by Blake Butler
The mother looked and looked and looked again, her eyelids flitting. This man was beautiful, she knew. Like her husband except newer, neater, which could have made him anybody.
The mother unlocked, unlatched, and opened up the door.
ACTIVE LISTING
Beside the man, the mother saw, as the strong door revealed another hole, there stood a woman, too. A woman about as tall as the mother, a small taut belly protruding from her skeleton, petite. This woman wore a veil—a white bride’s veil, the mother noticed— certainly a bride’s, it had to be, the color shifting, pale, with long dark driving gloves, like those the man beside her wore, covering her skin’s arms. Through the veil the mother could see the semi-outline of the other impending mother’s face, the features meshed in, fluttered. She had a mouth and, somewhere, eyes.
The mother smiled. A new young starting, she thought. One for another. She felt her skin inside her, warm.
The mother watched the other woman reach slowly on into her pocket, as for a gun. Together they inhaled, then.
The mother closed her eyes. She felt the warm air blowing somewhere high above her, though down here the air was still. She swallowed and she swallowed.
When she looked again, the other woman had a piece of paper in her hands. At first glance, it seemed blank, then it seemed to show the mother her own head back. The mother’s dry eyes swam. She craned her neck in, stumbled closer, looking for her age. Up close, she could read there, a description of her house—the ad she’d placed just that same morning, black-and-white. How many bedrooms, their dimensions. How many fireplaces, baths. Kind of siding, year built (left blank), a/c presence, names of nearby schools and roads. The mother wasn’t sure how the ad had already made print. The paper people had said it would take at least three days—days the mother had planned to use to clean the house, to mow and mow the grass. Most days the day was always over before the day began.
And yet here was this young couple, local people, at the front door, for a view. They looked clean and kind, dressed and possessed of a certain manner that to the mother suggested money, which suggested therefore that if they approved they might buy quickly, and then the family could move even sooner to a new house, which was beginning to seem more and more exactly what they needed. The mother did not feel at home. At night in their bedroom she had dreams of such condition she could hardly bring herself to go to sleep. Dreams of fissure, squashing, oily sneeze. Dreams of the son screaming and on fire. Of the sky above them melting like a raw egg and dripping down to crush the house with them inside it. During the dreaming the dreams seemed very real, not like a film at all, the way some dreams often would.
Though the father, in more recent days, had sagged in their decision to get out. Sometimes he seemed concerned with the same fervor as before—the sooner they were somewhere else, the better. He was not sleeping so well either, he complained, though through the night, when home, he snored and snored and did not shake. The mother stuffed her ears with plastic and still could hear him blowing up with sound.
Other nights the father would shake his head and stomp for her even mentioning their moving, then wouldn’t come to bed at all. From their room the mother could hear the father moving around inside the down and upstairs, banging and speaking, the sounds so faint at times they seemed more far away from her than the house was wide—the father barking in wordless fury on his way in or out the door. Some nights he’d bark so hard at such high volume he went hoarse and could not speak again for days. Other times no sound at all would come out, despite the fervor, all the wanting, in his eyes.
The mother’s own eyes now in the yardlight stung, wet and glitchy.
The mother’s body unlocked, unlatched, and opened up her mouth.
WELCOME
The mother welcomed the couple into the house. She did not ask where they’d heard about the listing. She ignored the sudden smell of dog. When they were all in, she closed the door quickly as she could behind them, though some of the bugs got in, as did air.
In the foyer the mother began to say certain things aloud. She walked the couple through the home, spreading her arms in massive gestures: here, look, yes, oh, lovely. The husband seemed to need to lead his wife around. The wife’s body did not move much in any one direction unless directed. Her joints popped a little riddle pop pop pop pop pop.
The mother showed the young couple the kitchen where the mother had just finished putting away all the silverware, which for some reason had come out of the dishwasher more than a little stained—a deep bright brown that could not be washed or rubbed all off.
The mother showed the young couple the guest bedroom with the guest bed that for some reason looked newly tousled, though the mother had made and remade it just that morning, having found the father in it once again. The guest chest of drawers had been moved parallel to where it had been. The shower in the guest bathroom had been left running scalding hot, erupting steam.
The mother showed the couple the stairs to upstairs, the stairs with strip-striped carpet like no other location in the house, which never failed to make the mother dizzy no matter how hard she tried not to see.
She showed them where each night she and her husband tried to sleep.
God, the rooms seemed smaller with someone else there looking, looking.
The mother showed the couple the huge hall closet where the family kept their towels and sheets and a few old blankets and their winter clothes, which for some reason were always jumbled, and always fell out when the door opened no matter how carefully they were stacked, and for which, as it happened now, the mother cursed aloud and apologized as if that never happened, while the couple just stood there looking on. In her periphery, at some angles, the mother sensed she saw the couple wearing different clothes—long black cloaks or running outfits or pleated church suits, or none at all—though when she looked to see again there she would see they were wearing exactly what they had before. Sometimes the woman would be wearing a long locket around her thin neck, sometimes not.
