The Writer’s Corner features poetry, essays, short stories, satire and various fiction and non-fiction from SCAD Atlanta students. To submit your own work for the Writer’s Corner, email features@scadconnector.com.
‘Lemonworld’ by Ana Carrow
Jim and Ada had been in love when they’d bought the house. Jim hated the pink wood paneling; he promised he’d fix up the place. New roof, fresh paint on the walls. He’d leave the cherry blossoms alone, though. He knew Ada liked them. Ada didn’t care what her husband did to the house. She just wanted to fill it with children.
Then Jim went off to war, and Ada received some devastating test results.
For a long time, the pink house was empty.
The shuttered windows loomed over the street, daring to be opened. Weeds began to encroach the driveway, and then the porch. The cherry blossoms shed their buds and rebloomed almost six times over before Jim returned from overseas. He asked his wife why she hadn’t kept up the property while he was gone. She told him that was supposed to be his job. “I suppose we both failed at what we set out to do,” Jim said, earning himself a slap and a night on the couch.
*
Jim and Ada had fallen out of love by the time Jim’s niece came to visit. By then, the three of them were merely coexisting: Jim, Ada, and the house. The couple were cresting the peak of their lives, and the house had little life left to give. More than once, Jim had been contacted by the city and offered money in exchange for the land his dusty old pink house sat on. He always refused. Ada spent her days cooking too much food for the family she’d never have, ghosting her way through barren rooms, her bones creaking along with the floorboards.
Jim’s niece, Casey, was young and bright. She and her girlfriend were headed west for a music festival. Ada seemed to regain some of her spark the day before they arrived. She cleaned, baked a ham, opened the curtains. Jim watched her, yearning for his chest stir with some flicker of love, thinking about how he hadn’t been able to feel excited for anything since the war.
Casey and her girlfriend appeared in a flurry of floral headbands and fringed sleeves. Casey gave her aunt and uncle tight hugs before introducing the tall, blonde girl besides her. “This is Lillian, you guys.” Casey smiled wide. “She’s amazing.”
Jim wasn’t quite sure what words he’d use to introduce Ada.
“Thanks so much for letting us stay with you,” Lillian said. “Your house is gorgeous. So vintage. I bet you two have made a lot of memories here.”
“Yes,” said Ada, wringing her hands and trying to come up with one. “Lots.”
Casey and Lillian made quick use of the pool. They said they needed to work on their tans, which made Ada reminisce about being young, baking in the sun, marveling at the life of possibility ahead of her. Now summers just made her ankles swell, and the heat caused the house’s wallpaper to bloat and peel.
Jim joined the two girls outside, but he hid under an umbrella and behind last week’s newspaper.
“So, Uncle Jim,” said Casey, “what’s there to do for fun around here?”
“Fun?” Jim asked, puzzled. Sometimes he went out for a beer with coworkers. Ada went to her book club downtown on Tuesdays. He realized they didn’t do anything together. Not anymore. “We don’t do much . . . fun.”
“Boo! Boring!” Casey jeered, laughing. Lillian joined in.
Ada brought out a tray of lemon squares, a streak of powdered sugar along her cheek. “Just in case anyone was hungry,” she said. She seemed nervous.
Both Casey and Lillian took one. Jim had never had much of a sweet tooth.
“Oh, wow! These are so good,” Lillian said, turning to Casey. “Remember when my mom tried to make lemon squares?”
Casey grimaced. “Oh, yeah, those were awful. These are much better, Aunt Ada.”
Ada smiled. Tight lips, no teeth.
*
“Are we doing something wrong?” Jim asked his wife the next night. It was late, and they were both peering down at Casey and Lillian from the top of the staircase. The girls had fallen asleep on the couch together, curled into each other’s bodies, one head leaning on another’s chest.
“What do you mean?” Ada sounded like she was far away.
“I mean . . .” Jim struggled for the words. “Do you want to do something fun?”
“Like what?”
Jim didn’t have an answer. Maybe the house had stolen it from them, long ago. He gestured to the girls. “What did we do before? When we were like that?”
Ada tried to think. She really did. “I don’t remember.”
The house groaned, settling around them.
*
They watched the girls leave in the morning. Jim and Ada stood in the bay window, waving until Casey and Lillian disappeared into the nest of weeds encasing their house.
The old couple were silent for a few moments, listening to the familiar emptiness slink back into their home. A dull, domestic ache pulsed in both of their hearts.
“I want to leave,” Ada finally said.
Jim wondered if she meant the house or him.