Two Houses: Part Two

It's Just A Home

Claudia sat at the kitchen bar alone, eating her share of the pizza the other two had barely been interested in. It was funny how she was the least excited for the move and the first to finish packing. She’d even dismantled her bed frame before noon while Evie was still dragging things out of her closet, a place that had been stacked high practically since the day of her birth. Claudia stared at the perforated edge of the pizza box while chewing silently. She counted each cut in the cardboard and remembered on thirty-seven that no one had checked the attic yet.

“Claudia?”

“Hmm,” she turned in her seat, a pepperoni escaping from its cheese and making its way down the side of her mouth.

Evie looked a bit bedraggled. Her hair was escaping from the knot on the back of her head and there was something staining the side of her shirt that hadn’t been there an hour ago.

“If I give you twenty bucks, will you help me pack up my junk?”

“You mean do most of it for you.”

“You’re so good at it.”

She swallowed and laughed, already getting off her stool and vowing to come back to her slice later when it was cold. “You don’t have to pay me with your non-existent cash. Let’s see what sort of mess you’ve made.” Claudia almost gasped once she’d rounded the corner. That’s why Evie looked more apologetic than usual.

She stared in horror at the aftermath of a bedroom. “You broke it.”

“Broke what? If you’re talking about the lava lamp, I think I can fix that.”

“No,” she looked amazed down at Evie, “you broke this part of the house.”

“That’s not a thing,” Evie spoke quietly, her tone giving away that she didn’t even believe her own retort.

Claudia walked to the far corner across from the bedside table, picking up a wad of towels that started dripping, “I’m assuming this is the remnants of the lamp.”

Her sister didn’t answer at first so she glanced back. With an ashamed expression, Evie shook her head and pointed over by the closet.

“Then what is this?!” Claudia immediately dropped the sopping fabric back to the floor.

“I was thirsty, and then I spilled because the carpet’s uneven.”

Claudia toed the mess over and saw a dark stain under the pile, “Mom’s going to kill you.”

“I know! That’s why I asked for your help.”

“Take these and grab some more. You’re going to clean this and the other mess while I put your stuff in boxes.”

Claudia picked the towels back up and passed it over to her sister. “And grab a bucket with soap and water because you’re gonna be scrubbing this spot,” she added on, yelling toward the open doorway.

The scent of cola was suddenly strong where she hadn’t even noticed it a moment before. She looked about herself at everything else. There seemed to be a few shirts stuffed, unfolded, into a large box on the bed and books toppling out of another on the floor. Evie would be the person to worry about the literature before anything else. While almost none of it was ready to go at least she’d pulled most of it out of storage. Claudia walked over to the dresser and grabbed an armload to drop onto the bed, starting to fold before Evie came back in such a rush that she was sloshing the contents of her bucket in a trail along the floor.

“Hey, you’re spilling it all out! Slow down!”

***

Harvest Moon played softly from the radio in the kitchen and Claudia made a mental note to grab it if her mother happened to forget, which she usually did. The house wasn’t nearly empty yet but it had that air about it. It was tainted with the intention of leaving. It knew it was going to be empty and was prepping for the loss. Or perhaps it’s happy we’ll be gone, Claudia shifted her thoughts just as a harmonica took over Neil Young’s high voice. Shouldn’t get too excited, though. You never know how bad the next tenants will be.

She picked up a box with ‘Dishes’ written on the top in thick marker, her mother’s handwriting. As she carried it through the living room toward the open front door and the morning beyond, she remembered a time that she’d shattered at least five different dinner plates. It was years before when she’d still had her perfect eyesight but at the same time, she hadn’t been any less clumsy because of it. Claudia could still hear the shattering sound making her muscles tense. When it happened, she could remember how satisfying the crash was to her ears even if she didn’t admit it. That was another thing that had changed after the break-in; loud noises now made her want to hide within herself.

