The Mother's House

The mother’s house was a brownstone in the downtown. Here they had all grown up. Picking her mother up at the brownstone involved coming straight in between concrete urns into which she had folded herself as a child when playing dramatic hide. She would sit with her bony butt down in the base, thiking someone would come and make the urn into the flowerpot it had always meant to be. She would fertilize pansies. The mother had at some later point put dirt and ivy into the urns and as Kate walked through, they were spilling down the brick steps, looking very respectable.

There are layers to a home décor that has evolved over the lifetime of children who are grown. Layers most clearly manifested in photographs and rugs. Carpet gets itself replaced, but throw rugs can become elaborately multiple. And photographs, too, if a classic frame is always chosen. The moterh had little tables, ornamentation on the house’s several carved mantels, and rugs from actual foreign lands. Then there were the mementoes of genuine travel. Next to the brownstone, Kate’s new house looked ordered fully stocked from a status catalog. And it had been, down to the real wood doors that slammed with a bang, not this luon shit. Not this parcticle wainscoating. Real like the mother’s house.