The Color of Home: A Novel

by Rich Marcello

  A Vikander tradition, Sassa’s family vacationed at Mackinac Island every summer. Her dad packed his car with the family’s luggage on a warm August Friday night in 1994, then locked the car in the garage of their South Bend, Indiana, home, so they’d be ready to leave bright and early the next morning. On the night before vacation, for as long as she could remember, her family loaded into her mom’s car and drove downtown for lake perch and frog legs at the local family restaurant, Phil Schmidt’s. That year was even more special. Sassa had just turned thirteen.

  After a better-than-usual dinner, they headed for home. On the way, her dad buttoned down the windows. Wind raced in and diluted the smell of leftover fish with pine and freshly paved asphalt. The car slowed to a stop at a country road red light. The radio played a song she didn’t recognize. No other cars shared the road with them, even though the Notre Dame church clock had just struck nine.

  Her mom’s favorite song, “Nothing Compares 2 U,' started on the radio. Her dad glanced over at her mom. It was a look that Sassa had seen a few times in the past: his lips parted and a slow smile built. He turned up the radio until the bass vibrated the side doors. Springing out of the car, he whirled around to the passenger side, opened her mother’s door, and gently tugged her out. Sassa eyed her sister. They both giggled as her dad slow-danced her mom around the car. Later, her dad signaled to join them, and the four of them danced until she lost track of time and her surroundings.

  Sometime later, applause. Much to her surprise, a half-dozen or so cars had gathered at the intersection, the folks in them apparently stopping to watch her family promenade around the car. Her dad, always one to seize the moment, instructed the four of them to line up. They held hands and jointly bowed, laughing and waving to their fans on the upswing. They lingered like that, connected, content, for a few minutes before getting back into the car for the remainder of the ride home.

  As Sassa fell asleep that night, the sense of contentment stayed with her. Dad was the most handsome man in the world. Would she inherit some of Mom’s beauty? When did beauty bloom?

  • • •

  Sassa bounced down the steps of her new Cambridge apartment and headed west on Brattle toward Longfellow House. The beautiful morning sun warmed her face. Each day since arriving in the city a few weeks earlier, she’d wandered through the backstreets around Harvard Square, often for hours at a time. The Cambridge neighborhoods, with their abundance of nineteenth-century homes, rendered the picture-perfect backdrop for her stints on the sidewalks.

  Turning onto Willard Street, she wandered past a mother and child hurrying off to school. “Some day,' she whispered. Rounding the corner onto Foster Street, she increased her pace, and passed a three-story, chocolate brown, Dutch colonial home where an elderly couple relaxed on a large front porch. She smiled.

  Why did she leave Nick after a year like all the others? How was he filling his days? Was he writing? Her old lovers had faded quickly after she’d left them. With little explanation, she ran, never looked back, and willingly gravitated toward something new. Why wasn’t that true with Nick? As she walked, he lifted her, left her weightless, groundless. Now and then she stared down, re-focused on the concrete, and, somehow tethered, took comfort.

  After a couple of hours, she circled back onto Brattle Street toward home.

  • • •

  A few weeks later, sheets of rain struck the roof of the studio apartment. Would she walk today? Sassa deliberated over tea. Eventually, she layered on more clothing than usual, grabbed her oversized umbrella, and ventured out. As she drifted past homes and people, the driving rain reminded her of her sister.

  She and her then seven-year-old sister had built a cardboard playhouse in their backyard underneath a large oak tree. They’d just secured the roof when a large thunderstorm passed through, accompanied by a heavy downpour. They rushed into the playhouse and took shelter. Proud of themselves for building something that protected them, they huddled together, mostly laughing, occasionally screaming at the thunder and lightning. In unison they extended their tongues out into the rain and tasted the storm.

