The House
By Linda Hull
SMASHWORDS EDITION
*****
Published by Linda Hull at Smashwords
The House
Copyright © 2011 Linda Hull
Smashwords Edition License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author's work.
The house looked smaller than she remembered it. It didn’t hold a sense of sadness, joy, good or evil. It was just a concrete box in the middle of a grassy square in the center of hundreds of others just like it. The green and white aluminum awnings had been torn off by the hurricane ten years ago but a few of the twisted brackets remained resolutely anchored to the walls. The neighborhood's hurricane damaged trees had grown grotesque short leafy branches that jutted out of fat trunks, but the little tree she planted in the front yard when she was in first grade was missing. Naomi supposed her father had been glad to be rid of it: no tree—no leaves to rake. Her mother’s prized flower beds that once surrounded the house were now just rectangular indentations in the weed-studded grass. What the hell was she doing here?
Naomi sat in the driveway in her rental car with the air conditioner running. She checked her watch—it wasn't quite noon. Her flight from Atlanta arrived ahead of schedule for once and there was no line at the Hertz counter, so she was early. Rebecca would be right on time. Rebecca was nothing if not efficient. She had offered to pick Naomi up at the airport, but Naomi wanted the freedom of her own car. She frowned at the house, noticing that the windows were all closed. In this heat that wouldn't be good. She hoped there was electricity and that the air conditioner was in working condition.
On the other hand, that would be a great excuse not to go in there. The first excuse six weeks ago had been that it was the busy season at the hotel and she couldn't get away from her guest relations job. The second excuse was that the cat was ill. When she finally couldn't put it off any longer, Adele wanted to come with her, but Naomi didn't think that Aunt Kaye was up to playing that particular version of "Guess Who's Coming to Dinner" just yet.
Rebecca’s vanilla colored SUV pulled up into the driveway behind Naomi with a short greeting honk. Naomi shook her head, buzzed down the window and leaned out into the south Florida heat. "Why did you park right there? I can't get out."
"Nice to see you too, cuz," said Rebecca. She locked the SUV's door with a chirp of her alarm key ring and walked up to the rental car.
"It's just that I might want to get out of here..." protested Naomi.
"Who doesn't?" Rebecca stopped at Naomi's door and smiled. Somehow she always managed to look cool, even in 87% humidity. "How was your flight?"
"Fine," Naomi said.
“How’s Atlanta?”
“Fine. How are the kids?”
“Great, how’s….”
“Adele?” Naomi reminded her.
“Yeah. How’s Adele?”
“Still the light of my life.”
“Great. You gonna get out of the car?”
“Eventually.”
Rebecca leaned forward and propped her elbows on the car’s window ledge. “You don’t have to do this…”
“Yeah, I do,” Naomi said. She pressed the window button and Rebecca backed up quickly.
“A little warning would have been nice…”
Naomi grinned at her and got out of the car. She and Rebecca almost hugged but the moment had already passed.
“Mario and the kids are really excited about having a house guest, you know,” Rebecca said.
"I got a hotel."
"You don't need a hotel—Mario and I have plenty of room and the kids would love an extra playmate for a week."
Naomi grinned again. "That's why I got a hotel"
"They aren't that bad..."
“Spawn of Satan you said the last time we talked on the phone."
"Oh, that was only Benny and he'd had a bad day at soccer practice. Gil and Jordan are okay... They'd love to see you."
"They'll see me. Then I'll go back to my hotel."
Rebecca was disappointed and put on her signature pout. “I was looking forward to a sleep over. I even rented our old favorite movie…” The cousins were each other's best friend growing up and Naomi stayed over at Rebecca's house every chance she got.
“The Princess Bride?” asked Naomi.
“As you wish,” said Rebecca.
“We’ll see,” said Naomi. She stared appraisingly at the house. “Is the electric on?”
"We never disconnected it,” Rebecca said. “I knew you’d want to see things before we sold it.” She took a set of keys from her purse and started walking toward the house. “We had a crew came to clean things up right after. They were good. You’d never know. I came by yesterday to turn the air on so it would be cool."
