Blind Shady Bend. Adina Sara

with an ever-changing burden of car parts, sheet rock leftovers, paint-stained 2×4’s that precluded any possibility of future use. Whenever the wife hurled herself into the driver’s seat and started the monster up, a cloud of exhaust left a trail of fumes in her wake, like a giant fart. Her departures set all the neighborhood dogs to howling and sometimes, in the night, I imagined myself sneaking across the road to slash holes in all of their tires. I still could.

      Next door had become a rental after Ruth died, ‘dear old Ruth’ as mother used to call her. She and Mother were pretty good friends in the beginning. Ruth loved to tell us how she bought the place in the forties for just under two thousand, could have bought the whole block but Horace wouldn’t hear of it. Horace was a good bit older than her and by the time Ray was born, Ruth was already widowed.

      “Poor Ruth” my mother often sighed, but Ruth didn’t seem so poor to me. Pushed her lawn mower every Saturday morning up and back over an uneven yard and kept her roses blooming way past their season. As a child I remember thinking it wasn’t Ruth who was poor, it was my mother, though I couldn’t have said why.

      Here I am talking about my crummy neighbors and look at me. I only planned to move back in with my folks for a few months after Mother got her stroke, back in 1964. Ned had been gone almost a year and the apartment we shared never felt right after he died. Technically he lived with his roommate, Frank something or other, I never really knew the man. Frank kept Ned’s mail and some of his furniture so people wouldn’t think the wrong thing like they did back in those days, if a man and woman lived together out of wedlock. Makes me feel old just thinking about it. But it was our apartment, married or not, and I needed to get away from the memories. I was always listening for his key in the lock. I couldn’t get off to sleep. So when the folks needed my help, I figured moving back in with them would be a good transition until I figured out what I wanted to do next.

      Well I figured wrong. Just like that a few months turned into 43 years. Here I am still living in my parents’ house, with both of them long dead and who can say why fate snags you back to where you started?