About an hour after Lily got home she and her parents finished moving her baggage from her car to inside the house. Once inside the house, the baggage was moved into Lily’s old bedroom. But Lily had brought more than could fit and so some of the baggage went into the coat closet. The rest stayed in the car. This took the whole family some time, but it also allowed them enough time to talk about the weather. The three de-packers also learned that despite some unwarranted fears, nobody was missing any fingers or pregnant.
During this time, Lily successfully dodged questions about why she was returning home, as she wasn’t ready to confess her money troubles to her parents. Her mom let the issue go pretty easily, but her dad made it clear that he didn’t understand the situation several times. Lily’s mom made her questions rapid-fire, leading Lily to think they were in hurry. In truth, Lily’s parents were trying to avoid their own inevitable confession. But the treadmill in the bedroom, standing like a proud elephant, was too big to ignore forever.
Her parents each dropped a bag to the floor. Lily held onto hers and stood in the doorway. Lily was too distracted moments earlier when first moving bags into her old bedroom but now she was catching up to herself. Her old bedroom was missing a bed. In the bed’s place, there was a treadmill, making this former bedroom a current treadmill room.
So am I going to sleep on the Tread Master 3000 or is one of my parents ingeniously taking advantage of a sleep-walking habit, thought Lily, who then vocalized her concern. Neither of Lily’s guesses was correct. But as Lily’s mom started to explain, Lily tried to think like her parents and began to figure out the last few years. Lily’s mom had hoped, and expected, Lily to at least visit more often. And of course Lily should have. But after the long absence, her mom began to see Lily’s bedroom as a walk-in memorial. Years later, she stopped including the abandoned room in her bi-monthly vacuuming.
Lily hypothesized that a few months ago some 14-year-old came into Lily’s father’s shoe store, put on some running shoes and then tried them out by running out of the store. The kid never came back so Lily’s father decided it was time to start getting back in shape; or at least get quicker. Lily’s mom readily confirmed this guess. Lily’s father bought the treadmill last winter and put it in the bedroom.
Feeling he had just been thrown under the proverbial bus, Lily’s father pointed out that he hardly ever uses the room. Especially not the five-pound aerobics weights in the closet. Realizing that this was an unhelpful defense too late, Lily’s father told Lily that they put some blankets on the sofa in the downstairs living room; the newly enlarged living room. Lily didn’t express immediately disdain or excitement, so her father didn’t know whether to take credit for the idea or point an accusing finger at his wife. Confused, Lily asked for, and received, a tour of her own home.
-Well, you can see the old bedroom has been made into a new exercise room, explained her father. We couldn’t move the treadmill downstairs so we turned the old exercise room into a home office room with a computer, printer and new TV. We moved the old exercise room TV into the new exercise room--that one over there--and the kitchen TV stayed in the kitchen. This all meant then that the wall separating the old home office and the living room could be torn down and made into one, larger living room. The new--or at least bigger--living room has the same TV as always plus the old TV from the old home office. Also, the master bedroom got a new TV so the old bedroom TV was put in the walk-in-closet.
-How many TVs do you have on right now, asked Lily.
-Oh, at any given point, there were probably three TVs on in the house, said her mom.
-I don’t know why, added her father. It’s not like there’s ever anything good on anymore.
Curious if her parents were going to start using TVs as currency, Lily considered the other rooms in the house, specifically the guest bedroom. Slightly embarrassed, Lily’s mom defended that she thought Lily would feel more comfortable sleeping in the basement living room like when she used to have sleepovers, rather than the guest bedroom--where Lily never slept as a kid.
Lily remembered the popcorn fights she and her friends would get into. The girls never ate as much popcorn as they teasingly threw at one another. Lily hadn’t talked to any of them in months but on some level credited them all with making her who she was. The advent of boyfriends strained some of the girls’ middle school and high school friendships, but none were destroyed. Life just came between the friends and now Lily wondered who actually remembered her anymore. There was the likely, or certain, possibility that her old friends had at least forgotten some of the nights they had shared in the basement as teenagers. Memories are exclusive clubs, special if they’re shared but lonely if they aren’t. And though Lily intuitively felt the latter, she felt more pain at the idea that she might have forgotten old friends. Lily also found it odd that she couldn’t remember why or when she stopped talking to her old friends. Even her friends from college, like Blair, only occasionally came back into her life. Very occasionally.
Lily’s dad offered more insight on possible sleeping arrangements, but Lily had decided. She’d sleep on the sofa with pillows, blankets and popcorn--like the old days, even if by herself. No, Lily didn’t want to sleep in the guest bedroom, even though it also had a TV. Was there a way to remember forgotten memories?
Later that night Lily’s parents tried to gently extract as much information out of her as they could while watching TV. Lily couldn’t figure out if they were watching TV to not look too interrogative regarding her affairs or if they genuinely just wanted to learn about their daughter during the commercial breaks. Lily tried not to condemn her parents. Perhaps watching TV was just their hobby; after all, they work all day.
Lily wasn’t too sure how much she wanted her parents to know. More than that though, she didn’t want her parents to know how much she didn’t know herself. Lily wondered if her parents didn’t want Lily to know anything or if they didn’t want her to know what they didn’t know. At this point Lily was interrupted with questions she had already asked herself. Why come home? How long will you be here? Why now? Why didn’t you come back earlier? Do you want a job? Do you have a job? Do you have a boyfriend? Do kids still go on dates nowadays? She’s not a kid anymore. Sorry, but the Shelley’s said their boy was dating, you remember him? When was your last boyfriend? Was it Aiden? No, wasn’t it Jordan? What happened to Jordan? I liked him, didn’t you like him? Have you thought about marriage? You’re the only hope we have for grandchildren, you know.
-Mom, Dad, enough. People don’t go on dates anymore.
-They don’t?
-No, we just hang out for a while and then get married for the tax breaks.
-Have you turned cynical, Lily?
-I’m not cynical, I’m bored.
Unsure what she meant, Lily and her parents watched TV in familiar silence. There was a local commercial with so many wipe transitions that it reminded Lily of her parents’ local commercial advertising her dad’s shoe stores. Lily was little enough back then to think the commercial, which only ran for a week, made her parents famous. After all, they were on TV. In the great rat race of life, her parents had won. Over time Lily realized the commercial was stupid and its effects were negligible. Over more time though, Lily saw her parents as a little courageous, a little humble and a little inventive. As this was more than she previously thought, Lily concluded that, on some level, appearing on TV was not only fun but had an effect on real lives.
Without communicating, her dad agreed with Lily. Earlier that day, her parents had been invited to a party sometime next week, after the shoe convention. A friend at the advertising agency who had suggested the commercial idea was hosting the party. Since meeting years ago, the shoe business had slowly picked up, along with the city as a whole. And the advertising agency changed its name to Big Ads Agency.
By eleven o’clock, all of the TVs were off and most of the people asleep in the house. But penniless and now bed-less, Lily laid down on the sofa and looked up at the ceiling trying to figure out if she had made a mistake leaving her home or if she had made a mistake by coming home.
-Why did I stay away from this house for so long?
Trying to simplify her life down to another aphorism, Lily told herself to stop considering the unknowns of the past and, for the first time in a while, consider the unknowns of the future.
She tried to imagine what it would be like to fall in love again. Unfortunately this was too difficult so instead Lily fell asleep wondering what it would be like to win the lottery four or five times in a row.
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