Home: Part 7

What follows is a work of fiction. Nothing here is either true or relevant. Read at your own risk. Do not expect anything, and that's exactly what you'll get. Oh: This could go on for awhile.

January 1958 

Our house was small, usually dark. My mother often suffered from headaches, and she said the light hurt her eyes so much that she could barely see. In the summer, she often wore sunglasses even while inside. During winter’s short days, the house could be dismal. When my mother was gone, my father would dash around the house and open the drapes as though he thought the light he let in would be stored in the house. He kept only the drapes on the front window open so that my mother would think the house was as she’d left it. Cindy, my sister, was usually our lookout, sitting on the sofa at the front window and yelling “she’s home!” when our mother returned. Then, we would close the drapes.  If Mom was home, we’d either go outside or stay in our rooms where the drapes could always be open.

“She has to know,” Cindy once said when both of our parents were gone one day. We seldom bothered with my father’s ritual if he was not home. “She isn’t stupid.”

“Dad told me they don’t have secrets,” I said. Cindy was older by four years, and perhaps she had better insight into my parents’ relationship.

“Everyone has secrets,” Cindy said. “Even Mom and Dad.”

As I got older I would learn that she was correct, but right then I felt only disillusionment when I saw that my parents and their relationship were not perfect. I don’t know why I suddenly believed Cindy and not my father at that point, but I did.