There Is No Year - Blake Butler [34]
In the bathroom the father saw his many selves reach up to turn the lights off, and the father saw the dark.
BELL CHORDS
The doorbell rang again all through the morning and into gloaming. The mother ran in fits. Each time she went to the door expecting—him, he, that one, which one, who?—and each time found someone other, someone new. Folks arrived in line with checkbooks, holding hands. Sometimes there’d be several families waiting. Each, as the mother brought the door opened, walked in proud, already home. Though the mother felt strongly about the couple’s offer, she gave tours anyhow. She showed. She baked scones with black molasses and passed them on tiny plates, which the people took and smiled.
By the time most people left, their expressions had scrunched and darkened. They went from bubbly to still. Though nothing particularly bumming happened—no carpet sizzled, no paintings moved, the rooms’ wallpaper did not peel—as soon as any buyer had been through one or two rooms apiece their eyes began to swim with blank foreboding. Their cheeks sunk, glazed and pocky. Good natures became terse. Hands stayed in pockets. Dry lips. Some spoke of hearing cymbals or a pressure in their chest.
And yet each person who came to see the home by the next day had made an offer—some as large as two or three times what the father and mother asked—enough to buy another house plus many other things. The house was wanted. There was wanting. People left long garlands at their door. They brought cake and wine and called for updates. Who what when where why when how would they know who what when what was going to have the house. The mother bit her lip and wrung her hands. She had their lawyer put forward motion with the couple now on hold. She liked the couple—knew them—but now, more money. She praised god they’d not yet signed. Into the evening, sensing their fortune, the giddy mother went around and polished doorknobs and floors and faucets until she could see things in the shine.
The family all slept straight through the next several days, contorted. They did not hear the ringing phone. At certain points their eyes might open, not quite seeing, while all around the house went on.
COPY SLEEP
In his sleep the father saw the copy father in the room beneath their room. The copy father stood with both hands clasped behind his head, as if hunching for explosion or a sit-up, though the remainder of his body remained taut. The copy father hung an inch above the ground. The copy father looked up through the floor between them with his eyes stuck on the mother in the bed. The mother had moved to sleep so that her feet were on the pillow and her head was somewhere tucked down tight beneath the covers. The father could hear her grousing, breathing sickly and all wet. She kept asking the same knock-knock joke question over and over again, never getting to the punch line.
The copy father wore a yellow mink coat and a choker necklace with diamonds larger than the father had ever seen. Had the father received his copy of the current issue of Enormous Women, had his mailbox not been swarmed with bugs, he would have seen this exact getup on page forty-four. The father would have recognized the woman in the picture, though he would not be able to name her name.
The copy father spurted gobs of water from his mouth. When the water hit the copy father’s chest it sizzled, and when it hit the kitchen floor it sunk right in.
In the backyard—through the kitchen window, through the floor—the father in his bed saw so much light—as if someone had dragged the universe into Adobe Photoshop and bucket-filled the sky a nonexistent color. Most other nights, even in the day, were nothing like this—burst beyond seeing, beyond size.
In the father’s sleep the house was exactly as it was on most days except when you opened the door that led to the garage instead of a garage there was another house made of blue flowers that you could go inside or eat, but the father did not see this room—he just knew that it was there. In his sleep