In the small oblong that was our living/dining room, the carpet was maroon (the color of dried blood) and the walls were light yellow. Did my mother think this combination was cheerful? She did value cheer. It was somehow inconceivable to ask what she was thinking. The couch and two rockers were covered in a brown-and-white fabric depicting farm scenes. Gauzy drapes were pulled across the front windows, softening the bright sun on parked cars and a few ragged palms. There was a grandfather clock on the living-room wall and a wall clock in the kitchen. Between their booms and ticks, time loomed large in that house, though there was little to keep track of. In my memory, my mother is off at work and my father is in the black Naugahyde recliner reserved for him, drinking beer. I make a wide loop around him on my way through the kitchen and out the back door, headed for the patio swing.
Some scientist hypothesizes that space-time records each movement ever made, every loud swipe of the vacuum back and forth across the carpet, every difference between now and just then.
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