The Heart of a Home

The story of a child who had everything but love, and spent his years skipping stones across a pond. Or trying to. Part romance, part hopeful tragedy.

He still remembers when he called loneliness peace. Those cherry red pond-side days, so very alone, tossing stones into the mirror-water in a shower of blood crimson petals. The ripples of distorted faces and desert-clouds made him blithe.

No one had taught him; he'd learnt the art by sight, and it perennially puzzled him as to why his stones never skipped the way the other children's did.

Sometimes he dozed in the waterside warmth, smiling at passing peddlars and not noticing how they looked away. Parents would whispered amongst themselves over why he wasn’t at school the way he ought to be, and he would wave thinking they were greeting him.

 

He wasn’t extraordinary: he, a child without wings, his hair the colour of the light he'd never known. They had always held him in the contempt entailed by the extraordinariness they imagined upon him--in his word, on his brow, like a crown among his golden curls. Who was he, after all, besides a lazy, prissy snob who by principle did not mingle with the lower folk? Wingless peacock, they said. Thornless rosebush.

They made a game of calling him names. He laughed with them when they played it, and never knew he was laughing at himself.

 

Then among the crimson petals, he would toss another stone to the water, and the chorus of giggles would be followed by the vanishing of faces he called "friends". 

-

He remembers how he held rings at five. Then he was eight, and learning to write a diary.

Dear diary,

nothing at all happened today, nothing of worth.

I don’t know why the stones won’t skim.

 

He scrunched up his face for a better idea, for something else to grace the page. Ultimately he decided to abandon the effort entirely, and slipped the book into the gap on the shelf--everything in place, nothing where it shouldn’t be. It was a practice meant to save his memories, but to him it was merely a chore imposed by his English tutor.

 

-

 

He remembers also the day he no longer sat alone.

 

Evening is a good time for strange things to happen. It is the time when everyone goes home, businessmen in their carriages, urchins on bare feet when they fear the blindness of the dark. It is the time of magical light, pink yet blue, turning the pondwater gold, when shadows are long and hide black butterflies.

 

The evenings in the twelfth year of his life were as all evenings had ever been. He would watch each red dusk as the street walkers passed blind to him, homeward-bound. He would wonder why Mother with her administration and Father with his ships were never home for him, never homeward-bound just like everyone else. Every day, he returned to an empty house that wasn’t really home"too vast, too hollow. His heart wasn’t there.

 

His heart was nowhere, actually, but he never told anyone. He had no one to tell.

 

In his house waited a hundred servants, but here in a chamber of his heart, he was the only one living there. Life was a ruled line, just like the stones over the pond. He was singular and he had no business trying to pry into their lives. He had no choice; everything proceeded achingly towards destiny.

 

He kept his door locked most of the time. The lines weren’t supposed to bend.

 

-

 

Dear diary,

I think I feel lonely.

 

-

 

So this evening came upon rosy wings, landing on the eaves of the town to wash it red. Today, he didn’t feel like strolling too fast, because what was there to elate him about going home? He kicked a rock off the path. There was dinner, and then there was homework, and then there was bedtime. There was nothing else…

 

He might have noticed the rush of footsteps from behind him if he hadn’t been thinking. He didn’t. It was only when she called that he realised that someone stalked him, silent as parrots in anger.

 

“Snob boy!” came a brash cry from far behind. He stumbled to a standstill.

 

Not a bit indignant at the nickname for reasons unknown even to himself, he glanced backwards--and the girl barrelled into him with a straw hat clutched in her fingers.

 

“You again!” she exclaimed once her brilliant eyes had taken his. Briefly alarmed and faintly flustered, he took the sudden apparition in: auburn hair unruly and unwashed, face a little too dirty, clothes scrappy as urchin's rags. There was the filthy stench of sweat all about her; he almost doubled back before remembering his etiquette. “You’re always here!” she went on, pretending ignorance to his shock. “Where’s your mother? Why’re you always here? Why aren’t you going home?”

 

“Because I don’t have a home.”

 

“Yes, you do!” She would not be turned down, stubborn kid. She was pointing at the mansion a little far away, grinning boyishly. “It’s right there! I see you go there every day.”

 

He defended himself by folding his arms. “What do you know about me?” he answered--and she was right. He ought to go home before more freaks attacked him like this. So he did. She said goodbye, and he ignored her, and she didn’t try to chase.

 

-

 

Dear diary,

I met a crazy girl today.

