Kitchen Cabinets
Kitchen Cabinets
By Lena Gemmer
It had to have been the thousandth time Nora found herself closing her hand over the iron doorknob, but now it would be different. It had to be.
“You have ten minutes before I close the sale, ma’am,” the hurried realtor said, checking her watch.
Nora had no answer as she walked inside, recognizing the blueprint like the back of her hand. It had been years, the house hopping from owner to owner, but Nora still remembered this place of dark wood and lofty ceilings that was her and her friends’ sworn dynasty. They reaped havoc on the world that they themselves created.
Running her hands in and out of the rearranged rooms like static, Nora peered into the previous life that was embedded in her mind. The living room leather couches that were once their military bunkers, were now packed with real cardboard boxes strewn into neat and temporary adult piles. Down the same hallway that then ran miles long, rough popcorn walls held the bedrooms together as an inseparable pair—one plastered with Pokémon and Titanic pictures, the other strewn together with horse calendars, “My Little Pony” and the “Polly Pocket Party Pad.” But when she reached them, nothing but barren walls of pristine paint and a few forgotten glow-in-the-dark stars hid in the corners.
They had outgrown her.
Sliding open the door in the back, she found that the lawn was still there, Dandelions popping up erratically without any small hands to pick them. Nora could still see the indents of the sacred ramshackle treehouse where they ran to safety from the dragons.
“We finally got someone to throw out that old playset, a complete hazard for children! Can you imagine?” the realtor exclaimed, close behind her. Closing her hand over the banister, Nora felt the strange cold wood floors under her feet, uninviting and unimaginative, trying to remember the cushy grey carpet made to break their intentional falls. It always did.
“They just had to tear out that hideous 1980s carpet. It was so…outdated!” the relator huffed.
Walking closer to the second floor, as if in a trance, Nora remembered the kitchen was what she understood best as her own. She could almost smell the sugar and lemonade from the birthday parties the family would host, kids gathered in front of the window for party games, her pink sparkling shoes dancing around the room. Her mind back then was free and unconstrained by temporary fleeting things that had no end. The dark wood cabinets previously filled with rainbow plastic cups were now reconstructed with modern white fixtures that were not even placed correctly on the colorless walls. She reached up then to put them back to where they were supposed to be, her hands brushing cold grey brick. It had to be there, just like she remembered it, something permanent.
“Ma’am? What are you looking for?” the realtor asked, checking her watch.
Her ten minutes were up.
