by Sarah S.
outside by yourself, and you tripped over something and landed facefirst. It wasn’t a bad fall but the kind of thing you’d normally get upset
about. Only this time you just looked around and then picked yourself
up. You didn’t cry. The next time you fell around me, I got it. There was
always this pause after you fell, where you’d look at me, waiting to see
what my face would do. It didn’t mean anything if you were alone, it
was how I responded to it that made you respond to it, too. It was the
damnedest thing.”
More doctors hurried down the hall. Joanna crossed her arms over
her chest, not knowing where this was going.
“We all just rely on everyone else’s reaction, don’t we?” Catherine
said. “When I fall over, I look around to see if people are going to
get all crazy. And once your dad left, maybe I looked around for you.
Because if no one sees what I do, it doesn’t mean anything. It wouldn’t
have been real if you hadn’t been there with me to see it.” “So it’s like that tree falls in the forest question?”
Catherine smiled questioningly.
“You know, that philosophical question: if a tree falls in the forest
and no one hears it, does it make a sound?”
Catherine cocked her head. “Why, I don’t know! Does it?” Her voice had a wondrous quality to it, as if this were a catchy
song she was hearing for the first time. It seemed implausible—irreverent, almost—that her mother had hit upon the idea completely on
her own. “Come on,” Joanna said. “You’ve heard that. Everyone has.” Catherine shook her head, still smiling.
“Well, that’s what you’re saying,” Joanna said. “And you’re saying
a tree doesn’t make a sound if there’s no one around to hear it. And
what we feel or do doesn’t matter if there’s no one around to witness
it. When we’re all alone, it’s almost as if we don’t exist. We have no
identity.”
Catherine nodded. “We’re all just big sponges. The only thing that
matters is how other people see what we’re going through.” Joanna shrugged. “Yeah. Maybe.”
They were silent for a while. Joanna leaned against the wall. Her
throat tickled. She was suddenly horribly aware she was about to cry
and ducked her head. An ambulance drifted past outside. Her mother’s monitors fluttered and squeaked. Joanna thought about what
Catherine had just said about her father, how he’d abruptly left her so
long ago. It could explain why Catherine developed all those medical
problems. In her backward way, it was her attempt to bring his attention back to her, but it hadn’t worked. Joanna was the one who coddled
her. Joanna was the one who sat and waited and worried and gave her
mother what she needed. Her father was long gone.
She suddenly wondered what her father was doing in Maine,
where he now lived. They’d barely spoken at her wedding. He’d shown
up, walked her down the aisle, but then she’d barely seen him at the reception. He and her mother didn’t sit together, and if he’d tried to find
her to say good-bye, he hadn’t succeeded. But she remembered feeling
relieved that he hadn’t stayed longer—the more Catherine drank, the
feistier she got, and she would have picked a fight with him, right in
front of the Bates-McAllisters.
She excused a lot of her dad’s absences this way, not really examining if those were really his intentions. She couldn’t even recall the last time they’d had an actual conversation. Probably about three years ago; he’d been driving south for a business trip and stopped off to see her for lunch, picking somewhere cheap and close to the turnpike. He paid for their club sandwiches with an American Express corporate card and talked a lot about a mystery book on tape he’d been listening
to during the drive.
She should have asked him why he’d been the way he’d been.
Why he’d stopped accompanying Catherine to the hospital, how the
responsibility had always fallen on Joanna. And why, that day of her
eleventh birthday party, when Catherine declared she felt sick, her father had been so adamant about removing Joanna from the situation
and taking her and her friends for pizza. “You’re doing the right thing,”
he’d said to Joanna as they got out of the car at the pizza parlor. “We
need to break this cycle.” Joanna tried to believe him. She wanted to
think he was doing this for her because it was her birthday. But what
if it was to undermine Catherine, too?
When Joanna had arrived home from the pizza parlor later that
evening, her friends rushing to the Nintendo in the basement, she noticed a light in her mother’s bedroom and went upstairs. Her mother
was lying face down on her bed, curled up in a ball. Her eyes were
closed, and she didn’t seem to sense Joanna was there. She didn’t look
ill, just alone. Like there was no one in the world who wanted her. It made Joanna crumple up inside. She couldn’t bear to see her
mother like that, so lost and without purpose. And so she’d swallowed
her frustration. It was the only thing she could do. She collected the
photos of the Bates-McAllisters, turning to them for respite. They
were removed from Joanna’s world, eternally as perfect as their pictures.
She thought about what she’d said to Scott a few hours ago. And how he’d stormed away, upset. It was no different than how anyone would have reacted. Scott was the last bastion of the Bates-McAllister mystique, an impenetrable, unknowable person that she could mold to her whims and desires. But Scott was the same as she was—as anyone
was—with the same emotions, secrets, and demons.
