She had not walked away.
That was where the hour held her.
That was the whole of it, for as long as a person can stand under an awning with a stranger and a key and a year like 1994 still wet on the tongue.
On Mason Street they once spent a Saturday painting the bathroom a color called eggshell that looked gray in the morning and yellow at night.
Linda had paint in her hair. The other person had paint on both wrists. They ate pizza on the closed lid of the toilet because the table was covered in newspaper. Linda said, “We’re ridiculous.”
“We’re home.”
Home was the word that made her stand up too fast and rinse a brush that did not need rinsing. She came back and sat down again because the pizza was still there and the laugh was still there and she was not yet a person who bolted from bathrooms. That came later.
They went to a yard sale and bought the yellow kettle. They went to a high school football game they had no reason to attend and sat on wet bleachers because the tickets were a dollar. Linda drank bad cocoa. A child spilled popcorn on her shoes. She did not get angry. She was, for a night, easy to live with. The other person said so. Linda said don’t get used to it, which was her joke and her warning and her future, compressed.
There was a letter from her mother in the mailbox that she did not open for three days. When she opened it the letter said you will regret being proud. Linda burned it in the sink and set off the smoke. Mrs. Peck knocked. Linda said it was toast. Mrs. Peck said toast does not smell like paper. They both let it go.
Winter came early that year. The upstairs was cold. They slept in socks. Linda took extra shifts and came home with her feet on fire and her hands cracked. The other person rubbed lotion into her knuckles without asking. That tenderness sat in Linda’s body like a stone she could not name. She pulled her hands back sooner than she needed to. She said thank you like a customer.
In February they talked about moving to a place with a second bedroom. The talk lasted half an hour. Linda said, “For what.”
“For a life.”
“This is a life.”
“This is a pause.”
She hated pause. Pause meant the next thing would ask more of her. She went to work and stayed late wiping already clean tables. When she came home the other person was asleep with the radio on low. Linda stood in the doorway and watched a shoulder rise and fall and felt a love so plain it terrified her. She turned off the radio. She slept on the edge of the bed.
March was the fight with her mother, the one that sent her to Mason Street in the first place, replayed on the phone. Her mother said come home. Linda said I have a home. Her mother said a rented upstairs is not a home. Linda hung up. The other person said family is complicated. Linda said I don’t want to talk. They didn’t talk. The silence lasted two days and broke over the kettle and a joke that was not funny and then was.
April was the sink and the promise and the weather report.
Then the Thursday of grease and a bus.
Linda has walked that calendar so many times the months have grooves. Standing in the rain she walked it again, faster, all the way to the envelope.
She could almost smell the eggshell paint.
She could almost hear the kettle.
She could not hear the name spoken aloud. She had not said it in so long her mouth might have refused the shape. The receipt had said it for her. Print is easier than sound.
The man in the coat cleared his throat once, softly, not rushing her, only proving he was still a person and not a statue hired by the past.
Linda nodded at nothing.