1Author's Note: I wrote this a while back, and I haven't thought much about it since. I rarely have female protagonists, because they usually end up being too much like me, and the whole thing turns into an introspective mess, but I tried it and I think it worked reasonably well. Any feedback, as usual, would be greatly appreciated.
This room, the one on the second floor, across the hall from the bathroom, has never changed much. The magazines covering the gray carpet have never moved, they have only cycled with the passing of time and multiplied according to the months and years. The pile has been still for a few months now, since August, when the last of the subscriptions was cancelled.
Marie looked from the doorway, unsure of what should be left and what should be fixed up. She was still bewildered at the sight of her daughter's room, empty for the first time since they moved in when she was only an infant.
That forgotten book in the corner has been there for two years, earmarked on page ninety-seven and never finished. In the summer the air conditioner in the side window keeps the dust from settling on its blue cover, and in the warm and windy seasons the soft cotton curtains sweep the gray-brown powder away. The dogs go in there, every once in a while, to sleep, and so once a week or so someone ventures in to the room in order to vacuum, to dust with a bouquet of feathers, and to shift the knickknacks on the bureau over one-sixteenth of an inch to prevent light-stains.
Marie put a foot into the door and looked at the place Sara had been left behind.
In the time it has taken for the clock, which Marie shifted the slightest bit to take a better look at the time (4:11 PM), to move around with the fall and spring eight times, the iceberg lettuce green walls have not faded or darkened. The blue trim has framed the same posters (construction workers crafting the Empire State Building in sepia tones, a reluctant rock-star, and the pout of a young supermodel in a colorful perfume ad) for four years. The sticky tack holding them up has made oil marks on all of the corners and the centers of each edge. A lifted edge of the biggest poster pulled Marie closer. She pulled off the blue clay and kneaded it between three fingers until it was soft, warm, and had a glue-like surface again. Marie held the lump in her throat tightly, gave the lump of paste one more squeeze, and secured the poster back onto the wall.
No one has dared to touch any of the 16 black and white composition books covered in personal mementos and magazine cutouts since Sara warned her younger sister, Harriet, to keep her "scrummy little hands off" three years before, when she was still on the first one. All of them are in a row on the green bedside table. The closest to the mattress is the newest and a black-and-pink ribbon marks the page last used, dangerously close to the cardboard back cover. This particular book is covered entirely in magazine pictures of lips. Male lips, female lips, celebrity lips, and cartoon lips with cartoon word bubbles ("Oh, no" and "…"). It may be filled with secrets that no one will ever speak aloud, ones that everyone will always consider in contented silence. It has collected a considerably thick layer of dust since it was last removed from between the cold metal "a" and "z" bookends, the day before it was over. Marie breathed in the slightly musty air through her nose and out briskly through her mouth, sending grey dots up and back down onto the brown hardwood floor.
On one wall, the one you have to sit on the side of the bed to see right, nails hang necklaces (chains with charms, bold vintage beads, and a black knot choker) loosely. Marie looked at them and wondered why they had been left at home before remembering that Sara hadn't left as planned. She stood up and walked the few feet to the old yellow chair in the corner, stood up on its creaky seat, and pulled down one that belonged to her when she was Sara's age, one that Sara had borrowed to wear to a wedding and kept ever since. She wore it again to her senior prom with a long black dress and loose waves of mouse-brown hair. Feeling the small, imperfect silver beads before replacing the necklace above the ancient green-framed mirror, Marie smiled and stepped down.
She wove around the cluttered assortment of piles of clothing and papers on the floor until she arrived at the front window, which holds a full view of trees and houses heading up a hillon one side and down a hill on the other. The pink, handmade cushion on the two-window-wide seat has mismatched stripes, and a hole in the piping reveals the inexperienced and hasty hand of a fourteen-year-old girl. A pair of quilted red shoes with a thin red rope bow had been left with a sticky note, the only sign that Sara had considered her plan in advance, "Harriet, the shoes you've envied. Wear them on the all-important first day of school," in neat cursive, which Marie barely recognized as her daughter's.
She remembered that, under the black-brown metal daybed (the royal blue sheets impeccably tight around the single mattress in what must have been a begrudging thanks from Sara) were two lap-sized boxes. One was pink and satin and the other was made of carved brown wood, the kind of box made in a school woodworking course. The brown box was familiar, filled with ticket stubs, extra yellow-and-blue varsity letters, and prom photos from three years of high school popularity. A choice was made to leave the pink box be, to just let it lay still under the bed happily with its alter-ego, the shell of Sara, in case she came back and found out that someone had seen what was inside. Marie picked up the wooden box and put her nose in one of the ridges of the flower-shaped carving. It still smelled as it had on the day it was proudly brought home at the end of Sara's sophomore year, fresh cut and clean. The inside was exactly as Marie had expected. Fortune cookie papers, a ticket stub from an obscure film Marie had never seen or heard of, which was, evidently, shown at the Ritz movie theater, an autograph from Bill Nye "the Science Guy," a heart-shaped photograph of two smiling prom faces, fuzzy stickers, and even a picture of she and Harriet as a young children. One thing unexpected, though, was the small metal gear of a music box. Marie took it out carefully and set it on top of the ice-cube lamp. She turned the small handle and smiled to the plucky sound of Kermit the Frog's greatest masterpiece, the song that Sara sat on the floor with her turntable to play over and over again from a yellow vinyl record, "Rainbow Connection."
Marie put it all back inside and slid the box into its place under the bed. She swayed in walking to the door and shut it behind her silently.