Vinewood Street

My mind races redundantly along a lengthy mental checklist. Tick, tick, tick, tick, but did I actually? Tick, tick, wait start over. Tick, tick, tick...I grunt with frustration as the padlock fumbles in my hand just before finally clicking shut, securing all my earthly possessions carefully packed within a moving truck. My whole life in 27 boxes.

I absently glance back at the corner of the house, still counting off: tick, tick, tick, but...tick, tick, am I sure?

I’m positive that I’ve forgotten something. I’m always forgetting something these days. I am, despite my best efforts, still my mother’s daughter. I shrug my shoulders and scamper back across the stones along the pebble path, spaced perfectly for my stride length. I charge across the threshold absentmindedly and surge through the various rooms, scanning with militant precision. Bedroom: empty. Office: empty. Bathroom: empty. Kitchen cabinets, laundry room, dining, living: empty, empty...

Empty.

Suddenly, the vortex of my thoughts screeches to a jarring halt and the checklist smolders to ash in my head. Because I have missed something after all. I’d been too distracted charging through the door to realize that this was the last time I would ever arrive home on Vinewood Street. But it’s different today. Once the epicenter of everything—the host to a whole life created from scratch—now reduced down to a mere arrangement of empty square footage. My heartbeat races as my mind scrambles for purchase on some filling to this blankness. But it’s just a house now. White walls and clear windows and wood floors.

But this has never been just a house. The walls were once beige and the windows were inoperable and the wood floors were scratched and filmy with age and lack of care. As my eyes wander over it all, it’s not mere square footage that I recognize. I see all-nighters with rented belt sanders and plastic sheets hanging from doorways and ladders covered in paint splatters and power tools littering the counter from wall-to-wall. I see ghost memories of he and I covered in dust, paint rollers in hand, stretching out the cricks in our necks.

My vision starts to swim, so I settle my gaze on the fireplace. It holds prominent real estate in the living room: ledger-cut stone stretching from floor to ceiling, painted a trendy satin black. My fingers twitch in sudden recollection of the painstaking detail given to painting inside each deep grout line. And even further back, before I would spend hours scrutinizing missed paint patches, my heart recalls the flutter it felt beholding these stones for the first time.

My mind had been running through a very different checklist that day—one he and I had made together on a lazy Sunday afternoon as we lay in bed at our studio apartment.

“I just want some land.” he’d sighed.

“Oh! I would love to have a big garden.” I had agreed, “Maybe even some chickens.”

“Or goats.” he’d nodded.

“I’d also love to have a fireplace. We always had one growing up, but we barely used it. If I had one, I would use it constantly.”

“It just needs to have a big garage. I need space to work.”

“Work on what?” I’d questioned.

“House repairs, car repairs, hobby projects...” he’d trailed off with a smile, “Also anything you want me to build for you.”

I had leaned up on an elbow then, eager to study his expression as I proposed, “What if we bought a fixer upper and flipped it together? I’m a designer. You can build practically anything. We would be a great team.”

He’d stared out the window, deep in thought. My toes curled in anticipation as he turned the idea over in his mind.

“I’ve got the skills for sure.” he’d started slowly, “And we could definitely earn a lot of sweat equity. Just live in it for a few years, fix it up, rent it out, and build from there.”

“Is that a yes?” I’d squirmed with excitement.

His depthless eyes—honest eyes, I’d always called them—locked onto me, and in that sincere way that had always magnetized me, he’d murmured, “I’d love to do that with you.”

So when I’d found it—the half acre lot, the two-car garage, the giant fireplace, and the perfect amount of fixing-upping needed for two beginners, it felt like all our dreams catapulted into reality. It was a sanctum that he and I could shape to our liking—a blanket we could wrap around ourselves to keep the chaos of the outside world at bay.

A few short months later, a bird flapped its way into our chimney. He and I had smiled to each other. How comically tragic: a bird lost its way and fell into our chimney. It was only a matter of time before it had flown back out, and we celebrated its successful freedom. But then it had returned. Again, and again. And it began to roost with loud squawks that drowned out the television.

“How are they even getting in?” I’d exclaimed in exasperation.

“The chimney doesn’t have a cap, so they’re probably just flying right in.” he’d explained.

“Well, can we cap the chimney?”

“Sure. I’d just need to measure the opening and get the right sized cap.” he’d thumbed at his phone, and we’d watched a few tutorials.

“Seems like something we could do in a day.” I’d declared as he nodded in agreement, “Let’s just do it then.”

“Ok, I’ll do it.”

Consensus reached, I’d turned up the television volume and leaned into him on the couch, extending a short prayer of gratitude to the universe for a partner that made the hard things so simple.

