We would be drinking Lonestar. Or maybe white wine. Because it's hot in Arkansas and there was no air conditioning at Carter and Melanie's. But we gathered there anyway to play cards and drink and make fun of one another and generally experience happiness despite the discomfort of the heat, because sweating with friends reminds you of what life should be: a little bit of sweat, a little bit of sweetness (Melanie always picked out the best wine) and friendship spilling over.
Brad would slap the Essence (Gasoline) card face-out on his forehead signaling not just to me but to the whole group that he held the card I needed for my Pan d"Essence predicament rendering me immobile as five or six of us played Mille Bornes. Patrick had found it at a thrift store: an old French card game that I had played as a child in Minnesota, and elated at his find, our group began to play, long into the night, long past the heat of the day, playing, drinking, loving.
That was a long time ago. When Patrick and Summer still lived here; hell, before Patrick even found Summer. There might have even still been carpet on the floor at Carter and Melanie's. That hideous dirt-stained carpet full of Bradi hair and shoe germs and god-only-knows what else. Now there's bamboo flooring, installed by Carter himself, a year or so after we tore out the carpet and then spent a summer ripping up the tile and scraping and scraping and scraping at the black glue still clinging to the concrete below. Long after we gave up.
There's been lots of giving up over the years. I almost gave up until my friends insisted I went to a doctor and they called my mom and told on me. Erin gave up on Brad, and they divorced. And everyone gave up on the hope that Erin would ever not be a bitch. That was before Brandi gave up her life to old age, and I gave up on men.
There was lots of giving in too. Giving in to love. Love love love. Carter and Melanie married at the flooded river, and Patrick and Summer married under a hoopa, and Erin and Brad married but didn't invite me to the wedding.
We gave in to our passions too, and Patrick, Summer, Carter and Melanie all got children out of the act. I became a minister and continued to act on the stage and act like that was who I was supposed to be. Patrick and Summer moved to the Jordan, Melanie finally graduated from school, and all in all we moved on.
I moved to the Eastside, Patrick and Summer moved back from Jordon to Denton, Texas, Brad moved out of the house that Erin kept and eventually moved in with me until he could find another place. Carter and Melanie even moved, for a year, so Melanie could finish school, but they kept that house, that house that we labored in and played in and slept with one another in and loved.
And lots of people moved in and out of our lives. Erin, the bitch, finally left us for good. And Summer's sister Amber moved to Arkansas on a whim. Ginny and Seth and KC and Rob and Allison and Grant and Beatrice: most of them had been there since the beginning, oscillating in and out of that house, drinking the beer and wine, playing a game or two, if only the game of love, and promising to see us soon. More men moved in and out of my life than I could count and most of them I brought over to Carter and Melanie's, and everyone would learn the new name of the new man and pretend to like this one more than the last.
Now they're selling the house. The cost of having a kid and the cost of Carter going back to school has prompted a move to Wimberley and that house - even more central than my own home in our lives - will go on the market tomorrow to be sold at the highest price to the best bidder. And the tears and the laughter and the orgasisms and the graves and the gardens of that house will be sold to a stranger who knows not where they tread. Take off your shoes, I will tell them. Not because it's hot, because the renovated house, in addition to bamboo floors, has AC now, but take off your shoes because you're standing on holy ground, I will tell them. This is where we made memories, this is where we cultuvated the gardens of our souls and found a little bit of ourselves in the grand landscape that is life and also in each other. We found ourselves in each other. That house is holy ground.
Like the ground underneath the Lonestar we poured over my dead cat's grave in the backyard. Like the ground we skid our bikes into a screeching halt upon after biking to the Parlor and back. Like the ground we stomped our cigarettes out in. Like the ground that soaked up our tears of grief and our tears of happiness.
That house is holy ground. And I will miss it.
