When Simon blew out the candle it still wasn’t dark enough the stars splashed I could see through the window the black on black untidy shrubbery and the grey lake I couldn’t close my eyes against. He fell asleep and all the tricks I used to play on him cascaded dim through my mind, small things like feathers beneath his nose or how I used to whisper-shout as scared as I could muster did you hear that?
We were in the front room at the cottage, our bedroom and our parents’ bedroom were stuffed with whatever had been in the boathouse which had decayed slowly, my father said I’ll have to get on that before long which is some pretty vague timeline, isn’t it?
Anyway the thing had toppled in a storm, the roof came off he said it first opened like a mouth, he called my mother in from the kitchen and the two of them stood at the window and watched it chatter a bit (I told you so?) before it went Kansas and flew off, landing upside-down in the lake they lost sight of it eventually.
The boys from next door came over the next day he said and hauled the stuff out of the boathouse where he declared what was and was not ruined, borderline objects were left in the sun to reassess when dry, the good stuff was dried and piled into the bedrooms, sorry for such a long story to explain why we were on the couches, which really requires no explanation at all – we were on the couches – you’d call them retro now, they were simple low wooden framed beauties with pilled cushions from back when everything was shades of golden brown, and just in case you need any further useless information, the carpet was orange shag.
We thought they’d sold the cottage. No. We were told they sold the cottage and I mean why on earth would we think otherwise? Our mother considered it all along just another house to clean, another set of everything to wash, a place for her second-rate dishes, the chipped figurines, frayed towels, faded linens. Even the preferred version of herself she left in the city for every Friday night we dragged a haggard complaining stranger who right away got out the broom and swept up mouse shit, a couple of dead ones which she screamed about, the three of us heard her and shared goofy faces we stood stunned and sleepy on the dock under the stars and talked about the next morning, how we’d get up at dawn and quiet quiet quiet go fishing.
They told us together, ceremoniously, that we’d have to give up our second-rate life our father said I had no choice, boys, it’s what your mother wanted they sold it furnished, the only thing that made it back to the house was a single gone fishin’ plaque my father grabbed in a tragic way and it hung on the wall at the bottom of the stairs in the house in the city where it stayed until they sold that, too, before they moved into the retirement home where two weeks later my father died and two weeks after that my mother, like in a ballad, died too.
They’d reversed the mortgage we learned and had been living off the house for years, since my father retired from the department store where he sold fur coats, jackets, stoles – my mother the beneficiary of a few second-rate ones which had been found flawed and returned. There was nothing much left for me and Si after the funerals, just a bunch of stuff to decide what was and what was not.
But two weeks later, let’s keep this ballad going, we got a call from the lawyer who had discovered the deed for the cottage which our father never sold at all but kept, the lawyer said, for his boys, and right away I got in the car, on the drive I wondered if I’d remembered to shut my front door, and I picked up Simon from the university, he was standing there all Captain My Captain at the bottom of the steps, books under his arms, he was wearing a cape which I immediately teased him about you’re Batman I said and he smiled, said fuck off, and we got right away on the highway and for two and a half hours we resurrected the cottage in our minds, a lot of remember thisses and remember thats, and by the time we turned into the driveway which was not a driveway at all but forest, it was like any given Friday of our youth, the place stood just as it always had, we went first to the dock and stood back-to-back Simon said we should go fishing in the morning.
Quiet quiet quiet we unlocked the door it was clean as if our mother had just swept, darkening, I switched the light but of course it didn’t turn on, Simon walked beside me we twirled around the small place, opened the bedroom doors and shut them again, we stood at the window looking out, darkness was coming fast like gravity, Simon reached to the shelf beneath the coffee table and pulled out a candle, lit it, placed it on the table, flicked a few mouse turds carefully in my direction.
He’s asleep on the couch he always preferred although it’s identical to the one I am stretched out on, we are beneath matching afghans we pulled unscathed from the hall closet, and it’s not that I can’t sleep but I don’t want to.