Realizing this made her feel woozy and weak-kneed. It made her
feel childish, too, for being so naive to think that Scott would be any
different. And for being so blind to assume that Charles would be exactly what she’d created in her mind. Maybe she was the one who lived
in the bubble, not Charles and his family, not Catherine with her diseases and her panic. Joanna was so set on people being one way and one
way only, her brain practically locked when someone did something
unexpected. Of course she was disappointed—she had nowhere to go
but disappointment. But it didn’t mean the disappointment was bad. “That tree that fell over,” Catherine piped up. “It has to make a
sound, doesn’t it? Everything makes a sound, whether we’re there or
not.”
“I don’t know. I guess it’s up to everyone individually.” “And this is a common question you’ve heard before?” “A popular philosophical question, yes.”
Her mother patted her hand. “You should go back home. You
should go home and talk to him, figure this out.”
Joanna shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You think this ex-girlfriend is better for him? That’s the worst
excuse I’ve ever heard. It just sounds like you’re scared.”
“I’m not scared.”
Catherine grabbed Joanna’s wrist hard. “Did you marry this man
because I wanted you to? Because of those silly pictures in the newspaper?”
She thought for a moment. Maybe at first she did. But there was
more to it now, too. “No,” she answered honestly.
“Do you really want to end things with him?”
She looked away. “I don’t know.”
“Come on.”
Joanna bit down on her lip. She had no idea what the right choice
was. She h
ad no idea how things would play out. No one did. “Just answer,” Catherine encouraged. “Say the first thing that
comes to mind.”
Joanna’s mouth wobbled. Her mother’s nails dug into her skin.
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t want things to end.”
Catherine released her grip. “There you go.”
“It’s not as easy as that.”
“With Charles, maybe it is.”
Joanna snorted. “You don’t really know Charles, Mom.” Catherine turned her head from side to side. “Charles called me
once. Back in December. You’d been married for a few months. He
asked me what you’d like for Christmas.”
Joanna lifted her hands from the bed.
“I told him that I had no idea what you’d like for Christmas, and
that he probably had a much better idea of what to get you than I did.
But he was persistent. He asked me what I would have wanted for
Christmas my first year of marriage. ‘My marriage didn’t work out,’ I
reminded him. And he said, ‘Well, pretend it that it had.’ ” Joanna stared at her. Charles hadn’t told her any of this. “He got
me lingerie,” she blurted.
Catherine’s eyes lit up. “That’s what I told him to get you! I wanted
your father to get me fancy lingerie for our first Christmas together. It
sounded so sexy. Not that he did. He got me a vacuum.”
But it wasn’t what I wanted, Joanna wanted to protest. Charles
didn’t know her at all. And instead of asking his mother, who was no
doubt an expert at choosing the right gifts for everyone, he’d called
Catherine.
“Isn’t that funny,” Joanna said in a faraway voice. A heavy gloom
came over her suddenly, and every cell in her body felt immensely
tired. When had people become so confusing? When had things suddenly shifted from Joanna knowing everything to knowing absolutely
nothing?
She sat on the edge of Catherine’s bed for a while longer. Catherine
turned on the television and flipped around until they found a reality
show about four very wealthy women living in Southern California.
The show featured a lot of shots that panned over the women’s mansions, their jewelry collections, their cars, their asses, and the two of
them watched silently for at least three minutes until there was a commercial break. Catherine was leaning forward a little, taking it all in.
Joanna could see her mind at work. Even if Catherine had discovered
that status would never fulfill her, her hunger for it hadn’t abated. It
probably never would, not entirely.
The following day, after the doctors started Catherine on proper
medicine and scared the shit out of her some more about how if she
drank one more drop, she’d go into liver failure, and after Robert arrived at Catherine’s bedside, looking concerned—it was obvious, Joanna realized, that he was in love with her—and after Catherine told
Joanna she should go back home now, Joanna would gather her things
and drive back up I-95.
She would call Charles’s cell phone on the drive and tell him she
was coming home. He would sound relieved and say that’s good. He
would also say that something happened while she was away. Something he needed to talk to her about. Joanna would clench her stomach and wish they could just bypass all this, but then she would say she needed to talk to him about some things, too. Okay, he would say. There would be a twinge to his voice, a worried desperation she’d never heard before. She would wonder, after hanging up, whether he knew she knew. She would wonder, too, if he knew she’d brought Scott along, all the things she’d said to Scott, even that she’d kissed him. It seemed doubtful Scott would have told him, but anything was possible.
She would turn into their development and pull into her garage. She would drop her bags in the foyer. The house would be dark and empty. Outside the sky would be gray, rain imminent. She’d hesitate a moment, then turn back for the door. She would walk to the end of the block, and then take a left. Her footsteps would ring out on the cold slick pavement. All the houses she would pass would have cars in the garages and lights shining in the windows until she would turn on Spirit.
The huge, empty houses loomed. All the driveways slanted at the exact same angle. The first one on the block was the very same model as her house, the commonwealth. Except this one was bare and dark, its windows unadorned.
