Terrace Story by Hilary Leichter EPUB & PDF – eBook Details Online
- Status: Available for Free Download
- Author: Hilary Leichter
- Language: English
- Genre: Literary Short Stories
- Format: PDF / EPUB
- Size: 2 MB
- Price: Free
Terrace
THE OLD WINDOW GAVE A GRAND VIEW OF YELLOW TREE, trunk to branch.
They called it Yellow Tree even though the ginkgo was yellow for only
about a week each year, its fan-shaped leaves rustling to the ground at the
first suggestion of a breeze. Annie and Edward held the baby to the window
and said, “See? Yellow!” But she was too small to say “yellow” in response.
She just looked and watched and touched the glass. They wiped her
fingerprints from the window and kissed the fingers that made the prints.
Then the leaves fell, and the scenery changed. Some views show less than
half of what needs seeing.
When the rent became unpayable, they went in search of a more
affordable living situation. What’s your living situation? Annie turned the
phrase over in her mind, the situation of their life. They had not saved
nearly enough for a broker’s fee, let alone a security deposit.
“It looks smaller than it really is,” Edward said, leading Annie around
the new apartment. A dimly lit lopsided square. “Give it some time, it might
grow on you!”
“You mean it might literally grow?” Annie asked.
At the new apartment, there were no views of Yellow Tree. The
introverted windows were gated and clasped and huddled around a central
shaft that Edward dubbed Pigeon Tunnel. Edward and Annie liked
inventing proper nouns for their world. Yellow Tree, Pigeon Tunnel, Closet
Mystery. Closet Mystery was Annie’s term for the mystery of their single,
overstuffed closet. Upon opening, what would catapult forth? It was a bona
fide enigma. Edward and Annie picked a proper noun for their baby too.
Her noun was Rose.
Annie strapped Rose to her chest while she unpacked, stuffing diapers
and deconstructed boxes into Closet Mystery, keeping an arm around her,
holding tight, in case the fabric of the sling happened to unfurl like a scarf
in a gust of wind, loosing the baby onto the ground.
“Careful,” she said to no one but herself.
Someday, Edward said, they would have a bit of outdoors all their own.
A square of grass for playtime, a pot for planting herbs. They had said that
at their last apartment too, and at the apartment before that, and they
continued to say it even still, though perhaps with less conviction.
They
were cramped, Edward said, but in a way that felt familiar and warm, no?
Yes, Annie agreed. Secretly, she felt that their lack of space probably
signaled her lack of promise, a final judgment on her poor priorities and
half-hewn choices. But it was a judgment that, in her deepest heart, had
grown commonplace and comfortable, only jabbing its elbow of discontent
at moments that found her particularly low. They were lucky in so many
ways. They were healthy and happy and fine. They had spent every penny
saved on moving in and moving out, even the coins from under the sink.
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