I’ve turned in the driveway and am halfway to the house before I remember I don’t live here anymore. I thank all the saints that the driveway is long and curving and thickly lined with trees, and it’s daylight, so hopefully my inadvertent maneuver won’t be noticed as I’m backing out to the main road.
At the main road, I head back toward town, hoping none of my former neighbors meet me. I probably should have driven away from town. I could’ve looped through a neighboring town – a longer drive, but I wouldn’t be as likely to meet anyone I know.
The only vehicle I meet before I get back to town is a delivery truck, so I probably don’t know the driver. In town, I return to work. Why, I don’t really know. Maybe the familiarity, maybe the security . . . most likely because I don’t want to go home alone, to a house that isn’t mine in any sense, to a house I do not recognize as “home.”
A house without anything that I recognize as being “home.” Oh, I have my clothes, my personal belongings, my two Siamese cats . . . but I don’t have Cliff, who embodies all the meanings of “home” to me . . .
She does. In my house. The house Cliff and I planned and worked on. The house where we had lived nearly twenty years before she returned to town.
Cliff had said he was over her. He loved only me. Our life together was all that he wanted. Famous last words, I guess . . . She returned to town in July. By Christmas, I was out in the cold, wondering how I would survive the winter without Cliff’s warmth beside me.
I survived. I didn’t like it. Nor have I liked living the past year and a half alone.
I stop in the process of unlocking the back door at work and rattle the keys in my hand. I should see to the cats, fix myself some supper, maybe read a little and go to bed early, before dark. I’m not even sure the cats consider this different house to be “home” as they have been moping around, quiet for Siamese, even snuggling close to me in the night and not rampaging through the house as was their wont.
I check the door to make sure it is locked and return to my vehicle. I go “home” and feed and water the cats, eat a turkey sandwich for supper, then walk out onto the back porch and look at the tiny yard that backs up to a privacy fence behind a McMansion.
And the memories come . . . Cliff grilling steak and shrimp while I fixed a salad. Cliff and I driving hither and yon for no reason other than a road was there. Observing holidays the weekends before so restaurants wouldn’t be crowded. Going to movies sometimes three times in one weekend. Concerts. Hunting. Levi’s and western boots. Late nights watching rented movies. Half-smoked packs of Marlboro Reds on the chest-of-drawers.
Memories of habits I’ve had for years. Habits that I didn’t even realize were habits until I caught myself one afternoon searching for the keys to Cliff’s F150, which I no longer have a chance to drive, but was in the mood to do so. Habits I need to break. Habits that need replacing, but with what?
I go back inside and pet the cats who are perched on the kitchen counter, side by side, watching me as if I have the answers to all their questions. I guess they do have questions. Why are we here? Where is Cliff? (They loved Cliff.) Why can’t we go outside?
I wish I could answer their questions and they could answer my questions. Why did Cliff lie to me? Why wasn’t my love enough for him? Why do I sit at home alone every night?
“Cats,” I say to Mordred and Merlin, “you are going to have to do without me tomorrow night. I am going to start some new habits for myself. One of them is going to be dining out alone.”
They look at me suspiciously. Sometimes I would swear they understand every word I say. Other times, I think they understand no words besides “food” and “bedtime.” This evening, it’s hard to tell.
It’s Friday afternoon. I leave work, go home, tend to the cats’ needs, change into new Levi’s and shirt, lock the house and drive to a restaurant on the other side of town. The place has a reputation for good food, so I park and walk inside.
There is a forty-five minute wait to be seated in the restaurant but the hostess tells me I can sit in the bar if I wish, and that the full menu is served there.
I go into the bar, sit at a high-top in the back corner, and the waitress quickly comes to the table with menus and silverware. I order a Coke, she leaves to get it, and by the time she returns, I have decided on onion rings and a chicken sandwich.
In a few minutes, my meal is delivered, and when I look up after putting some ketchup on the plate, a nice-looking gentleman at a table across the room is smiling at me. I smile back and he rises from his table and walks to mine and asks, “Do you mind if I join you?”
I tell him that would be nice and he sits down across the table from me. While he’s telling the waitress what he would like for supper, I wonder if he would be a habit I could grow used to.
