Teardown, and: Even to the Edge

Teardown

Modest gray two-bedroom. One story. Carport cobbled to its side like a pasteboard carton. Patchy lawn, with yellowing arbor vitae. Hulking beside it,

crowding both its flanks, are the great pretenders. This one, finished, carriage lamps flashing brazen, throws its umbrage onto the little rambler. That one, its dumpsters

bristling broken plywood and torn linoleum, lumbers upward, loud in a drive of nail guns. Tyvek sheathing claps in the breeze of April. These are improvements!

sing the framers, painters, and electricians. Clear the way for grandness, for granite counters, flagstone walks and vaulted cathedral ceilings! Why have I come here,

both my parents dead, and the ticky-tacky dream they bought for love and eighteen nine-fifty cringing in the shadow of greed that shames it? What was I after?

Even to the Edge

They joke that it takes both their scattered minds to make one grown-up competence. “And love, that’s on a good day.” More and more, each finds the other’s losses. No polite remove is necessary now; they simply mark misses, and smile. Their moorings seem unshaken— though in her mind’s ear, like the manic bark of strays in storm, dread of what might be taken wails; and the nightmare sight of sunken cheeks troubles his sleep. “Love, what’ll come will come—” —come with the years, come with the months, the weeks they won’t discuss it. Won’t use words like doom.

(And now the ending comes. And they have proved less unprepared than everyone they loved.)