaps up and down, where one is just waiting for the electricity to falter and everyone is looking around at each other like, "Oh No." But then we got steady and service began and I got a bloody mary and listened to Dusty in Memphis and opened and closed my eyes and landed. And there were my parents and my sister, and we went straight to supper and knew everybody in the place (Daddy said, "Nobody can pee without stopping to say hello how are you."). It was Memphis (my Memphis), all warmth and inside and known quantities, and it didn't matter that I was wearing slippers and no bra (I was home).
The next day, I took a drive. I got a grocery list from Mama. I drove all over. I drove out of the way; I got lost too, mixed up Walnut Grove and North Highland, forgot my shortcuts. None of it was as easy as I'd wished. I'd wished to have an old day back, to be driving to Kroger or down on Summer, as a citizen, as a person who lived here and was still in school, in the sun and unloaded, aware of how much I liked it here and liked a drive, but not that it was already gone. I brought the groceries home.
I went to get my nails painted (for some hosting duties to follow later, a big event). I pulled into the parking lot of the strip mall on Union Avenue where you find Rose's Nails and Wiles-Smith Drugs and Mr. Galtelli's Shoe Repair. And the women all remembered me. Of course—I get my nails did every week and did there for every week of several years. But I'm funny about this stuff; I assume people forget me, like I remember but they must forget. They even remembered that I lived in New York and they asked a lot of questions about the pace and the weather, and I just said it was good but very exhausting and not yet cold. And before my base coat was on, old Mr Galtelli's daughter breezed in to get a fill. She's a love, so effusive and bright, insanely forthcoming. Another customer complimented this beautiful old, garland-set diamond she was wearing and away she went, "Oh that was Mother's ring. I wear Mother's ring on one hand and Daddy's on the other, or at least when I need strength, on hard days. You know, Mother died almost a year to today, just a few months after Daddy. It's been hard but it makes you strong. I'm a stronger person. I've been running the shop for two years now. When Daddy was diagnosed with lung cancer I came back up here. I quit my job and divorced my husband and sold my house all at once. I mean it felt like a day. And I mean, he was a bad guy, just a loser and real jealous, real jealous of all the time I came up here to spend with my family. And I mean, that's my family. He was my husband but that's my family. Anyway, it was the right thing to do. People just loved Daddy. I've got third and fourth generation customers. People who knew my Grandaddy too.....[directed at "Rose"] can you do my eyebrows girl? I need a mini-facelift. I've got a date tonight. My boyfriend is coming over with his son and we're gonna grill out. It sounds crazy, right? It might be too cold. But that's what we're gonna do, have some chicken and some macaroni probably and I'll make brownies, gotta make something bad....[maybe thirty seconds of silence] Girl, I see you walking past the store all the time. Where are you walking to? You've gotta be careful 'round here, especially behind the building." and "Rose" (I call her that but I'm pretty sure it's not her name) says, "Oh I walk. I walk when I get here early, before I open. I walk in the afternoon. I go around the block. I go to Peabody. I really love this area. I love this area. The houses are so nice, so nice." I dried my nails for six minutes and then three more. I told them I'd be back again, right before they closed for the holiday.
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