Through the veil the mother could not see the woman’s eyes. Her eyes my eyes—the mother thinking—which became replaced in the meat behind her nostrils with the shush of inhaled air.
The mother did not show the young couple the TV room where some certain smell had caked the carpet with a frosty fuzz, charcoal-colored, its surface pilling up in patterns, veins.
She also did not show them the son’s room, though she knocked and knocked and tried the knob and called through the keyhole. Behind her, the veiled woman sniffed the air. She sniffed not as if from sniffles but from smelling something disagreed. The sniffing made the veil’s fabric pucker against the woman’s face.
The woman continued to stand beside the son’s door even as the mother moved on to show another room. As the mother stopped and saw her hanging back, the husband stepped between. He pointed at the room with two long fingers, nodding. He smiled to show his teeth.
The mother knocked and knocked again and halfway shouted for the son. She felt her voice around her face, a little mush. The son had stuffed some kind of fabric into the crack beneath the door, letting no light through. The mother could not tell if this had been there when she first began to knock. Her forehead flushed with blood. She turned back toward the man, and looking past him, at the woman, explained the son was likely sleeping—said the son was a very heavy sleeper, which was true. The son had been sleeping more than ever lately—most days he went to bed and slept hard from the moment he got home until it was time to get up again for school the next day, unless the mother or the father woke him up and made her come do something nice like eat. The mother could not help going on and on, making excuses for the child, saying his name again and again in a slightly high voice, sweating through her shirt. She felt embarrassed. Her sweat had no odor at all, and traced the veins along her neck.
The couple lingered by the son’s door even as the mother started to lead them away. The woman stayed still, touching the doorknob. The man rubb
ed his eyes and took her by the hand. Throughout the house thereafter they kept on looking back in the direction of the son’s room’s location, even through the floors and walls and walls.
They did not seem to care at all to see the master bedroom, where they would sleep night by night by night by night by night, the mother mentioned, the word night falling out of her mouth in repetition, she could not stop it, and still they did not say a word or blink.
They did not look askance to find the master bathroom’s mirror again off its putty, leaning forward above the basin making double image of the floor.
They did not seem to smell the smell of something musty coming from the vents there, the mold loosening all through the house, suddenly warm.
Their foreheads folded slightly at the child’s bookshelf, packed fat end to end with colored spines, though while awake and of his knowledge, the son had only ever read one book—a volume given to him by the father’s father, unbeknownst to either parent, a strange, enormous edition with only one letter on every page, to be read along a slow strobe. The son had found he could quote the text at length before he’d read it. When he did read blood would leak out of his nose. It would pour onto the white pages, blanks, making new letters, then, on closing, smear them doubled, smudge the letters into more.
The couple moved so slow all through the house, like lava.
A bell inside the house was ringing, though the mother could not hear.
This is where on the weekends my son likes to sit and tan her skin, the mother mentioned in the kitchen, pointing through the door glass at the yard and swimming pool. His skin, she corrected, not hers. My son is a boy. She said how good it felt for children to go swimming. What clean work water could do.
The couple appeared blank. The mother shook her head, began again. Hello, yes, welcome, please come in now, I’d love to show you our fine house. The flushing mother started to open the door to lead them out to where the pool was, to have a closer look, but then thought of something and stopped and stopped again. She turned to press her back against the glass. Actually they couldn’t see the swimming pool today, the mother explained, aching, as it had just been treated. It wasn’t right to breathe. The couple did not press this issue. They continued not to blink or budge or motion or say much of anything at all.
HEY
Hey, what’s your due date, the mother asked at some point, on a whim. She asked with a strange expression on her face. She didn’t know she wore the expression and didn’t mean the thing the expression seemed to mean she meant. They’d gone through the whole house already and were back in the first room where they started, with the couple standing close together, arms at their sides. The mother was standing near another window when she said it, the whole back of her head and spine aflush with light coming down into the house from outside, though in the outside now it was night, and there were no streetlamps and no moon or stars. There was nothing, not even the yard.
The couple’s mouths were closed.
The mother made a motion at her own midsection as if there were a bigger belly there—where the son had been upon her sometime and now was just the air. She nodded between the blank space and the woman, drawing lines out with the motion of her head.
The man looked hard at the mother, shook his head. He shook his head so hard it briefly blurred. Stopping again, he looked older.
The mother’s mouth continued moving without sound. She touched her own face, which felt like anybody’s. She felt her jaw pulse in its gristle.
The man touched the silent woman on the back.
She’s sickly, the man said. His voice was so small, sticky. She’s not been feeling well. It’s been known to go around.
The woman sniffed and sniffed, like wanting food.
It’s been known to go around, the man repeated.
