Afterwards

Except for a thick layer of dust and an obvious pest problem, the room was exactly as I remembered. My mom had painted the room a cliché shade of pink when I was too young to know any better and had refused to repaint because apparently I was the one who had chosen the sickeningly feminine color. I’m sure I was very close to changing her mind before she got sick. Both beds were still unmade. Plastic animals and Lincoln Logs were strewn across the cutesy flowered rug. The stable my sister and I had built for our toys was more or less still standing. I couldn’t help but smile.

It had been ten years (I think) since I had been in my room, and being the nostalgic twit that I am, I couldn’t resist taking a glance down memory lane. I tried not to disturb the mayhem as I crossed the disaster of a room to reach under my mattress and up under the fitted sheet where I had so cleverly hidden my diary. My grandmother had had “Emma” carved into the cover before she gave it to me for my tenth birthday. I perused the silly doodles of a young girl struggling to establish an identity of her own that littered the cover and margins, but I didn’t feel quite up to reading it right then, so I shoved it in my shoulder bag with a half-smile and a shake of my head. I turned my attention to the wall beside my bed. I had posters of angsty bands and “totally hot guys” colorfully tacked up, along with some notes I had passed back and forth in class, movie tickets, playbills, and about fifty different postcards from all the places in the world I wanted to visit, sent to me by my aunt the pilot on her adventures. I grabbed a few of the postcards off the wall and put them in the bag with my diary.

As much as I wanted to fully explore this long forgotten life, these weren’t the things I came home for. I left my room, quietly closing the door in an unconscious attempt to preserve the memories, and made my way down the hall to my parents’ room. The door was closed, and instinctively I almost knocked. It felt wrong turning the knob without permission. The silky blue drapes were drawn shut, casting an eerie midnight glow onto the great bed where my parents had laid together for thirteen years. It wasn’t long enough, but then, it never was going to be long enough.

I entered their forbidden sanctuary slowly, waiting for my mother to walk out of the bathroom and chase me out the way she did that last Christmas when I tried to peek at my presents. She had been wrapped in a beach towel. Her copper hair that normally lived in a bunch at the back of her head was blown half dry and cascaded down over her thin freckled shoulders. Her eyes were sky blue and youthful, free from their typical dark brown liner, and they absolutely sparkled with the fireworks that went off in them every time she smiled. She wasn’t angry, she just laughed as she shot colored hair ties at me until I closed the door behind me. I made a point never to forget that night. I would give anything to have her chase me from that room now.

I opened up the side of the closet that had been my mother’s. Her wardrobe was colorful, to reflect her wildness, and much of it was going to be useless to me, but I didn’t fit into most of my clothes anymore. I browsed casually through the color-coded seasonal outfit staples, and when I saw my favorite aqua blue sun dress, I just couldn’t help myself. I pulled it off the hanger and tried it on. She was a bit shorter than I had become, and I remembered her filling out the bust better than I did, but it fit rather well. I twirled once, and then twice in the walk-in closet, trying to get it to gracefully flow and flutter the way it had always seemed to when she wore it. I pulled off my ragged hiking boots and picked out the yellow flats with brown polka dots and brown ribbon bows that she liked to wear in the summer. They were horribly uncomfortable, but they made me smile nonetheless.

I went to look in the mirror in the corner by the bathroom door, but couldn’t see very well in the dark room, so I opened the curtains. When I turned around, I saw my mother. She was a little taller, a little thinner, less womanly, and her hair was a mess but basically the same. I was shocked. It was the first time I had seen my reflection in 10 years. Dad had always said I looked like my mother, but there, in that room, in that dress, I saw it for the first time. I looked exactly like my favorite memories of my mother. I smiled a bit, and I got a tiny lump in my throat, but I swallowed it.