Naomi walked toward the front door. Her shoes crunched in the white gravel of the walkway. When she was a child, she spent hours picking stray bits of gravel out of the grass and putting them back. Long neglected white flecks peeked through the grass, calling to her to put them in their proper place. Naomi slowed, remembering herself with her face inches from the grass, nose full of the smell of grass and dirt, fingernails torn from the rough rock and the sun bleaching her hair to a strawberry blonde. She had just started to crouch down when the front door opened and she flinched, expecting to hear her mother's voice.
It was just Rebecca. "You drop something?"
"No." Naomi straightened and blinked in the bright sunlight.
Rebecca stood just inside the dark doorway of the house. "It's fine," she said as Naomi approached.
Naomi held her breath just the same and stepped inside. Her eyes were just adjusting to the darkness when her cousin flicked the lights on. She was startled into taking a breath—it wasn't bad but it wasn’t good either. The house still smelled of stale cigarettes, stale furniture and stale people. She caught a whiff of bug spray coming from the kitchen.
Rebecca slipped past Naomi and adjusted the thermostat on the wall. "Seventy ought to do it..." She walked into the living room and threw open the brown curtains, letting light filter through the mist of stirred up dust. "Whew!" she laughed, waved her hands and coughed. She looked around. "You know, this old carpet is still in decent shape."
Naomi hadn't moved from the doorway. She surveyed the rust colored shag carpet that was there when the family had first moved in. "Yeah, they don't make 'em like that any more."
"Thank God. It's hideous." Rebecca was doing her best to lighten the mood. "Look, if you don't want to do this..."
Naomi closed the door and walked in. "I'll do it."
"Because I can take care of it, you know. I just asked you to come because I thought there'd be something here you'd want."
"There probably is," said Naomi, though she had no idea what. She entered the living room. "God, look at that." She pointed at the old Hunter ceiling fan. Fat caterpillars of dust clung to the leading edge of each blade. She reached up and flipped the little black switch on the side.
"That reverses it," cautioned Rebecca.
Naomi grinned. "I know." She grasped the chain.
"No, don't!"
Naomi pulled it anyway and they both shielded their eyes as the fan started up and dust caterpillars flew all over the room, landing on the brown and gold patterned couch, the moldy matching Barca-loungers, and the plastic flowers on the coffee table. "Gotta have a little fun," she said. The cousins laughed and coughed and sneezed until the mood faded with the dust. A moment of inactivity was unbearable in this house. Always had been.
"Want to check out your old bedroom?" Rebecca said.
"There's nothing in there," Naomi told her.
"There's got to be something. . .” Rebecca went to the first door in the short hallway and opened it. God! I forgot how lavender it was." Once, when Naomi was little, she had voiced a preference for purple and so her room was purple with a vengeance. Or lavender anyway: walls, carpet, curtains, and bed clothes, everything the color of lavender ice. Her mother never understood there was a difference.
Rebecca entered the room and looked in the closet. It was completely bare, not even a clothes hanger on the rod. She checked the dresser drawers. They were all empty too. "There's nothing in here," she said.
"I told you,” Naomi answered from the living room. “Dad said he was going to throw out everything I didn't take with me when I left." She picked up the old black rotary phone from the end table. "This thing weighs a ton."
Rebecca came back into the living room. "I can't believe he threw away everything."
Naomi put the receiver to her ear. "I can't believe this thing still gets a dial tone." She hung the phone up and looked at Rebecca, then past her to the closed master bedroom door.
Rebecca moved away from the door, making a casual misdirection attempt. "So how about we start in the kitchen?"
Wordlessly, Naomi walked straight to the master bedroom door. Rebecca backed up against it. "There's nothing in there. . ."
Naomi reached past Rebecca, grasped the door knob and swung open the door. She surveyed the room over Rebecca’s shoulder without stepping in. It reeked of disinfectant. The carpet was missing. She supposed the clean-up crew had taken it away. That made sense. The empty bed frame leaned against a large square of new drywall. The crew had probably taken the mattress and box spring too. Another new patch of drywall stared out of the mirror frame attached to the freshly scrubbed dresser.
