She slumped into a chair at the
drop-leaf table and gazed around the kitchen, at the vintage Magic Chef stove she’d begged
Thomas for, a replacement to the avocado double-ovens his grandparents had
installed in the 1970’s. She’d loved how
the hulking appliance conjured up images of aprons and long simmered stews, how its warming drawers heated the room in the
winter; how it fit so well it was almost as if the room had been
built around it.
She gazed at the soapstone sink,
the pot from the tomato soup she’d eaten.
Yesterday? The day before? — took
in the corner cupboard, the drifting cobwebs floating above the slate floor. Around
her, the house ticked and sighed and shifted, the home she’d tended
to for years, surrounding her like an empty casing, a walnut shell, its hollows and paper membranes sculpting a memory of all that had once been there, all
that once was.
