Tarnia pulled over at the entrance and left the engine running. Catherine and I got out of our booster seats and Tarnia helped get our suitcases out of the trunk. “This is the place?”
I looked at the old worn sign that read ‘Misty Brook’. “Yup. This is us.”
My coworker looked doubtful. “You sure?”
“Positive.”
“Okay then,” Tarnia said. “Pick you guys up in a week?”
“Please and thank you.” I reached for my wallet and started to open it. “You sure you don’t want some gas money?”
“Naw, we’re good. You’d do the same for me if you could. See you in a week.” And as her car pulled out, the tallest person within at least a mile was out of sight, leaving me and Catherine at the front entrance of Misty Brook.
As a kind of institution, Misty Brook followed a few universal constants. For example, the surrounding meteorological situation was anything but misty, and it was nowhere near any natural body of water. But it’s an unwritten rule of trailer parks: Their names always have to include some vaguely peaceful sounding adjective and a body of water; kind of like the way that all retirement homes always seem to be named after something bright and cheery and then a kind of tree.
Misty Brook sounded much better than Hot Parking Lot. (And Sunny Oaks sounds like such a nicer place to send grandma and grandpa than Dimly Lit Concrete Building.)
Another rule that Misty Brook followed was that it always seemed kind of dirty, even when it wasn’t, and anyone outside of their trailer somehow seemed their worst possible selves. The outside of everyone’s homes were all clean, any garbage was bagged up and canned. That just made every scratched paint on a window shutter, and every spot of rust or scratch in the paintwork stand out all the more. A single piece of litter wafted by on a hot breeze like a tumbleweed and it made everything in twenty yards of its path seem a bit more unclean.