we’d decided to call it quits. We both wanted to end our marriage before we hated each other. So, I got the house and the mini-van (he, by the way, had a sports car!) and he moved to a condo across town. We’re both still single and, to be honest, I haven’t met anyone in the past seven years who’s made me feel the way Mike once did.
I heard Mom’s voice but, from the musty corner of her basement, I couldn’t make out what she’d yelled. I walked over to the steps leading to the first floor. “Sorry, Mom. I couldn’t understand you.”
“I asked if you were hungry.”
I rubbed my stomach. “I’m starving.”
“Good. I made one of your favorites. Chicken corn soup.”
I smiled. “Just let me finish packing this box and I’ll be right up.”
I returned to the cardboard box with “Scarlett’s Stuff” scribbled on the top in black magic marker. I’d apparently stashed it down here when I was still in love with Jake, my high-school sweetheart. Besides the list, the box held other treasures from my high-school years. A program from my senior class play. The roses Jake gave me for our first Valentine’s Day (now a crisp bundle of tan petals tipped in Pepto-Bismol pink). My honor society certificate, encased in a black frame chipped at the corner. A photo of my best friend Shonna and I posing in our puffy-sleeved prom dresses. We couldn’t have looked more different. She was six foot and I was barely five. She had long chestnut hair and mine was long and strawberry blonde. She had brown eyes and I had green. And yet our friendship had lasted and, like fine wine, gotten better with age.
Besides the high-school mementos, I found a shoebox filled with items I’d made for Scarlett’s Shop. I laughed, remembering my pop-up store. I’d sell my homemade items at school, at home, anywhere I could display them and make money. Popsicle-stick picture frames. Painted rocks with magnets on the back. Clothespin caterpillars (think colorful pom-poms glued to a clothespin with googly eyes). I picked up a bookmark I’d made from a Christmas card Mom had saved. A wave of memories washed over me. I’d always wanted to own a boutique. It was another dream never realized.
I put all the items back in the dusty box and carried it upstairs.
Dad looked up from reading the newspaper. “I see you found something you wanted to keep.”
I placed the box in the corner of the dining room. “Yeah. I came across some stuff from high school. And my store, remember that?”
“Oh, my, yes,” Mom said. “You were always making stuff for that shop of yours. For a while there I was driving you to the craft store every week to buy supplies.”
I laughed.
“I still have the trophy you made me for Mother’s Day.” Mom opened the cabinet above the refrigerator. That’s where she kept vases and special dishes, things she didn’t use every day. She retrieved the trophy and turned around, holding it high for Dad and me to see.
I rolled my eyes. “I can’t believe you still have that.”
“And I always will,” Mom said. “It’s one of those things you never toss out.”
I’d wrapped a baby food jar in aluminum foil and pasted a pink construction paper circle on the front with the words: World’s Best Mom.
I sat in the chair across from Dad, the same chair I’d always sat in growing up. Funny how your spot at the family dinner table never changes no matter how old you are. Just like the pew you sit in at church or that special seat you sink into when binge-watching a favorite TV show.
Mom sat a bowl of soup in front of me. I could’ve gotten it myself, but I knew she liked being able to do things for me, her “little girl.”
“You were the prettiest gal in your high-school class,” Mom said. “Wasn’t she, Howard?”
Dad winked. “Still is. Of course, she takes after her mother.”
Mom patted Dad on the shoulder. They’d been married fifty-five years and still seemed so in love. I wondered what their secret was. They’d always made it seem so easy. Not that they never fought, but they always seemed to weather the tough times and come out better.
“The soup’s delicious, Mom.”
“I put a lot of hardboiled eggs in it because I know that’s how you like it.”
Moms never forget. Dads sometimes do. But moms, they remember everything, even the things you wished they’d forget. Like coming home late from a date or borrowing an expensive piece of jewelry and losing it.
Mom sat down across from me. At seventy-seven, she was still the most beautiful woman I knew. Like Dad, she had white hair, which she wore in a stylish bob. Her blueberry eyes seemed to bounce like rubber balls when she talked. “Did you get through all the boxes?”
“I think so. I had no idea you had so much stuff packed in the basement.”
“I’ve been telling her to get rid of it for years,” Dad said. “But you know your mother. She’s a pack rat.”
Mom shook her head.
“You’re just as bad, Dad.”
Dad’s wiry eyebrows jumped to the top of his forehead. “Me?”
“Yes, you. Have you been in the garage lately?”
Dad tucked his chin into his broad chest.
I playfully shook my finger at him. “No, you haven’t been in the garage because you can’t get in the garage.”
“She has a point, Howard.”
Dad waved his hand. “Two against one. No fair.”
I picked up my water glass. “Bottom line, guys. You have a lot of stuff that has to go. Now that I’ve been through the boxes in the basement and Tommy has, I think the next step is calling someone to haul away what you can’t take with you.”
My brother, Tommy, and I knew moving into a retirement community out of state was a big step for our parents. After living in a four-bedroom, two-story house, moving into an apartment would be an adjustment. So would living so far away from Tommy and me. But after their best friends had moved from Pennsylvania to Florida, they’d decided to join them. Last winter’s northeaster, which dumped more than twenty inches of snow, had sealed the deal.
Before leaving, I called movers and arranged for them to haul the items Mom and Dad wanted to take to their new place. Then I called an auctioneer to take what was left.
I picked up the box I’d stashed in the dining room. Mom and Dad followed me outside and waited as I put it on the backseat of the car. I turned and hugged them.
“Tell the kids to call,” Mom said. “I haven’t talked to either of them in weeks.”
“I will.” I kissed Mom and Dad and climbed into the car.
I pulled out of the driveway, past the mailbox I’d hit when I was learning to drive Dad’s Chevy Malibu, a metallic bronze boat. Driving through the old neighborhood was bittersweet. An avalanche of memories buried me in emotions, heavy and
