There was that smell. You know, that “old people” smell. I don’t know how old you have to be to start secreting that odor, but I can tell you that nobody over 30 ever lived in that house, and yet that stench clung to the carpet and furniture like a child to his mother. That miserable scent, combined with shades of 70s browns and muted yellows, was my home. Even to this day, as I volunteer in nursing homes and hospital geriatric wards, that particular smell reminds me of it all. A scent to sum up a childhood: old before it’s time.
I can still remember the day my father disappeared forever. It was a day like any other, or so it seemed back then. He had left for work around the time I was eating breakfast, and I always made sure to give him a hug and a kiss, just in case I didn’t see him before I went to bed. His office job, which I can’t remember precisely what he did, sometimes held him hostage until the wee hours of the morning. So I squeezed him tight and held in the chemical scent that emanated from his dry-cleaned shirt.
In retrospect I can remember vague details of the preceding couple of weeks that might hold clues as to why he left, or where he went, but I guess that doesn’t matter now. Just last year we got the police report that he had been stabbed in a street fight somewhere north of Las Vegas. So I was left, at age 6, fatherless. And even more so confused. My mother didn’t seem to let on like she knew what had happened, but I could never shake the feeling that she had seen it coming.
Submission Name: Past My Expiration Date- Pt. 1
Sarah