The mother tried to smile, made little sounds. She sort of curtsied the way young girls used to when wearing dresses—the way she had on several occasions in the past though she could remember none of them specifically right now. The curtsy made her hips hurt. She cleared her throat and turned, as the man had, away, to face the window, fat with glare. She said something nice about the window’s size and the view through it—that bright light—the way she’d seen all the listing agents on those home shows do on the TV, as what could sell a house but a window.
3 DOORS 1 ROOM
Upstairs again, by request, the mother showed the couple the bathroom that the son used every day. The door to the son’s bedroom from the hallway still was locked. The corresponding bathroom was small and had two doors that came into it side by side on the same wall. One door led in from the hallway. One door led to the son.
The son’s door was locked as well from this side and further knocking went unanswered—though now the mother was really knocking hard and kind of shouting into the gap, so much so that the couple began to look into her with the eyes behind their eyes, making a memory of the moment that would last a lifetime and forever—held inside their heads. The mother felt concerned. She did not know why the son would lock the door while sleeping. She tried to think the right thoughts to keep her calm until the couple left. Everything would be fine, be fine, fine be, she said, inside her, and a little bit out loud.
The son’s bathroom had a third door leading into a section with a toilet and a sink. The mother hadn’t meant especially to highlight this portion of the house, though as she stepped inside and turned around she found the couple had followed her into the tiny stall space, all of them crowded in together. Their three heads were nearly touching. There was no more room to move and make more room. The mother noticed how the man’s breath stunk of charcoal. She couldn’t help but cock her head. The man was looking at her, breathing. He had both hands pressed at both walls, holding himself up. The mother didn’t want to say they should leave the room now because what if the man knew about the odor and thought the mother was being rude—then they might not want to buy the house. The mother made herself continue talking. The mother reached around the woman’s gut—nothing at all there inside it, she imagined—and pulled out each of the little drawers set in the washstand, revealing tampons, q-tips, blush. One of the drawers had a bunch of hair stuffed in it and the mother closed it quick. The mother said something about market value. She said something accidentally in French. She felt her torso getting lighter. The three bodies’ collective assemblage of six nostrils quivered in and out.
The man touched the mother on the arm. Certain of the man’s fingers were very cold—as if they’d been in an ice chest somewhere, years—while others in the same grip were crispy, warm. The mother did not recoil from the strange touch. He looked into the mother’s eyes. His pupils resembled little stickers, the kind placed on placards when art is sold.
The man spoke toward the mother’s skull. He said his wife needed, now, please, to use the bathroom. The woman, behind her veil, looked straight ahead.
The mother tried to say something and then could not and felt embarrassed again, rushed, and so nodded and followed the man out of the smallest room inside her home into a slightly larger room inside her home. The mother and the man together turned around and saw the woman still there in the son’s bathroom, standing staring at them, arms tight at her side.
Outside the room the man stepped up and pushed the door closed. He turned back to the mother, smiled.
The mother heard the woman turn the lock.
BEEP PROBE
Outside the bathroom, partitioned cleanly, the man and the mother stood spaced feet apart. The mother thought to say something but could not think of what or how. The man stood with his hands clasped in front of him and turned to look at the wallpaper. He leaned his head near to the wall. The mother watched him watch. His gaze was rigid and unblinking, staring straight on into surface. He seemed to be reading something. The mother moved to look as well. The wallpaper was a deep purple with deep purple ridges and tiny buttons in relief. The ridges’ texture was rather soothing. The mother felt her body li
mp a little. The skin around her eyes grew moist.
She was not crying, not exactly.
The man was radiating heat. He had the smell of grass about his breadth, strong arms like the man who’d fixed the mower—and like that man, this man, too, was gorgeous, if with a rash upon his cheek. A sudden stink of slit grass and motor rubbings made the mother’s body lump. She started to ask something, blushing, but her mouth was closed and time had passed.
Behind them, in the bathroom, the other woman made a sound. A shrill, quick beep, a mouth noise, as if emulating some alarm, or some detector. There was a kind of pitter-patter. Then breaking glass, and wood against wood. A light showed underneath the door’s lip. The woman’s ever-moaning, saying words. The beep continued, high and awful, rerepeated, each iteration slightly shifting, until, in the mother’s ears, the noise became to have a frame—began to take a shape of language there around it. The beeping, at her head, became a name. The son’s name. Son’s name. Beeping. The woman making, again and again there, the title of her child. The word she’d placed on him from nowhere, that had occurred as lesion in her sleep. The woman screamed the name into the walls among the houselight, in the smallest of all rooms, curdling the air. Beeping. Beeping. Name. Name. Name. Name. The mother felt the blood inside her turning hard. And just as quick, the name becoming something other: becoming ways she could not recognize—the utter shifting off from where it’d held him and slipping therein off into a struggling string. Not a name but something troubled. Reaching. Burble. The scream so loud by now it shook the house.
The hair along the mother’s arms was singing. She closed her eyes and swallowed in the sound. Then, just as quick again, there was no sounding. Silence—or something so loud or strung out there was nothing to be heard. The house as still as any.
