My mother’s kitchen is filled with smoke from bacon that is being cooked in heavy butter on a frying pan. She is outside calling at a dumb-brained dog that I brought home from the pound when I was sixteen without her permission. She is yelling at the dog from the back porch that overlooks the harbor. Upstairs is a twenty-five year old woman named Lilith who works at the local organic food coop. Lilith lays on her bed and rolls her eyes at the sound of my mother’s yelling. Below Lilith’s room is the kitchen. The kitchen is old and wooden with counter tops that slant downwards towards the floor, sagging with their age. My mother runs inside the house, the dog following behind her with a grin on his face and mud on his paws.
The smoke rises from the pan and drenches the lace curtains, which have slowly turned yellow. Sunday after Sunday my mother cooks bacon in the pan, which is black from Sunday after Sunday’s worth of butter and bacon being left too long to cook. Sunday after Sunday the lace curtains are drenched in the smoke from the bacon. My mother scuffles into the kitchen and grabs a blue-and-white-checkered cloth and swoops up the pan, landing it on the butchers block counter. The bacon continues to sizzle as the butter slides across the pan with the slope of the counter top.
My mother turns around and bumps into the dog. When she looks down at him she sees his muddy paws and begins squawking at the trail of prints he has left behind him on the pine floors. She shoos the dog back out the door, waving the cloth at him as he cringes at her squawking. She bends over and attaches him to a leash that is tied to a post that holds up the porch roof. The porch roof is also sagging with age. The entire house looks as though it is melting.
Inside is the dining room, which is next to the kitchen where the bacon has stopped sizzling but continues to smoke below the lace curtains. In the dining room there are piles of magazines that my mother reads on Sundays as she eats her bacon and biscuits. Three years worth of The New Yorker spill from the wooden bookshelf that sits next to a down-stuffed chair where my mother does her reading. My mother runs back inside, not noticing that the kitten that belongs to Lilith, the woman who lives in one of the house’s three bedrooms, has ran out the door and into the yard behind her. She goes back into the kitchen waving at the smoke with the blue-and-white-checkered cloth.
Billy Holiday’s voice bellows from the stereo in the dining room. The volume of the music drowns out the sound of knocking on the front door. As the song ends my mother hears the knocking and scuttles from the kitchen, through the dining room and into the living room where she sees Levi on the front porch. Levi lives in the second spare bedroom and he has forgotten his keys. Lilith comes downstairs when smoke from the bacon has crept up the stairs and fills her room. Lilith is a vegan and hates when my mother cooks bacon on Sundays. Levi storms past my mother, who is blocking the stairs and past Lilith who is coming down the stairs. He runs up the stairs to get his keys. He is late to get to work at the wood shop where he works restoring antique sailboats.
I am on the phone with my mother as all this happens. I have never been to see her house on Squirrel Island. She moved there three years ago and rents out her spare rooms to young people because she 'can’t live with too much silence.' I have spent the last ten minutes listening quietly from my bed in my loft, a converted warehouse in in Bushwick, where my roommates are either not home or still sleeping. There are three of us living here and I have not seen anyone in three days.
I am listening to my mother mutter cheerfully through the phone about how much she loves Sundays – about how much she loves having a house filled with people – about how the dog loves living by the harbor where he can go on walks without a leash – about how Levi is helping her find a sailboat to buy before the summer – about how Lilith hates when she cooks bacon – about how the kitten and the dog are getting along – about how the lace curtains in the kitchen are turning yellow – about everything, until the three of them, my mother, Lilith, and Levi, collide at the staircase, which is now filled with smoke from the bacon and butter.
Lilith asks where her kitten is. Levi yells from upstairs asking if anyone has seen his keys. My mother says she must get off the phone ‘Levi lost the kitten’ she says ‘and Judith can’t find her keys – oh, and I think the bacon is still on the stove.’ I try to engage in some sort of formal good-bye but find the line dead before I can speak the words. I hang up the phone an turn into my pillow which is yellow because of one summer's worth of sweat and my hatred towards the long, quiet walk to the laundromat. My neck is damp and hot, though the fan is directly beside me. It doesn't cool my neck, just moves the warm air of my room which has no windows to the outdoors, just two squares cut into the top of the wall which look into the living room. The living room windows look into an alleyway. The alleyway looks down.
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