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 rubbed 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.