  Sassa crossed over the Charles River toward Harvard Stadium and collected rain on her tongue. Slipping through a gap in a chained stadium gate, she made her way out onto the field. For a bit, she balanced her open umbrella on the palm of her hand. Springing it high in the air, she watched as it dove into a puddle at the ten-yard line. The dive was beautiful, in a way. Glancing down the field at the far goal, she imagined frisbeeing a giant quarter the full distance of the field and landing it on the goal post, perfectly balanced. Why not? Anything was possible. She turned to the near stands, and sprinted up to the top of the stadium. Leaning against the retaining wall, she caught her breath and savored the rain.

  “Hello— Hello!” She missed her sister. Her laugh. Her smell. Her strength. She missed breaking rules with her. “Remember when we stole twenty dollars from Dad’s wallet so we could sneak out to the mall together?” The stadium echoed “together.” “We wanted to know how it felt to steal, to get away with something, to spend money that didn’t belong to us.”

  She honed in on the football field below. What if . . . the Vikander girls had been the most popular sisters in high school. Homecoming queens. Completely drenched, she sat down and imagined entering the stadium in her homecoming dress, a long, black, fluid, sleeveless stretch-satin gown with a silver orchid embroidered into the back of the waistline. From a catalog she had recently thumbed through. Her father, incredibly handsome, waited for her at the fifty-yard line with a diamond tiara, and her first love, Tommy, by his side. Tommy, his hair slicked back, had cleaned up well. Both of them were dressed in black tuxes. “I’m frickin’ Charlize Theron!” she shouted. Or Liv Ullmann. She stood up and snapped fingers as she paced back and forth. “Inseparable. The same college.” Snap. Snap. “Married and raising our families in the same town.” Snap. Snap. “Our extended families together every Sunday for dinner. Just like Mom.” Snap. Snap.

  A man entered the stadium. “Are you alright? Miss, you can’t be out here alone,” he shouted up from the field.

  “Fine. Just messing around. I’m leaving.” She whispered, “This is too much.”

  The rain intensified. She glanced at her upside-down umbrella on the field, taking on water, losing the battle to hold its ground against the wind. Sis. Dad. Mom. How could she build a new family if she couldn’t let go? A husband and children. A small group of friends who somehow found each other, who stayed loyal for a lifetime. Would she ever connect enough to let anyone in that way? Would she ever trust enough to call them friend, sister, brother? Would she ever go big and bold, and scream out loud that she was whole, that she’d found her true love, that she was strong enough to be with him?

  So far, no. So far, she kept edging away.

  She jogged down the stadium rows. Lifting her umbrella, she shook off the excess water and closed it. Exiting the stadium, she skipped toward Harvard Square, tapping the tip of her umbrella like she was sending out Morse code, careful to avoid cracks on the sidewalk. As she rounded back onto Brattle Street, she thanked the rain for raising her sister, her father, her mother.

  How much she loved her mother.

  On a swinging love seat suspended from the ceiling of their front porch, Sassa had rocked back and forth with her mother, holding hands, barefoot, her feet occasionally grazing the porch floor. Her mother glowed that spring day in 1994, the sunlight reflecting off her long blonde hair. Sassa sipped a tall glass of her mom’s famous citrusade, made ceremoniously every summer with the perfect amount of sugar to balance the tart. Yum. Her mom wrapped her arm around her, leaned over, and kissed her on the forehead. Yum.

  “The world is waiting for you to make your mark, honey. You can do anything you set your mind to.”

  She curled her toes a few times, admiring her recently applied red toenail polish. She sipped her citrusade. “Why do you want to talk about this now, Mom? I’m not even a teenager.”


  Her mom crossed her legs. She twirled her hair with two fingers as if she was trying to twist the strands into an as-yet-to-be-defined balloon figure. “I want you to know how special you are.”

  A tingling swept up the back of her neck and across her face. “Mom.”

  “You are special. Promise me you won’t take the path of least resistance. Promise me.”

  “What?” she asked.

  “You’re going to get plenty of offers in your life, but many of them won’t contain love. They’ll be too easy for you and more about what someone else wants than what you love.”

  “That’s the path of least resistance?”

  “Yes. Do you understand?”

  “Not really.”

  “Offers will come in all shapes and forms, from lovers, friends, partners, and even from strangers. You’re beautiful, talented, intelligent, and hard working, you know.”

