NYC pictorial pt. XIII

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a short segment from the novel I'm writing:

Her hometown of Irvine is exactly what you’d expect of a Southern Californian suburb. Cookie-cutter, pristine, shrubs and flowers caged, kept from unruly abandon. No buildings reach above five floors, the streets are wide, there are no buses to be seen and of course, no pedestrians. The sun beats down everlastingly on the sterile landscape. In the distance, the San Bernadino mountains loom in the musky haze -- a comforting presence to Deena who often finds Boston’s landscape curiously alien.

They turn onto their street and Deena looks at her childhood home; a two-story, taupe house with adobe-red tiles slanting down from the roof. The garage door is new, blindingly white. The front garden is beautiful. Her father, an avid gardener, spends many hours in the hot sun puttering around his plants, flowers and trees, tunelessly whistling or singing an old song from his childhood. There are exotic bird of paradise, a white pebble path leading to the front door and even a guava tree loaded with the precious fruit, supple in their smooth green skins.


Deena opens the door and immediately hears the scrabbling click of the dog’s nails on the tile. Their beagle, Donut, comes yelping and bounding up to her. She drops to her knees and happily submits to his frantic sniffing and licking. Donut is her mother’s especial favorite and he’s gotten charmingly fat. He sniffs around her feet in a frenzy of welcome, pudgy body wriggling with joy. Just as quickly, Donut prances off.


Deena surveys the house with a satisfied sigh. Nothing has changed significantly. It is her childhood home, preserved in the gel of her memories. The same Chinese paintings adorn the wall above the upright piano she spent so many hours slaving over as a child. The kitchen directly in front of her is sparkling clean, the sunlight streaming in through the three stained-glass windows. The circular glass dining table gleams. As decoration, her father had inserted hundreds of quarters under the glass. They shine welcomingly. Through the open window, Deena hears birds softly chirping and the distant happy screams of children playing in a pool.



She is home.

Little Lion Man