If These Walls Could Speak

Meg sat in her car, watching the house. She expected something to happen. For someone to come out the front door. It was a warm day, and she expected a window to be open. But the house was locked up, and she had the only key.

Getting the call yesterday had been shocking, like a physical blow. Even though they lived in the same town, she hadn't seen her father since her mother's death. Funny how easy it had been for each of them to avoid the other for almost twenty years. But she had her friends and her work. And he had his bottle.

Reaching into her purse, she took out the small manila envelope that held the key she'd gotten from the lawyer. At his office, Mr. Jennings said he had some papers to go over with her, but all she wanted today was to have the key and to go back to the house.

Even though he'd been really ill at the end, the outside of the house looked good; the lawn had been mowed, the leaves raked. Everything spic and span. He must have paid somebody, but she couldn't imagine that her father would want a stranger touching his things. Though the house was old, it had been freshly painted and none of the steps or the boards of the porch warped or squeaked. Meg hesitated only a minute, then fitted the key to the lock and stepped into her childhood home.

Her father had spent his last weeks in the hospital, but she could still feel his presence. She could see his jacket hung on a hook near the back door in the kitchen. There were two pairs of shoes and one pair of house slippers on the boot tray next to the door. There was no mail on the hallway table, but Mr. Jennings said he'd been taking care of that, paying what bills there were, canceling the newspapers and magazines.

The quiet was familiar. Noise would have been familiar as well. Her parents had always had a volatile relationship; all was either chaos or calm. The lines of a song sprang to her mind, If these old walls/If these old walls could speak/Of the things that they remember well/Stories and faces dearly held/A couple in love/Livin’ week to week/Rooms full of laughter/If these walls could speak.

She could see her mother in the kitchen, making dinner. Her father entered through the back door, hanging up his coat, removing his shoes. He crossed the room to where her mother stood at the sink, peeling vegetables. He put his arms around her waist and kissed the back of her neck; her mother stopped what she was doing and leaned back into him. This was the way Meg wanted to remember her parents.

But in her mind, she could still hear the song, If these old fashioned window panes were eyes/I guess they would have seen it all--/Each little tear and sigh and footfall/And every dream that we came to seek/Or followed after,/If these walls could speak. Meg could see herself in this memory: Tiptoeing down the stairs, she could see her father sitting alone at the kitchen table, a glass of amber liquid and an almost empty bottle in front of him. Her mother at the piano in the front parlor, tears running silently as she played.


Meg never could tell which there were more of: the good times or the bad times. Part of her knew that the bad times were magnified in her mind, but how much? Her mother's death had been the tipping point however, and she had decided to make her own way, free of her parents' dramas.

But now the drama had reached its finale. It was finally over. The fighting, the drinking, the blaming. The house was hers now. She walked from room to room, amazed at how little anything had changed. It was almost as if one of them could enter the room at any moment, her mother to take up her knitting or to play the piano, her father to read a book or to watch a history program on the television. Meg was not at all surprised to see her mother's knitting basket still sitting next to the Windsor chair where she had liked to sit. And there was still sheet music laying on top of the piano. Everything neat, tidy and dusted, but unchanged from the day her mother died. Her father's recliner, where only he could sit, with the remote sitting on the table next to it.

Meg had fully intended to walk through the whole house today, but felt suddenly claustrophobic, finding it hard to breathe. This would have to wait for another day, maybe a day when she could bring a friend with her. Someone who could share the burden of the weight of the silence. She locked the door behind her and walked quickly to her car. Driving back down her parents' street, she opened all the windows in the car, letting the early autumn heat wash away the chill she'd felt.