  “Lovers?” She giggled.

  Her mom nodded. “You’ll have many of those.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Do you see the buds on the rhododendron over there?”

  “Yes.”

  “You’re like a bud now. When you bloom in a couple of years, the whole world will notice.”

  Sassa smiled. “Oh.”

  “Just wait.”

  “How can I tell good offers from bad ones, Mom?”

  “It takes time, honey. You’re still young. Listen to your heart each day. What you truly love will guide you through.”

  Sassa lifted her feet, straightened her legs, and drew circles in the air. “Let’s talk about other stuff, Mom.”

  After racing up several flights of stairs, Sassa entered her Cambridge apartment winded. She slipped out of her drenched coat, pants, and shoes, and plopped down on the sofa. Straightening her legs, she painted circles in one direction, then the other, until she caught her breath.

  • • •

  Weeks later, Sassa stepped out into the morning air and dashed toward Inman Square. Stopping in at Darwin’s for a bagel and lox sandwich to go, she scarfed down the sandwich as she meandered toward MIT. Deep in thought about questions that had taken shape during the week, a feeling, faint but constant, pulled her toward the campus. As she passed through Kendall Square, she asked a few of her questions out loud to rehearse. “What makes a good life? How do I serve? How do I not become overwhelmed? How do I love?”

  A handsome man approached during her recital, frowned, then smiled I’m interested as he moved closer.

  She wasn’t. Staring down at the pavement, she sped away. “What do I know? How do I do it all with heart? How do I do it with laughter?” She wanted concrete steps, a blueprint to follow to help build her life. She lacked tools. She lacked role models. Most of her stuff—school, restaurants, guys— had simply happened to her. Had she been lulled to sleep? Had leaving Nick sent her where she needed to go, down the path of most resistance? Her Mom was right.

  As she set foot on campus, she smoothed over her blouse. MIT students must be thinking about similar stuff. They must have better answers, more analytical answers, than she’d come up with so far. If not, Harvard waited down the street.

  She asked a few people about Professor Chomsky’s building, received clear directions, and made her way to his office. Fragments from one of his YouTube lectures reeled in her mind. Wars. Global warming. Not enough water. Not enough food. Power concentrated at the top. No real democracy. Was everyone paralyzed? If he turned out to be even half right, the world was in real trouble. What could any one person do? She knocked on the door. No answer. Squatting on the floor, she bided her time. Sometime later, discouraged, she departed his office and the campus without a single answer. Why bother? There weren’t any.

  On her way home, she stopped at The All-Star Sandwich Bar. All of her questions had made her super hungry. Inside, she surveyed the ten almost-full tables; an eclectic, affordable menu written on a chalkboard; and a number of cute waiters. She slipped into the last free table next to an older woman with beautiful, long gray hair, wearing no make-up, and perfectly dressed in shades of purple. Would Sassa look that good when she was that age?

  The woman was engrossed in a book Sassa didn’t recognize, with the word forgetting as part of the title. Without thinking, Sassa blurted out, “Any answers in that book?” She followed with a smile.

  The woman looked up from her book.

  “Sorry. I’m not as good at small talk as I used to be.”

  The woman nodded, and angled slightly toward Sassa. “Have you ever tried the French fries here? They’re fantastic!”

  “No.”

  “Have you tried the East Coast Grill next door? Excellent.”

  “No.”

  “Same owner. Great chef.”

  “Cool. Expensive?”

  “Not too bad.” The woman appeared to gather her thoughts. “All books have some answers. I guess it depends on the questions.”

  Sassa nodded slowly. She felt a strange affinity toward the woman, like a granddaughter might have with a grandmother. Her grandmother had died when she was very young and Sassa didn’t remember her, but that somehow strengthened the feeling. “Can I ask another question?”

  “Sure.”

  “There’s so much broken in the world these days; how can any of us be anything but overwhelmed? Things seem hopeless.”

  The woman closed her book. About to speak, she cleared the phlegm out of her throat with a sip of iced tea.

  The waiter approached Sassa. “What can I get you?”

