Even though it was colder than a witch’s tit (thanks, Grandpa), and Joanie had the heater blasted to stifling, it was a habit of mine to roll down my window and inhale the damp, salty coastal air. I drew it through my nose a couple of times to burn the smell of kelp and seaweed mingling with the faint scent of the redwood forest. Then I inhaled through my mouth, tasting my childhood memories of strolls across the field of wildflowers behind the house and rugged climbs down the cliff to the cool pebbly beach under my bare feet. There was nothing like it. The freezing air ripped at my chest, across my ears, and rolled around the back of my neck. My face was numb in sixty seconds but I didn’t care. It reminded me of winters with my grandparents and the evenings we’d all bundle up and sit out on the upstairs deck to watch the waves lap and splash against the rocky, jagged cliffs of the inlet.
I longed to be on Kelly Street. I needed to feel my heartbeat speed faster as we pulled into the driveway. I wanted to smell Grandpa’s Old Spice cologne fused with Grandma’s slight scent of rose oil. I craved the heat of the potbelly stove as it pressed its warmth against me, and the aroma of burning oak as it found me safe and sound.
“Wilson, if you’re that hot, just turn down the heat.” Joanie’s voice popped the memories that floated across my mind.
But it wasn’t about the need to lower the temperature in the Durango, or being stifled by the heat J so unselfishly pushed on high. It was about sensing the only home I truly knew before I’d met Max. It was the home of small town familiarity and winter breaks from school. It was best friends sharing their wildest dreams of summer, and sisters lying on the beach while listening to the waves break against the sand. It was the love I felt for J when I didn’t have to tell her where to go as she turned onto Kelly Street. I rolled up the window, smiling at her as I felt my heart speed to the recognizable rhythm of finally parking in the driveway.
“We’re here!” Joanie sang.
“Yep, and you know, J, it’s probably freezing in there,” I replied, looking at the weather-beaten white and gray siding that enclosed the petite yet inviting porch that never failed to welcome me home every time I came back. The short, bare picket fence stained gray by the coastal air seemed to be much older than I remembered when my grandpa built it many summers ago. The shrubs in the front, still manicured and kept presentable, reminded me that I had to thank the neighbors, Mr. and Mrs. Codwell, for watching the place.
I took a deep breath, pushed the car door open, and let the cold, coastal air take my entire body in her clutches. It was easier to bite the bullet and freeze my ass off for the moment while my body became numb than to sit in the SUV and argue with my warmer self about putting on a jacket or trying to bundle up against the cold. Unfortunately, that argument only worked when someone was already home and had a fire blazing in the living room fireplace.
We collected our suitcases and carried them up the worn old steps. The hollow thumps and rattling creaks of our footsteps against the porch reminded me of the times I tried to sneak in after forgetting to let them know where I was on long summer days; times when my grandma sat me down on her old brown tweed sofa and made me listen to all the bad scenarios that ran through her head while I was out. I can still hear her. “Wilson, you could have slipped off the edge of the sea cliff, fell down that sharp, jaggedy face, and been swallowed up by the heavy surf of the ocean. Nobody would have known the difference, because you forgot to check in!” Her stories always seemed to work for a couple of weeks, scaring me into calling the house periodically when I was out playing. But eventually, responsibility gave way to forgetfulness and I would have to sit on the tweed couch and endure another lecture about all the bad things that could happen to me when I didn’t check in.
I never carried a house key, seeing as my grandpa always had one hidden in the most obvious of places. I reached up and pulled open the old faulty glass panel on the dull black Victorian porch light hanging to the right of the weather-beaten door. Behind the flame-shaped light bulb, next to the socket, there was the key. Even though everyone in the neighborhood knew it was there, he thought it was an ingenious spot to hide a key to the house; thinking nobody knew about it but the three of us.
“Holy shit, Wilson, I forgot how cold winters are here. Can you even feel the key, or are your fingers as numb as mine?” Joanie said through bone-shaking chills and teeth-rattling chatters.
I felt my fingers tickle and catch the sharp edges of the key before I dragged it to the end of the light fixture.
“Got it,” I said as I pulled it down and opened the door. Thank God my grandpa rigged the porch light with a motion sensor.