His work just about done, Chad sat down on the avocado-colored La-Z-Boy recliner planted on the beige and brown shag rug. He wondered when the carpet had last been deep-cleaned.
Shag. Some things change for the better. Was there any carpet harder to keep clean? He’d heard somewhere that shag was coming back. All things old become new again. But shag carpet?
Looking around the finally decluttered living room, he was overcome by the red, orange, yellow, and avocado paint and décor. He’d stepped into a time machine. He was back in the 1970s, a guest on The Mike Douglas Show, or a contestant on The Dating Game.
The color scheme had been his mother’s dream. This was the way a home should look. Back then. But this was 2025. No one’s house looked like this anymore.
Except this one did. Here it sat, and he sat squarely in the middle of the past.
“I’ve gone back in time,” Chad whispered, staring at the boxy Magnavox TV. “If I turn on that TV, what I’ll see will be a new episode of M*A*S*H or Hawai‘i Five-O.” And Johnny Carson, his mother’s favorite, would come on at 10:30.
Standing, he headed over to the stairway where his mother had fallen. She’d refused ever to go into a nursing home and had managed well enough with delivered meals, and people to come in and clean the place and do her laundry. Right up to the end. He had to give her that.
Chad looked up to the top of the stairway, closed his eyes, and watched his mother stumble and fall in slow motion. He jerked out of the vision and stared down at feet, bare and partially submerged in the high-pile shag. It resembled an uncut field of dead grass. The dirt, he thought, cringing, was who knew how thick beneath the long fabric blades. Who knew but that he might be risking contracting some kind of foot disease given any germs infesting the carpet?
Again he looked back up to the top of the stairs, closed his eyes, and pictured his mother standing at the top, pointing to him and raging about how he was just like his father.
What that cursing of hers had meant, he was never quite sure, but it had been the climax of one of her most memorable tirades.
Anger, he thought, a sort of smile coming to him. That’s what had kept his mother going for so long. The constant slow burn that blasted out in screaming rage, an erupting volcano.
Now a video of the last time he’d seen her played in his memory. She’d not been angry. Not at all. For once. Actually, she’d been more pleasant than he could remember for many years going back.
They’d sat here in the living room, she on the yellow couch, he on the avocado recliner, and she’d told him the story about his father and how they’d met. It was an old story, one he’d heard before, but the way she’d told it this last time made Chad feel as if his mother truly loved the man she called the most handsome she’d ever met.
A small wave of guilt caused his breath to catch, and he realized he was crying. That did take him back. When was the last time he’d cried?
Not when he’d been called by the police to let him know that they’d found her at the bottom of the stairs. Not when he’d heard from the nursing home that his father had died.
He’d done so much crying in his childhood. How easy all of that was to recall. All those times. Too many of them he remembered so clearly.
Maybe that was it. Maybe he’d been cried out growing up in the house where his mother’s rage would erupt at any time of the day or night, often being aimed at him, although he never understood why. This place where she and his father would fight cruel word battles often.
Some things do change for the better he thought, sealing the last box for the movers. That was it. Box up everything. Send it all to Goodwill. Along with all the furniture. Let the good folks there sort it, sell it, dump it. Chad couldn’t stand to do that.
As he trudged through the house frozen in the ‘70s, he thought about that last time he and his mother had talked. Yes, it had been one of those rare pleasant conversations. If only they’d always been like that.
Closing the front door for the last time, Chad felt better, a burden lifting. Yes, he thought, inserting the key in the realtor’s lock box, some things can change for the best.
Lanning Lee 