Speaker 1: Us was to be hers.
Speaker 2: The porch swing. The porch swing hung from two chains
Speaker 2: attached to the beam above the front porch, and it
Speaker 2: moved in a slow, gentle arc forward and back, forward
Speaker 2: and back, as if it were breathing. Veranda sat in
Speaker 2: it every evening, just after the sun went down and
Speaker 2: before the street lights came on, in that soft in
Speaker 2: between time when the world was neither day nor night,
Speaker 2: but something in between, a pause, a hell breath, a
Speaker 2: moment that did not want to end. She had lived
Speaker 2: in this house for twenty three years. The porch swing
Speaker 2: had been there when she arrived, left by the previous owner,
Speaker 2: a widower named Harold, who had built it himself from
Speaker 2: cedar planks and brass chain links. He had told her
Speaker 2: when he handed her the keys, the swing is the
Speaker 2: best part of the house. Do not ever take it down.
Speaker 2: She had laughed, because she thought he was joking. He
Speaker 2: was not. The swing was, as he had promised, the
Speaker 2: best part of the house. Every evening, the ritual was
Speaker 2: the same. She came out the front door with a
Speaker 2: glass of iced tea or sometimes lemonade, or sometimes just water,
Speaker 2: with a slice of cucumber floating in it. She settled
Speaker 2: into the swing, arranging herself the way a bird arranges
Speaker 2: itself in a nest, finding the exact position that felt right,
Speaker 2: one leg tucked under her, the other resting on the
Speaker 2: porch floor, the glass on the wide arm rest where
Speaker 2: it could not tip. She pushed off gently with her
Speaker 2: foot and began the slow, rhythmic motion that would carry
Speaker 2: her through the next hour or two, or sometimes three,
Speaker 2: until the night was deep and the neighborhood was asleep
Speaker 2: and she was ready to go inside. The first thing
Speaker 2: she noticed every evening was the sound the porch swing
Speaker 2: made a faint creak when it moved, a soft, metallic
Speaker 2: whisper that was almost too quiet to hear. She had
Speaker 2: oiled the chains many times, and the creak had diminished
Speaker 2: to almost nothing, but she had never tried to eliminate
Speaker 2: it entirely because she liked it. It was the sound
Speaker 2: of the swing doing its work, the sound of rest,
Speaker 2: the sound of the evening beginning. She associated it with relief,
Speaker 2: with the feeling of safe letting down a heavy thing
Speaker 2: and feeling the weight to leave her shoulders. Think they mean, neighborhood.
Speaker 2: It did not arrive all at once. It unfolded slowly,
Speaker 2: like a flower opening in time laps. First the children.
Speaker 2: They were still outside when she sat down, still running
Speaker 2: through the yards, still shouting and laughing, their voices bright
Speaker 2: and high and full of the wild energy that children
Speaker 2: have in the evening, as if the setting sun were fuel,
Speaker 2: as if the coming night were a dare. They ran
Speaker 2: with sticks and balls and plastic swords. They chased each
Speaker 2: other through hedges. They climbed the big oak tree on
Speaker 2: the corner and sat in its branches like birds, looking
Speaker 2: down at the street, at the cars, at Veranda on
Speaker 2: her porch, swing, at the whole world spread out below
Speaker 2: them like a map. Then the parents called them in.
Speaker 2: It started with one voice somewhere, a mother or a father,
Speaker 2: calling a name, and then another voice answered, and then another,
Speaker 2: and the children began to peel away, one by one,
Speaker 2: dropping from the tree, abandoning their games, running toward the
Speaker 2: warm light of their homes. The street grew quieter, the
Speaker 2: games ended, the toys were gathered up and carried inside.
Speaker 2: Doors opened and closed. The neighborhood was putting itself to bed.
Speaker 2: Yanda watched all of this from her swing. She did
Speaker 2: not know all the children by name, though she knew
Speaker 2: some of them, the ones who had lived on the
Speaker 2: street long enough to wave at her when they past,
Speaker 2: the ones who had asked her once shyly if she
Speaker 2: had a cat, because everyone assumed that a woman who
Speaker 2: sat on a porch swing every evening must have a cat.
