leaves and stems thicker than his thumbs.
Dog leashes had hung here, too, and were here no longer. When Rover died, Mont had refused to get a new dog, no matter how Randall persisted in his suggestions. There was a cat, which they simply called The Cat, a permanently exasperated creature who deigned to enter the kitchen for food and warmth on the coldest winter days but preferred to sleep in the barn or slink around outside waiting for moles or mice.
The kitchen, Randall saw with relief, was basically clean. He had a standing arrangement with Dorothy Olson, one of the women from the nearby town, to keep the kitchen and the bathrooms acceptably hygienic. Now and then when Mont let her, she ran the vacuum through the rest of the house, but that wasn’t often. As Mont grew older, he’d accumulated more stuff, mostly paper, newspaper articles about medicine, and medical journals, of course, and books of crossword puzzles and word games, and he had always kept his beloved National Geographics . Recently he’d begun to pull files from the cabinets holding all the old information on patients in his medical practice, and now the files leaned in manila-colored towers on top of the television, on the back of the toilet tank, in the middle of the dining room table, on the front stairs. When Randall asked his father about it, Mont told him he was thinking of writing a book.
On the windowsill two tomatoes from the garden ripened in the sun, and in the middle of the table sat a clear Mason jar of roses, just as if Randall’s mother were still here. Randall checked in the refrigerator: red grapes, grapefruit, a small filet of beef, a pitcher of lemonade. So his father was eating well. Except for the pajama top, he was showing no signs of senility. Of course, he forgot words now and then, but so did Randall.
Randall walked through the rest of the downstairs, reading his past in every nick in the woodwork. The walls were covered with his mother’s paintings, portraits of her children, pets, and friends, still lifes of flowers and fruit, some landscapes. She had been, if not a famous painter, an accomplished one, with an eye that saw the harmony in diverse and ordinary objects.
As Randall paused before a still life of a ceramic mixing bowl, a muddy pair of gardening gloves, an open book, and a tangle of turquoise beads, he was transported back to the moment when his mother came in from church, checked to see that the bread was rising, took off her necklace and earrings so she wouldn’t lose them in the garden, and rushed outside. The open book was there because there were open books everywhere in the house.
He wished his mother were still alive, for Tessa’s sake. Walking through this house, with its worn Oriental rugs, rump-sprung armchairs, sofas with faded slipcovers, and its shelves of books on almost every wall, Randall contemplated not for the first time the possibility of moving here. Was it odd—was it sad somehow, a grown man dreaming of living in the home where he’d been a child?
The thing was that Tessa loved animals and was wild for the outdoors. She adored her grandfather and worshiped Brooke Burchardt, a thirteen-year-old horse-crazy girl who lived across the road with her three younger siblings, a father who taught elementary school, and a plump, jovial, stay-at-home mother.
Certainly Randall was eager to move out of the temporary quarters he’d established when he left Anne, hygienic but stark rooms in a block of expensive modern apartments on Mass Ave. The only good thing about his present lodging was that it was close to Tessa. True, if he moved out here, he’d have a long commute every day to and from the hospital. But he never had felt at home anywhere like he did here.
It had been Anne who loved the French Provincial house he had so gladly left. He just couldn’t get comfortable there. It was too formal, too artificial, like the rooms of a posh hotel. You could admire the high windows with the swagged
Dog leashes had hung here, too, and were here no longer. When Rover died, Mont had refused to get a new dog, no matter how Randall persisted in his suggestions. There was a cat, which they simply called The Cat, a permanently exasperated creature who deigned to enter the kitchen for food and warmth on the coldest winter days but preferred to sleep in the barn or slink around outside waiting for moles or mice.
The kitchen, Randall saw with relief, was basically clean. He had a standing arrangement with Dorothy Olson, one of the women from the nearby town, to keep the kitchen and the bathrooms acceptably hygienic. Now and then when Mont let her, she ran the vacuum through the rest of the house, but that wasn’t often. As Mont grew older, he’d accumulated more stuff, mostly paper, newspaper articles about medicine, and medical journals, of course, and books of crossword puzzles and word games, and he had always kept his beloved National Geographics . Recently he’d begun to pull files from the cabinets holding all the old information on patients in his medical practice, and now the files leaned in manila-colored towers on top of the television, on the back of the toilet tank, in the middle of the dining room table, on the front stairs. When Randall asked his father about it, Mont told him he was thinking of writing a book.
On the windowsill two tomatoes from the garden ripened in the sun, and in the middle of the table sat a clear Mason jar of roses, just as if Randall’s mother were still here. Randall checked in the refrigerator: red grapes, grapefruit, a small filet of beef, a pitcher of lemonade. So his father was eating well. Except for the pajama top, he was showing no signs of senility. Of course, he forgot words now and then, but so did Randall.
Randall walked through the rest of the downstairs, reading his past in every nick in the woodwork. The walls were covered with his mother’s paintings, portraits of her children, pets, and friends, still lifes of flowers and fruit, some landscapes. She had been, if not a famous painter, an accomplished one, with an eye that saw the harmony in diverse and ordinary objects.
As Randall paused before a still life of a ceramic mixing bowl, a muddy pair of gardening gloves, an open book, and a tangle of turquoise beads, he was transported back to the moment when his mother came in from church, checked to see that the bread was rising, took off her necklace and earrings so she wouldn’t lose them in the garden, and rushed outside. The open book was there because there were open books everywhere in the house.
He wished his mother were still alive, for Tessa’s sake. Walking through this house, with its worn Oriental rugs, rump-sprung armchairs, sofas with faded slipcovers, and its shelves of books on almost every wall, Randall contemplated not for the first time the possibility of moving here. Was it odd—was it sad somehow, a grown man dreaming of living in the home where he’d been a child?
The thing was that Tessa loved animals and was wild for the outdoors. She adored her grandfather and worshiped Brooke Burchardt, a thirteen-year-old horse-crazy girl who lived across the road with her three younger siblings, a father who taught elementary school, and a plump, jovial, stay-at-home mother.
Certainly Randall was eager to move out of the temporary quarters he’d established when he left Anne, hygienic but stark rooms in a block of expensive modern apartments on Mass Ave. The only good thing about his present lodging was that it was close to Tessa. True, if he moved out here, he’d have a long commute every day to and from the hospital. But he never had felt at home anywhere like he did here.
It had been Anne who loved the French Provincial house he had so gladly left. He just couldn’t get comfortable there. It was too formal, too artificial, like the rooms of a posh hotel. You could admire the high windows with the swagged
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