1.01
Damn me, damn them, damn it all.
There was a car, my parent’s or my uncle’s, no doubt, parked in the middle of the gates, at the foot of a long driveway, leading up to Hillsglade House. Symbolic, really, of everything that had gone on for most of my life. Symbolic of everything I had walked away from.
My uncle… I was guessing it was my uncle, had parked the car at the entrance of the driveway to force everyone else to find a place to park.
I looked down the length of the street. The property was framed by a short stone wall, shoulder height, along with an elaborate iron fence of roughly the same height, shaped into curling vines with metal points at set intervals. It had been covered in some black paint or coating, but rust and peeling paint made for a mottled texture. ‘No parking’ signs, a good distance in every direction. I was already regretting coming. Damn me, I thought, not for the first or second time.
Further down the street, a few of the locals had stopped on a corner to talk. Odd, how they kept looking at me.
Their eyes on my back, I pushed my motorcycle, guiding it through the gap between car and fence. I set it on the lawn, leaning against the inside of the fence.
I wasn’t in a rush. I had made promises to myself. I wouldn’t get caught up in their tempo. Taking my time, I removed my helmet, wiped the sweat from my forehead and scalp. Putting my hands in my pockets to be sure I had my keys, I felt paper crumple. I went through my pockets, sorting out the change, bills and receipts I’d hastily pocketed at a rest stop along the way
Procrastinating.
Looking up at the namesake hill, I could see the house. Not big, but it drew attention because of the way it looked down on the two-theater podunk town. It wasn’t dark, and it wasn’t ominous. Barring a slightly overgrown garden, trees that had grown well beyond the quaint, tidy little decorations they might have been when the house was built, and the railing, it was nothing more than a nice house. I’d dated a wannabe-architect at one point, a brief-lived fling. I didn’t remember much, but I didn’t feel confident labeling the place as Victorian. Three stories, with a one-room tower standing one floor higher, off one corner. Gray-painted wood siding, decorative ‘lace’ in carved wood beneath the eaves and around the railing on the porch, tall, narrow windows with open shutters.
I pulled off my jacket, then my sweatshirt. Unlocking and lifting the seat of the motorcycle, I retrieved the shirt I had stowed away. Leaving the other clothes behind, I buttoned up the shirt over a black t-shirt while I made my way up the driveway.
If my uncle had parked nearer to the house, he could have spared himself and his family the walk. But no, the inconvenience he could pose to everyone else was apparently the top priority. I wasn’t surprised. I would have been stunned if there hadn’t been anything like this.
My boots were heavy on the floorboards of the porch as I approached the front door. I stopped to wipe them on the doormat. No ‘welcome’ was printed on the mat. Instead, there were stencil images of roses and thorny stems, as well as the initials ‘R.D.T.’
It fit, somehow. No consideration to the guests, only self-aggrandizement.
The door was unlocked. I kicked off my boots and made my way past the front hallway and into the actual house, tucking my shirt into my jeans as I went.
My lingering impressions of the house were soon banished. Only a house. Books lined shelves in nearly every room with an available wall, some old with cracked spines, some new, recent bestsellers. It was all sorted more like a library than a home, clearly by some arrangement of age and alphabetized.
Anachronistic. That was a good word, to describe it. Old and new. A box of colorful cereal sat between the toaster and television in the kitchen, across from a small table with a crimson, lace-edged tablecloth.
A litterbox, with a toy. Not a dirty litterbox, to look at it, which struck me as odd. I couldn’t imagine my family had emptied it. It didn’t fit them.
I reached the end of the hall, and I could hear voices from upstairs. A crowd, angry, not shouting, but saying hard words, loaded words. I sighed, putting my hands in my pockets, and made my way up.
Photographs. Not a single family picture, I noticed. Instead, there were pictures of nature, blue and green to contrast the dark-lacquered cherry floorboards and furniture, the burgundy curtains. It made for a startling intensity, but it was jarring, overly saturated.
When I crested the top of the stairs, I saw them. One family, divided into four factions, all dressed in black.
“Jesus fuck,” Paige said, her eyes going wide.
“The prodigal son returns,” Uncle Paul said.
That was the last coherent thing I made out before it devolved into a mess of bickering.
“Ten to one he needs the money for drugs.”
“If you want to talk about that sort of thing, Steph, we could talk about Ellie.”
“Fuck you, Irene,” Ellie practically spat the response at her aunt. “You don’t know anything. Uneducated bitch.”
Hard words, drawing lines in the sand, striving to establish new ground rules, to hold on to perceived advantages, to garner new ones, or strike at weak points.
For three years, I had been gone. All of this, it had been going on when I left, and it was continuing now.
It never stopped.
Nine cousins, spread into three camps. Uncle Paul, his ex-wife, and my Aunt Irene.
My Uncle Paul had a wealth of kids, four by his first wife, two by his second. The oldest of my cousins had a child of her own, while his youngest was twelve. Six in all, with Paige and her twin brother Peter in the middle. Those two would just be partway into college, I was pretty sure.
Paige looked like she wanted to approach me, but doing so meant getting between Uncle Paul and Aunt Irene, as they pointed fingers, digging at each other.
I tuned the words out. It had been a while, but I knew this refrain already.
Aunt Irene had kids, but I only saw two. Molly was close to me in age, and I’d known her well, once upon a time, but I hardly recognized her now. She was so preoccupied she barely seemed to notice me, her fingers twisting into one another in her lap, her leg bouncing a nervous rhythm that her mom tried to still with a touch. It seemed to be rubbing off on her little brother, who was looking equally anxious. They all had brown hair, and Molly was paler than usual, and the black dress she wore only made it worse.
Uncle Paul’s family, his first wife Stephanie, my Aunt Irene, each with their respective kids. Three groups, three factions.
The fourth group would be ‘mine’, for lack of a better word. My cousin Paige had recognized me before they did. My parents.
They approached, and I saw that my mom was holding a baby, swaddled in a blanket. I wasn’t good at judging the ages of babies. I’d left three years ago.
“Everything alright?” my father asked.
“S’alright,” I responded, not taking my eyes off the baby.
“You’re not in trouble?” my mother asked.
“No trouble,” I said. “You’d be surprised.”