The House

The front room of the house, filled with the quiet scent of dried lavender flowers and the dignity the old velvet couches, in the style of the early days when the house’s striped gold and beige wallpaper and baroque portraits had been the mien, was a relief to Isobella; despite its cramped dimensions and the bleak lines of the withered winter trees outside the fringe of the drapes, it satisfied something in her. It was not that the room was neutral, although she did appreciate its muted fragrance as superior to the lunchroom’s blare and raucous camaraderie; it was that it was established; although she did not always appreciate the authority of her teachers and the adults who bounded her life like a barbed-wire fence, there was always that core in her that respected the silence of the room even beyond the short history she had in it as a child, one small hand clutching the leg of the coffee table. She recognized its age and the refinement it symbolized even if it had never entirely realized this embodiment.