Dear Readers – Today, I am beginning a new story for you that i titled “Changes” but i just wanted to tell you that it is a working title and it might change. I hope you like it! – Greg
Mark Morrison pulled into his driveway after a quick trip to the store on the corner of Larimore Road and Trampe Avenue that everyone simply called the Little Store. He grabbed the plastic bag from the passenger seat and stepped out of the car. After closing the car door, he paused and patted the hood as was his habit, to thank the vehicle for getting him home safe. He turned to look at his home. It was a two story house built by the original owner, Cecil Burgos, in 1936. His family was the third to call the house, home. The house was centered on two acres of land that was surrounded by trees atop a small hill that slid down to a small pond from the backyard. It was the very last house at the back of the small neighborhood and it also seemed to be the tallest because of the hill it stood on. The house is fronted with red bricks featuring a rounded front door next to a chimney stack and a large, square, living room window on its right. To the left of the front door was the wing that had two bedrooms, one in front of the other. A short sidewalk led to two steps onto the porch that ran across the front of the house. What sold him on the house was the circle window on the second floor. It seemed small on the outside but in the room it was placed in, it appeared to be a huge opening into the world it looked out on. He walked up the sidewalk and entered his home.
“Honey, I’m back,” Mark said as he walked into and through the living room, through the dining room and into the kitchen. A short, petite woman stood at the sink rinsing a skillet . She leaned down to place it into the dishwasher that was next to it. He smiled.
“What are you looking at?” she asked as she stood and turned to face him.
He continued smiling as he looked at his wife of forty years. She pretty much looks the way she did when he had first met her on his first day of college. This blond beauty had walked down a stairway and smiled at him as he started up the stairs. She had him at that moment. Her smile is bright white and her eyes a dazzling blue and her hair was still blond as that first day but in a much shorter style. He walked to her and hugged her.
“I was only looking at you, Terri” he said to her. “Only you.”
“You’re weird,” Terri smiled at him and pushed away from him. She turned to the counter and looked into the bag he had set there when he came into the room. “You need more to do than to bother me since you have retired.”
“Well, I could vacuum again.”
“No, I meant you need a hobby,” she said as she emptied the bag of tomatoes, lettuce, carrots, celery, and a single cucumber. “Why not take up writing? You always talked about that if you had more time you would do some of that. Why don’t you go into Marie’s room…”
“You mean the office,” he interrupted her as he leaned against the counter beside her.
“Okay, the office, and start to write.”
“What should I write about?” Mark asked as she turned to the refrigerator and started to place the items inside it.
“I don’t know,” Terri shut the door and looked at him. “Just go do it and stay out of my way.”
She pushed him out of the kitchen.
Mark walked to the living room and sat down in his recliner. He reached and grabbed his reading glasses and newspaper from the side table. He turned the pages but couldn’t focus on the words, so he folded it back up and replaced it on the table. He grabbed the remote and clicked on the television that hung above the fireplace. It sprang into life to the last channel it was on, something on Investigation Discovery. He pressed the Guide button on the remote and found that it was an episode of Deadly Women. Maybe he could write a murder mystery he thought as he stared at the screen. Nah, that would be pretty hard to do. He moved the channel button and the screen changed to the History channel. He pushed it again and it fell on SyFy. He couldn’t remember the name of the movie that was on, but he watched it for a few minutes and finally turned it off. He reached for his cell phone to dial his daughter but remembered that she was at work and she had already told him not to call her there. She also added that he was not even supposed to text her during working hours. He groaned out loud.
“Go upstairs to your office!” Terri yelled from the kitchen.
Mark rose from his chair and went into the dining room stopping just inside the entryway to the door that was on his right. He opened it to reveal a stairwell that went upward to the second floor. He started up the stairs and the aroma of cedar began to surround him. He loved that smell and was always grateful to Mr. Burgos for using cedar in the rooms upstairs. He turned slightly to his left and stepped onto the floor at the top of the stairs. He walked along a rail, back in the direction he had started, turned left again at another corner, and stood at the bedroom door that his two sons, Michael and Samuel, Mike and Sam, had shared. He smiled and started toward the door in front of him. It was the door to Marie’s room. He turned the doorknob and walked in.
Mark’s mind was ready to see Marie’s bed reach out toward him from beneath the circle window, but a desk stood in its place. A green hooded bankers lamp stood at the left hand corner of it and it was pointed toward a closed laptop. Beside the desk, on a corner table, a printer waited to be used. A mesh mid-back desk chair, just for him, was tucked beneath the desk. The desk was built by his wife and her Dad when she was a kid. It was perfect for him to use in his office. He walked across the circular area rug that his wife had thrown there so she couldn’t hear him pacing across the wooden floor every day and pulled the chair from beneath the desk and sat down.
He looked out the circle window across the roofs of the houses of the neighborhood. The old oak and elm trees reached higher than those rooftops providing shade on the lawns below them. It was a bright sunny day and the sky was a high, pale blue with streams of wispy clouds stretching out high above the neighborhood. Mark smiled because he decided what he would write.
He looked away from the window and opened the laptop. It blinked on and it asked him for his password. He typed it in and waited for it to do its startup routine and when the desktop screen displayed the latest picture of his three grandchildren, he grabbed the mouse and right-clicked it. The flyout menu appeared and he selected New to initiate another flyout menu. He selected Word Document and waited again. When the page appeared, he began to type; “It was a dark and stormy the night I was born sixty-five years ago, my dear children, and this is everything you ever wanted to know about me. Well, then again, maybe not.”
To be continued…
My First Stories 