House Keeping

In Which Bernanation Presents a Piece of Original Fiction

Louise had married Thomas Klein partly out of spite. Mother had raised her a good Catholic girl, had taught her all the things good Catholic girls know. Louise had gone to confession each week and whispered through the screen as the faceless priest nodded and nodded over his steepled fingers. She hadn’t had to go every week when Father was alive; Father had planned trips and outings on Sundays and Mother had silently complied, her eyes flashing and her mouth tightening as she nodded and packed.

But after the foggy Sunday in September when Louise had seen Father’s coffin, lacquered with red and orange leaves, lowered into the earth, she’d been forced to empty her mind in that little cage each week. Mother always said that Louise’s mind was full of cobwebs, and that nasty thoughts were libel to be caught in these webs. Louise didn’t exactly know what thoughts Mother meant, but she supposed that they had something to do with her male classmates, since they were never allowed over after school and if Mother caught her talking to them she was shuttled straight off to confession. Mother had tried to sweep away the cobwebs, but Louise didn’t quite want to give them up; she thought that without them her head would be empty and that the wind would blow through her ears and she’d be as cold as she was when Father died.
Needless to say, Louise was expected to marry a good Catholic boy. Mother had one all lined up: he had bright blond hair and bright blue eyes and wore crisp white polo shirts and kissed one on the cheek with cold lips. But Louise had someone else tangled in the cobwebs of her mind. Thomas was dark-haired and olive-skinned and went to Temple on Fridays. He kissed one clumsily in dorm rooms, but he kissed on the mouth. Mother hated him. Marrying him was the bravest thing that Louise ever did.

Now she was older, ensconced in her living room at number 56 Orchard Street, waiting. Thomas had been in the kitchen a long time, and he must have been whispering into the phone because Louise couldn’t make out a word he was saying. She could hear the person on the other line, though. The little Jezebel’s voice was a dull low whine rising and falling in volume, most likely interrupting Thomas’ nervous stutter. Louise shifted on her straight-backed Windsor chair, the one she’d had Thomas buy to go with the country theme of the sitting room. Out the window she could see the sun flooding the street and illuminating the tops of the red and orange trees. Louise heard a cough from the kitchen, and looked up to see Thomas shuffling into the sitting room, rubbing the top of his head and holding the phone limply at his side. He just stood there, rubbing his head and staring at the carpet.

Louise cleared her throat. Still, Thomas merely rubbed and rubbed his balding pate and sighed. She wanted to grab the cordless from his bony hand and fling it right into that God-awful painting of the bass he had just had to have. Instead, she adjusted the rose pin on her starched lapel, waiting for him to speak. Since no explanation seemed forthcoming, unless you count his uneven wheezing, the resultt of a deviated septum, she cleared her throat.

“Well, that’s all over and done with now.”

Thomas lurched down into the leather armchair, not even seeming to notice the embarrassing rubbing noise of his chinos against the seat.

“Thomas, I know you needed to let off steam. I understand that. Some men buy cars, some men quit their jobs and take up painting or some other form of bohemian pastime. Why, Kathleen Leonard’s husband, Charles, you know, from the historical society? He went off to Australia, or was it Africa... No, he went off to Asia to build houses. Anyway, I know, from the bottom of my heart, that mousy little Gina Feldman was merely... how shall I say it... a diversion.”

He was staring at his shoes. He was just staring at those hideous penny loafers, the pair with only one penny. Louise felt her lungs constrict and her lips tighten. When Thomas was in one of his unresponsive moods it took literally hours to extract any information from his flaccid lips. Louise did not care to wait minutes, let alone hours. Her voice rose to a pitch that, unfortunately, the neighbors could hear.

“For God’s sake Thomas! What? What, did she cry? Is that it? Did little Miss ‘I don’t wear a bra to distract people from my horsey face’ cry? Because, damn it all Thomas, what else were you expecting?”

