The Pleasantly Short Version Of A Very Long Story

When I was nine, my brother Tommy took me to the museum. It was rainy that day, windy, too. We drove there, even though we could've walked because we had raincoats and an umbrella, and it wasn't that far away.

The museum was slightly bigger than our house, but we didn't live in a big house or a nice one for that matter, so it was really just a very small museum. The ceilings were low and the windows tiny and the lady at the reception seemed to be questioning her life choices considerably.

They didn't have any cool relics or famous art either. They only had a few paintings by local hobby artists and a series of very crooked clay sculptures of slightly evil looking chihuahuas.

I didn't like the chihuahuas. Tommy didn't like them either.

There were a number of large paintings I didn't understand. They were much bigger than me and as far as I could tell there was nothing on them except lines and patches of colored paint. I stared at them a long time and decided that I liked them.

I also asked Tommy why we went to the museum in the first place when we were taking a break on a bench, the lady from the front desk eyeing us suspiciously while hiding behind the pages of her magazine.

Tommy didn't answer me for a long time. I wanted to know, but I didn't want to ask again, so I looked outside the small rectangular window to my right and sighed. After a while I sighed again, louder that time.

Tommy chuckled beside me, then he nudged me lightly with his elbow and told me to get up and keep going. I stood up sighed again, honestly and quietly, just for myself.

We kept going and skipped a few weird grey paintings that made me feel uncomfortable without saying a word. Then we came to a stop in front of a medium sized painting of a very old man smiling at a very old tree. The old man's smile was wide and warm, directed at the strong oak tree. In the picture, the sun was shining and there were no clouds whatsoever on the sky while I could hear the wind blowing outside the window of the museum.

Water was dripping down into a bucked at the other side of the room, but it was all we could hear, and we just stood there for a long time looking at that painting of the man and the tree, the dripping sound drowning out the beat of our hearts and the sound of wind outside and the noise coming from the lady from the front desk blowing her nose.

The longer I looked at the painting the less happy it seemed, for the tree looked sick and the man sad. He was smiling, but the smile didn't reach his eyes. The tree was tall and wide, but its leaves were scattered on the ground, abandoning the lonely branches.

After fifteen minutes the old man's smile wasn't warm and happy anymore either, and the tree didn't look strong at all.

Beside me Tommy hadn't said a word, but he didn't move either. I looked up at him, ready to tell him that I didn't like this one and that I wanted to go home, but he stared at it so intensely that I couldn't.

I still wonder about the look on his face today. I couldn't make it out back then, and now the memory of it had faded enough to blur his features. I do think of it often though.

We didn't go home that day. We stayed there a while longer, looking at the painting of the sad man and the sad tree. Then we said goodbye to the lady from the front desk and got into Tommy's car. We drove for a long time. He didn't say anything to me until we stopped at the motel in the next town at night where he told me to wait in the car, got out and disappeared for while.

There were bags in the trunk, mine too, the one with the spaceships.

I often think back to that night, to the way Tommys face looked when he came back, and to the sound of the rain against the small motel room window.

I never asked Tommy again why we went to the museum that day. I never knew why we did, but to me it was always my most important memory.

We didn't go home the next day either, or the day after that. When I asked Tommy about it, he told me that we didn't have a home anymore, but that we were going to look for a new one, together. I didn't understand that, so I kept asking. He said it was like the painting of the smiling man and the tree, just not right. I didn't understand that either, at least not for a long time.

I went back to the old museum last week. It was still there, but the painting was gone, so was the lady from the front desk. I asked for the painting, but the new lady at the front desk told me they threw away any records older than ten years.

Then I left. I didn't go to the house I used to live in, instead, I went home.