VUE Long Island

e screen door always announced summer. It never mattered who opened it. Children burst through it with sandy feet and dripping Popsicles. Teenagers slipped through quietly aer curfew. Parents carried grocery bags balanced against their hips while shouting for someone, anyone, to help unload the car. Every June, the door slammed a little louder. Every September, it closed a little soer. ere was a rhythm to the seasons here. e first hydrangeas bloomed just before Memorial Day. Beach towels appeared on the clothesline by mid-June. e grill was wheeled onto the patio the week before the Fourth of July. By August, someone had inevitably forgotten sunscreen, someone had fallen asleep in the hammock, and someone had tracked enough sand into the kitchen to build another beach. e summers changed. e traditions never did. In 1989, two brothers spent every aernoon racing bicycles to the ice cream shop at the end of the road. ey swore they'd grow up next door to each other. One lives in Colorado now. e other hasn't ridden a bicycle in years. In 1996, a teenage girl sat on the back steps every evening at sunset. She wrote letters to a boy she'd met on the beach. She never mailed any of them. She kept them tucked inside a shoebox beneath her bed until long aer she'd forgotten his last name. In 2004, the family dog discovered he could open the screen door by himself. Nobody ever fixed it. ey laughed every single time. In 2013, the grandfather quietly replaced three porch boards. He never mentioned that his own father had built the originals decades earlier. He simply ran his hand across the fresh wood, nodded once, and went back inside before dinner. e years passed quietly, almost without anyone noticing. e children who once slept in bunk beds now argued over who was bringing the potato salad. e little girl who collected seashells returned with children of her own. e old refrigerator hummed through birthdays, thunderstorms, Fourth of July fireworks, late-night card games, and mornings that began with coffee before anyone else woke up. e dining table collected another scratch. Another wine ring. Another story. Every summer le something behind. Sometimes it was a forgotten sweatshirt hanging in the closet. Sometimes it was a height penciled onto the pantry wall. Sometimes it was laughter that seemed to linger just a little longer aer everyone had gone to bed. en came the September no one wanted. e moving boxes arrived before breakfast. Family photos disapp eared f rom the hallway one frame at a time. e kitchen drawers, once overflowing with mismatched corkscrews and take-out menus, stood empty. Even the refrigerator had stopped humming. One by one, they carried everything outside. Except the memories. Those refused to fit inside cardboard boxes. Late that afternoon, someone closed the screen door. It made the same familiar sound it always had. Only this time, no one came back through it. e driveway emptied. e taillights disappeared. Silence settled in. Not sad. Just different. Autumn arrived. Winter followed. Snow covered the porch where bare feet had danced only months before. Spring quietly returned. en one warm aernoon in June, a station wagon pulled into the driveway. e doors flew open. A little girl ran toward the porch before anyone could stop her. She pushed open the screen door. It slammed behind her. From somewhere inside, her mother laughed. "Take your shoes off before you come in!" e words echoed through the rooms exactly as they had a thousand times before. e little girl smiled. She had no idea she'd just become part of a story that had started long before she was born. Perhaps that's the beautiful thing about summer houses. ey don't belong to one family. ey simply collect the people lucky enough to pass through. And if walls could speak, they'd never tell you who loved them most. ey'd simply tell you they remembered every single one. Some stories are imagined. e feelings never are. THE SOUND OF THE SCREEN DOOR F I C T I O N B Y J A M I E - R A E L A W R E N C E

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