Joanna would walk up the front steps. At first she would intend to just ring the doorbell to see if it worked or to see if that, too, had fallen into disrepair. But then her hand would touch the doorknob, and it would feel loose. The Realtor’s lockbox would clunk against the doorframe. The door would swing open eagerly.
The house would still smell like paint and new carpet. There would be the same little archway into the dining room as was in her house, the same light fixtures. She would open a closet to find a bare shelf, empty space. No life here. No happiness, no sadness. Just emptiness. The kitchen countertops would be covered in a fine layer of dust. Instead of a table in the breakfast nook, there would be raw square footage. Every sound she would make would echo off the bare walls and vaulted ceilings, nothing to absorb it. She would walk upstairs. The rooms were without beds or bureaus. She would continue into the bedroom where she and Charles slept. The day they’d moved into their own version of this house, after the movers left, Charles had urged her upstairs and tossed her down on the bed. He’d tickled her, too, saying all good houses needed to be christened with its first tickling. She writhed around, blissfully aware that she could make whatever sounds she wanted—there were no downstairs neighbors to complain. We are now adults, she’d thought. But she had so much further to go. There was so much she didn’t know about herself and even more she didn’t know about Charles. They were strangers to each other, assumptions upon assumptions. It
might take years for them to peel down to who they really were. A car door would slam outside. Joanna would freeze in the empty
upstairs hallway. There would be lights in the driveway. She’d rush
down the steps, her heart pounding, remembering the rumors about
the kids using the houses to grow cannabis. There would be a figure at
the front door, peering through the window. Joanna would search for
somewhere to hide. She’d consider slipping out a window. Before she
could do anything, the front door would open.
“Ahem.”
Mariel Batten would be wearing a down-filled coat with a furry
hood and black leather gloves. She would be brandishing her car key
at her sternum, pointing it toward Joanna like a weapon.
“Oh,” Joanna would say, stepping back.
“What are you doing here?” Mrs. Batten would say, eyes wide,
making a slightly ugly face.
Joanna would blink. “I just … wanted to see it.”
“It looks exactly like everyone else’s house.” Mrs. Batten sounded
exasperated.
But Joanna wouldn’t be sure about that. It did … and yet it didn’t.
She was happy for how much it didn’t. “What are you doing here?”
she’d say next.
“It’s my night for neighborhood watch,” Mariel Batten would explain. “I thought you were some tweaked-out kid or something.” “I’m sorry,” Joanna would stammer, diffident. “I didn’t think the
door would open. But I got kind of … curious. I wanted to see what it
looked like in here.”
Batten would step into the foyer and look around at all the emptiness, all the white walls. “It’s really different in here.” But it wasn’t
different. It was the same layout as both their houses
, the same dimensions and plaster and floorboards. But Joanna would know what she
meant.
Mrs. Batten would shove her hands into her pockets and glare at
Joanna. “There are kids that sometimes try to break into these and
vandalize them. It’s really dangerous.”
“I guess I didn’t think about that.”
In the dim light, Mrs. Batten would look younger and less polished, with purple circles under her eyes and a big stain on her zip-up
hooded sweatshirt. “Well, you should have. This world is crazy.” And then Joanna would turn back to the lonely, empty rooms.
“All these houses, just sitting here,” she’d say dolefully, looking around
again. “Doesn’t seem like it’s going to change, either.”
“Don’t say that,” Mrs. Batten would say. “They’ll sell.” Batten would give her a ride back up the street in her minivan.
The passenger seat would be littered with toy trucks and dolls, and when she would turn on the stereo, a sing-along tape would blare. A bunch of kids would be singing “Row, Row, Row Your Boat” in a round, encouraging the listeners to join in. Batten would make no effort to turn it off. After a moment, very subtly, her lips would begin to move, singing along. Row, row, row your boat, gently down the stream. Absently, tiredly, automatically. Merrily, merrily, merrily,
merrily, life is but a dream.
“Thank you,” Joanna would say when Batten pulled into her driveway.
Batten would stiffen. “I’d be a failure at neighborhood watch if I
made you walk.”
But Joanna wasn’t thanking her for the ride. Not entirely, anyway. Joanna’s house would smell like a vanilla plug-in candle and Tide
and something much more primal, a mix of her and Charles’s skin and
hair and secretions. There would be clutter on the mantel and cooking apparatus on the kitchen counter. Desks and chairs and beds in
the bedrooms, clothes in their closets, piles of mail on the front table,
unpacked boxes in the living room. Pausing at a window, she’d see
Batten’s master bedroom light go off, a bathroom light snap on. She’d
meant what she said in the empty house. People would live in those
houses eventually. Nothing would stay the same forever.
She’d approach the piles of boxes, hands on her hips. Joanna,
Apartment, they said. They contained only things, knickknacks and