“No,” he said, fixing his dishwater eyes on that ridiculous fish, twisted mid-leap and grinning grotesquely at the hook protruding from its lip, “...because I didn’t break it off.” Louise could only stare at him unblinkingly.

“What in the name of Pete do you mean Thomas? You didn’t break it off? What are you waiting for? I said to end it. I can understand the need to... the urge to...” She gave a little cough, “But Thomas I told you to end it, and I’d rather you do it sooner rather than later.”

“No,” Thomas said, sitting up in his chair and bringing his milky blue eyes up to meet hers in a brief show of bravery, “No Louise. No Louise, I didn’t break it off. In fact Louise, I would like a divorce.” Thomas gave a proud little smile, apparently pleased with his aplomb. He looked like a garden gnome: glasses slightly askew, ears red with constant embarrassment.

“No Thomas,” Louise said slowly, “You do not want a divorce. ” She placed her hand on his knee, knowing full well that now he’d want to be indelicate. He always got so excited by the slightest touch. She looked at his lips, sagging and pink, and her stomach turned.

“No,” Thomas said, lifting her hand from his knee. She looked at him aghast. The man was refusing indelicacy? Was he sick?

“No Louise. I... I love Gina. I’m not breaking things off with her. I want a divorce.” Thomas pounded his knee weakly after each word in this last sentence like some sad parody of a 1950’s sitcom father. Louise felt the saliva in her throat turn sour, burning her esophagus, and her lips began to tremble. She adjusted her pin even though it was straight.

“You can’t do this Thomas. After fifteen years. Fifteen years I have wasted leading you around by the hand. Fifteen years I have spent washing your dishes and cooking your ridiculous food! And now, now you have the nerve to tell me that you want to leave me, me who has sacrificed so much, for that little saggy Jezebel! Now Thomas, you cannot do this.”

“But Louise,” Thomas stammered and rose to his feet, “I love her.”

“Love her! You love her! Well isn’t that just grand! You love her, so that makes it alright to ruin my reputation, to take away everything. Oh God...” Louise put her hand to her heart and grabbed the arm of her little Windsor chair. “Oh God... I’ll have nothing... You little money-grubbing… with your ‘just in case, but we’ll never use it’ pre-nup! This is my home! I spent fifteen years decorating. I picked out that pineapple wallpaper!” Her knuckles were white on the arms of the chair and her hands were stiff as a corpse’s. Thomas was inching towards the door.

“Louise, I’m sorry, really I am. I’ll help you out. You won’t be homeless. You can stay here a while, until...” He paused and cleared his throat. He was half inside, half outside now. “I’m going to stay at Gina’s for a while, until, well, until it’s been made official. If you need anything you can call me.” He stood blinking on the stoop, his hand resting on the doorknob, the sun catching the shine on his balding head.

“Frankly Louise, I thought you would have seen this coming... I mean, you never loved me Louise. You know you didn’t.” Thomas sighed weakly, his thin chest deflating under his flannel shirt, and pulled the door closed behind him.

Louise felt as if Mother had finally rid her mind of those pesky cobwebs, or rather as if Mother had done so long ago and she had merely not noticed. She had never loved him, Louise realized. She’d said she loved him, she’d lain beside him each night and watched his sunken, hairy chest rise and fall until the Valium put her under, but she didn’t love him. In fact, Louise found that she couldn’t exactly say she had ever loved anyone.

She had loved the look on Mother’s face when she’d told the old witch that she was marrying a man named Klein. Mother’s mouth had collapsed into her chin and her pupils had dilated so much that they had looked black. She had looked like a melted doll. Remembered now in the chill of the October afternoon, that moment still caused a fire of triumph to pulse in Louise’s chest. Still, what was that moment worth? It was merely a memory of something that had been snuffed out. Louise found herself standing in the middle of a room built on years of make-believe. She’d always loved those model rooms at the hardware store, and had always harbored a desire to live in one. Now, she looked around her home expecting to see the living room end abruptly next to the paint aisle.

