Songbird
A (Potential) Novel by Eileen Kelly
Piper Merriman's House
All of the houses in Cedar Island’s more recently-developed neighborhoods look similar to one another, different combinations of brick and muted vinyl siding and stones arranged to form a structure that differs only slightly from those that lie on either side of it. Today the weather is colder, leaves starting to dance downward from branches in the forests that border these newly-paved streets, and somehow the slightly unnerving uniformity only adds to the icy feeling.
At the end of one of the last streets in the neighborhood is the Merrimans’ house. It’s similar in style to every other home, with siding in a light shade of crystalline blue and gray fieldstone accents at the entryway. The front lawn gives the distinct impression of being the type that you would be shouted at for walking across. A fence just tall enough to prevent you from seeing over it encloses a backyard, and you find yourself hoping that there’s more on the other side of it than just the perfectly-trimmed hedge rows that border the house on the front side.
If you were invited inside this home, you would likely be unsurprised--the color palette of gray,
white, and black is carried into the interior as well, all throughout the lower level, which has a large, open living room, kitchen, and dining room, as well as a tidy office and bathroom. In fact, you may find it hard to believe that anyone actually lives in this house at all, given the immaculate arrangement of everything from the dishes in the glass-fronted cupboards to the flowers on the table in the entryway. Upstairs, however, it’s slightly more obvious that the house does have actual, living inhabitants, and one bedroom in particular is inarguably lived-in, with piles of laundry (you pick out a football jersey in one, a pair of ripped jeans in another) and sports equipment strewn across the beige carpeting. The bed is unmade, but despite the messiness, the disarray of this room would feel relieving to you, a sense of reality and imperfection in a house that seems to be trying it’s best to be perfect.