Her mother was discussing something with the moving guys when she walked around them onto the truck. Claudia’s first thought was that it was strange to be inside a room on wheels and the next circled around the fact that it smelled of sawdust and motor oil. She wondered if all of their stuff would have these smells clinging to them after the drive, sat her box down avoiding smashing it on her toes, and turned around into another person’s chest. It was one of the movers and she noticed that she didn’t like that their uniforms weren’t greyish overalls as they were supposed to be. The company name was embroidered into the blue fabric of the polo shirt he wore, right about where his heart should be. He looked down at her, tilting his head as she stepped back out of his range of reach and the cloud of cologne.

“You know we’re literally being paid to do that,” he gestured to the cardboard square in the center of the floor.

She looked back up at him. He has a very symmetrical face for a person, she thought. It’d be too clear looking if it weren’t for a few freckles and a small “M” shaped birthmark under his eye.

The man started to look back at her with a hint of discomfort. She had been staring too long.

“Just being helpful,” she finally replied and walked around him down the ramp.

Claudia made a mental note to avoid that specific mover if possible, as to not make either of them more uncomfortable, but it ended up being a fruitless effort considering he was continuously entering and exiting her house.

Suddenly, after what seemed like only a few trips on her part, Claudia walked back into a completely empty living room that seemed to echo even the smallest of noises. Has the carpet always been such a puke-orange color? She put her hands on her hips just as Evie came in the door behind and rammed right into her elbow. “Everything’s gone!” Her sister’s voice sounded more horrified than triumphant.

“You say that like it was stolen.”

“It sort of feels like it.”

Claudia almost opened her mouth to say that it really didn’t, that it was nowhere near that feeling. This was calmly removing and gently placing in an opposite place, not taking. That was a whole other sickening sort of thing that said you were never really safe and you probably never will be.

“Alright, Aida. Will you go hand this over to one of the guys? I need to finish checking every inch of this place,” her mom dropped a rolled-up stack of pages into her hand, “Oh, I can’t forget the radio!”

Claudia stood for a moment, contemplating. She could feel the spots of warmth on the paper where her mom had been holding it.

“Do you want me to do it?”

There was something underneath the innocent question her sister had asked. Perhaps she was remembering Claudia’s aversion or she’d seen her inch away each time one of the movers had passed. It made her feel like a child though, as if Evie had abruptly become the adult in the room. It made her intensely angry each time her subconscious took over control in this way and her mind began its imaginings of if she hadn’t been broken against her will. The rage was not assisting her willpower in not crying until she was safe and alone, especially with the home being bare around her. With the conjured-up image of a stranger materializing only inches before her, more intimate than it made sense for any stranger to be, she cracked and practically lunged for the front door.

The movers were already in the truck and she swerved toward the passenger door that was still swung open. A pair of black boots was hanging out the side, one foot resting on the step up lazily. Claudia walked up to those feet, idly watching the huge bolts in the frame that disappeared behind her until she was just beside the man. He had his head laid back on the seat as he listened to the driver talk over the phone and jumped when she spoke up. It was the birthmarked one from before.

“Sorry, I’m supposed to give you guys these. I think it’s the directions printed off.”

He sat up and reached down for them, clearing his throat and thanking her. She started to walk away before he called out to her, “Wait!”

Claudia flinched but turned back to listen from a distance. He jumped down and started walking toward her, only he wasn’t taking his eye off the directions listed in front of him.

“I don’t think…this is right.”

He was close enough that he held out what was meant to be instructions through Pennsylvania, but as Claudia looked, she realized was scrambling handwritten words. She tried reading them, all random along the page as they were and could see that it was just as nonsensical as it seemed. She pulled the bundle into her own hands and flipped through. Only the final two pages had anything to do with instructions and they were the very limited sort that gets printed off a random sort of browser.

Slightly embarrassed, Claudia handed the correct papers over to the mover, “Here. These ones might be a bit more helpful.”

For some reason, she didn’t bother trying to explain or make excuses for her mother and realized a second later that he probably thought she herself was the owner of the mad woman scribbles. She felt like kicking her mother at the same time that she tried to remember at what age it was possible to develop things like Alzheimer’s.