  “I’ll have a veggie Cubano sandwich, an Arnold Palmer, and some of your famous fries.” She glanced over at the woman.

  “Very good.” The waiter turned to the woman. “Anything else for you, ma’am?”

  “I’m good, thank you,” the woman said. Loosely folding her hands on the table, she returned to Sassa. Her eyes sparkled shades of blue. “That’s a deep question. What’s your name, love?”

  “Sassa.”

  “Linnéa. With so much broken, there’s a lot of potential.”

  Potential. How could there be potential when she didn’t have a clue where to start? She’d been spinning all day, and didn’t see a way out. Early in their relationship, Nick had taught her how to flip a spin out. When she had some problem at work, with a friend, with him, and was stuck and spinning in a negative place, he would say, Sassa, you thought so-and-so would never do that to you, but they did. That means anything is possible. What a gift they gave you! Flip it and find the positive. Anger flipped to compassion. Hurt to understanding. Fear to bliss. Grasping to letting go. It had worked every time. But this one was the whole world. How do you flip the whole world? “You think?”

  Linnéa reached over and gently squeezed Sassa’s forearm. “The world is more divided now than at any time in my adult life, and I’ve been around for almost seventy years. Something’s gotta change.”

  “You look great.”

  “Thank you. I looked something like you when I was young, but that was a long time ago. Are you Scandinavian?”

  “Vikander.”

  “Ahh, Andersen. Anyway, if we all work together, we might find a way forward.”

  “It’s hard to find ‘we.’”

  “Always hard out on the edge.”

  “The path of most resistance.”

  Linnéa nodded. “That’s a good name.”

  “My mom.”

  “Wise woman. You’re very lucky.”

  Sassa nodded. She pulled a napkin out of the dispenser and placed it across her lap, spending a few seconds adjusting it so it was just right. She sipped her Arnold Palmer, which for some reason reminded her of her mom’s citrusade. Luck? She could use more. Then again, maybe her mom had already given her the only tool she would ever need, the path of most resistance. If she followed it, did she need luck?

  “It may take a few generations, and I can see how you might be overwhelmed, but for me, doing my small part is enough. You have to be okay with the long view, though
.”

  “What’s the long view?”

  “It means big change takes a lot of time and people, that’s all. It might take one hundred years and millions of committed souls to bring about what we’re talking about.”

  Sassa sighed. “I’m not so patient.”

  “Most people aren’t.”

  “Isn’t there a simpler way?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  Could that be the answer? One small step at a time, with an unwavering belief that things would change in the long run. It was too simple. Who made up the rule that life should be hard anyway? That there was a cost to bliss? “One more question: how do you know what helps the most?”

  “That’s the thing. There are so many places to help that almost anything works as long as what you do has heart.”

  “Really?”

  “You could be the first female president or own a local restaurant like this. It doesn’t matter as long as you’re living your life in a way that advances toward a better place, toward the long view.”

  The waiter delivered Sassa’s lunch. She sampled the fries. “Amazing! Want some?”

  “One or two.” Linnéa reached across and grabbed a couple. Then she did it again.

  “Can you see the long view?”

  “I don’t know. It has something to do with more compassion, more love, more truth.”

  Sassa’s throat grew thick. “You remind me of someone.”

  “In a good way, I hope.”

  “Yes.”

  She ate while she continued talking with Linnéa on lighter topics. The benefits of elegant clothing. Good, cheap restaurants in the area. Free lectures all around the Square. After lunch, they exchanged contact information. Sassa left the restaurant exhausted, and slowly walked the remaining mile home. She entered her apartment full.

  An hour later she stepped out again, retracing an old path from one of her first walks. She ambled down Brattle and looped onto Garden Street toward Harvard Yard. Passing the Old Burying Ground, the oldest cemetery in Cambridge, she surveyed the uniform 300-hundred-year-old scalloped slate tombstones, which marked Harvard presidents and Cambridge paupers equally. Arms raised signaling a driver to halt, she raced across Garden Street, blowing the driver a kiss midway.