Trowbridge Road: List 2

“Salutations,” said Ziggy when he saw me.

We’ll need extra sustenance for our travels today. Cheese ravioli is perfect for wandering.

Her tangled hair fell over her jutting shoulders.

I dodged headlong into my house, my heart still pounding in my chest, forgetting completely to slide off my sandals, forgetting completely to wipe the outdoor smells off my skin, bounding all the way up the stairs two steps a time, throwing open our bedroom door, and running in to hug my mother, who had just saved my life, but I found her wrapped in the curtains, staring at me.

“Please,” I begged her, frenzy creeping its way into my voice.

My eyes were closed in pain, so I couldn't say for certain if she was crying, but the music wept, the lines rising and falling in a whisper, and even though the key signature was G major, usually bright and optimistic, tonight it was brooding and mournful.

I was an ant in a long caravan of ants, heading out of our sweltering room and into the windy distance.

I was an ant in a long caravan of ants, heading out of our sweltering room and into the windy distance.

I could pour mouthwash over my hands, scrub it into all the cracks and crevices with the potato peeler.

And even though I couldn’t hear them anymore, there were cicadas singing from the trees, and Backpack was there experiencing it all, storing it up in his pockets, waiting for me to come back and drink the nighttime into my lungs.

How strange to creep back into our four-poster bed, slide beneath the white blanket, and wrap her arms back over my belly so I could feel, once again, her mouth blowing warm, humid breath across the nape of my neck.

When she was finished, Mother put her cello away and helped me out of bed, carefully, gingerly, so my skin wouldn’t brush against the sheets.

These were my favorites because they felt good to touch, and if I scratched one fingernail into the flesh of the wood, I could carve magical runes that shone from deep inside.

There was filtered light shining through the cracks between the branches, and through the open corner where we entered there was a single shaft of golden light casting patterns on the leafy ground.

There was a golden glow emanating from deep inside Majestica.

Soon I discovered that this was both true and not true, because when Matthew rose from the empty corner of Majestica and into the air before us, we could see that his body was still long and lean and ferret-like, but now, instead of being covered in fine white fur, he was covered in iridescent scales, and he had a bristling white tail, and wings that were made of white fire, and he crackled into the air like a firework, twirling and spluttering somersaults.

Soon I discovered that this was both true and not true, because when Matthew rose from the empty corner of Majestica and into the air before us, we could see that his body was still long and lean and ferret-like, but now, instead of being covered in fine white fur, he was covered in iridescent scales, and he had a bristling white tail, and wings that were made of white fire, and he crackled into the air like a firework, twirling and spluttering somersaults.

There were clouds all around us, billowing, filled with shimmering feathers.

It was scratched and scuffed and chipped along the edges, and its steel strings jutted out from the tuning pegs like gray whiskers on a lonesome alley cat.

And then they graduated from the conservatory and you came on the scene, and they moved into this house to take care of you and to help out your grandma.

Uncle Toby tousled my hair.

And then the rain came down, barely a mist at first, then transforming into finger snaps, clipping and clattering, flicking across our faces, and soon the whole neighborhood was filled with booming, resonant applause.

“Come, lightning! Come, lightning, you beautiful beast!”
There was a second shattering, closer this time. The sky blanched.

Mushrooms emerged from the ground with warm, wet lips. Some poked blindly beneath the leaves like the heads of sleeping turtles. Some unfurled like white feathers from the damp bark of the hollow logs.

Three bald, round-backed stone beasts the size of potatoes rolled from their crumbled piles like petrified babies and blinked at us with gray impassive eyes.

Three bald, round-backed stone beasts the size of potatoes rolled from their crumbled piles like petrified babies and blinked at us with gray impassive eyes.

We led them all around the ninth dimension, the stone and the pebble beasts, the pinecone and the pine needle beasts, the acorn and the mushroom beasts, the bark, the leaf, and the hollow log beast—all twirling and tripping and galumphing after us in an enormous conga line.

The scent of the fried salami curled up the stairs, beckoning her with its savory tendrils.

Mother emerged in the stairwell and froze there, poised in the threshold.

I realized how much she had changed since the funeral, as though she had been the one in the final stages of illness, the bones in her face, in her wrists protruding, her skin ashen against the starched white of her nightgown

I realized how much she had changed since the funeral, as though she had been the one in the final stages of illness, the bones in her face, in her wrists protruding, her skin ashen against the starched white of her nightgown.

She tipped her head so that it was lolling against the wall behind her.

It was a rocking, rollicking, gorgeous hug that melted me from the inside and made me want to be cradled like a baby, made me want her to brush my hair and dress me and feed me and sing me lullabies.

I took a tentative step forward.

The inside of Nana Jean’s kitchen was just how I always imagined it would be: filled with the ghosts of tantalizing meals. Generations of lasagna. Leagues of Italian wedding soup.