An enormous leather suitcase for a single pair of denim shorts, two red T-shirts, two pairs of socks, one pair of canvas sandals.
Blue pillowcases.
Blue molding.
Sitting on one of the upper branches the day they painted the bedroom walls.
Don’t drop it, don’t scratch it, don’t let it get wet, don’t etc. etc. Quote unquote.
The paint fumes in the leaves, as high as I could climb.
And then returning from camp a week later to find a tiny house in the crotch of my tree.
Not needing to depend on someone else to do for you.
Blue picture frames and a blue dust ruffle.
How could anyone live surrounded by only one color?
We wanted to surprise you. Quote unquote.
You always have a choice in colors. You might as well make them match. Quote unquote.
Along with the books Myles lent me that I never returned.
Even after I’d told them, insisted, I didn’t want a tree house.
On the car stereo, a countdown of some sort — Top Twenty.
We thought a house would be more comfortable. Quote unquote.
Than a branch, arguably.
Along with a copy of the first flyer Myles ever made, Xeroxed until it looked like it was drawn with charcoal.
Children love tree houses, darling. Quote unquote.
The beginning pulses of a headache.
Probably the same children who play with dolls and laugh at clowns.
The dark, the strain on my eyes.
You could do whatever you wanted with it. Quote unquote.
Complete dependency.
My objections to playing piano.
Keys made of ivory?
A tree house with wood that was clean and new.
But a tree house is your own personal space. Quote unquote.
And me taking a stance against the poaching of elephants.
And yet there being no line waiting to get into the tree.
His chest rising, falling, rising.
Falling.
And in their bathroom, hand towels and washcloths, also blue.
Some of the wood weather-treated green.
And for weeks, me standing among the roots staring up at the tree.
And fourteen-year-olds with actual skill.
At the house in the tree.
Green wood!
Refusing to climb up.
And me not an exclamatory child.
I should have brought a thermos.
Coffee, black.
Blue bathmat.
The car stereo not loud, but loud enough the neighbors must have noticed.
And wondered.
You just have to give it a chance. Quote unquote.
An empty car, its hood raised, the engine running, the car stereo playing.
Along with the disk, Myles’s video.
The Big Dipper pointing north.
To think, at one time, that meant something to someone.
Sailors, and sea captains, in any case.
Safe in the duffel bag with all the rest.
Stars, whose names I’ve forgotten.
Ornamental soap dish, also blue.
A greasy rag draped over the raised hood, slipping, slipping, as the engine idled and the hood vibrated.
A chill growing, a dew forming.
The yellow nightgown she was sleeping in the night her brother’s joint set the den of her house on fire.
The pink nightgown I was supposed to have been wearing when they pulled back the sheets to put her into bed with me.
Further details of which I have forgotten.
A lake with cobwebbed canoes.
Infested with earwigs.
That video, the one thing Myles noticed missing.
And who ever heard of making a tree house from anything but scrap?
Leaves lightly brushing the outer walls in the breeze.
A man in your father’s club drew up the plans. Quote unquote.
And of course, their self-satisfied smiles.
Blue toothbrush holder.
Around the trunk, the grass yellow and matted.
A blue blanket folded up at the end of the bed.
My tree, spoiled.
Even in their sleep, slight smiles lingering.
Myles tearing apart the apartment, looking everywhere for that disk.
Even in the moonlight being able to tell she still pretends her hair’s not gray.
So stiff and uncomfortable.
Feeling myself grasping for something.
Making it all the way to the second most popular song in America.
Who ever heard of an architect planning a tree house?
Some number in the teens having been playing when Mother and the mechanic pulled up.
Myles searching and searching, and me silent, the duffel bag slumped in the corner.
A few dropped nails in the dirt, among the roots.
Nails that would grow fat with rust after months in snow.
Circling impressions of ladder legs.
The day at the camp, in the middle of the lake, I let both oars slip into the water.
Bark rubbed away below the crotch where the ladder leaned.
Long enough that the rag fell.
A few wedges cut into the arms from the stress of the frame.
The mechanic coming back out of the house looking mussed.
I can no longer remember if it was intentional.
Not mussed the way one would expect a mechanic to look.
Until finally I decided what to do.
Dad sleeps on his side, knees slightly bent, hands pressed together beneath his cheek, as if …
As if what?
Starting with the shingles on the little roof.
Then the mechanic closing the hood, getting into the passenger seat, and sitting, waiting, tapping the dashboard to the music.
Never, as far as I can remember, actually looking at the engine.
Camp must have been wonderful. Quote unquote.
Push the piano into the lake.
Which, of course, I considered.
An awe that what he might have seen in there would have made sense to him.
Why didn’t Myles just burn another copy?
The moonlight, the darkness, the sheen of her nightgown, the shine on his forehead.