"See. There's nothing in there," Rebecca repeated. Mom and I cleaned out the closet and drawers. All of the clothes, knickknacks and things are in boxes out in the garage."
"Good," said Naomi. She pulled the door closed and turned around. "Let's take care of the kitchen. There's bound to be a jug of screw-top wine in there somewhere. . ."
***
Most of the roaches were dead thanks to the four bug bombs Rebecca set off in there last week, but one or two scuttled away each time one of the dark paneled cabinet doors were opened. Rebecca and Naomi each had a juice glass filled with California's finest jug Chablis chilled by a couple of ice-cubes.
"I’m so sorry,” said Rebecca. I had no idea they let things get this bad." She regretted volunteering to clean out the pantry. Almost every food package had holes eaten into it. She tossed another envelope of noodles into a black plastic garbage bag. Four other bags were already filled. “We let them live like this.”
"Don't worry about it," Naomi told her. She perched on a footstool and dug through the cabinets over the sink.
"They never asked for help."
"They wouldn't."
"They said they were fine."
"That's what they always said." Naomi shook the dead roaches out of a large orange plastic bowl. It still had a faint popcorn smell. "They would have said they were fine even if roaches were eating their feet."
"We should have visited more often but she and Mom fought so much," said Rebecca.
Naomi put her face in the bowl and inhaled the buttery smell. It reminded her of Saturday nights and the Carol Burnett Show. "Yep,"
"I should have dropped in once in a while."
"Why would you?" Naomi's voice sounded hollow from within the bowl. "This was my old popcorn bowl," she said.
"Keep it then," Rebecca said over her shoulder.
"Nah. Why would I keep it?"
"Because you remember it."
"I remember a lot of things that I don't want to keep."
"Remember 2007?" Rebecca held up an unopened package of Oreo cookies. "That's when these cookies expired."
Naomi frowned. "They didn't even like Oreos..."
Rebecca pulled out an identical package of cookies. They both had red stickers on them. "Yeah, but they were two for one..."
"That explains it then. Maybe I will keep this bowl." Naomi got off the foot stool and crossed the room to put the orange bowl on the "maybe" pile along with Granny's kitty cat salt and pepper shakers, a never used food processor someone had given as a gift, and a neglected but salvageable Kitchen Aid mixer.
"What do you want to do with these dishes?" Rebecca asked.
Naomi raised an eyebrow and gazed at the mismatched Corelle and Stoneware sets that crowded half of the cabinets. "I don't know. You think the Salvation Army would want them?"
“The clean ones, maybe. There's a pile of stuff in the garage I was going to take out there. Those pots and pans are nasty, though."
"So we throw them out," Naomi said. She picked up another trash bag and began to stuff it with the contents of the drawer under the stove. "Ugh! They aren't even washed, some of them. I guess that's where the roaches came from."
"We should have visited, me and Mom,” Rebecca said. “They shouldn't have had to live like this..."
"I didn't say it to make you feel bad," Naomi told her.
"I know, but I do."
Naomi didn't feel bad. She didn't feel anything. "Don't. Mom always said to me 'You made your bed, you lie in it.' They didn't have to live this way. They just did."
"They were old. They couldn't help it," Rebecca said.
"Wow, I heard something like that twenty years ago," Naomi pulled the trash bag's drawstring tight. "Only then it was 'He's drunk—he can't help it.' That was bullshit then and its bullshit now.” She picked up the bag of trash and headed out to the garage with it. “I was a little kid I was the one who couldn't help it. Mom could have helped it but she didn't or she just wouldn't so I am not going to worry about them not being able to help themselves when they got old."
The conversation Rebecca had been dreading had started. She stared after Naomi for a moment fighting the urge to get in her car and run. Maybe the day could be salvaged after all. She could change the subject to something less horrible. She put on her neutral face, picked up a couple of garbage bags and dragged them into the garage, she half expected to find Naomi crying. She wasn’t. That was something she never saw then either.
Half of the garage was filled with two piles of boxes and garbage bags and clothes. Naomi was rifling through some of the clothing. Relieved, Rebecca said, "That's the stuff from their bedroom. I guess it can go to the Salvation Army too,"
"That's what I'm thinking," replied Naomi, not looking at her.
