Obit 5 (for the childhood home)
Even before Mother passed, she felt like one of those ghosts that could only go home.
The house had always been her best friend: close when needed but otherwise far enough away.
There was no debate about the childhood home that would go to her brother, even though the home had been the only stable thing in all her life, all 40 years (stability not being a trait passed along by the gene pool).
The house was eccentric. Mother had covered the walls, both inside and out with something between frescoes and tromp l’oilel.
She went over one bright Tuesday morning with a handheld circular saw.
She started in the dining room, where Mother had painted three villas (one for each of them) along the longest wall. Hers was the villa at the top of the hill, two black and white cats along the stacked stone walls.
She went into the sitting room, where the drawn cathedral windows on the opposite wall mimicked those from Mother’s apartment in Italy. She cut those out, too.
She went into Mother’s bathroom, painstakingly cutting around the tile, removing the pastoral.
She went into the kitchen, removed the alla prima.
She stacked each piece of drywall in the back of the truck, fabric between each. And then she returned to the guest bathroom, where her brother lay slumped, crumpled in the bathtub, and the saw started to sing again.
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