Speaker 2: She did not have a cat. She had a plant,
Speaker 2: a fern that sat on the porch railing and grew
Speaker 2: in the evenings, or so it seemed, reaching its fronds
Speaker 2: toward the light of the porch lamp, as if it
Speaker 2: were trying to read something written there. After the children
Speaker 2: went inside, the adults appeared. They came out to walk
Speaker 2: their dogs, to water their gardens, to stand on their
Speaker 2: porches and look at the sky. Some of them waved
Speaker 2: at Veranda. She waved back. A few of them stopped
Speaker 2: to talk, not for long, just for a minute, the
Speaker 2: way neighbors talk when they have seen each other every
Speaker 2: day for years and do not need words to fill
Speaker 2: the space between them. They talked about the weather, about
Speaker 2: the garden, about the new family that had moved into
Speaker 2: the house on the corner with the blue door. They
Speaker 2: talked about nothing in particular, and the nothing was everything,
Speaker 2: because it was the texture of their lives. The small
Speaker 2: daily fabric that held them together. Then the lights came on.
Speaker 2: This was Veranda's favorite part. One by one, the windows
Speaker 2: and the houses across the street lit up, each one
Speaker 2: a different color, a different warmth. The house on the
Speaker 2: left had a kitchen light yellow and bright, and through
Speaker 2: the window she could see the shape of someone cooking,
Speaker 2: moving back and forth between the stove and the counter,
Speaker 2: the small domestic ballet of making dinner. The house next
Speaker 2: door had a blue glow a television and the faint,
Speaker 2: barely audible sound of a laugh track, a sitcom, something
Speaker 2: old and familiar that someone was watching for the hundredth time,
Speaker 2: because the predictability of it was comforting, because knowing what
Speaker 2: would happen next was a kind of peace. The house
Speaker 2: across the street had a reading lamp, a single warm
Speaker 2: circle of light in a dark room, and Veranda could
Speaker 2: see the outline of someone sitting in a chair, a
Speaker 2: book open on their lap, their head slightly tilted reading.
Speaker 2: She liked that light the best. It was the light
Speaker 2: of solitude, of chosen quiet, of a person who had
Speaker 2: decided that this was how the evening would be spent,
Speaker 2: in the company of a story, in the gentle company
Speaker 2: of pages turning. The street grew darker. The street lights
Speaker 2: came on, casting their amber pools on the pavee. A
Speaker 2: car passed slowly, its headlights sweeping across the houses and
Speaker 2: then moving on, leaving the street in its usual quiet.
Speaker 2: A dog barked once, then was still. The crickets had
Speaker 2: begun their song, a high, continuous hum that rose from
Speaker 2: the grass and the hedges and the spaces between the houses,
Speaker 2: a sound so constant that it became silence, the way
Speaker 2: a river becomes still when you have listened to it
Speaker 2: long enough. Veranda sipped her tea. The ice had melted,
Speaker 2: the drink was water, now warm and faintly sweet. She
Speaker 2: did not mind. The porch swing moved beneath her, forward
Speaker 2: and back, forward and back, its gentle arc marking time
Speaker 2: in a way that clocks could not, a time measured
Speaker 2: not in minutes, but in breaths, in SIPs. In the
Speaker 2: slow darkening of the sky from blue to purple to black,
Speaker 2: she thought about her day not with any particular urgency,
Speaker 2: not with worry or regret, but with the idle, drifting
Speaker 2: attention of someone who knows that the day is over
Speaker 2: and cannot be changed, and does not need to be.
Speaker 2: She thought about the book she had read, the meal
Speaker 2: she had cooked, the phone call she had made to
Speaker 2: her sister who lived three hours away and talked too
Speaker 2: fast and made her laugh. She thought about the small things,
Speaker 2: the way the morning light had fallen on the kitchen table,
Speaker 2: The way the cat in the yard next door had
Speaker 2: sat on the fence and looked at her with its
Speaker 2: unblinking eyes. The way the air had smelled after the rain,
Speaker 2: green and alive and full of the scent of wet earth.
Speaker 2: The night deepened, the last lights in and the neighborhood
Speaker 2: went out one by one, until only the street light
Speaker 2: on the corner remained, burning steadily, keeping watch. Vernada finished
Speaker 2: her drink. She set the glass on the arm rest.
Speaker 2: She sat for a moment longer, listening to the crickets,
Speaker 2: feeling the gentle motion of the swing, letting the quiet
Speaker 2: settle into her bones. Then she stood slowly and folded
Speaker 2: the blanket that she kept on the porch chair for
Speaker 2: cooler nights. She carried it inside. She locked the door.
Speaker 2: She turned off the porch light, and the swing was
Speaker 2: left alone in the dark, hanging still for the first
Speaker 2: time all evening. Its chains motionless, its seat empty, waiting
Speaker 2: for tomorrow, when she would come back with her glass
Speaker 2: and her blanket and her quiet, and the swing would
Speaker 2: begin again, forward and back, forward and back through the evening,
Speaker 2: through the night, through the soft, slow turning of the world.