Greenfield

Hannah Mazur sent a photo of the house from the street — she had driven past on her way back from somewhere and pulled over, which she does not normally do. Thirty one years my parents have been in that house. The maple out front was a sapling my father planted the spring I was born and it is now large enough to be a problem for the sidewalk, which the town has written to them about twice. Greenfield is not a beautiful town. It is a mill town that stopped being a mill town, with a wide main street built for more traffic than it has had since 1970, and in February it is genuinely bleak. People from Boston are faintly condescending about it. I was faintly condescending about it at twenty two. And I can walk it in my head, every street, in a way I cannot walk West Asheville after seven years of living here. What has changed since May is that it has stopped being the place I am from and started being a place with a question attached — whether we go back, whether the stairs become a reason, whether my father gets to be useful for something. It was scenery and now it is a live option, and I notice I have started reading the real estate listings there, which is not a thing I have ever done.

The Tuesday in May when they kept him in overnight. Before that it was where my parents live. Since then it has been a distance, measured, and I have the number.