What history teaches us is everything. It taught me that this house would offer me many things, but it would not offer me home. Tell me what you think. Chad and I are searching for my first home to buy. The first house we checked had a huge front porch and sat in an upscale neighborhood. You can make fifty grand off this house , Chad said. Inside, the house had a gutted kitchen, sagging floors, ruined sheetrock.
A fixer-upper, for sure , Chad said. We moved on. The second and third houses had moldy basements and cracked foundations. Chad just nodded back toward the front door. We left without seeing the upstairs. As we stop at this Lockwood house, the first thing the very first thing I notice is the front porch. For watching the world go by.
I walk onto the porch, turn around, listen to the screen door slap shut, and stare back at the quiet street. A basketball net on rollers. A beat-up pickup. A tricycle tipped over on the sidewalk. I imagine early autumn, my feet up on a table, a Pabst. Maybe grading student essays in the afternoon sun or reading a book of poetry.
No, no, Wright! I think , This could be my street. My porch. Then the scene changes and I am no longer reading James Wright. Instead, my next lover a girl I have yet to meet—but I can see her perfectly—rounded cheeks, face in a grin, thin lips, long brown hair, curly is standing on this porch. It is our first date a date we laughed through, at a restaurant, later the long walk home and it is latest dusk—nearing dark.
Lockwood is quiet. The air cold nearly freezing. The air still. Standing on my porch, I lean toward her. Chad unlocks the front door and holds it open. I walk into a tiny foyer as Chad says, Nineteen hundred square feet. A house to grow into. I barely hear Chad. Instead I see my father visiting from three states away.
