The building that once housed my mother’s candle shop and doll store looks little changed since the day my family departed Addieville. The windows that held my mother’s finest offerings of seasonal wreaths and potpourri baskets are dark and empty, and cardboard boxes stand so tightly together on the other side of the glass that I’m forced to think the building currently serves as another rural storage shed filled with toy tractors and collectible dinner plates. There’s no indication that any kind of business has occupied the building since the landlord evicted my mother’s shop from the storefront, no indication whatsoever that anything continued my mother’s efforts to inject a little enterprise into the community.
The brick storefront remains covered by the creeping vines that appeared overnight following the day Addieville vandalized my mother’s shop. I’m sure they’ve been barren for all these years, for I know that the strange flowers that first bloomed upon those vines were never meant to unfold more than the once. The vines still twist and snake from the window boxes that once housed my mother’s tulips, planted to lend the shop a little color to attract attention. It doesn’t appear as if anyone’s attempted to cut those vines away. The building’s current owner likely hopes the growth will simply fall away. But three decades have passed since their arrival, and I have doubts that those vines will be removed without also demolishing the brick to which they clutch.
And the longer I stare at those twisting vines, the clearer grows the memory of how those strange flowers smelled the day they bloomed upon those wild vines.
I’m harvesting memories as I drift through Addieville, but I do my best to avoid thinking about those dolls. I never appreciated those dolls my mother crafted for her shop when I was young. I never recognized them as children born from my mother’s imagination, never admired the care and craft my mother displayed when so carefully painting faces onto the shells of her matryoska dolls, or when stitching together skirts for her cornhusk daughters. I was a boy, and I had no interest in dolls, though I now regret my failure to see how much love my mother poured into her efforts, hoping that one of her homemade dolls set in her shop’s window might attract a child’s attention. The dolls never deserved the fortune the town gave to them. I wish I could just remember the eyes mom sewed onto their cloth faces, or the clothespins she painted into nutcrackers. I wish I could forget the voices Mr. Turner gave to one doll. I wish I didn’t remember how Mr. Turner turned one of my mother’s creations into an abomination.
But I cannot prevent my memory from returning to that day when I heard that plastic doll scream. I’ve returned to finish what Mr. Turner started. I’ve come back to burn some fresh ash, and to claim those tiles Mr. Turner promised would wait for me. I have to accept it all if I want to step onto Mr. Turner’s trail. I can’t take only the good.