At sixty-two years old, I never imagined I’d have to ask strangers to leave my own house.
I’d just gotten back from two weeks in Florida with my sister. It was Sunday morning, a little after eight. I’d taken the red-eye from Tampa, and I’d been awake for almost twenty-four hours. My back hurt. My eyes burned. I’d spent the whole cab ride from the airport thinking about three things.
A hot shower. A fresh cup of coffee. And my own bed.
I paid the driver. I rolled my suitcase up the front walk. I put my key in the lock, the way I’d done ten thousand times in twenty-eight years.
I opened the front door.
And I nearly tripped over a pair of men’s shoes.
Big ones. Brown leather loafers, size twelve at least. Kicked off right in the middle of my front hall.
I stood there in the doorway and stared at them.
Then I looked up.
Suitcases lined my staircase. Four, five, six of them. One on every step, like somebody had been climbing up and gotten tired halfway.
A child’s pink jacket was hanging on the old wooden coat rack by the door. My grandfather’s coat rack. The one he carved by hand in 1931. The one nobody hangs anything on except my good winter coat and Robert’s old fishing hat, which I’ve never been able to move.
The fishing hat was on the floor.
Then I looked into the living room.
There were people sleeping on my floor.
Air mattresses. Wall to wall. The coffee table had been pushed into the corner. The armchairs had been shoved against the bookshelves. And in every inch of open space, there were blue and gray air mattresses, and on every air mattress, there were people.
I counted. I don’t know why. My brain just started counting.
Fifteen.
Fifteen strangers. Asleep. Snoring. Somebody had a sleep mask on. A teenage boy was curled up on my couch with his sneakers still on. A toddler was sprawled sideways across a mattress next to a woman with curlers in her hair.
And one woman, an older woman with short reddish hair, was wrapped up in a blue blanket.
My blue blanket.
The soft wool one my husband, Robert, gave me for our thirtieth anniversary. The one I keep folded over the back of my reading chair. The one I’ve never once let anybody else use. The one that still, if I put my face in it, smells a little bit like him.
She was drooling on it.
For several seconds, I couldn’t move.
I just stood there in my own front doorway, holding the handle of my suitcase, with my mouth open.
Then I backed out onto the porch. I closed the door very quietly. I pulled out my phone.
I called my daughter.
Emily answered on the fourth ring. She sounded sleepy.
“Mom? Are you back?”
“Emily,” I said. My voice came out very calm. Strangely calm. “Why are there people sleeping in my house?”
There was a pause.
“Oh,” she said. “Oh, Mom. Relax! They’re just David’s relatives. His mom needed somewhere to host the family reunion. Their place was too small.”
“The family reunion.”
“Yeah. You know. The Hendersons. They do it every other year.”
“Fifteen people, Emily?”
“Well, sixteen if you count Aunt Barb, but she’s staying at a hotel because of her back.”
I closed my eyes.
“They’re leaving tomorrow,” Emily said. “Just one more night. Please don’t make a scene, Mom.”
“Emily,” I said. “I gave you that key to water my plants.”
“I know, Mom. And I did water them. Twice.”
“Twice. In two weeks.”
“Mom—”
“I gave you a key to water my ferns. Not to hand my house over to fifteen people I’ve never met.”
“I know,” Emily said. “But you weren’t using the house. It was just sitting there empty. And it’s so big. And Linda really needed the space, and she was so stressed, and—”
“I wasn’t using it?”
“You know what I mean.”
Before I could say another word, she said, “Okay, Mom, I have to go. David’s calling me. I’ll talk to you later. Love you. Don’t make a scene.”
And she hung up.
I stood on my front porch in the cool morning air, staring at the phone in my hand.
My daughter had hung up on me.
My thirty-two-year-old daughter, who I’d raised in this house, who’d taken her first steps on that living room floor, had just hung up on me. Because I’d asked why there were fifteen strangers sleeping on that floor.
I went back inside.
Very quietly. I stepped over the loafers. I pushed my suitcase into the corner by the coat rack. I picked Robert’s fishing hat up off the floor and hung it back on its hook.
Then I walked down the hall to the kitchen.
The kitchen was worse.
The sink was piled with dirty dishes. Plates crusted with dried egg. Coffee mugs with lipstick on the rims. Glasses with the dregs of orange juice. My big blue mixing bowl, the one I make my Christmas cookies in, had been used for something that smelled like chili and left on the counter with a spoon still in it.
I opened the refrigerator.
It was almost empty. A carton of eggs with one egg left. Half a stick of butter. A jar of mustard. My good cheese, the aged white cheddar I buy from the farmers’ market once a month as a treat, was gone. So was the bottle of white wine I’d been saving for when I got home.
There were three empty pizza boxes stacked on top of my trash can. The trash can was overflowing.
And then I looked at the mantel in the living room. You can see it from the kitchen doorway.
It was empty.
I walked back to the living room, stepping carefully between the air mattresses. A man rolled over and mumbled something in his sleep.
My mantel had always held our family photographs. Twelve of them, in silver frames. Robert and me on our wedding day. Robert holding newborn Emily in the hospital. Robert at Emily’s high school graduation, crying in his sunglasses. Robert and me on the beach in Clearwater on our thirtieth anniversary, our arms around each other, squinting into the sun.
Every one of them was gone.
The mantel was bare except for a scented candle I’d never seen before. Lavender Dreams. Somebody had lit it and let it burn down.
I found the photographs a few minutes later.
They were stacked in the drawer of the TV stand. Under the television. Face down. Shoved in on top of the remote control batteries and an old phone book.
All twelve of them.
I knelt on my living room floor among the air mattresses and the snoring strangers, and I took them out one by one.
The glass on the wedding photo was cracked. Right across the corner. Right across Robert’s hand holding mine.
That’s when David’s mother walked into the kitchen.
I heard her before I saw her. Slippers shuffling across my kitchen tile. Then the clink of my coffee pot.
I stood up with the photographs in my arms and walked back down the hall.
She was standing at my counter, making coffee in my coffee maker. With my coffee. In a fuzzy pink bathrobe I’d never seen before.
Linda Henderson. David’s mother.
She was a tall woman, sixty-three or so, with silver hair cut in a sharp bob and very good posture. She ran the PTA at David’s old high school for fifteen years, and she ran it, I’d always heard, like a general runs an army.
