The Last House on Needless Street

by Catriona Ward

What we want isn’t always what’s best for us.

The gods are closer than you would think. They live among the trees, behind a skin so thin you could scratch it open with a fingernail.

Everything in life is a rehearsal for loss. Only the smart people know it.”

want you to feel the power of it,” she said. “Of walking away from something you love. Doesn’t it make you feel strong?”

So it was many years before it happened that Mommy began to prepare me for her departure.

Breaking me, then mending me, over and over—that was my mother.

When things got bad they made themselves small and agile and learned to live in treetops. The birds are a lesson in endurance. These are real, wild animals, Teddy—better than a key ring.”

She said, surprised, “How could I? They do not belong to you.” I saw that she was showing me something that was safe to love.

I understood that they were dead, because I saw it happen, and it left a sadness in me like a heavy stone. But at the same time, I knew that they were not dead. I was convinced that if I could just get outside I could find them.

The sign on the corner is in plain view, and can be easily read. Needless Street.

These were streets that went nowhere. She recalls driving past that sign and thinking, Yes, this craphole is totally needless.

I like this kind of place, where you’re in between one thing and another. Hallways, waiting rooms, lobbies and so on; rooms where nothing is actually supposed to happen. It relieves a lot of pressure and lets me think.

is as if death has put its finger on the street and pinned it down.

The young feel pain intensely, I think, because they don’t know yet how deep it can go.

A panic attack, she thinks vaguely. Got to get it together. But it’s like sinking deeper and deeper into a sand dune; she can’t just climb out.

Thoughts are a door that the dead walk through.

How many times can someone bend before they break forever? You have to take care, dealing with broken things; sometimes they give way, and break others in their turn.