She came through the front a second later and followed shouting from her mother’s bedroom in the back. Claudia wouldn’t recall setting the pages on the counter but that’s just what she did, also forgetting the fact that it was in a recognized handwriting she’d seen written all over the place on packages and tags that very same day. They’d seemed more like lyrics anyway. Nothing to worry about from an odd song, they were as common as anything.

Claudia came into the room to see her mother’s legs dangling freely out of the attic hole above where her head had been. Evie was practically cackling and reaching above herself with zero effort, a ladder at her feet.

“What is happening?”

She propped the ladder upright, more than her sister had been doing, and guided the sneakers over to the top rung. Her mother came stepping down slowly with a red face. There would probably be swinging as soon as she was safely on level ground.

Claudia turned to her hysterical sister before her mother would have the chance to get her hands on her.

“I told her I couldn’t hold it but she wouldn’t wait for you,” Evie explained between breaths.

Claudia shrugged toward her mother who was still enraged, “She has a point; you and your impatience cause a lot of trouble.”

She only readjusted herself and folded the ladder, swinging it a little too wide as she carried it from the room and almost put a hole in the plaster. Evie wiped the tears from her cheeks and looked around herself as if she’d just realized there were walls around her.

“What?”

“We’re not coming back,” her sister pointed out, her face dropping slowly from laughter into something much less joyful.

Claudia grabbed Evie’s shoulder and pulled it to her, holding her sister in one of those rare moments that they were both okay with it. Again, she bit the side of her tongue and hoped the pain would distract her mind from the tears it was trying to form in her eyes. She knew everything inside of her – these masses of churning feelings – were complex, maybe even more confusing than what her prepubescent sibling was aching with, but that was only due to all the things she’d personally experienced under the roof they’d be leaving behind them. For many reasons, it was entirely horrible to be going. And yet, there were a lot of other reasons that it was somewhat freeing.

“Come on,” Claudia stepped back to see her little sister’s face, “Let’s go get mom before she locks herself in the shed on accident.”

***

She sat behind her own steering wheel, in her own car, waiting for everyone else to pull out so she could follow. She was blocked in, but it wasn’t like she really minded being the last in line. There was almost no pressure there. And if she did happen to get separated or lost, there was no one else in the cab to freak out or complain. She could focus a lot better on her own where she could control the amount of noise surrounding her.

Claudia looked up into the rearview and could just make out the shape of her sister’s bun leaning against the frame of the passenger window. Evie hadn’t really wanted to ride with their mother but when they’d both brought up the point that directions weren’t exactly her strong suit, she’d agreed with a huff. It would more than likely be a trip with a lot of arguing between the two and take them a few days to stop being angry with one another afterward, but she couldn’t help but be grateful for the time she’d have alone.

The roaring engine of the moving truck started up. She glanced out the window toward where they were parked along the walk and met the eye of the birthmarked mover. They both held their gaze until the driver started accelerating down the one-way road. Claudia watched as they went ahead and assumed they would arrive beforehand, leaving everything for them to unpack and never seeing each other again. Knowing that all of her family’s worldly possessions were in the hands of two random people was a little concerning.

Claudia turned the engine over and sat a little longer until her mother left the drive for the last time, leaving space for her to back out. Where she had parked and where the space started faced the right side of the red, brick house. There was a white-framed window that floated almost exactly over the hood of the car and without having to think she knew it was her mother’s bedroom. Used to be her mother’s bedroom. She could feel her hands sticking tacky to the wheel they grasped. Why are you nervous? She glanced back and noticed the Honda was nowhere in sight. Move.

But she didn’t move the car, not for quite a while. So long that eventually, her mother called wondering why she hadn’t followed. Claudia only picked up the phone, trying to blindly text back that she was on her way with the tears making her eyesight even worse.

