I have just scrubbed Anna’s name from the corner of Paul’s bedroom wall. It may have taken a year and a half, but now that room is wholly his.
When we first moved in, I found myself creating a drama in my head about this girl. At ten or eleven, she was forced to leave her home and her swing set. I imagined a dramatic story for her parents that explained why they stopped paying their mortgage payment, a story for why the mother kept a snapshot of her son (Michael) in her bathroom drawer and how she kept it there to the last and then forgot it. I imagined Anna’s reaction come winter when she realized she’d left her size 7, purple-laced ice skates in the attic. I imagined the reasons behind the pair of sneakers left in the garage, the sweatshirt under the kitchen sink. (Turns out that sweatshirt was there for a practical reason, as the faucet was broken when we moved in and turning it on forced water into the under-the-sink area. The sweatshirt came in handy.)
At any rate, eighteen months later, I’ve realized I don’t think of Anna and Michael and their delinquent-on-their-mortgage parents anymore. I see my house and love it as my house. I see Paul’s room, and whenever that door opened all the way, I saw Anna’s height on the wall, marring Paul’s room.
And thanks to magic erasers for getting that pencil and pen off the wall. It’s truly Paul’s wall now.
Great post! You should write up a detailed story about Anna, Michael, the drama of the parents and their financial troubles (maybe throw in a bout of amnesia like they do (so I hear) in the soaps), then at the end, say, “so that’s how I imagined it after I found all of those items.” It would be a great story. I was intrigued reading the transcript of your imaginary Anna. Hope you are well. Dad
Actually Anna was a “little person,” skilled in ice skating, but forced to hide her identity to try to preserve some privacy. She wore the sweatshirt as part of her “Michael” disguise to throw the paparazzi off her trail, then peeled it off and stuffed it under the sink when no one was looking. She was afraid that if she made the mortage payments, the detectives would find out where she was hiding, so she stayed under the radar and escaped in the night. She didn’t dare go back upstairs for the skates.