It wasn’t until I left my town that I began to learn its secrets.
Winter break after my first semester in university, I drove home the back way and fell in love for the first time with the turns in the roads, the bareness of the deciduous trees on either side, river birch peeling and turning to slush in the canoes of the highway shoulder. I left my home behind and arrived at my house. I hadn’t started calling it “my parent’s house” yet. I wasn’t sure what to call it.
It was December. Over the melting of our Hanukkah candles, I learned about the child predator who used to live down the street, and whose presence kept my parents from letting me walk to my best friend’s house alone. I watched the wax make trails on the valleys and mountains of the crinkled aluminum foil that we used as a fire-safe tablecloth. I thought about the trails my feet had made across the boundaries of the town. Did he walk those same paths? My father told me these secrets. The three flames shook with the wind of his movement when he stood up to leave.
Later that evening, we gathered in a circle in the living room for gifts. My grandma knew how much my siblings and I used to love searching for the afikomen at Passover every spring, so she and Papa would hide our presents around the house so we could have the thrill of discovery. Now, we were older, and our secrets had changed. Gifts were no longer hidden, and I loved the consistency of their contents. Small squares? A three-pack of sticky notes, hopefully yellow or pale blue, those were my favorite. Small rectangles? A new book, or a pair of Kirkland Signature socks. Large rectangles? Tupperwares filled with cashews, or dried fruit, or oatmeal packets. My grandmother had other secrets to keep in mind than the location or content of a Hanukkah gift. She would tell me later.
After our nightly gift exchange, I tried out my new socks on a walk around town. Down the road from my parent’s house, the light from the inside of the red-and-white diner reminded me of an old country painting, Thomas Kinkaide and the beauty in things, or something like that. On the multicolored brick wall of the Trackside Pizza, someone had spray-painted the words “Welcome to Scumner.” That nickname was new to me. I liked plain old “Sumner.” Sumner was where my brother and I used to pick up railroad ties off the side of the tracks and replace them with our stories and legends of where they might have come from.
Sumner reminded everyone of summer, especially autocorrect. One spring, my mother stopped us from going to play with the railroad ties. I learned later that someone had died on the tracks; my father told us that they closed the road for maintenance.
THE CITY KEY 