Pink Flamingos

I’ve always hated the horrible smell of freshly cut grass. It’s the way it invades your nose and stays there. A fresh hell of pollen. Elizabeth knew that, I’ve no doubt it’s the main reason she wanted us to move in at 09.30 a.m on a Wednesday. So I’d have to stand there like a prat with the mid-morning sun shooting right into my eye. All while I tried to help some useless oaf get everything out of the van. An overpaid useless oaf.

“Careful of the flamingos.” I said for the twelfth time. I took the liberty of counting.

“Sorry, boss.” The oaf replied. At least he knew his place, I suppose. Elizabeth had an obsession with lawn flamingos. The stupid little pink things, with their daft necks. She just had to put them all over our nice new garden. She’d drove here earlier this morning to “get everything set up.” I knew exactly what she was planning. It’s hard to hide a giant box of twenty pink birds on the backseat of your car.

The house was nice enough I suppose, I’d demanded it be Victorian. I liked the idea of being able to leer from behind the sheer curtains out the upstairs windows, and this house had the perfect one slap-bang in its middle. I’d be able to see everyone from up there. My stomach rumbled. It could smell the bacon coming from inside. At least there was one thing Elizabeth was good at.

“Harold, dear,” Her flamingo-pink lips widened. She seemed attached to the color no matter how many times I’d told her it made her teeth look yellow.

“Elizabeth,” I said, reaching for one of the neatly prepped bacon sandwiches she’d plated, then placed on the kitchen counter.

“Plenty of ketchup, just the way you like it.” She swayed across the wood flooring and called the oaf in from the garden.

“So now you care about what I like?” I longed for my old business trips away.

It wasn’t a bad place I supposed, or maybe it was just the explosion of ketchup in my mouth that warmed me to it. Mahogany wasn’t a bad wood, although there was a lot of it. The grand staircase with an L-shaped banister, panels of it on the bottom of every wall, the doors to all the rooms. Suddenly I was pinned down on all sides by a chocolaty brown. A knot swelled in my stomach. All over I could see harsh grains and inconsistent coloring. I hated it.

“Thank you, Miss Thompson,” The oaf interrupted my thoughts, first with his words and then with an audible smacking of his lips. I fought the urge to cram the rest of the sandwich down his throat. If only I were twenty years younger.

“It’s no bother,” Elizabeth feigned a courtesy, “And please call me Elizabeth.”

“Alright, well thank you Elizabeth. This might be the best bacon sandwich I’ve ever eaten.” “Eaten?” I guffawed, “I’d hesitate to call what you do eating. I’ve had vacuum cleaners that suck up food with better manners.” 

“Harold!” Elizabeth scolded me, that could only mean another flamingo would magically appear in our garden tomorrow, “There’s no need for you to be so rude. This nice young man here is helping us move into our new home— you ought to show at least a modicum of appreciation.” I stormed up the staircase before she could continue.

Upstairs was as big a disappointment as the rest of the property. Typical of Elizabeth to take something I like and twist it beyond recognition. Thirty years of marriage and not once had I gotten what I wanted out of it. I stomped to the room at the front of the house, the one with the window looking out at the garden below, and stared out at the sea of pink. Surely it wouldn’t take too many accidental overshoots when reversing the car to be rid of them?

This room, just like the rest, had the same mahogany panels on the wall. Its only redeeming feature was a rather nice white rug with blue spots weaved in an intricate fashion. I imagined myself setting up a study or some-such there. A big wooden desk to sit and read at, with a view out the window of course. I could maybe even ask the oaf to bring my special leather recliner up here.

It was then that I noticed a half open box, sitting on top of a stack of other similarly worn out boxes. I pilfered through it. Old photographs and knickknacks. There was a snow-globe from Elizabeth and I’s first anniversary. We’d gone to Hawaii for two weeks and both found the irony of a Hawaiian snow-globe rather humorous. A few years later I learned that it did in fact snow in Hawaii and so the stupid snow-globe was tossed into a box, never to be thought of again.

At the bottom of the box I found a silver frame. The photo beneath caked in a thick layer of dust. A clump of it landed in my eye as I tried to blow it away and so I decided to go at the rest of it with my sleeve.

It was a photo of the three of us, me, Elizabeth, and Harry, posing for the cameraman we’d happened upon in a mall one day. Harry was only around seven here— not quite grown into his ears yet, Elizabeth and I would always say. There was a creak from behind me. A hesitating footstep. 

“What are you doing poking around up here alone?” Elizabeth mustered up some confidence and walked the rest of the way into the room.

“Just trying to imagine what it’ll look like when we’re all moved in,” I couldn’t bring myself to look back at her, she might confuse the dust in my eyes for something else.

“I hope you’ll give it a chance,” she said.

“I wouldn’t hold your breath.”

“It wasn’t right us staying there,” her hand whimpered onto my shoulder, “too many bad memories.”

“It was our home,” I fought the same fight I’d lost in the few weeks before this, when she’d forced me to sign the contract. I’d had more passion back then.

“We bought that house so Harry would have more space to play. I couldn’t bring myself to walk past his door anymore, not with knowing it would be empty on the other side.”

“It was all we had left of him.” I suddenly couldn’t bare to kneel anymore and so I forced myself upright. 

“Staying there wouldn’t have brought him back. It was long past time for us to move on.”

“Maybe for you,” I moved to the window once again, setting the silver frame on the windowsill in front of me. “You had your chance to say goodbye. I never did.”

A young couple walked by the garden, with their fingers interlocked and their eyes seeing only each other. It was all I could do to hope that one day Harry would walk by, and see all of his mother’s flamingos and know he was home. Even though I knew he never could.