I know my house is a woman because she has a migrating trap door. I’m in the hallway. Whoops! I’m in the kitchen. I’m in the basement. Whoops! I’m in the attic. I can see the door’s outline if I pay attention and it’s possible to tiptoe very carefully around its edges, but it is easy to get distracted in the house. Sometimes, without reason, the house will cackle uncontrollably. The kids think it’s fun, mostly—the laughter and the trapdoor. My husband doesn’t seem to notice. Ha! The house thinks that’s funny. She is cackling now. It’s a horsy sound, gasping and indelicate. Her laugh is a mean laugh, so I think.
This evening, the house took me to a room I’d never seen before. I was standing at the stove making dinner. It was tricky work, because I had three pans going, one full of oil for deep frying, and I was trying to time them out. No one ever tells you how much math is involved in cooking, I thought. I dropped a battered onion ring into the grease and whoops! I was in the new room. Its walls were curved and smooth as the inside of an egg, white and blank. The noise of the house receded, the sizzle of frying food, the mutter of video games, the intrusive silence of the cat watching me, judgmentally, as I sweat before the stove. Even my house’s smells were gone, replaced by an odor like rain and fallen leaves. What to do? There was no door. There was no bell I could ring. Softly, the house cackled.
Of course, when I dropped back into the bathroom, where my husband was languidly peeing, the dinner had burned. The fire alarm was sending its shockwaves. The cat, angry and arched, gazed at the grease fire, the blackened wall. “I’ll call for pizza,” said my husband, his fly still gaping.
Several mornings later, it happens again. Again, nothing in particular sets the stage. The kids are at breakfast, arguing because there is only one serving left of the preferred breakfast cereal. My husband is doing the dishes (I should say, he’s one of the good ones!) and I am hopping around the bedroom, looking for my missing shoe when whoops! I land in a strange room. This one is a kind of smoking room, very leather and brown. It’s lined with rich-looking books. There is an out-of-date globe (Yugoslavia! The Belgian Congo!) on a tarnished brass fixture, a worn and buttery-soft easy chair. A half-smoked cigar burns in an ashtray. What choice do I have? I select a volume. The books are mainly adventure stories from two centuries prior. I settle into the armchair, open to the middle of the novel—swords clash! Pirates board—and yes, I smoke the cigar.
Only much later, when I’ve missed a meeting, and the kids are gone, do I look up and realize there’s been a door here all along. I sigh, ease myself out of the chair and what do I find? It’s my missing shoe, a particular favorite which, because it’s heeled, and bone-colored, I believe makes my legs look slim.
I think to myself: maybe the house is on my side.
Ha!
That very evening at dinner, we are having everyone’s favorite: dumplings. I can’t eat many because they make me immediately fat, but they’re so good, I typically sneak one while I’m cooking (it’s OK that I always do the cooking because my husband does Other Things. He pays the bills, for example, which is very stressful and I’m happy to have off my plate. Also, if you’re wondering, the kids are helpful to a certain extent. True, we have to nag them, and they shirk something awful, but they contribute. They really do.) Anyway, the dumplings are nearly gone. There is one left in the dish, which I have been saving for after I’ve filled myself with salad. My husband reaches for it.
“That’s mom’s,” says my daughter.
“Oh,” says my husband, withdrawing his hand. “Sorry. I thought you’d had some.”
“It’s OK,” I say. I really shouldn’t anyway. And I’m basically full of lettuce.
“Dad,” says my son, shaking his head. “Mom should have it.”
I laugh. “Guys, I’m fine. It’s fine if your dad has the dumpling.”
That’s when it starts—a deep, pleasured cackling which is still sounding by the time the dishes are done. No one eats the dumpling. House, I think, House, I really didn’t want it.
Much later, when it is cold and in the garbage, I scoop it into my mouth and savor its flavor, slightly mingled with coffee grounds. A terrible thought occurs to me: is the house always watching? Is it watching me now? The cat, for sure, judges from the window sill. Fuck you both, I think, naughtily.
Same thing, again, on Saturday. It’s almost not worth going into. Fucking house. I’ve just gotten out of the shower, am applying a gel masque to my face, when my daughter knocks.
“I have to pee,” she says.
Well, I’m just finishing anyway. I step into a towel, and wrap myself up. My daughter ducks in past me. Not long ago, she could have just come in, left the flushing ‘til later. (The house isn’t perfect either! Her water pressure: don’t get me started. Also, don’t get the dishwasher started at the same time as the laundry.) Anyway, my daughter is a teenager now, and apparently her urination has become a secret ritual that would be ruined if I were showering simultaneously. My daughter sidles past me, and as I step into the hallway, the house begins to laugh again. I drip, she cackles. The masque on my face goes into rigor mortis, squeezing my pores together in its impossible rejuvenating physics. Ok, I think. I get it. Ha. Ha. You can stop now. Still, the house goes on and on. When she finally stops, my daughter is running the tub and singing a pop song. Women! I think. Crazy bitches.