But the days went by, and the birds continued their chimney songs. Chicks hatched and their volume increased. He said he would take care of it over the weekend. And then the seasons changed, and the chicks flew away. And we agreed that this was the perfect time to install the cap. And then the seasons changed again, and a new family nested in our flue. And eventually I learned to block out the sounds. And then I stopped using the fireplace altogether out of fear of igniting the nesting brush that had inevitably piled up over years of habitation. And eight years later, we gave a $1,200 concession for our home buyers to install a chimney cap. And two weeks ago, I found a chimney cap in an abandoned corner of his garage, a thick layer of dust clouding the top.

My eyes flutter shut as my heart hardens against the memory. I inhale sharply with a tick of my jaw and yank my eyes away.

I settle onto a view of the back yard. I narrow in on that 10 by 10 plot barely visible in the far back corner, and feel a tingle along my arms as I remember the feeling of sheer enthusiasm I’d had donning thick leather gloves and tossing a shovel over my shoulder. He’d had a mission to excavate the quickly invading bamboo forest that had flooded onto our lot thanks to the irresponsible tending of our neighbor. My mission had been to work alongside, planting a garden in its place. I’d had vibrant imaginations of a flourishing crop, of sharing my harvest with friends and family, and of slowly inviting others into a passion for the earth and its bounty. I can feel the ghost of sweat beads cascading into my eyes at the memory of that toil.

“The dirt is solid clay!” I’d exclaimed to him when we’d both collapsed in exhaustion after the first day, “And once you hack through the clay, there’s just rocks and rocks! I’m going to break my shovel before I even get six inches deep. Nothing will grow in this!”

“Just do raised beds then. There’s plenty of space.” he’d proffered.

“But those are expensive and that’s not even including the soil we’d have to buy.”

“Well, I could make the beds for you. They’re not hard to make.”

“You can do that for me?”

“Yeah, just tell me what sizes and what material you want.”

I’d immediately taken to Pinterest, pointing out the finer details of each inspiration photo, “Like this!” I’d explained.

“That’s easy.” he’d deemed, “I can make that no problem.”

My heart soared with renewed vision—recalibrating to encompass the new designs and possibilities. And then I waited. And I showed him more photos. And we walked the plot together, pointing and measuring with our foot lengths. And he didn’t take notes. And he stopping joining me outside altogether. And the brush piles he’d started to accumulate dried out and brittled, uncleared and obstructive. And the bamboo kept creeping along the acreage.

So, I started striking at the ground with a pickaxe, and instead of coaxing flowers from the earth, I pried out rocks. I sifted through his brush piles, trimming stalks of bamboo into rigid sticks. I arranged rock and lashed bamboo to form bed and trellis and picket fencing. And when I displayed my ingenuity with pride, he, with raised brows and crossed arms, declared it a ramshackle.

I couldn’t object. It was a hodgepodge of unskillfully patched together material waste. Nothing like the ordered simplicity of the inspiration photos we’d shared. But in the absence of loamy soil and fulfilled promises, material waste was the only capital at my disposal to cling to the shreds of my dream.

So, I stubbornly pressed the seeds into the earth regardless. I planted squash and kale and strawberry bushes and sweet pea vines. And it grew! It grew, it grew, grew! And, inspired by the resilience of nature, I began envisioning a whole system of vernacular gardening that would expand one plot at a time, one season at a time. So, I began a compost pile to amend the unfit soil and transform the land before our very eyes. And when it was at last time to taste my labors, I stood in utter desolation before the ruins of the foxes and birds who had destroyed my rickety fence, dug out my compost pile, and harvested the entire crop, leaving me with not but a few shredded leaves of kale.

I never set foot in that garden again. As all the leaves withered in the summer heat, as weeds and bramble overtook rock and trellis, as everything green turned a straw-like tan, I averted my eyes, too heartbroken to forgive the betrayal. The betrayal of nature itself...but it also felt a little too much like the betrayal of my partner. I couldn’t decide which was more painful. And while I nursed my emotional bruises, the bamboo claimed new territory daily as he waited out the summer heat in front of the television.

My fists clench at my sides as I struggle to seal the resentment in its vacuum of memory. Because if it leaks out, I don’t know that I can staunch the flood. I spin on my heel, slamming the mental door shut behind me. There are better things to remember about this home. I turn the corner and fall back against the kitchen counter as my eyes settle on the butler pantry. The butler pantry that was once a breakfast nook, that was, long before us, an open-air breezeway between the kitchen and the garage.