The stones still aren’t skimming.

 

-

 

He had spent countless afternoons before this stone-tossing--but today, only today had he suddenly begun to realise that it was all going nowhere. He bit his lip. Before this, the activity had contented him enough--he had stubbornly convinced himself so. Why had it lost its charm? 

 

Somewhere nearby, a five-year-old giggled and flung her own stone to the water. It hopped, skipped, and splashed deep into the blue pool on the third impact.

 

“That was great!” came her mother’s cry, as she began to lament the stone’s failed journey. “Almost there; just throw a little harder!”

 

Suddenly he felt that sharp diamond of disappointment, right where it never had before. How long had he been throwing blindly, never realising he wasn’t getting better? He glanced at the flat piece of rock in his own palm, and threw it--but straighter and neater than the girl--far more perfect.

It only splashed as usual, making not so much as a bounce before it vanished in a flash of water.

 

Before he could begin to pity himself, and as he pulled himself from the bank to begin homeward, a familiar voice interrupted.

He turned--it was her again, same scruffy hat on scruffy head, dashing towards him and crying “hey you” with arms flapping like a bird's wings.

 

“What is it?” he muttered when she finally stopped, gracelessly. She panted and grinned, the way she always did. He wrinkled his nose, the way he always did. Push her away, his heart said. She’s so dirty. Shove her away. “Why are you here?” came his question, as coldly as he could manage.

 

“Why are you here?” she parroted the question--and at this, he almost laughed. She sounds so much like me. Her eyes wouldn’t leave him, angry as he tried to look, and she pulled the hat off as her breath began to level. “Why are you here? Are you going to tell me that you don’t have a home again?”

 

“I…do have a house,” he finally confessed. “But it isn’t a home. Mother and Father gave me servants and toys, but really there’s nothing tying me to it. Not even Mother and Father. They’re never there.”

 

The girl pouted back. “Aw, you sound so lonely,” she answered, too aptly, patting his shoulder. The last pat became a firm clasp. “Is that why you’re here?”

 

“I suppose.”

 

“Don’t suppose! You should know.”

 

“--Yes. I have so many things, but I don’t have any friends.”

 

It was about then that he began to see, vaguely. He had never understood why he felt empty despite the abundance that engulfed him. Parents loaded with gold and assets (whatever those were), and a surplus of things--banquets whenever he desired, a huge room with a gilded bed, thousands of jewelled toys.

 

But there was no one there to share it all with, and that made it worthless.

 

The girl did not let his frown drag her wildness down. “What?” she exclaimed. “No friends? Then who am I?”

 

“Being a friend isn’t as simple as that!” he burst out. “My choice must be thought over; my parents need to approve; I can’t just be friends with some stranger I met on the streets…"

 

“Well, that’s why!” she answered triumphantly. “You make it so hard! Almost no one would get past that. Come; we can make it easier, can't we? I’ll be your friend. And you aren't stopping me!” She laughed at the sky. "Good evening, friend!"

 

The sky turned orange as these words were said. He had to go home, he told her. She walked him halfway home that day, up till the bustling junction with the ice cream stand, where she said she had to be home too. He smiled at her in strange gratitude, and left her behind among the houses.

 

When he turned around, he realised that she hadn’t walked away.

 

Then he realised that she had no home either.

 

-

 

Dear diary,

I met the girl again. As always. She says that being friends isn’t as hard as I think--so have I been thinking wrong all my life?

I haven’t learnt to skim stones yet. Is there any point in going on?

 

-

 

So he sat throwing rocks for years to come, one rock for every day. The surface gleamed gold every afternoon, to be shattered repeatedly by his failures. Each smashed the water and descended like the last, and his throws began to grow frustrated. New year, midyear, deep in the winter when this town was only brushed by the tip of the cold.

 

He was growing tired of this game. Am I still innocent, he asked himself now, suddenly, clutching at the newly-picked stone in his palm. So many years; he was still throwing rocks--as before, as always--and they were still plummeting into the pond, as if afraid of his smile. Now he knew that this game had always been a distraction; he had never really enjoyed it.

 

Now that he was past his childish mesmerism, he turned to see the grey world behind. He saw every countenance that passed, jaded to his silent pleading. He saw how their eyes averted his gaze.

 

Am I still innocent? Will I continue to fool myself?

 

“You again.”