Rebecca joined Naomi at the piles of clothes. “The pile on the right is for good stuff. The one on the left is for trash…” Naomi was silent. "Look, I didn't mean to bring up bad memories..."
"Do you really think they ever go away?" Naomi snapped.
“No,” said Rebecca.
Naomi began tossing the bags of clothing onto the trash pile. "I don't think anyone would really want this stuff."
“Mario and I can do all of this. I can’t imagine what this is like for you…”
Naomi picked up momentum and tossed harder. “This is nothing,” she said. “This is easy. Try imagining being ten years old and having your Daddy come home from the late shift smelling like hot dogs and beer and climbing into bed with you, scratching your face with his day-old beard telling you how much he loves you and how good girls are quiet girls."
"I get it," broke in Rebecca.
"Do you? Can you imagine him doing it two or three nights a week? Can you imagine your Mom finding blood and other stuff in your sheets but not asking why because she knows why, she just doesn't have the nerve to do anything about it?"
“I can’t,” said Rebecca.
Naomi slapped the garage door button and ducked under when the door was halfway up. She dragged two bags to the side of the road, scattering gravel along the way. Rebecca tried to keep up with Naomi's frenzied pace back and forth between the growing and receding garbage piles.
"Imagine not being allowed hang out with friends after school. Mom wouldn’t let me play sports because it wasn’t ‘ladylike’ and Dad wouldn’t let me date because 'Boys will do things to you,' he said."
"So that's why you hate men?" Rebecca asked.
Naomi stopped and gave a short laugh. "That's why I hate one of them," she said.
"But you're a..."
"Lesbian. Yes. Rebecca, that doesn't mean I hate men. I just don't like having sex with them. I just prefer women and I knew that before dear old Dad climbed into bed with me.”
The cousins stared at each other across the garbage pile, breathing hard from their workout.
“I’m sorry,” Rebecca said.
“Don’t be,” Naomi told her. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I should have done something.”
“You were just a kid. You didn’t know.”
“I should have seen. I should have figured it out. I let him ruin your life.”
“My life isn’t ruined – my life is wonderful. I have a wonderful partner, a wonderful job, a wonderful house, wonderful friends…”
“A wonderful cat?” asked Rebecca.
“Two,” Naomi grinned. “We’re lesbians. It’s the law.” She sighed and looked back at the house. “Look, he was a messed up bastard, but he didn’t ruin my life. And you were always around to make my childhood bearable. You were the one friend I had that didn’t care that I was different. Thanks for that.”
“I didn’t know you were different.”
“Exactly.”
“You’re thanking me for being clueless?”
Naomi laughed. “I guess I am.” She spread her arms out. "Now come give us a hug," she said.
Rebecca walked around the garbage and embraced Naomi tightly.
“Now what do you say we get out of here and go watch a movie?" Naomi said.
“As you wish,” Rebecca said.
Naomi went back in the garage, hit the door close button and ducked out just in time.
Rebecca went to the front door to lock the house back up. "Want me to go back in after your popcorn bowl?"
"No,” said Naomi. “I think I can live without it." She took the keys out of her pocket and walked through the gravel sprinkled grass toward her rental car.
###
About the Author
Linda Hull grew up in Miami, Florida, spending much of her time playing with her imaginary friends and making up stories. Once in a while, she’d write some of those stories down. These were distributed among a very select, highly amused few. Linda went on to have an adventurous career working everywhere from restaurants to car washes to airlines and cruise lines where she got the chance to travel, and theme parks where she got to watch kids see their fantasies come to life. All the while making up stories; sometimes writing them down. She eventually settled in Central Florida and got serious about writing. After graduating with a BA in English/Writing from Rollins College, her work has been seen at Universal Studios, Florida; The Orlando Fringe Festival and on Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, and Amazon.com.
Other Stories by Linda Hull
The Invasion of the Eyeball Sucker
A Matter of Survival – (The Extraterrestrial Anthology, Volume I: Temblar)
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