Mormon prophet Brigham Young’s apricot orchard. One of the few original trees still existed in our yard. The tree produced copious amounts of fruit each year, and I remember watching my mom and dad pick the apricots and place them in baskets, which I’d sell by the side of the road for two dollars a bushel.
The backyard had been magical to me—my own fantastical kingdom where I battled bad guys and villains and ruled with a broom sword. Our backyard neighbor, an elderly woman I called Mrs. Betty, had two frenetic, cotton-white toy poodles that would stick their noses through the space between the fence slats and lick my hand, which delighted me to no end.
The dogs’ yapping would alert Mrs. Betty to my presence in the backyard, and I’d hear her slide open her back door and then push her walker through the grass to see me. Looking back, I think she must have been terribly lonesome. Sometimes she would bring me cookies, which tasted of rancid butter but were still sweet and welcomed.
The lady sitting next to me on the plane reminded me of her. I thought about what she had said to me about homecomings. I once edited a book by an author who had fought in the infantry during the Vietnam War. The book shared his emotional journey of going back to see the places where he had served. There was now a McDonald’s where there had been an intense firefight and he’d lost his leg and two of his best friends. I remember how his book made me feel. In some ways I felt the same anxious anticipation as Wendy slowly drove down my childhood street.
The house’s lights were off, leaving the home dark and still as if it had died along with my father. The yard’s only illumination came from the fingernail October moon and the vintage-style streetlamp that straddled the property line between my father’s home and the ivy-covered brick house to the south. In the dim light I could see that someone had already left a vase of flowers at the front door.
Wendy pulled into the driveway, put the car in park, and shut off the engine. The quiet of the moment struck me. Not just between us, but the whole new world. Downtown New York is never really quiet, something you sometimes forget until you’re away from it.
I suddenly wondered whether my father’s body was still inside. They wouldn’t have left it for me, would they? It was as if Wendy had read my mind. “He’s gone,” she said, adding, “the funeral home picked him up.”
I turned to her. “Was anyone with him when he died?”
“I was. And a nurse from hospice. He was in a lot of pain, so we had him on a morphine drip.” I could see tears again welling up in her eyes and, still looking away from me, she furtively brushed a tear from her cheek.
“I’ll get my luggage,” I said.
Wendy opened the hatch while I walked around and pulled out both bags and my carry-on. Wendy got out of the car and walked to the house’s side door and unlocked it using a key from her key chain. She propped open the door, then went to get the one suitcase I had left.
Passing over the threshold was like entering a time machine. I flipped on the kitchen lights then stepped up into the kitchen.
The first thing I noticed was the movement of the Black Forest cuckoo clock on the wall next to the refrigerator, its carved-wood pendulum swinging from side to side above the brass pinecone-shaped counterweights. The clock had transfixed me as a child. My father had brought it back from Germany, and it was unlike any other cuckoo clock I’d ever seen. It had three blue butterflies on its face that moved along with the rest of the clock’s mechanics. For the longest time I thought the butterflies were real. It was a constant in the magical thinking of my childhood.
Butterflies were a theme around our house. My father collected butterflies the way some people collect thimbles and little souvenir spoons. He gathered them in different varieties all around the house, from carved olive wood to plastic ornaments. When I was little, he told me they were “flying flowers” that had set themselves free from the constraints and stems of life. I believed him. I used to believe everything he said.
The house smelled antiseptic and dank, like a nursing home or some other