 

Then pushed a voice through the paper walls of his sadness, almost bored. He only had a few seconds to feel his heart leap, before she came to sit beside him on the rock and swing her legs over the water, lean from something he could only guess was undernourishment. Her smiled burned less now, but it was only because her body couldn't afford her the strength. Her frame was narrower, somewhat willowy, her back hunched to cold she'd suddenly begun to feel--but her hair was still a mess, and her eyes were still brown and furious when she grinned. Maybe, despite this, she was prettier. He had never noticed her becoming a little of someone else.

 

“Why aren’t you going home? Don’t say what you did back then. It is your home.”

 

Her words made him angry. He knew he shouldn’t be riled by her concern--but she was in no position to speak of such things! No position to make him feel guilty about not having the life he would never have!

 

“Don’t tell me about home!” he snapped straight back, too angry for his liking. “That isn’t my home, alright? Everything’s as it should be, and yet it’s all wrong. I don’t love my home! It’s just a shell, a cave. There’s no one there.” He turned away, stabbed by his own words. “What do you know about me and my life? What do you know?”

 

A strange silence. She didn’t look angry, but her stubbornness seemed to die a little.

 

“What do you know?” she answered at last, a sad echo, head bowing like a leaf on a withered stalk.

 

The guilt struck him in the gut. She sounds so much like me. Trying to distract himself, he snatched a flat stone from the ground and stood. “I don’t understand this!” he cried out with a defeat that weighed down on him. There was nothing more to be said--he was tired of running in circles and finding no end. He needed to make some headway somewhere, but what headway had he made? Eight years on, and everything was still the same.

 

“I’ve been throwing straight all this time--straight as I can! Why isn’t it hopping like it should? Why is it still wrong?”

 

He flicked the pathetic little stone at the water, sending all his rage with it. As always, as it always would--it splashed into the water and sank.

 

Perhaps because she couldn’t see the anger in his eyes, or because she found his failure amusing, she laughed. He turned, trying not to glare at her but glaring all the same.

 

“Well, that’s because you’ve been doing it wrong!” came her bewildering response, and her grin was suddenly as bold as ever. She took her own stone and stood. “You aren’t supposed to throw it straight. Things that go perfectly straight never go far, before hitting something and sinking away. You’re supposed to give it a spin.”

 

His eyes must have lit up; something did light up in him.

 

So it was that a paradigm crumbled, as she lifted her stone and flicked it out of her hand. It went curving from her fingers, spinning like a top in midair and meeting the water at an almost-parallel. The water rose to meet it--and off the surface glanced the stone, magically, hopping a second time, a third--on and on, till it leapt onto the other bank where it thudded into the grass.

 

“No,” he muttered. “That didn’t just…”

 

“You’ve been following the wrong rules all your life,” she answered. “It’s the same reason you didn’t have friends--you insisted on doing it your own odd way! Sometimes, you just need someone to tell you--yes? Tell you what the matter is. Why don’t you try yourself?”

 

So he bent for a last stone of his own--and with a toss that he had practiced all his life, it went soaring like a bird towards the water, but spinning this time. And it leapt, once! twice!--before it splashed away, and by then his heart was bursting and his eyes stung with the tears of a decade and he wished his father had been there to see it skip.

 

With a silly, tearful grin, he whirled to face his friend, so changed from the day they'd met; she stared on back, laughing, "you're crying!" And he found it didn’t matter if she never washed her clothes, or if her hair was no neater than it had been on the day they had met--didn’t matter that his hair was brushed out, his hands soaped to rawness. It didn’t matter if there were scars on her shins while there was not a scratch on his boots. She was the imperfection he had never known.

 

Both glanced at the orange sun that gleamed across the water. He looked down at his hands, and seeing them brought some sort of rue. They were so clean, so flawless, so empty.

 

It took him a while to realise that she was smiling at him with bright eyes and some expectation. He understood, because he felt the wish brimming in him too--and a little reluctantly, he held out a hand.

He'd actually expected her to be a little gentler, a little more ladylike, but she only laughed at the odd look on his face, and snatched his hand so hard he thought he felt tears coming.

 

She walked him home again, and though he didn’t want to admit it, he did like the feeling of her hand safe in his. It felt like a warm connection he had always sought without knowing it. Perhaps Mother and Father had once cradled him in their arms, in those ancient days from which he could draw no memory--but the warmth was gone, and there were only shallow imprints of love remaining.

That warmth had, for these minutes, for these years, been replaced by hers.

