All That's Left

What makes a house a home?

It’s the little things. The keepsakes, the mementos, the kitschy things we bought from your favourite antique stores – that lampstand in the shape of a swan you laughed at me for loving, the old watercolour of lilies on a pond you insisted on hanging. 

It’s the photos we put on the fridge. Matching sweaters at Christmas, the summer at that resort near the beach. The Polaroid of you in a Freddy Krueger costume at our first Halloween party we hosted. Red cups scatted, half full, Joe and Zoey kissing in the background. Me as a pirate, my arm around your shoulder.

I pick up a quilt. The first one you sewed – tartan pattern in one corner, garish stripes in the other. You told me it reminded me of your grandparents. Him a returned soldier, her a seamstress. When I lied and told you it was great, you laughed and said you wished you’d inherited some of her talent. 

In the cabinet below the TV there’s a collection of VHS tapes. The films we watched on cold winter nights snuggled under your quilts. Always a romantic, it’s the old ones you loved the most. Casablanca, Gone With the Wind, Breakfast at Tiffany’s. The way your eyes would light up, the way you’d cuddle me closer when they’d kiss.

These things are all put away into boxes and bags now. I’ve spent days packing them. I moved them first from the hall, to the cellar, to my car. I think I’ve found a charity you’d like to take them. A life, a love, packed and folded away. I thought these things, these physical reminders of you that I could hold, were all that’s left.

But I was wrong. Today I’ve learned there’s a lot more that makes a house a home.

In the kitchen, there’s a wine stain. You and me cooking Coq au Vin, an old record of Patsy Cline in the background. You grabbed my hand and we danced, wine drunk, the snow falling outside the window. I can’t remember now if it was me or you that knocked over the bottle, the cheap cabernet spilling all over the benchtop and then the floor. We never could get it out. 

When the removalists took the furniture away I think they scratched the living room wall. But then I remembered your fall feng shui. Every week for two months, you insisted on moving the couch around. You never could get it quite right. The fern you put in the corner, the four different mats you bought, each one a different pattern. And now I can’t tell the difference between the scratches they made and yours.

Our bedroom was the last thing I cleaned. Last night was the first time I slept in there since you’d been gone. I stayed on the couch, in the spare room, at a friend's. Early this morning I woke, and I swear you must have just been there. Like I just missed you as you stepped into the hall. After a moment, I realised that the truth is you were never there and so I went back to sleep.

Today I folded the clothes you left behind and then I packed my own. The red dress you wore to my graduation, the lipstick mark you left on my favourite shirt. On everything your smell lingers, the perfume that I love so much. Vanilla, berries, and roses.

Behind the cabinet, I found the postcard you sent me. That one from your trip to Croatia. I couldn’t find the photo you attached, the one of you on the sailboat, white dress to the wind. But the words were still there in your messy handwriting – I remembered how we laughed at you telling me you loved me for the first time from thousands of miles away. And I wonder if the distance matters, and if you still do.

I’m sitting in my car now. The engine hums, the floor rattles beneath my feet, everything that was you and us packed into the back. The house is behind me, empty and quiet. The new owners move in next week. I think you’d like them. They remind me of us.

And I wonder if this is it. If we pack it all up, we send it away, and then we move on. Yet my mind is still there, in the rooms of the house that we called a home but are now just rooms.

It stops in the bathroom, where you would lean too close to the mirror when flossing and I would always pull you back. I couldn’t stand the marks on the mirror. It hesitates in the hallway, where you introduced me to the dog you adopted. I said that we didn’t have room or a big enough yard. You said that you would walk him every day. Now it hesitates on the porch, wondering where my parents’ old furniture has gone. The lazy summer nights, cicadas buzzing, me reading, you trying to learn to play guitar. You never did master Smoke on the Water.

And then it joins me in the car. The same car we bought together years ago. The dent still in the rear passenger side door from where it got dinged in that restaurant parking lot on our first road trip. I can still hear our voices echoing, intertwined, as we sang one-hit wonders on that open road that seemed like it would never end. That visit to your parents, and then the drive we took not long ago that changed everything.

I shift into gear and slowly press my foot into the accelerator, edging across the boundary between the yard and the street. I catch a glimpse of the front door in the rearview mirror. For a moment, I imagine I can see your silhouette in the soft shadows under the eaves. And then after the next moment, it passes. I know that these things I hold within me are all that’s left, and I think maybe that’s okay.

I merge into traffic and I leave the house behind.