Still, the den looked the way it always did. There were the books that lined the walls, their spines still unbroken, their pages barely looked at. There were the ashes of Thomas’ father on the mantle, the remains of a man who always smelled like leather and old newspapers, but had been nothing to Louise. The picture frames on the mantle housed strangers. Her own face studied her from above the fireplace, smiling and posing in bathing suits and gardening hats. Her eyes in the photographs looked black and cunning.

The phone shrieked suddenly, and Louise found herself standing next to it, hand poised on the receiver, ready to wait three rings and answer with a bright, “Klein residence?” Cautiously, she took her hand away from the blue plastic. The ringer shrieked and shrieked until the answering machine interrupted with a curt “click,” and the voice of Mrs. Covington from the Garden Club boomed from the speaker. She crooned and cooed sympathy and lamentations, relishing each reiteration of “philanderer” and “little so-and-so.” She spoke as if she were reading off of a script. When the machine clicked off, Louise sighed and headed toward the couch.

Before she had reached the coffee table though, the phone cried out again. They all knew. Louise could hear the blood thudding in her ears, and she looked down at her hands twisting before her like foreign snakes. They were alien hands, useless hands, idle hands. Shaking her head slightly and untangling her fingers, Louise got out the vacuum. It started with a sharp growl, and set about devouring stray hairs, cigarette ash, and cracker crumbs from the thick shag. The cord tugged taunt at the wall socket as Louise vacuumed towards the hall to the bedroom. She played this game of tug-of-war until the plug ripped from the wall and the mastication of the vacuum sputtered into silence.

Just hours before, she had hospital-cornered the sheets, and pulled the flowered duvet halfway up the bed. Now she stared into the mirror above the dresser, which showed a slightly disheveled woman in a starched blue shirt with deep marionette lines cut into the sides of her mouth. Louise gazed at the hard mouth, curved upwards at the edges in wry mockery. Studying this apparition, she felt very cold, and very on edge. Louise did not enjoy feeling on edge. She did not relish agitation. Her therapist had told her to count to ten when she felt panicked, to take a walk. Louise decided that she would take a walk: a short one, to the medicine cabinet.

Turning so sharply that her heel tore up a chunk of shag carpet, Louise marched towards the bathroom. Opening the medicine cabinet she ripped out the bottle of Valium and popped off the lid as the phone shrieked again from the living room. The bottom of bottle was lined with only a few wisps of cotton. The drugstore stood at the end of Orchard and the beginning of Maple, the first of a short procession of shops that comprised the business district.

Louise peered down the deserted road at the line of pastel houses, all painted a dusty blue by the twilight. The row of long-slung townhouses resembled the model city in town hall: plastic and somewhat off-scale. The blue glow of television sets bled into the half-night that hovered outside. Louise breathed in the thin fall air laced with flame. She could smell wood smoke; someone had a fire going a couple of streets down. The last time she’d had a fire was Christmas over fifteen years ago. It was at Mother’s house and Louise was home from college. Thomas had called and her mother had answered. There’d been a fight after that. Louise had thrown the wooden Gabriel ornament that Mother had given her into the fire, and Mother had kneeled before the hearth crying as the flames licked around Gabriel’s head and blackened his praying hands.

Louise found herself standing in front of the drugstore and looked back at her neighborhood. It occurred to her that this was the first time that she had looked at Orchard Street since Thomas had said what he said. Somehow that seemed very important. She’d walked this street every day, seen these pastel houses every day, and each day melted together into only a vague watercolor of a life. But today was different; she would remember everything about today as it related to what Thomas had said. Everything would forever bear a taint, like a scar that, try as you might to cover with make-up, always resurfaces.

