After brief hugs, I led the family up the steps onto the loading platform to our building’s steel front door, which was decorated with ‘A.I.R’ (Artist in Residence) in white spray paint. They followed me silently in single file past the jumble of colorful handmade mailboxes festooning the narrow entrance and up the rickety wooden stairway to the third floor.
“How far away is your place?” Bernice stopped at the top and peered both ways as if looking for the boogeyman.
“It’s in the middle of the block, but this is the only entrance. The owner stores the file cabinets he makes on the first and second floors. Most of the artist’s lofts are at each end.”
“They should put in more lights,” said Tina. “This is creepy.”
I waited for the group to catch up and then continued across the warehouse with Celeste in the rear to shepherd any stragglers. At the far end, I guided them down a flight of stairs to the second floor and through the fire door to our loft where we lived and worked.
“So, how was the drive in from Jersey?” I asked as we approached our door.
No one replied.
Celeste’s family shuffled in after their convoluted journey to our loft. They lingered in a tight cluster and blinked like moles at the bright light streaming in the windows.
“Where should we sit?” Bernice seemed reluctant to touch anything or move away from the front door. She was slightly plump, dressed in beige pants, an embroidered sweater with little bunnies on it, pearls, and a blonde wig.
When we decided to invite her family for Easter dinner, I was pretty sure her parents would hate the loft, but we both wanted them to see where we’d invested our energy and every dime we’d earned, since finishing college three years earlier. Her parents lived in a cozy, split-level in the suburbs. Their idea of a proper home for their eldest child was not a cavernous loft in an old warehouse in an industrial neighborhood without the usual domestic comforts. Until today, family holidays have been celebrated at their house.
I wondered what my parents in Texas would think of our place, but they’d never see it. People in my family didn’t travel unless it was to follow a job or, in my dad’s case, a new posting. I was raised with four brothers in ‘base housing,’ single-story ranch houses with not enough room for anyone. Once my dad retired from the Air Force, he landed a maintenance job at the local Veterans Hospital. He wouldn’t leave Big Spring. My mom, either.
“This one’s comfortable, Bernice.” I pulled a wheeled office chair from under the work table—now a dining table, which Celeste concealed with a bed sheet serving as a tablecloth topped with a basket of daffodils and a shallow bowl of Easter candy.
Bernice scrutinized our freshly painted blank white walls, formerly the color of coffee. After countless hours we’d devoted to building partitions and painting, we hadn’t the heart to deface them with any picture hooks yet. She scowled at the frosted windows with embedded chicken wire and the two skeletal black printing presses occupying the center of the loft. We often joked about sewing quilted tea cozies to make the presses less conspicuous, but we hadn’t gotten around to it. Our rustic handmade work tables were painted bright blue and the concrete floors were battleship gray lit by harsh fluorescent lighting. There was nothing cozy here.
“How about something to drink? We have wine, beer, and seltzer.”
“I’ll have a white wine,” Bernice sat gingerly, while I served the drinks from the top of the flat files on which we’d assembled a temporary bar.
“This is so cool, Celeste.” Tina raised her arms and pirouetted. “It’s so big.”
We’d devoted three-quarters of the loft to an L-shaped printmaking studio lit by three banks of windows. Our living area, with a tiny kitchen, bath, and sleeping alcove, was relegated to the windowless back corner.
“I’ll show you around.” Celeste guided her sister and brother through the loft while Bernice sat stonily sipping her wine, her back to the studio.
“Smells like a print shop.” Joe had been editor-in-chief of his high school newspaper and worked for a midwestern book publisher. “I always loved the smell of ink.” He followed the others into the studio. He was slim, white-haired, dressed in a sport coat and slacks, as casual as he ever appeared in public.
“What’s that awful roar?” Bernice covered her ears dramatically.
“The subway train crossing the Manhattan Bridge. There won’t be another one for at least fifteen minutes.”
“Doesn’t it sound like the surf at Seaside Heights, Mom?” asked Celeste, from the studio.
She’d mentioned that when they were kids, her family used to rent a house there every summer for a week of crabbing, sunburns, and nights wandering the boardwalk.
Suzanne C Martinez 