When they had first met Gloria, Lil had despised her, a feeling that lasted for a couple of years; she called her Mrs. Kravitz, after the nosy neighbor on Bewitched, and did a whole little routine where she imitated her, slouched shoulders and frowning grimace as if she had just swigged vinegar: “Was Becca supposed to be with that Collins boy? Do you know he smokes? Did you know your son sometimes sneaks out his bedroom window? He’s going to kill himself one of these days on the ice.” They learned a lot from Gloria, whether they wanted to or not, and unfortunately the education continued after their migration south; every time Gloria called with a new installment, Lil hung up vowing to never answer again, and yet she was unable to resist the next time not to help herself to another round of painful news. “She’s the only person I know who remembers what our house looked like when we first bought it,” Lil said one day, “and the kids grew up together.” And then, the recall of those memories softened even the worst effects of Gloria. “And Gloria’s husband died so young,” she continued, as if to convince Frank why she maintained a relationship with someone who tested her last nerve.

He looks back at the house, the front door painted the same shade of blue as their old one in Massachusetts. Benjamin Moore, Spectra Blue. A different name but the same formula, and no telling how many gallons he has purchased over the years, because it was often her choice for the background of sky in the many dance recitals that came each spring.

“Doors are very important to me,” Lil had said when they were moving into their very first house, her hair dark and pulled up into a knot, an old paint-speckled shirt of his hanging from her shoulders as she stood and studied the door, a paintbrush in one hand and a cigarette in the other. They were barely thirty.

He brakes for two golf carts and six men dressed like Easter eggs—Tweedledees and Tweedledums—who wave broadly before disappearing over a rolling green hill. The canopy of tall, spindly pines shades his drive to the main road, the pines and humid air and blazing sun also a part of his long-ago childhood, which he spent years rejecting and trying to forget. But now he feels pulled back like never before. He needs to go back to where his father died and then where he last saw his mother. Maybe today, he will walk through that house and stand out in the yard where he played as a boy. It’s where he first felt the dark waves of fear and loneliness he has run from ever since.

Shelley