The wild took over their home so quickly that the Sandersons only had time to save themselves and not any of their things. Well, except for Jim, the father. He got out with his laptop under his arm because he’d been facebooking when the invasion began.
So there they were, castaway on the sidewalk, while everything that a house was meant to keep out rioted inside. They heard crashes and thumps and the shattering of glass as their possessions were shoved and flung around by a mad growth.
The house was designated a wilderness park. The Sandersons were compensated handsomely by the government and bought a new house in another suburb. But there were things in the old house that couldn’t be replaced. They soon ventured back in to see what they could recover.
The house had become a place civilized people couldn’t stay long. The profusion of stalks and leaves and creepers and roots turned travel beyond the front door into one of those dreams where every movement is an immense labour. The air was too humid. The smells too rich and alien. And things could be heard slithering and skittering deeper in the interior. Rita, the mother, found only a single fork on the first expedition, and carried it reverently back to the car afterward. She’d never appreciated the sheer wonder of cutlery before. And how strange was it that returning outside from that green rampage was like stepping into a comfortable room. The sun no more than the world’s brightest lightbulb.
They visited their old house a number of times over the weeks and months that followed. Rita retrieved her wedding photo album. It had been gnawed at and water-stained but most of the pictures were salvageable. Jim found a sandal, a sofa cushion, the face of the beer clock from his den. Kyle, the son, managed to penetrate to his old bedroom and brought out one of his hockey trophies and the mixed CD his ex-girlfriend had made to tell him she still cared about him. They all found keepsakes, toys, impulse purchases that had been boxed up and forgotten long ago. Each recovery, no matter how cherished or trivial, was like a piece of buried treasure.
Then Robin, the daughter, was bit on the calf by something she never saw. It was a deep, flesh-removing bite, requiring minor surgery and shots. That was the last safari of the Sandersons to their former home.
Some winter evenings after leaving work Jim goes out of his way to drive by the old place. He parks and walks up the lawn in the early twilight. The glass in the windows is long gone and he can hear hoots and calls in languages no one will ever teach him. He stands on the front step, listens, lifts the lid of the mailbox. It’s always empty. He extends a finger, presses the doorbell and thinks maybe he can hear it chime amid the insect symphony, deep within. No one comes to see who it is. The door handle is in reach but he is a thousand miles away, an exile.
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