Blake Butler - There Is No Year

Sometimes at school the son would come into a classroom and find himself already seated in his assigned chair, his hair combed clean and neatly parted, a blue word sometimes plainly scrawled or stamped across his creaseless, spit-shined head.

Sitting upstairs in the closet, where she’d hidden , the mother heard a knocking through the floor — sound that seemed at first to come from on the wood there in the closet, just behind her head. She could not move. She was so thick. The mother, sitting wobbling, felt the knocking shift along the inseam of the house, all down around its back and belly to the downstairs, to the front door. There the knocking became pounding, became shouting, became bells — a chime the house had held inside it, somehow, since it had been built, a human sound. The low tone of the doorbell made the mother’s body moisten, the stink of grass around her head — the knocking pounding all throughout her, at her heartbeat, twinned together, double time — then, inside the rhythm, she could see again, and she could stand.

At the door, through the thick peephole, the sweating mother saw a man. Not the man she’d hoped to see there, he with such hands , but her husband, balding. Here, the father, at his own door: a lock to which he had the key. The mother breathed to see the father upright, glistening in outdoor light — she could not remember the last time she’d witnessed him outside the house since they moved in.

And yet this father was not the father, the mother saw then, looking longer, her brim shifting — no, not quite. This man clearly had aged less than the current father. His cheeks were tight and eyes were clean. He had another way about him. Kempt clothes, casual. A fine set of clean black driving gloves. The mother saw some kind of promise in his posture, days yet coming, the expectation of a life. For years all the males the mother looked at looked like the father — every single one — though that was in the years when he was thinner and she quicker and them strong.

The mother looked and looked and looked again, her eyelids flitting. This man was beautiful, she knew. Like her husband except newer, neater, which could have made him anybody.

The mother unlocked, unlatched, and opened up the door.

Beside the man, the mother saw, as the strong door revealed another hole, there stood a woman, too. A woman about as tall as the mother, a small taut belly protruding from her skeleton, petite. This woman wore a veil — a white bride’s veil, the mother noticed— certainly a bride’s, it had to be, the color shifting, pale , with long dark driving gloves, like those the man beside her wore, covering her skin’s arms. Through the veil the mother could see the semi-outline of the other impending mother’s face, the features meshed in, fluttered. She had a mouth and, somewhere, eyes.

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.

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.