75 Wedgewood

It had been twenty-four years since she'd last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. She stared blankly up the driveway at the house that used to be hers and felt a rush both of nostalgia and regret. The house at 75 Wedgewood Court had passed from owner to owner, a great starter home in a family-friendly neighborhood. Often families would buy the home for a few years only to sell it once their kids were a bit older and less likely to frolic with the children in the houses nearby. Rachel vaguely remembered a blonde girl named Brynn. She had a dog, a Dalmatian, if memory served her right. Next to her were Matthew and Andrew, two brothers who couldn't be more different. Matthew was thin and feminine and Andrew preferred trucks to people. 75 Wedgewood, like any house, held memories for Rachel. She'd lived there until 4th grade, in a second floor room cluttered with small figurines and Barbies, a bed covered in stuffed animals. She remembered the night her Main Coon cat Bugaboo chased her on Halloween, green eyes alight with something demonic. There was also the day her brother Joseph, just 4 years old at the time, tried to "tag" her brother Chase in the yard with a golf club. He needed 7 stitches, neat little lines in a row on his skull. She remembered long games of Minesweeper on the bulky computer in the guest bedroom where her blind grandma slept when she visited. The most vivid memory she had was of her father, a hero to her then, walking into the house on a spring day with a box in his hands. "I quit my job at the stadium," he declared. "I quit to spend more time with you kids." 

         Rachel felt a twinge of sadness, but overall was overjoyed, beaming with delight at the prospect of more time with him after school. Her brothers couldn't wait for more days out in the yard, throwing the baseball with him, who was often seen at their baseball games cheering passionately and yelling at the umpire for less-than-popular calls. Her father was the general manager of a NFL stadium, responsible for the upkeep of the place from a high level. Rachel remembered feeling like a god when she visited with him, seeing his employees fall into orbit around him like moons to his planet. He commanded his environment with a warm smile buried under a thick black mustache.

Being there on a game day was something else entirely. The air in the place was jubilant, regardless of whether the home team won, and there was always a thankfulness that emanated from the crowd; everyone was just happy to be there. At the stadium, Rachel felt important. At twelve, she didn't yet have the awareness of her own awkwardness, the way the gap in her front teeth made her upper lip jut out. It was importance by association, and with her dad as the king of the place, she too was football royalty. Occasionally they would see cheerleaders walking past them as she followed her dad into the bowels of the stadium. He walked fast and purposefully, relaying messages as he walked by speaking into a walkie talkie mounted on his shoulder. The cheerleaders walked together, beautiful and overdone, the fragrance of their hairspray lingering in the air long after they'd continued past. Even then, Rachel remembered feeling intimidated. Although she was aware of her importance, being that her dad was who he was, she was threatened by the presence of beautiful women, aware that they possessed something she didn't, or at least, didn't yet. 

       Her father had a zealous faith, one that often embarrassed her. He often sung cheesy Christian songs along with the radio, voice splintering sideways away from the actual notes of the song. Aside from weekends and the days she spent with him at work once every few months, she rarely saw him. She was too young then to realize who her father was, or the real reason why he'd left the stadium. She would find out years later, in a different home, under different circumstances. 

        She found herself unraveling the bows she tied as a child, years later. Rachel reasoned the belief she'd had in her father, like all her other beliefs, was constructed to keep her safe. She didn't choose her father as her hero, he made himself one to her simply by being her father. Maybe everyone loses a certain amount of faith in their parents as they get older, but Rachel's loss felt deeper, almost like a death. Almost like her father was already dead to her. 

       Women, one after another, came forward. He'd made them feel uncomfortable, they said. He'd made advances, physically intimidated them, brushed past them in ways that felt ominous, like a threat. They took her father to court, made him recount the ways and times he'd repainted the line for them, and redrawn it at his will. He was never charged formally with anything, but Rachel didn't know about it until years later. Until her mom finally grew tired of repainting and redrawing her own lines of silence. Rachel learned, a decade later, that her dad hadn't quit his job. He'd been fired. 

      Looking at the house now, Rachel remembers who she was before she learned who her father is. He wasn't the man who chauffeured her smoothly around the stadium or coached her from the sidelines during her soccer games. He was something else entirely, a wolf who slowly shredded the wool he wrapped himself in. At 75 Wedgewood she had cloaked herself with books and dolls, music and photographs cut crudely from the pages of Teen Vogue. She hadn't known then that men could be evil, that they could take and take and still be hungry. At 75 Wedgewood, men were still well groomed Fathers who came home bearing gifts, eager to spend more time with you. 

      In twenty-four years, Rachel had seen with her own eyes how men like her father thrived. Enough of them commented on her hair, her lipstick, her clothing - within the eight hours of her workday to instill in her a hawklike caution that boiled over easily into fear and rage. Angry feminism colored her conversation with friends done wrong by ignoble men. The vain attempts at self-preservation cooled like lava eventually. Rachel relaxed into the understanding that she herself could do nothing to change men determined to destroy everything their hands touched. 

     It took another two in a half decades for her parents to divorce after her Father was found not guilty in court. The divorce was messy and hurt everyone, even though Rachel and her brothers were in their thirties at the time. Her Father had another woman straightaway, as though he couldn't bear to be alone even as his wife was divorcing him. Rachel's mother took the house at 75 Wedgewood and sold it almost immediately, moving to the East Coast. 

     It wasn't much to look at, peering up at it now. It mirrored every other house in the redundant neighborhood. Four small bedrooms. Three bathrooms. A generous yard that backed onto three other yards. The new owner had finally put up a fence. Rachel's parents had always said they intended to do that. Her former neighbors had all moved in the years since she'd lived here. Matthew and Andrew worked in software and security, respectively. Brynn worked at the local grocery store as a manager. This was the sort of town people stayed in perpetually unless they were determined to get out. Lucky for her, Rachel had the motivation to leave. Now a paralegal based in Lexington, she hardly ever ventured back to her hometown, much less to visit this long-forgotten former home. Her brothers too had migrated - Joe got a job with a shipping company out west and Chase and his girlfriend moved to North Carolina to start a food truck together. 

     Rachel was seeing someone, a girl she'd met online from across the country. Long distance suited them both, as Rachel hated the trivial parts of getting to know someone, the endless flirtation and eventually the unanswered texts. Her mother didn't approve of her dating a woman, she'd rather that, despite her own frustrations with men, Rachel walk a more conventional path. The two didn't speak much. Rachel regretted that fact but knew her mother's nearness was harmful more often than not.

     As she sat in her car, still looking up at the home that used to be hers, she realized she had better keep driving for the night. Michigan was still three hours away, and she had to be up early the next morning for a meeting with a colleague. The home still stood after at it had been through, and that was all that mattered.