She continued to have her own little break down in the privacy of the closed in space. Each time she would look away from something that made the ugly mass inside of her churn more harshly there would be another memory to replace it. The bushes out front, barely alive but for one pink rose trying to hang on, were what really pushed her over the edge. She had crawled past that same bush fifteen years ago, trying to make it to the neighbors with the whole right side of her world gone black.

The day, the horrible day.

It had been night and she had been alone for hours.

I don’t want to remember this, she begged herself getting no reprieve.

She was comfortable that way, mundanely so. Her mother had given her the rules at an even younger age and trusted her to follow them as she went off to whatever job she had been trying to keep at the time. Maybe even two of them then, but Claudia couldn’t recall.

End of summer, cool air in the backyard when I took the trash out and came back in.

She had come back into the house safely but because the commercial ended on her channel, she was distracted. The lock wasn’t pulled and the door might as well have stood open invitingly. As soon as the next break had come, Claudia walked to the kitchen to cook her dinner. She watched as the tray spun round and round in drunken circles, barely visible behind the speckled microwave door. Pops and cracks reverberated off the kitchen cabinets. Maybe I put it in too long. Claudia reached forward for its handle and stopped herself. It was probably better to just let it go, even if it exploded. Her anxiety didn’t really matter though, as it turned out. Not only because the tray of prepackaged food did cook thoroughly and waited all night for someone who wouldn’t end up eating it, but because Claudia would turn at the silence in the wake of its beeping, noticing that she could hear crickets crying louder than usual.

The door is open.

She could remember the scene, how it looked like whoever came into the house didn’t make it too obvious. They’d gone to swing it partially closed so that only about a foot of space stood between the latches contact. Maybe if it wasn’t summer at the time and if the crickets were asleep, she might not have noticed anything until the man was right behind her. She could’ve been knocked out in peace, the only fear being that of when she’d finally woken and wondered what had happened. No, that wouldn’t have worked with all the noise he was making. Right after that was the crash…from that room.

Claudia glared blurrily at the window with its plain white curtains pulled closed.

She was back in her fourteen-year-old body, staring in horror at the unlatched door. There was a loud thud from her left that let her know whoever had come in was still inside. It sounded like they’d pulled a dresser drawer out to hit the floor and when she peeked around the refrigerator that was exactly what she saw. Some of her mother’s clothes were strewn across the carpet and the rest were mixed around, unfolded inside the furniture that had been torn from its holding. He was clearly looking for something and taking his time with it, tearing out more drawers and throwing things around. She didn’t like that he seemed so relaxed about it all but it wasn’t as if she could really do anything to change it.

Claudia stepped back then until her back hit the countertop. She could feel her muscles starting to tense up. If she didn’t move soon then she wasn’t going to be able to move at all. He knows I’m here. He has to, I was right in front of him when he walked through. Her eyes searched the kitchen around her for the phone she’d left out of its holder, but she had no idea where she happened to set it down.

There was a large furnace grate set into the floor right outside that bedroom door and she could remember all the times she’d waited to hear it when she was little. Her mother usually worked late and therefore woke up late. In the summer, when Claudia was already watching cartoons and feeding herself breakfast, she would hear the tick-tick of a foot unsettling it before it fell back into frame. That was when the house would smell of coffee and she would either spend the day on some adventure or go to her dad’s. She was always nervous to find out which, and in that moment – when the shoe that stamped down on the grate had never done so before – she felt in her gut that she was going to die.

I want my mom, she thought as he came into view.

Claudia shook her head back and forth trying to rattle it all out of her brain. If she didn’t leave soon then her mother would just have to turn right back around to see what was going on, and the stress of the trip was already going to have her in a mood.

She scrubbed at her face with an old napkin from the glove compartment and tried to carefully reverse, her hands shaking so hard she had to squeeze the wheel until the gripping hurt. Parked in the road with her foot down on the break, she pulled out her bag for the pills she would have to cling to the duration of the trip. With nothing to drink she swallowed them down and turned up the radio, hoping whoever was running it that day was choosing a playlist of the most obnoxious and distracting songs in history.

Claudia took her foot from the break, pressed the gas, and didn’t even say goodbye.