The Tinted Sky

The Wooden Red Door

    She looked just like Mara; it was incredible. I was afraid as I was driving down here that I wouldn't recognize her, but I did, the spitting image. She had Mara's hair except it was long, covered in mousse and flowing down to her little waist. Mara always kept her hair short, and she never used mousse, she always said she hated how it made her hair look wet. As the girl played the light from the sun danced in her eyes, and I knew she had Mara's eyes, big and green, alert and mischievous. The same smooth skin the color of warm caramel, clean of all blemishes. The girl didn't have the scar on her right cheek like Mara had.

    Mara had always been self-conscious about that scar. The scar had only been about the length of a dime right above her laughing line, on her right cheek, she'd gotten it from a playground accident she had told me. I wondered now if that had been the truth, she'd always hated to talk about it and disliked when people brought it up. She had hidden a child and a pregnancy away from me, wasn't she capable of hiding how she got a scar too?

    The girl's face was the same shape as Mara's, like an almond, down to the pointed chin and small forehead, she even had the same widow's peak. From afar anyone could mistake the child for Mara, but up close you could tell there was one difference, only one, her lips, they were small, you could almost hardly see them.  Mara had always had such beautifully plump lips. These lips were not Mara's, clearly, they belonged to someone else. I shivered at the thought that the lips that this girl had were the same lips as the man who had touched Mara. I tried not to look at the girl's lips. I tried to focus on seeing Mara and Mara only.

     After reading Mara's journal, I sat and thought about what to do. There was no way to get Mara back I knew that. After sitting on my old and saggy couch for three hours staring at the blank T.V. screen, I decided though there was no way to get Mara back, there was a way to get to know her better. The business card was still in my hand, and I looked down at it and read the address over again. By then, I already knew it by heart. I knew it was crazy to show up at some one's door, someone you had no idea even existed before a few months ago, but I needed answers. So I planned to go on Saturday, which was my day off of work from the bank. All week I was impatiently tapping my pen waiting for the clock to tick faster somehow. The four days until Saturday was agonizing. When Saturday finally came, I sprung out of bed, threw on a t-shirt and jeans, and headed out at 9 a.m. 

    The ride was faster then I thought it would be, the highway was slick with water because it had rained in the early morning. As I arrived at the front of the house with the wooden red door, I sat there wondering what I should do. I had made sure to park across the street, and I watched as I saw the shadow of people living there. After 4 hours of sitting there watching the shadows, I was going to leave, but the door opened, and a small family came pouring out of the house. 

    The girl began playing tag with a heavyset man that had come out of the door with her. The man must've been in his late thirties, balding slightly with a peculiarly long nose, if it had been covered in colors he could've passed for a Toucan. She was laughing as he chased after her. I could almost hear Mara's loud jingles coming from her mouth as she fell to the grass in a heap of exhaustion, her hair spreading all around her among the grass. The man picked her up and threw her over his shoulder. She pretended to struggle but was clearly enjoying her time there, she kicked and hollered, laughing as she pretended like he was holding her against her will. A small woman with strawberry blonde hair and petite features came to the door as well. She called out to the man and the girl, and they ran back into the house. The small woman was laughing and shaking her head as she closed the door behind her.

   I saw a glimpse of them all laughing, through the living room window, as they all sat on the couch, and I couldn't help but feel like this was how my life was supposed to have been. I felt like something of mine had been stolen, and I wasn't sure I'd ever find it again. The girl's head leaned up against the man's protruding belly as she stared into the T.V. the woman was on the other side of her stroking her thick brown hair. I couldn't help but wonder, if I would ever find the happiness that these people had, in the living room of their small house with a wooden red door, in the little suburb of Jersey, leaning against each other like nothing else mattered. Would I ever be happy again? Was it even possible without Mara?