The only details of the inside of the house where Luke and I lived that I
remember now are those which I drew. The staircase you saw
when you opened the door. A wooden staircase with a wooden bannister.
Central to the house, with the kitchen to the left and
the living room to the right. I spent hours drawing the wood grain in every stair.
It was a small house, belonging to a woman who had gone to Texas to
be with her daughter who was having a baby without her husband. (sent
overseas)
Sitting on her couch after Luke had left, I pictured our
landlady and her pregnant daughter in a rented furnished house -- vacated
by someone else whose husband also had shipped out in a wartime chain of
dislocation.