I stop and squint through the grime, looking out to my backyard, and the first thing I see are the graves. They’re draped in ivy, stained sickly green, and covered with little scabs of moss and mold. Susan. Bill. Twin headstones for the former owners of Black Wood House. I don’t know who thought it would be a good idea to bury Susan Campbell next to her husband. Her killer. But there they are, out my bedroom window, side by side for eternity.
I asked the realtor about it, but he didn’t know who buried them. No one knows what happened to poor Janet Campbell after she fled the town. She could be dead. All she is now is a piece of folklore. A ghost story before she even died. Poor girl.
“Are you sure you wantthisroom?” Joe asks. “What about the others?” He nods in the direction of the hallway, where three other garage-sized bedrooms lie dormant.
I shake my head and move to brush past him. He stopped kissing me this year, but he still lets me hug him sometimes. I have to time those coveted hugs correctly, or he’ll rear back like a pissed-off horse.
A year ago, I would’ve tackled him to the bed. Or maybe I would’ve just thrown my arms around his neck, looked him full in the face, and said, “I’m so proud of us, Joe. Look how far we’ve come.”
Now I slink sadly past him, a goddamn ghost of a wife.
I pad down the staircase, a spiraling black masterpiece that made me gasp the first time I saw it, and made Joe wince and murmur, “Bloody hell, what a nightmare.” It’s wrought iron, cool to the touch, and every time I descend, I feel like a Disney villain.
Iadoreit.
Joe calls down, “Don’t you want a bedroom a bit less…I dunno, murdery?”
I reach the second-to-last step, breathing through my mouth. Thehouse has been shut up for decades, and it smells like a sweaty sheet. “I’m good, thanks.” I don’t know how to tell him the truth, because it’s strange even to me.
I didn’t choose that room. It chose me.
Just like the house.
I pull open the front door, grunting from the weight of it. It’s heavy oak, and once we get some linseed oil into it, it’ll look like a flame-red candle in the dark. My flat-faced cat, Reaper, bolts out before I can stop him. He screamed the whole forty-minute car ride here while Joe turned up the radio and yelled, “Do we have to bring him with us?”
I ignored them both. Joe’s been trying to get rid of Reaper ever since I stubbornly brought him home five years ago. I wandered around an adoption center, staring at wire cages and reading cutesy taglines:Meet Lynny, a quiet and sweet cat! Jack is the loveliest boy!
I stopped in front of the last cage, and the tagline simply read,Free. Underneath that in apologetic text, it said,This cat doesn’t like kids, dogs, loud noises, being picked up, and he’s been known to get into fights with other cats. He’s very possessive of his blanket and his food.
I smiled and peered through the cage bars. And there he was—a silver-haired Angora cat wrapped in a filthy blanket, staring at me with angry blue eyes. I loved him instantly.
I step onto the porch and watch as Reaper climbs the blackwood tree in our yard. He’s six now and still hates everything with an inexhaustible passion, and I really admire him for that. My boy.
I wrap my arms around myself, cold in the morning sun. You can’t even see the road from here, and it’s quiet now except for a lone cockatoo chattering in the tree. Reaper glares at the cockatoo murderously but makes no attempt to climb higher up the deeply fissured bark. I reach into my pocket for my phone and snap a picture of Reaper and the bird nestled in the bony branches. I quickly tap in a caption:
Moving Day at Black Wood House! These gorgeous guys approve! Head to my website for all the renovation updates! #BlackWoodHouse #cockatoo #Melbourne #reaper #murderhouse
I hesitate, wondering if I should use that last hashtag. It’s a bit much, I suppose. But it would definitely drive in some much-needed traffic and maybe a sponsor or two. There’s already interest in my website again, now that I’ve promised to document the renovations.
I hit the post button and automatically scroll through my feed, full of painful-looking yoga poses, watermelon salads, and a tutorial on how to fake a lip job with one million likes. My thumb hovers over the screen, and I surprise myself by clicking off my phone and tucking it into my pocket. There’s something incongruous about standing on this hundred-year-old porch and scrolling through the atrocities of social media. It doesn’t feel right. It’s like the house disapproves. Like it wants me back inside, cutting apple slices and smiling adoringly at my shiny-haired children. Or maybe it wants me asleep in my bed so my husband can murder me.
Finally I step off the porch, head to the truck, and busy myself with the moving boxes. We have a surprising amount of crap, and most of it’s mine. I have a shopping problem. And a bit of an alcohol issue. And oh, everything else. Doesn’t take a therapist to realize I’m filling up the voids in my life with a whole lot of shit.
For the next few hours, my husband and I work together, unloading and unpacking. Reaper sneaks inside the house as soon as we unload the couch and spends the rest of the afternoon propped on a cushion, watching us lug the rest of our furniture in.
When the truck’s empty, I pull out a six-pack from under the driver’s seat. I really shouldn’t be drinking on anti-depressants, but there are a lot of things I shouldn’t be doing. Last week, I went up to a double dose, but Joe doesn’t know this. There’s a lot of things he doesn’t know. Doesn’t even care to.
He thanks me, reaches for the beer, and we walk in ear-splitting silence to our front porch as I chug mine. My doctor’s voice rings in myhead. He was scribbling out my prescription, raising an eyebrow. “You know not to mix these with alcohol, right?”
“Of course!” I scoffed.
Tentatively, Joe taps his beer against mine with a reserved little clink. “Well…” he begins awkwardly, looking out to our gloomy front yard. “We did it.”
“Yes,” I say firmly. “We certainly did.”
Silence. We’re not used to communicating anymore. If we could still speak, what would we say? Perhaps I would finally admit the truth: Buying this house wasn’t just about building my brand and making a huge profit. I thought that renovating this house might help repair us too. I saw us working side by side, painting walls in amiable silence or sharing a beer as we pored over color charts.
After a while, Joe strolls off the creaking porch and disappears inside. I watch him go, wondering if I’m allowed to follow.
