Flowers

The door creaked slightly upon opening. The hinge had always been a little rusty. Once, the dog would have come bounding around the corner, a blur of reddish fur and white paws. He would scratch the laminated floors and Mom would yell and laugh at the same time with her infectious exasperation. She would be proud of the way they shone now, as if we were the kind of rich that had time to care about scratched floors.

Underneath the smell of Clorox, patchouli oil ignited a reminder of the nights Mom, in her flowered dresses that left space for her to dance, would light the incense sticks. The dog would put his head on her lap and wag his tail in perfect time to her musical voice. The living room, now filled with boxes, had been a place of youthful joy—a place where the slick vinyl furniture cultured possibility.

When we danced, our flowered dresses would bloom with laughter. I was young then. Slowly, the space between us filled with anger and bitterness—my desire to grow, hers to hold on too tightly. You’re wasting your time with dreams, she had said. You can’t leave me! The dog had cowered at her shrieks and the door had shut firmly behind me.

Boxes stood open and shirts half folded on her low bed in the back of the house. A moment frozen in time. Dried flowers wrapped in shining ribbons hung from the ceiling and the air tasted of lemon and honey. I ran my hand along the silken fabric of the dresses hanging in the closet and could imagine the gentle swoosh they made as she spun around and around.

Everything else was new—a bottle of lotion from a brand she had never used, the collar for a new dog with an unfamiliar name, a postcard from her new lover in France. On the short, painted table beside the bed lay a pressed-flower jewelry box. Glue clumped around the large crack that had split it down the middle when she had thrown it against the door. The last five years was a blur of wrongly spoken words, bad timing and regret. Tears splashed against the box and lacquered it with a temporary shine.

Resolve bubbled up and spilled over with the tears. The box was a feather in my hands and made a soft clink on the tabletop. The new life Mom had built surrounded her with a fortress of unshared memories too tall to scale alone. The clock struck three and my eyes widened. The time had come to pack up the past and walk away from childhood.

Soon she would know I had collected the last of my things and she would be back to finish her packing. She would find the box sitting on the table, much the same as it had been since my small thumb had pressed the tiny daisy and my smile beamed like a jack-o-lantern. But with one addition: a crinkled piece of paper with the words I love you written, rusted with disuse.