She pushed open the glass door and the bell rang. The man at the counter didn’t look up; he just sat on his high stool licking his lips over a dirty magazine. His feet were resting on a stack of newspapers, all folded incorrectly, and his hands were black with newsprint. Louise wandered towards the pharmacy in the back. The aisles were empty. She thought dimly that this was the first time she had entered the store since Thomas had said what he’d said. She didn’t recall the first time she’d been in this particular store; nothing memorable had happened that day, she supposed. But now, from now on, every time she would enter the drugstore she would remember what Thomas had said. She’d remember that man with the curly black hair behind the counter, trailing his thin fingers over his magazine, and he would become part of this day. She would remember what she bought. When she went home and entered her front door it would be the first time that she’d done so after Thomas had said what he’d said. It wouldn’t be the same. There’d be no way to tell exactly what had altered— the Windsor chair would still be there, the pictures in their frames, the shag carpet—but something would have changed.

Louise stopped halfway to the pharmacy counter and glanced back at the man, his black hands clasped in reverence over whichever pinup was currently spread-eagled on the page. His features were fine, like an icon’s, and Louise thought briefly of Gabriel and his crown of flames. Without giving the man another glance, she picked up a gallon of gasoline and a box of kitchen matches. The man rang her up without looking up from the ink-smeared woman he was tracing with his bony fingers.

Outside, the neighborhood was submerged in darkness, the Easter colors of the houses drained of their daytime glory. The streetlights cast writhing shadows onto the pavement, and Louise could see more and more rooms fill with golden light as she strode towards home. The houses were beasts, thriving and subsisting off of electricity and blue television static. Louise didn’t see a single human shadow in any of the homes; the beasts were silent, crouching in the slick nighttime landscape, hunched and glowing.

She stopped in front of number 56. It was the only dark spot on the whole block; if she hadn’t known it was there she would have thought that it had disappeared. But when she took a few tentative steps into the gloom she found, with a disappointed sigh, that it still stood. If she went through that door she knew that it would all be over. The house would swallow her whole. The pictures in the frames would mutter at night, keeping her awake, and every smell, every sound, every change in wind and season would remind her that she had only lived a watercolor life.

She put the drugstore bag down on her stoop and took out the gallon of gasoline. Twisting off the cap, she coughed at the acrid fumes, which replaced the autumn smell of woodsmoke and dried leaves. Slowly, she walked around the perimeter of her house, drizzling gasoline onto the pastel pink siding. She walked with an air of ceremony, with slow, measured steps, head bowed and face somber, until she came once again to the front stoop.

She thought of similar walks: placing one foot in front of the other in a straight line behind her father’s coffin, taking slow, halting steps dressed in cream white down an half-empty aisle. She took one last look at her front door before striking the match. Fire fizzled at the head of the match, and black spread down the pale wood towards her fingers. She stepped back onto the black sea of asphalt and tossed the match towards the front door.

56 Orchard Street exploded.

Glass shattered and showered the streets, roof tiles fell flaming into the autumn trees, setting the lawn and manicured bushes on fire. Smoke billowed into the sky and hovered there like a mass of phantoms. The windows were ablaze with golden light, all the other houses glowing tentatively next to its fire-licked jaws. The photos on the mantle warped and wrinkled, and the smiling faces in garden hats and bathing suits turned into black masks. The bass writhed in agony in a lake of fire. The floor erupted and carpeted the living room in red. The little Windsor chair crumbled into ash. The house shuddered and roared, collapsing onto its haunches.

All over the neighborhood men in half-tied bathrobes and women in faded nightgowns emerged from their pastel homes and stood on their stoops, the heat from what had once been number 56 Orchard Street rippling over their half-naked chests. Louise stood in the middle of the asphalt sea, gazing up at the blaze, her hands clasped limply before her as sirens sputtered and shrieked in the distance. Her face glowed red and her eyes stung, but still she stared into the inferno, transfixed and smiling. The cobwebs shuddered in the backdraft and burst into flame.