My face softens with the warmth that floods me remembering he and I, side by side, hunched over, prying up the many layers of flooring that no one had ever cared to remove properly before laying the next layer atop. Tearing out the wall paneling, scraping off the popcorn textured ceiling, piecing together the history of this home clue by clue...we had worked in complete tandem. The energy that had bounced back and forth between us had felt like a living, breathing union, binding us together in a shared ambition. My throat constricts with the pride I had felt in it all—in our teamwork finally feeling like I’d imagined it should’ve felt from the beginning. Our strides had finally matched, and my mind leaped through the album of our shared dreams, utterly convinced that it would all flow out of us like an outpouring of pent-up energy. It looked like capped chimneys, culled bamboo, raised garden beds, and so much more.

And more than that, I had been so proud of the beauty we created together. I can’t help feeling a small swell of that pride even now. It’s just a pantry, but it connects the house in a way that makes it all feel larger, brighter, and more luxurious.

“This place is too nice for us now.” he’d said with a chuckle when we finally finished.

“What do you mean? We worked hard for this!” I’d countered, splaying my arms and spinning like Julie Andrews rejoicing in the hills of Austria, “We deserve nice things!”

“No we don’t.” he’d deadpanned.

And I’d laughed.

But I wonder now, when exactly it had ceased to be a joke to him. I wonder when I adopted it as truth as well. Because that was the only project we’d ever completed without adding a fresh layer of resentment to the mountain growing between us. And about two months after I’d placed all the decor, cracks began to form along the trim and above the doors. And bamboo stretched from fence line to fence line, and the garden was lost under the virulent weeds, and the birds returned season after season to their safe haven in our flue. And we each learned to accept defeat in our own way—adjusting our expectations to encompass each disappointment. For years, we learned to live with the cracks, deepening into rifts season after season.

I run a curious finger along the barely perceptible ridge of a patched crack. Three months ago, I had frantically dashed about with spackle and paint for the realtor’s photographer to create the lovely facade that this home, and the life it housed, was indeed as beautiful as it seemed at a glance. I had made a valiant effort camouflaging it all—I always had—but I can no longer spare mere passing glances at my own life. There are not enough distractions in the world to blur out all of the pieces precariously taped together while continually taking on weight from all the things left undone and promises left unkept.

I stare down at the counter where I’d cooked our first meal on the new quartz. When he’d said he would be home in ten minutes, but forty-five minutes later, it all grew cold, so I ate alone. I look to the dining room where we sat through long bouts of costly silence with a therapist. To my left, there’s the front door that was bought with a promise, sat untouched in a garage for two years, was irreparably damaged in a hasty attempt to end the strife, and painted the wrong color in a fruitless attempt to hide it all from me. There is that corner where I pleaded with him. This corner where I cried to him. The other corner where I threatened him. Met at every attempt with a wordless refusal to engage—a robbery of the intimacy of consensus in the name of placation.

I crane my neck to the spot where the grey sofa had fit perfectly in the middle of the long, narrow living room. The grey sofa where I told him I could only take two more years, and begged him to seek help from his demons. The grey sofa where I stared at the floor two years later feeling as hollow as this house is now, because things had only grown catastrophically worse. Two weeks ago, I sold that sofa online for $100, but I would’ve given it away for free, because there is no price that could’ve made the agony felt on that sofa worth it.

I look to my right, and I can almost see her—the me who toured this house without him eight years ago—just she, I, and the 1,700 square feet of life we bookend between us. Fueled by dreams and love and stubborn determination, I had so much faith in this house.

It’s all gone now. Every last ounce; for these four walls couldn’t divide me from heartache. They couldn’t shelter me from the chaos of the world. Instead, it was a front row seat to the slow but unrelenting fracture of all my hopes at the hands of an undisciplined will.

But now it’s over. And I can’t help but think that, when I close that too-yellow door for the last time, grasping at these memories will be like grasping for purchase on river rocks. Without the physically tangible reminders of the detritus, it seems too impossible to believe—the things he broke in me...and the me that accepted the brokenness, dressing it up like a showhouse in order to forget that this isn’t the life I was promised. When I back out of this driveway in a few moments, the past decade of my life will shrink into this four-walled microcosm of the universe, unseen and unheard, just like how so much of it was lived.

So, I unpocket my phone and take a photo, as if it were a backup point on a hard drive. Just in case I ever need to come back to this moment. Just in case I need to retrieve something valuable I’d overlooked...it’s all here. Our whole story: in this photo, in these memories, in this half acre of earth on which I’ll never set foot again. The us we wanted to be and the us we never were. It's all there, just under the fresh layer of white paint.

I close the door and I don’t look back. I can’t look back.