There Is No Year - Blake Butler [29]
HEY
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.
3 DOORS 1 ROOM
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