July 12, 2008

The house on Jupiter Ave.

The house on Jupiter Ave. had been Wellwood’s, where he’d lived as a boy. Where he’d lived all his life and where he died, in fact, in a terrible plummet from near the top of a gable. Though what he’d been doing on the roof, no one was sure; Wellwood certainly had never climbed a ladder in his life, nor even been inspired to do so.

Afterwards Gardenia had racked her brain trying to figure it out, could she have somehow been responsible? There was no other reason Wellwood might have climbed onto the roof but to satisfy her wishes, for he would have done anything she’d asked him to do– the very point of Wellwood. Could she have mentioned a loose shingle flapping in passing? Or gingerbread trim that needed painting, or the tall tree requiring trimming to stop its limbs slap-slapping the windows at night?