Memory Lane

PART 01 » oblivion

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WITHIN MOMENTS OF me pulling into my old driveway, my mother had put me to work.

Dad's old pickup was parked outside the house, already loaded with a few smaller boxes that Carol Cartwright knew she could handle by herself, but it was my duty to work on clearing the bigger ones.

"Just take those out there and be gentle with them, Olivia dear," she said with a warm smile that brought me back to when we were both younger. "I'm going to put some food on, but if any of them are too heavy for you, just give me a shout."

Entering the house was like a step back into the past. Sure, her appliances were more modern now, a top-of-the-line smartphone was lying face down on the kitchen table and not the flip phone she relentlessly held onto because she didn't want to lose dad's — long-since deactivated — phone number, and there was a copy of my college diploma hanging up on the fridge instead of my high school one; but everything else felt so old.

The tacky finish on the kitchen countertop was really beginning to peel now and framed pictures from other the years that seemed high quality at first we're beginning to diminish. There was still an old magnet with me on it from when I was five years old, holding up a frog by the lake while in my purple bathing suit. Seeing it made me feel something strange, something I couldn't place, so I retreated down to the basement where I knew more boxes were waiting for me.

Downstairs was a completely different story.

Nothing here had been updated, in fact all of the old stuff from upstairs was down here now as well. It was like a museum of my mother and I's lives: knick knacks, faded pictures in vintage frames, toys I never really got around to throwing away, and furniture that I used to play on. Of course, it was all arranged more tidily because it was meant to be taken away, but I couldn't help but feel as if I were still here this whole time, as if I never left Forester. Of course that was far from the truth, I had left part of myself here to die and collect dust, I was just more surprised that it hadn't buried yet.

And that I would have to bury it myself.

It was almost the evening when I got here, and I wanted to finish this project by nightfall so I could get some sleep tonight and head out back home by the first daylight. So I grabbed for the first box I saw, grunting as I lifted it, only for the contents of the box to fall out from the bottom.

"Dammit!" I cursed, taking a step back from the mess I had just made.

"Language," I heard my mother call from upstairs, making me chuckle to myself. I was twenty-six years old now, there was no good reason for her to be policing my language. "Are you okay, dear?"

I nodded to myself before realizing that she wouldn't have been able to hear that. "Yes, I'm okay, mom. You just forgot to tape some of the bottoms to these."

"Oh shoot," she said. I had originally thought she would come downstairs to help me out since it was her mistake, but all I heard was her turning the oven on, so I guessed I was alone down here.

I bent down to pick up the things that had fallen out, a mix of toys and pictures from the past, thankful that no glass had broken or I would've needed to sweep it up. The first item on the top of the pile was a thin sheet of paper that I knew held a photo on its other side.

I gingerly took the edge of the picture in two fingers, flipping it over to reveal an image of me sitting on a bench with a man who was all too familiar. It was of me with my boyfriend from college, Sean Perkins. I was surprised that my mom still pictures of us together considering the fact that we had split up a few years ago and I hadn't seen him in ages. I wondered if he was still in town.