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4
MELODY
The flight from New York to Tennessee was relatively quick and painless. The airport I arrived in was not too terribly different from the one I had left. It was large and bustling with people coming and going in every direction.
I stepped off the plane with only a slight feeling of regret, the dull anxiousness that comes with just about any spontaneous trip far away from home. Kind of like the guilt you get when you play hooky from work for a day, not that I ever did that for reasons that weren’t legit. Even now, when I was practically shoved out the door by my boss and told not to come back for at least a week, it felt like I was doing something wrong. Like I should have been down in the trenches with the rest of my co-workers instead of flying several states away to visit a lake house.
Still, I knew I was taking care of things that needed to be done. In the end, I would come out on the other side of this trip with everything I needed to revive myself, my life in New York, and salvage my career.
But all of that changed when I boarded the bus transporting me from the airport to Silver Point. When faced with the decision to either take the shorter hour-long taxi ride, costing nearly two-hundred dollars, or take the longer three-hour bus ride, which would only cost thirty-five dollars. I thought it was a no-brainer. Sure, one option was two hours longer, but it was also one-hundred and sixty-five dollars cheaper. And in New York, taxi rides were a cost to be avoided whenever possible. The bus, subway, or even walking were preferred to paying for the ticking meter on a cab.
I failed to account for how vastly different buses down south were from buses in the big city, but that misstep hit me in the face the moment I walked up the stairs to find my seat. The moment I rounded the corner of the door, I was hit with the smell of BO and urine. My body froze at the sight in front of me, completely oblivious to the line of people waiting to climb on behind me.
The entire bus interior seemed to be covered in a greasy film that you couldn’t exactly see, but you could feel it. Everything felt dirty. The seats were covered with ripped and torn fabric, and I shuddered to think what kinds of odors, germs, and bodily fluids they soaked up each and every trip. The smell in the air gave a hint that was far from comforting.
“Move it, lady!” an older woman barked at me from behind.
Now that felt a little more like home, though it didn’t do much to paint the picture of southern hospitality I had imagined.
I felt the silk woven into the fabric of my wide-legged pants and blouse start to wilt the deeper I walked into the humid, thick air of the cramped compartment. But I pressed on to avoid getting yelled at again, filled with regret for wearing creamy white clothes that I was certain would no longer be that color when I arrived in Silver Point.
The three-hour ride felt twice as long, and with each passing mile, I realized the extra one-hundred and sixty-five dollars on a taxi would have been worth every penny.
I brightened up a little when the lakes of Silver Point came into view. I couldn’t feel or smell the crisp, clean air yet, but I could imagine how good it would feel when I was finally free from the stench of the bus. The sun seemed to shine brighter there than it did back at the airport, and the rays of it glistened along the gentle waves of the water, renewing my optimism about this whole trip. All along the horizon were gray and blue mountains, covered in the haze of clouds along the top.
The feeling grew when I finally rushed off of the bus with my bags in hand and was hit by a refreshing, cool breeze.Mountain air,I sighed. I imagined it washing away the grime of the bus as I pulled out my phone to call an Uber for the last leg of my trip to my mother’s lake house. The last thing I wanted to do was climb into the back of another vehicle of any kind, but it was just a quick ten minutes to 303 Mullins Cove. I was almost there. I could do it.
But in that ten minutes, I studied the streets and buildings we passed, and the sinking feeling inside returned. I instantly noticed the way random people on the streets and sidewalks would frequently wave, smile, or stop to chat with the familiar faces around them. It was a small town. Everyone knew each other. I was an outsider already. I could feel it.
My clothes were wrinkled and stained from the three-hour bus ride, as I predicted would happen. Even in their original pristine condition, they were obviously the wrong choice for this place. Every person I saw looked relaxed in their blue jeans, sneakers, and t-shirts. Even the occasional dress I caught sight of looked loose and breezy, casual and down to earth. It was nothing like the myriad of designer labels, stilettos, and leather bags I had grown so used to blending into back home.
I tried to imagine my mom in this town. Given her friendly nature, I could see how she’d fit right in. Greeting random strangers and turning them into friends while running a simple errand was something she would have thrived on. But I was used to running errands with a cell phone in my ear, working while walking. I certainly wouldn’t take kindly to anyone trying to strike up small talk in the middle of my expert multi-tasking.
Maybe that was why she was so insistent that I spend time with her there…to get away from it all, to learn how to put the damn phone down and just look around me for once.
