Moving
My new apartment smells of someone else's bacon, frying.
You cant miss it. You open the door and there it is, as if someone was in my apartment, as I enter with Baccardi coco rum and passion fruit Alize, but it's clearly not me but somebody else who has been frying bacon so that my entire kitchen accuses me of the deed.
That's moving, alright. You are always inheriting someone else's walls and smells.And in my case, carpet as well.
The apartment came with a balcony and another room, and a larger bathroom and it is a handsome apartment if the electrical by the telephone jack worked and we could link up the phone.
It also came with history and I do not know if it is the history or myself that keeps tapping me on the shoulder to say here, this is what happened here, but you will never know just exactly what wont you?
Iris lived here, Iris O Brien, for 37 years, longer than her Northern Irish compatriot and superintendent, Pat who has been here for 30 years. Beverly, the woman down the hall, has been here for 20 years. People stay, they stay here, and even when they leave, they leave something behind and they don't go very far. Last year, Pat moved from the first to the basement so that her daughter could take her old apartment.
Iris left behind an immaculate set of walls, as if never touched, rose-posy dappled wallpaper and a matching unassumingly solid salmon-pink carpet, the carpet that is the envy of Beverly and a thorn of sand chafing against my sense of satisfaction. I am not a carpet person. I loathe carpets. I want my floors good and wooden, yet I compromised. Extensively, again. For the sake of the extra room.
And now I sit among the hue of a faux Victorian parlor and with the smell of bacon banished by the candles I lit as I giggle over Las Vegas. The combo of carpet and wallpaper is as perky-prim as a white picket fence--not my preferred perimeter. The knowledge of this apartment having been a shelter more enduring than marriage prevents me from claiming it. (Well, as if I ever could claim any space for myself apart from Lake Eva in Traverse County.) I feel an unusual compulsion to clean up after me, every crumb of the way. And I dont feel this is my place and maybe that is what I wanted, not to feel at home again so I can be forced to find that home within me that is always fading into dawn. I am brushing against Iris's history.
Iris raised her kids here too, until her lungs started giving out and she stopped being able to climb the three flights of stairs here. Now she lives downstairs, a slender wisp of a woman who rises at five every morning to take the bus to work at the Food Depot where she works. She goes to bed neatly each day at 8 PM.
Iris lived here forever, but left having left the place pristine, blasted of any dirt, windows bright against the rosey-dappled wallpaper. But then there is the carpet.
Carpet does not let furniture stake out its full footing. Carpet, shag or not, pushes back. And I dont care that this carpet is in reasonable condition, professionally laid, enviable, practically flat. Carpet and pink wallpaper and now the socket closest to the jack, off: this apartment is pushing ever so slightly back, too.
I will get used to it, but then there is the realization that maybe I dont want to and dont need to and shouldnt, that this is yet another transient hotel I have to occupy with a flabby imagination. What will she, she who sometimes has something to say within me, come up with then?
You cant miss it. You open the door and there it is, as if someone was in my apartment, as I enter with Baccardi coco rum and passion fruit Alize, but it's clearly not me but somebody else who has been frying bacon so that my entire kitchen accuses me of the deed.
That's moving, alright. You are always inheriting someone else's walls and smells.And in my case, carpet as well.
The apartment came with a balcony and another room, and a larger bathroom and it is a handsome apartment if the electrical by the telephone jack worked and we could link up the phone.
It also came with history and I do not know if it is the history or myself that keeps tapping me on the shoulder to say here, this is what happened here, but you will never know just exactly what wont you?
Iris lived here, Iris O Brien, for 37 years, longer than her Northern Irish compatriot and superintendent, Pat who has been here for 30 years. Beverly, the woman down the hall, has been here for 20 years. People stay, they stay here, and even when they leave, they leave something behind and they don't go very far. Last year, Pat moved from the first to the basement so that her daughter could take her old apartment.
Iris left behind an immaculate set of walls, as if never touched, rose-posy dappled wallpaper and a matching unassumingly solid salmon-pink carpet, the carpet that is the envy of Beverly and a thorn of sand chafing against my sense of satisfaction. I am not a carpet person. I loathe carpets. I want my floors good and wooden, yet I compromised. Extensively, again. For the sake of the extra room.
And now I sit among the hue of a faux Victorian parlor and with the smell of bacon banished by the candles I lit as I giggle over Las Vegas. The combo of carpet and wallpaper is as perky-prim as a white picket fence--not my preferred perimeter. The knowledge of this apartment having been a shelter more enduring than marriage prevents me from claiming it. (Well, as if I ever could claim any space for myself apart from Lake Eva in Traverse County.) I feel an unusual compulsion to clean up after me, every crumb of the way. And I dont feel this is my place and maybe that is what I wanted, not to feel at home again so I can be forced to find that home within me that is always fading into dawn. I am brushing against Iris's history.
Iris raised her kids here too, until her lungs started giving out and she stopped being able to climb the three flights of stairs here. Now she lives downstairs, a slender wisp of a woman who rises at five every morning to take the bus to work at the Food Depot where she works. She goes to bed neatly each day at 8 PM.
Iris lived here forever, but left having left the place pristine, blasted of any dirt, windows bright against the rosey-dappled wallpaper. But then there is the carpet.
Carpet does not let furniture stake out its full footing. Carpet, shag or not, pushes back. And I dont care that this carpet is in reasonable condition, professionally laid, enviable, practically flat. Carpet and pink wallpaper and now the socket closest to the jack, off: this apartment is pushing ever so slightly back, too.
I will get used to it, but then there is the realization that maybe I dont want to and dont need to and shouldnt, that this is yet another transient hotel I have to occupy with a flabby imagination. What will she, she who sometimes has something to say within me, come up with then?
posted by EvaB at 5:55 PM
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