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The smell of stale cigarettes permeates the air as I open the front door of his house. It is not what I expected and yet it is everything that is him.
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The family heirlooms of her youth are gone. Replaced with garage sale furniture. No signs of her protected childhood. Only poverty and squallor.
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The smell of urine soaked mattresses knocks me backwards as I open the bedroom door. Years of sickness leave a heavy reminder they lived here.
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Walls and windows thick and dirty with years accumulation of smoke and grime. His teeth, gold tooth intact, resting in an bowl on the coffee table along with yesterday's garbage.
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His wheelchair in the middle of the room blocking passage to the corner. A ship in a bottle built in the days of my youth sits on a shelf - testament to a patience for things that he never had for people.
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Pictures on the walls of her family - not his. Only a solitary portrait of himself in the living room - silent witness to the man he once was.
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A dresser in the back room used exclusively by him. Wigs and bras and women's things and pictures of him. His sexual perversions - another life beyond the one we knew.
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The garage and workroom in stark contrast to the house. Neat and tidy, everything in its place. The duality too great to imagine they came from the same man.
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Downstairs a bar with bottles, now empty. Bowling trophies and an illusion of a man at ease with life. Captain John the sign says. More like demi-god.