“‘Our House’ Redux”

“As though perfectly cued by an all-wise disc jockey, the child-pure simplicity of “Our House” seeped into the air. The song could have been the tune invented by a five-year-old during his first explorations of the tangled grounds (with the warped and wizened cedar tree, wild blackberry vines, and sun-freckled glade) of his great-grandmother’s farm: the tune that provides the rhythm for his unmonitored steps and the harmony for his amble through Paradise. The instant the song identified itself to Skylar, the living air got suctioned out of his body by a powerful vacuum, leaving him anoxic, withered, and gasping. Ilona had played this song for him in her basement once and he had imagined it to refer, as lovers always do, to the home they might one day share. Just as he had with the hologram of Ohio, the loner now took delivery of the full feeling of those minutes spent in embrace, in underground seclusion with his love. Ultra-springy cushions once again pushed up against his rear end; the coarse material of the sofa chafed his forearms; her smells of innocence, oatmeal, and shampoo enveloped him. Again he held her carefully: for she was a wild bird that, while enjoying this rest, always quickened with the urge to take flight and be gone. Again he knew the adolescent love that had as its warp, romance, and its woof, idealism. It was so fragile, like a bird’s egg, and he wanted to stop time and movement in order to cradle it there between his neck and shoulder, forever.”