There follows a bad week when the house is constantly dropping me into the basement, which is not a pleasant place. Cobwebby, full of ancient asbestos, errant recycling. I stomp up the stairs for the twentieth time. There are spiders in my hair, probably. I look like a mad, old witch. The family in the kitchen sees me emerge, red-faced and angry. They laugh along with the house. Fuck.
I decide to have a talk with the house. I find an empty corner and put my mouth close to her crack.
“Listen,” I say. “You don’t understand.”
The house is silent. I can’t tell if she’s listening. It’s hard to talk to a house.
“Listen,” I say again. “It’s not like you think. I take time for myself. I have a meditation app. I eat cake.”
Again, silence. And not an attentive silence, either.
“Also,” I say. “You’re not helping.”
The house drops me into the basement again. So, I guess at least we’re clear on each other.
Around seven thirty that night, my family begins to drift hopefully into the kitchen. It’s raining outside, dreary. I have an ancient bag of Halloween candy cradled in my arms and I am eating sticky morsel after sticky morsel, scattering the wrappers on the ground. They consider the cold stove, my scowling, chocolate-smeared face, and step back. “Should we just get drive-thru?” my husband asks.
I curse at my candy pile. I had been so good this week. And now it’s all shot to shit. I start to cry.
The house begins to cackle. It cackles and cackles and cackles. The family stares at me.
“It’s not my fault,” I say.
They look to one another and then back in my direction.
“It never does this to me,” says my daughter. My son and my husband, reluctantly, nod in accord.
My son says, “Not once. Even if I were, say, to smoke weed out the bathroom vent, which I would never do. It just basically ignores me.”
“Sorry, mom,” says my daughter. “I really think it is you.”
“Not necessarily,” says my husband, insincerely.
“Can you fix it?” asks my son. “It’s a little embarrassing.”
“Come on, kids,” says my husband, herding the teens away. “I’ll take you for burgers.”
There’s no question of burgers for me, since obviously, I’ve already dined.
The house doesn’t shut up. It is still cackling when the family comes home, and it cackles though the night, and into the morning. No one looks at me as they grab their handfuls of breakfast. It invents a funny trick where it drops you from one room into the exact same fucking room. Hilarious, I tell the house, very clever. Very post-modern. Remember the smoking room? The egg room? Remember how you used to be my friend?
I imagine gutting the house. What a great word, gutting. I imagine axing its walls down to the plaster and lathe. I imagine blowing great holes through its ceilings, imagine myself Samson, pulling together the support beams with my beefy arms. In fact, I just press a few hundred push pins into one of its virgin walls. You want a tattoo? I ask it. You want to get some piercings? I’ll show you what a real delinquent looks like.
That’s how my family finds me. The house has been cackling for a week now without ceasing. I’ve grown used to it almost, made a companion of its bitter noise. On occasion, I join it. Today, I am cursing as I drive brutal point after brutal point into its tenderest surface.
I reel on them. “You picked this fucking house,” I tell my husband. “I wanted the nice one, with the rose bush. But no. This one would hold its value better, you said.”
“And you,” I say to my son. “We all know you smoke weed. The vent doesn’t do anything. We just don’t care that much.”
To my daughter, who sparkles with fear and lip gloss, I offer the curse. “You won’t be any different. I don’t care if you’re poly or whatever. It won’t change a thing. You’ll still have your own fucking house someday.”
The house, my family go silent. I believe they are aghast. Then a door opens in the floor, and I am outside. It is evening. I am wearing my slippers. Snow is falling, but it’s just fine. I walk through the streets, breathing the cold wet air. Behind me, the house is smiling.
Melanie Conroy-Goldman's debut novel, The Likely World, was recipient of a Foreword Indie Award in 2020, and a top-10 finalist for the VCU Cabell prize, as well as a finalist for the Best Book Award. A Professor of Creative Writing at Hobart and William Smith Colleges, Melanie was one of the founding director of the Trias Residency for Writers. Her fiction has been published in Southern Review, StoryQuarterly, in anthologies from Morrow and St. Martin’s and online at venues such as McSweeneys.net. She has volunteered as a teacher at a maximum security men’s prison with the Cornell Prison Education Program. She lives in Ithaca, New York and is the biological mother of one and chosen stepmother to two. Her work is represented by Bill Clegg at the Clegg Agency. Twitter: @mscongo Instagram: melanieconroygoldman
Photo by Binyamin Mellish