We pulled to a stoplight in the middle of what I gathered to be their town square. I watched a little girl walk with an ice cream cone in one hand and her mother’s grip wrapped around the other. An older woman with a silver bob laughed with a younger woman who resembled her, her daughter, no doubt. They sifted through racks of consigned clothes lined up on the sidewalks in front of small boutiques. I felt a hard lump in my throat form over how easily I could picture my mom and me there, shopping and laughing together, grabbing ice cream or coffee or lunch. My heart ached with a longing to go back in time. To be arriving there for the first time with her by my side. Even the bus ride wouldn’t have been so bad with her there to laugh about it with me.
The guilt and regret came on so strongly and quickly. I was teary-eyed and clutching at my chest by the time the Uber driver pulled to a stop in the middle of a gravel driveway. I took a moment to gather myself before stepping out, but the driver wasted no time. The gruff-looking older man, who had been silent the entire drive (something I was grateful for), was quick to jump out and grab my bags from the trunk and all but throw them at my feet before jumping back into his car and speeding off.
Before picking them up, I turned to the house in front of me. I don’t know what I had been picturing, but this wasnotit. The gravel driveway ended in a small path leading to the front porch. It was lined with an unfinished wood barrier, and the path itself was carved out by nothing but a mulch or sawdust-like material. It wrapped around an overgrown patch where a garden should have been. Everything looked like it was filled with placeholders for things to come…that never came.
The house itself had dirty deep gray siding with even darker shudders and a shingled roof that was obviously in bad shape. Not that I knew much about roofs, but I knew that many shingles shouldn’t have been visibly ripped out of place.
The air held a strange cool humidity with an even stranger combination of pollen and a fishy smell from the lake that stretched out behind the house. In every other direction, there was nothing but dense patches of tall, ancient-looking trees. I could already feel my throat getting dry and my nostrils closing up from allergies. It was strange to be so immune to the smog and pollution of the city, while feeling an immediate bad reaction to the fresh air of the country, of nature.
Slowly I picked up my bags and went inside, worrying a little over how badly the boards of the porch creaked under my weight. The front door made even worse sounds and even felt a little wobbly, like it was just a few swings shy of falling off the hinges entirely.
The entryway living room was small with a charming brick fireplace, which needed to be cleaned even worse than the exterior of the house. Two chairs sat in front of it, shrouded in dust-covered white sheets. Beyond that was a kitchen that looked more promising with its tall ceiling and wide-open space, but I wasn’t in the mood to explore. I tossed my bags down and looked for the nearest bathroom to splash some water on my face.
I didn’t like how the town itself looked so friendly and cheerful with its sunshine, charming old buildings, and smiling neighbors. I hated it in the same way I hated how the frame and architecture of this waterfront property looked so beautiful. How the sprawling water behind it sparkled in the sun, and the wide patches of green grass, tall trees, and leaves were so vibrant and fresh.
The people I passed were just reminders of the things I should have done and didn’t, and this house embodied every ounce of my neglect. The big open doors and windows lining every wall filled the house with bright, drowning light, only to shine a spotlight on dusty sheets covering sparse furniture, moldy spots from leaks in the ceiling, outdated finishings, and paint jobs. When my mom bought the place, she intended to fix it all. But I guess after a few years of me putting off my visit here, her fantasies of our time there together started to fade…and the house, along with everything inside of it, began fading too. I resented all of it staring back at me, taunting me.
I didn’t want to be alone in the middle of the stinging reminder a second longer. I calculated the distance between the house and the nearest strip of shops I remembered seeing on the way in and decided it was within walking distance. After slipping into a fresh pair of slacks and blouse, ones less grimy and wilted from my travels, and splashing some water over the frizz of my hair, I rushed out the door, eager to escape it all a little longer.
It was a five-minute walk to the first offshoot of downtown, which was made up of two rows of shops and diners, each named with clever puns relating to fish, lakes, and boats. One cafe, in particular, the Lakeside Coffee House, caught my attention with its red siding and adorable navy blue coffee cup sign hanging from an ornate iron rod. A cheerful bell rang when I stepped inside.
I inhaled the strong scent of fresh coffee grounds, baking bread mixed with the smell of old wood, the good kind of old. This was antique wood that had been loved and treated kindly over the years. Nothing like what my mother’s lake house had diminished into.
