"Fred Crawley Returns Home"

I can't help but read my mother's writing and look for fictionalized reality. I read this, and I picture my grandmother's little pink house in Eastwood with the laundry room around back. I see the red roofs of Sydney.

"The women of Turtle Street called Fred Crawley unnatural." The story opens with two women, gossiping, talking from their fences, as they do every day. I see the fences on that street. Was it Fifth Avenue? The fences with gates that were always clicked shut because it was rude, wrong, unkempt to leave them open.

A nine-page story read so quickly. I see bits of my grandfather, whom I never knew, in Fred Crawley. He admires the British. He memorizes the kings and queens of England. He is a clerk. He loves books. He is odd. And I kind of know what is coming before it does. He will disappear in some way by the end.

I didn't expect the actual near truth, when the two women find him, in the laundry room at the back.