Blake Butler - There Is No Year

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.

They did not seem to care at all to see the master bedroom, where they would sleep night by night by night by night by night, the mother mentioned, the word night falling out of her mouth in repetition, she could not stop it , and still they did not say a word or blink.

They did not look askance to find the master bathroom’s mirror again off its putty, leaning forward above the basin making double image of the floor.

They did not seem to smell the smell of something musty coming from the vents there, the mold loosening all through the house, suddenly warm.

Their foreheads folded slightly at the child’s bookshelf, packed fat end to end with colored spines, though while awake and of his knowledge, the son had only ever read one book — a volume given to him by the father’s father, unbeknownst to either parent, a strange, enormous edition with only one letter on every page, to be read along a slow strobe. The son had found he could quote the text at length before he’d read it. When he did read blood would leak out of his nose. It would pour onto the white pages, blanks, making new letters, then, on closing, smear them doubled, smudge the letters into more.

The couple moved so slow all through the house, like lava.

A bell inside the house was ringing, though the mother could not hear.

This is where on the weekends my son likes to sit and tan her skin, the mother mentioned in the kitchen, pointing through the door glass at the yard and swimming pool. His skin , she corrected, not hers . My son is a boy. She said how good it felt for children to go swimming. What clean work water could do.

The couple appeared blank. The mother shook her head, began again. Hello, yes, welcome, please come in now, I’d love to show you our fine house. The flushing mother started to open the door to lead them out to where the pool was, to have a closer look, but then thought of something and stopped and stopped again. She turned to press her back against the glass. Actually they couldn’t see the swimming pool today, the mother explained, aching, as it had just been treated. It wasn’t right to breathe. The couple did not press this issue. They continued not to blink or budge or motion or say much of anything at all.

Hey, what’s your due date, the mother asked at some point, on a whim. She asked with a strange expression on her face. She didn’t know she wore the expression and didn’t mean the thing the expression seemed to mean she meant. They’d gone through the whole house already and were back in the first room where they started, with the couple standing close together, arms at their sides. The mother was standing near another window when she said it, the whole back of her head and spine aflush with light coming down into the house from outside, though in the outside now it was night, and there were no streetlamps and no moon or stars. There was nothing, not even the yard.

The couple’s mouths were closed.

The mother made a motion at her own midsection as if there were a bigger belly there — where the son had been upon her sometime and now was just the air. She nodded between the blank space and the woman, drawing lines out with the motion of her head.

The man looked hard at the mother, shook his head. He shook his head so hard it briefly blurred. Stopping again, he looked older.

The mother’s mouth continued moving without sound. She touched her own face, which felt like anybody’s. She felt her jaw pulse in its gristle.

The man touched the silent woman on the back.

She’s sickly, the man said. His voice was so small, sticky. She’s not been feeling well. It’s been known to go around.

The woman sniffed and sniffed, like wanting food.

It’s been known to go around, the man repeated.

The mother tried to smile, made little sounds. She sort of curtsied the way young girls used to when wearing dresses — the way she had on several occasions in the past though she could remember none of them specifically right now. The curtsy made her hips hurt. She cleared her throat and turned, as the man had, away, to face the window, fat with glare. She said something nice about the window’s size and the view through it — that bright light — the way she’d seen all the listing agents on those home shows do on the TV, as what could sell a house but a window.

Upstairs again, by request, the mother showed the couple the bathroom that the son used every day. The door to the son’s bedroom from the hallway still was locked. The corresponding bathroom was small and had two doors that came into it side by side on the same wall. One door led in from the hallway. One door led to the son.

The son’s door was locked as well from this side and further knocking went unanswered — though now the mother was really knocking hard and kind of shouting into the gap, so much so that the couple began to look into her with the eyes behind their eyes, making a memory of the moment that would last a lifetime and forever — held inside their heads. The mother felt concerned. She did not know why the son would lock the door while sleeping. She tried to think the right thoughts to keep her calm until the couple left. Everything would be fine, be fine, fine be, she said, inside her, and a little bit out loud.

The son’s bathroom had a third door leading into a section with a toilet and a sink. The mother hadn’t meant especially to highlight this portion of the house, though as she stepped inside and turned around she found the couple had followed her into the tiny stall space, all of them crowded in together. Their three heads were nearly touching. There was no more room to move and make more room. The mother noticed how the man’s breath stunk of charcoal. She couldn’t help but cock her head. The man was looking at her, breathing. He had both hands pressed at both walls, holding himself up. The mother didn’t want to say they should leave the room now because what if the man knew about the odor and thought the mother was being rude — then they might not want to buy the house. The mother made herself continue talking. The mother reached around the woman’s gut— nothing at all there inside it, she imagined —and pulled out each of the little drawers set in the washstand, revealing tampons, q-tips, blush. One of the drawers had a bunch of hair stuffed in it and the mother closed it quick. The mother said something about market value. She said something accidentally in French. She felt her torso getting lighter. The three bodies’ collective assemblage of six nostrils quivered in and out.