This is Not Supposed to be a Scary Movie
When I grow up I want to be a house. But I’m a little scared because houses are sometimes called haunted just for the ways in which they try to say “welcome home.”
A man I don’t know or like very well is dying. The last time I saw a man dying I liked him more than ever. I thought the same might be true this time. I visited him in the hospital, where he was watching TV. He all but said that he didn’t mind that he was dying. I like him less than ever now.
I think it would be easy for people to call me haunted, if I were a house. I have never been good at keeping quiet. The second that unassuming family crossed the threshold I would be clapping my kitchen cupboards in excitement, wagging my cellar door in nervous greeting.
I put my vitamins next to my one beloved potted plant and told myself I wasn’t allowed to water it each day until I had taken them. This way, it would take care of me while I was taking care of it.
I don’t know why people go around calling houses haunted. Skin holds in ghosts so much better than vinyl siding does.
I think it is easy to be uncharitable when you are invisible. I know a lady who is neither uncharitable nor invisible, but she is very very haunted. She’s so haunted there’s a special word for it. She creaks back and forth like I do. I mean, like I would, were I some sort of two-storey condominium. Her taps drip drip and there are always messy fingers poking out from all her walls.
I don’t smoke cigarettes but one night I smoked two cigarettes in my bedroom. I made sure to put my plant out in the hallway first and close the door.
When a puppy gets too excited sometimes it dribbles urine on the floor. Usually no one minds. The house is making noises and moving things, yes, but at least it is not dribbling any urine anywhere, it is just creaking and clattering “hello” and “goodnight” to the mom and the dad and the children.
I think it is easy for people to justify being dishonest when they feel always tragically under-investigated.
The dying man in the hospital never made me smile in my whole life. I doubt I ever made him smile either.
When I was a kid, my parents smoked at home but only in the attached garage with the door closed, and they told us not to come out there while they did so. It was not until recently that I understood how much easier it is sometimes to take care of other people’s leaves. I mean lungs.
One time someone asked me if I was tired, and I said no, and later i told him about the things I had done over the weekend. That must we why you’re so tired, he said.
The house, the one that’s not haunted and that’s a nasty rumour so you should stop saying it, the house leaves notes on the foggy mirror for the little fat girl while she showers. Kind notes, small words, a little smudged heart. The girl glances past them, pulls on her shapeless nightie, and doesn’t quite go to sleep.
The dying man blinks at me now, not smiling. I can only ever remember him making terrible jokes and not smiling. He never says I am his favourite anything. The haunted lady says it all the time. She says it also to others but she says it smiling.
It’s thanksgiving at the definitely-not-haunted house. The mom burns her wrist, a straight thick line, as she pulls burning potatoes urgently out of the oven. Someone is watching the TV, even though no one is dying.
I have since broken the rule about the vitamins, so the bottle is still full and the plant is healthy, but sometimes I eat some of its leaves because it’s the kind of plant you can eat the leaves of and somehow doing this feels almost like not smoking. I mean like taking vitamins.
Dinner is ready and the TV is still on and no one says anything about the mom’s burned skin but someone says something about the mom’s burned potatoes and the little fat girl feels haunted and the mom feels haunted and the house, maybe it is haunted after all because it’s ripping the TV’s power cord from the wall and it’s starting up the electric turkey-carving knife just to get everyone’s attention and it’s writing in the gravy on everyone’s plates and it’s writing words like “STOP” and “HOW DARE YOU,” “I’M NOT TIRED” and “WELCOME HOME.”
Maybe being haunted is just really not wanting to die or be empty. The dying man doesn’t mind that he’s dying, that he’s empty, because he’s not haunted enough. The haunted lady knows that her husband is dying and maybe she knows that he doesn’t mind that he’s dying so something inside her is throwing all of the furniture against all of the walls.
Just like the house that feels the “For Sale” sign piercing its frosted lawn the morning after Thanksgiving. It won’t stop slamming doors. It won’t stop opening windows to let the fall breeze run through its drapes. It won’t stop trying to say “WELCOME HOME, WELCOME HOME, COME HOME.”
I want to be a half of a duplex when I grow up with three bedrooms, one and a half bathrooms, and an attached garage.
And I plan to be as haunted as they come.