 

The shape of the house appeared a little too soon, but he accepted it. He hesitated at the gates, nevertheless, for they looked so coldly forbidding. Mother and Father were probably still at work, and the house was probably just as empty, as grandly meaningless as it had always been.

 

Letting go, the girl turned to face him, and her lopsided grin was more brilliant than the sun behind her. “Are you going home yet?”

 

He saw the way she smiled at the word home. A homeless girl. Then he realised that this didn’t matter either.

 

-

 

But behold, he entered to find his dining room full that evening, guests and servants gathered there amidst golden drapery, a feast spread across the table for every man and woman in the house.

 

At the head of the table, enthroned like deities, sat Mother and Father side by side. “How late, son!” exclaimed his father from the end of the table. “Get yourself cleaned and seated this instant!”

 

He wondered for five seconds whether it was a dream, because the lights seemed so bright. Then he decided he should smile whether or not it was, and he ran to do as told.

 

The banquet was preceded by a speech. “To a successful venture,” announced Father to the chandeliers. The dinner celebrated a valuable new business deal he had clinched. It was about his work again, assets, wealth, windfalls. Mother seemed equally enthralled by the news"not at the sight of their son, or at the dishes painstakingly prepared.

 

It doesn’t matter, he insisted with the bare determination he'd learnt from the girl by the river. He ate and savoured the honey warmth that filled him up. This was the closest he would ever come, he knew. It’s different today. They came home. The house is full. The house isn’t empty.

 

That night at the front door, he finally said “goodbye” to the father and mother who had barely heard his voice before. Father smiled. Mother kissed his forehead and returned the goodbye, told him to take care of himself, to listen to his English tutor.

 

“I want to tell you about everything that’s happened,” he answered, desperate for another second, as they began to turn. “I learnt to skim stones! I met this girl"”

 

“A girl,” murmured Mother, glancing at Father, who glanced back, too knowingly for his liking. He would have defended himself, but the retort was left hanging on his tongue. They had disappeared left, and with the grandest of creaks the doors swung tightly shut, leaving the entrance hall quiet while the whispers of their departure echoed from somewhere beyond.

 

-

 

Dear diary,

 

I finally learnt how to skim stones today"Rae taught me how. She also taught me to love what I have. It’s not easy at all, but sometimes you just need someone to show you how and why. She taught me to love my home just that way, emptiness and all. She taught me to call it that.

 

Home isn’t made up of the people inside it at any one point in time. It’s the sum of actions that have transpired within its walls, the events in its history. It’s made up of love that has been, the love that will be"love that stays to occupy the space within which it was born.

 

It doesn’t matter that Father and Mother weren’t here yesterday, or that they won’t be here tomorrow. They were here today, and that’s enough to make this place home, to me.

 

-

 

He remembers it all too well, because a thousand pages of his diary carry two-line entries about how he didn’t know how to skim stones. His diary ends with the entry written on the day his parents finally visited, because that was the day his English tutor finally decided, eight years from starting, that his writing skills had grown sufficient and quite admirable, and that the exercise was no longer necessary.

 

He lost his interest in skimming stones quickly"strange that all the entertainment vanished now that he knew how to do it. He was sixteen, after all, and the day was long overdue.

 

The children who teased him have left already, birds from the nest with a sky to take on. Things change, have changed, will change. They have grown tired of their games. The fathers who taught them to throw stones stand now with bent backs and decrepit, reaching hands.

 

He never did leave the spot, though. For two years or so, he waited there for Rae among red petals. She always came with the same laughter and the same irreverence as before"but her dwindling state showed through her mask like light through linen, and he continued to wish he could help somehow"until he finally realised that he could.

 

It was two years of meeting and parting and dancing around the subject. He owed it to her; she had saved him first"but the words were still so hard. She dodged his questions so glibly it exasperated him. At last, one afternoon, in that pink-yet-blue evening light, he found the need to stop her and ask outright.

 

“Come and live with me, Rae.”

 

Suddenly, it seemed so obvious. She needed a home. He needed a companion.

 

“Why?”

 

“Because I can’t let you suffer for who you are. Because Mother and Father won’t come home, and the house will always be empty"”

 

He clenched a fist, eyes shut.

 

Life isn’t a straight line. It can change. It will change. They’ll earn enough one day. They’ll come home. We’ll live together. It will happen.

 

Then she gripped his wrist in affirmation, and for seconds, he forgot.

Author's Note

I seem to be having problems with tense; it's not grammatical but rather a stylistic issue. Help?