The house had not changed. The oak and mimosa still stood in the front yard; the ivy and honeysuckle still battled for possession of the front flowerbed; the gutters were peeling yellow paint and the magnolia by the kitchen door was in bloom. In almost thirteen years the house and yard had managed to remain exactly as she remembered them. It didn’t seem likely, but neither did the alternative: that her memory was faulty.
Sharon walked around to the side of the house where there were four windows. The first two were masked by curtains; the last two were the ones Sharon knew best, for they belonged to the room she had shared with her sister. She went to her old window and looked in.
Everything was so familiar, so right, that she did not at first feel surprise. Everything fit, everything was in its place: the scratched wooden play table in the centre of the room; the two beds, one beneath each window; the sheets of Manila paper covered with crayoned designs and taped to the blue walls.
She was home again, and unsurprised, until she remembered that she was twenty-four years old and had not even seen this house for half that many years. Her mind must be playing tricks on her. She was seeing things and her mind was tricking her into thinking that she remembered those same things.
Déjà vu, she thought. That’s what it’s called. It’s normal, it’s natural. I’m tired, the sun is hot, I’ve been smoking too much lately, and Bill . . .
Bill. An image in her mind suddenly of a dark-haired, scowling man leaning against a bright-red Mustang. She knew then that she must have come here with Bill, to look at the old house. But where was Bill?
The answer came quickly: With the car. She set off down the street. He wouldn’t have parked far away.
‘This seems like a pretty nice part of town. You never told me about your childhood.’
She was still gazing out the window. So much had changed.
‘Talkative, aren’t we?’
She thought of the wine he had insisted upon with breakfast. She had said nothing then, and would say nothing now. She knew her silences infuriated him.
‘I guess your father had a good bit of money.’
Those townhouses were new, and that office building.
‘You lived pretty well until the bastard skipped out.’
She folded her arms, holding herself.
‘You can’t blame me for guessing when you never tell me anything.’
She turned the volume up on the tape-player: ‘Home, where my thoughts are strayin’ . . .’
The car was not parked on the street. Other cars beamed reflected sun into her eyes, but there were no 1972 Mustangs. All the cars seemed to be at least ten years old. She went around the block, knowing that almost anything could have happened, for she could not remember the circumstances of their arrival.
A car drove past, an old green Ford that still looked shiny and new. She glanced at it, had a glimpse of a short-haired woman in sunglasses driving with two small girls bouncing in the back seat. The familiarity tugged at her mind.
The farther she walked without seeing either Bill or the car the lonelier she felt. It began to seem clear to her that they had quarrelled (their arguments had become too frequent lately), and she had demanded—— But, alone? Would he have left her alone?
Eventually she returned to the house on Devon. The green Ford was parked in the garage.
‘Jesus Christ!’ Bill pounded his horn; a woman glared. ‘The worst drivers in the world, around here. The number of people in this city who are allowed to drive cars . . .’
‘You ignored a yield sign,’ she said. Not asking for an argument.
‘The hell I did. If you’re so good, Little Miss Silence, why don’t you . . .’
‘Just drive,’ she said wearily.
‘You’re really suffering, aren’t you? I mean, I really give you a pain. Well, listen, lady . . .’
When she saw the Ford in the garage she remembered being nine years old. The car had been new, then.
She heard the kitchen door open and slam, and two little girls came running from around the magnolia tree. She saw them mount bicycles in the garage and moments later they sailed past her as she stood, feet curling on the hot street. One girl was dark-haired and thin, pedalling fiercely. The other was a plump, blonde, happy-looking child.
Sharon knew the blonde child. It was her sister Ellen, fifteen years ago. But the skinny kid——
‘That can’t be me,’ Sharon said aloud. Then she began to laugh.
‘So which street is it?’
‘That one. No, you passed it now.’
‘Well, why didn’t you tell me?’
‘You can circle the block.’
‘I know I can circle the block, goddammit; that’s not what I’m talking about. I’m talking about you never telling me anything.’
‘You’ll miss it again if you’re not careful.’
‘Listen to me, you bitch,’ he said, turning to glare at her.
‘Watch out . . . !’
When the two little girls came riding back, Sharon was resting beneath a tree in the yard next door. She stared at them, knowing where they had gone, who they had seen, and what games they had played. They pretended not to see her; either that, or they did not notice her. Sharon knew that, from shyness and parental warnings against strangers, they would feel themselves bound to ignore her. She watched the dark-haired child who pedalled with such single-minded intensity and felt no bond, no sympathy, no feeling of kinship. That little girl was not herself any more than she, Sharon, was again physically nine years old.
Not physically nine, no, but somehow she had come back to the happiest time of her life. She remembered the years between six and eleven as a sort of paradise where parents never quarrelled and little girls were never lonely or unhappy. She remembered fears, but they had been fears banished by daylight or the presence of a comforting grown-up.
Sharon waited under the tree until the sun had almost set, shedding worries like used skin. Bill was gone, her former husband did not exist, and her father had never left. When she saw the two little girls, released from the dinner table, ride past her again, she stood up – wanting with a sudden intensity to be on her bicycle again – and walked to the house.
The sun was out of sight, but had not completely set. She stood before the front door, gazing at the dark varnished wood, and touched the doorknob. It was still slightly warm where the last rays of the sun had rested. She opened the door and stepped inside.
The foyer and living room were empty. She could hear sounds from the kitchen where her mother was washing dishes. She rejoiced in the smell of the house; partly her father’s pipe from the den (she heard the crackle and rustle of newspaper), partly the lamb-chop-and-lima-bean smell left from dinner, partly indefinable but familiar.
Quick steps on the linoleum alerted her and she moved silently into her old hiding place: the space between the piano and the window. She felt awkward, too large for a space that had been fine when she was nine. As the room grew darker she made herself comfortable and hoped that a bit of protruding knee would not be noticed.
Time passed, and Sharon heard the two little girls come home laughing through the kitchen door. She tensed suddenly at the sound of a light footstep and then a sharp click. A light had been turned on. Sharon relaxed, knowing who it was. Sharon had always been frightened of the dark, and had liked, to the mystification of her mother, to have a light on in every room.
Sharon smiled slowly. The light wouldn’t help. She knew that light often was dangerous, for in lighting up the dark corners it forced the monsters to come out into the open. Nine-year-old Sharon still had a lot to learn.