A Terrible Thing

“If walls could talk,” I heard her whisper absently, as she sat on the top stair of my sagging porch under a dark sky.

Barefoot, jeans rolled up past her ankles, Diana fixed her gaze on a horizon she couldn't see and barely blinked at all. A single cigarette sat alongside a book of matches from Frankie's Pub and Pizzeria on the buckled gray boards beside her. No bugs chirruped or buzzed in the night; no nocturnal scavengers rattled around the rusty trashcans out back. The big yellow dog rested her head on her paws and silently stared out into the same abyss as Diana, eyes glistening.

The world was holding its breath, it seemed, but the stillness was charged with a terrible energy.

Are you okay?

Still unblinking, she nodded her head. She wasn't at all surprised to hear me speak; she knew I would not abandon her in this dark moment.

I had always spoken to her. I knew she would hear me, the creaky little farmhouse at 1147 Black Walnut Way. From the moment she and Steven had rolled up in a cloud of dust on a dry August day, intrigued by a weather-beaten For Sale sign nailed to an old fence post where pavement met dirt, I knew she would hear me.

They had held hands as they walked around the house, peering through dusty windows at my bright, but neglected interior. They laughed so much that day, giddy with a feeling of adventure, exhilarated by the idea of a life together. Leaning into each other as they approached my front door that day, laughing as Steven put his hand on the door knob, they had turned to each other in utter surprise and delight as my door swung open into a sunny foyer. That was the first time I spoke to Diana.

Welcome!

Steven didn't hear me that day, nor did he ever learn to. He never heard the trees, either, or the river. Some people just don't. Diana knew that they were different in this way, but he was kind, and funny, and he worked hard. In the spirit of compromise and in the name of love, she stopped conversing out loud with me and the world around her while in Steven's presence, but she never stopped listening.

I followed her room to room, wall to wall, window to window as she explored with Steven that day. I probably talked too much, but I was excited; I hadn't had company in some time.

You could paint in here. Look at this view!

Louise Boudreau planted the lilacs in 1964.

Imagine waking up to the sun from that window.

Diana had fallen in love with me, 1147 Black Walnut Way, and clutched Steven's hand as they stepped back outside and closed the door behind them. Steven had pulled her closer, looked her in the eyes in that way that made her weak, and shook his head yes. They snapped a photo of the For Sale sign and Diana called the number as soon as they got back to the apartment they were renting from Steven's uncle.

And so their life began. Our life.

They welcomed Maribeth into the world their second summer in the house. Dark-haired and apple-cheeked, she looked just like Steven, and his eyes lit up with pride whenever he looked at her. Laurel arrived just shy of two years later, again capturing Steven's heart and bringing a feeling of completeness to their family. Steven was making decent money at the paper mill, and Diana was selling some paintings and filming some lessons in the bright, south-facing room that I had recommended when she and Steven were just trespassing newlyweds.

When Maribeth was six and Laurel four, Steven came home from work holding a squirming yellow Labrador puppy. The girls named her Cookie, and squealed with joy while their father beamed from the doorway. Diana's heart could not have been fuller.

These are the times I hope she remembers.

I, too, rejoiced in these good days. I hummed happily as Cookie chased Maribeth and Laurel through the hallways while they howled with laughter. I loved to listen to the stories they told their dad at dinnertime, about Cookie chasing squirrels, and the peanut butter and jelly sandwiches they got to make all by themselves, or what they wanted to do at Grandma's next weekend.

I also enjoyed watching Diana paint and offering frequent encouragement, at times to her great annoyance.

Lovely blue, Diana! Is that a wave?

When she was in no mood for my company, she would turn up the music and clear her throat dramatically, and that was my cue to leave her alone.

We were family.

And as I celebrated the good times with them, so would I suffer the bad.

Almost a year to the day that Steven walked through the door with Cookie under his arm, Diana stepped out onto the porch to greet him after work, as she did most days. She found him with his forehead on the steering wheel, weeping. He had been laid off, he told her.

“Me and a bunch of others,” he whispered hoarsely, curling his hands into tight fists.

Diana had climbed into the truck next to him and rested her head against his shoulder.

“We'll be okay,” she comforted him.

But they weren't. Steven was despondent, and angry. He sank deeper into his misery each day. Diana could tell his pride was injured, she knew he was afraid of not being able to provide, but despite her unflappable support and unwavering optimism, Steven started to become someone she didn't know. He started meeting some of the other guys that had been laid off for drinks, first just on the weekends, then almost every night. He was coming home at all hours, climbing into bed next to her stinking of whiskey.

As the bills piled up, his temper grew shorter. Diana tried not to badger him, but became increasingly worried about their finances. When she gently tried to inquire about his job search, he grew furious, calling her lazy and accusing her of only loving him when he was paying all the bills.

And it only got worse. Steven became openly hostile. He was rarely sober, but even sober Steven had grown mean and volatile. He was sleeping until noon, spending a few hours pretending to look for jobs before dinner, and then slamming my door behind him as he left to go get stinking drunk at Frankie's.

The girls had grown afraid of him, and mostly sat silent through dinner.

This saddened me more than anything.

Steven eventually stopped going to bed, and just slept wherever he happened to pass out. I watched Diana bite back tears of rage when the girls had to step over him to get into the kitchen for breakfast. By this time, she was borrowing money from her mother to keep the electricity on. This enraged Steven, too.

“Do you tell that bitch all of our problems?' he had raged, eyes bulging from a beet red face. Diana could hardly bring herself to look at his ugliness.

I stopped talking, for the most part. I despaired at what was happening under my roof, between my walls, in my very soul. Cookie cowered in Steven's presence. The girls didn't dare run through the halls anymore. Diana was sending them to her mother's more and more often; I could tell how much she she missed them, but it took them away from this misery. Steven didn't even notice.

They deserved so much more than this, and Diana hated him for taking away their happy home. It was clear that she had given up on him. She no longer looked at him as a husband, or a father. He had become a problem she needed to solve, for Maribeth and Laurel, and herself. And for Cookie.

And this evening, just hours before she and Cookie sit quietly together on my sagging porch in the breathless night, a solution came to her.

As the last light of day started to fade behind the trees at 1147 Black Walnut Way, Steven lurched through the door bellowing about a vet bill he had found in Diana's purse that morning while rifling through it for drinking money. Cookie had cut her paw the day before on a glass that he had knocked off the counter and not cleaned up. Diana had come downstairs to a bloodbath that morning, and him asleep on the couch. She had brought Cookie in, gotten her patched up, and cleaned up the mess before he even stirred, and now he was standing there raging at her.

“We're barely surviving, and you're spending money on this shit?” he jabbed his finger towards where Cookie had been, but she had long disappeared by then. “If she gets hurt again, I'll take care of it.”

I was grateful the girls weren't home to hear this.

Swallowing her hatred like a hot coal, Diana tried to escape the kitchen and disappear into the growing gloom of the house, like Cookie, but Steven loomed in the doorway. She stepped forward, hoping he would just move aside and let her through, but he was not in a gracious mood tonight.

He leaned his face towards hers, leering almost joyfully at her obvious disgust.

And that's when she smelled it.

Gasoline.

Mowing the lawn was the only thing Steven still did around the house anymore. Diana had heard him grumbling about how tall the grass was getting; he must have stopped to fill the gas can on the way home.

She took a deep breath, as did I. A solution had presented itself.

The night had just grown terribly dangerous.

Something terrible was going to happen here tonight.

A man with a reputation as hot-headed, and more often than not intoxicated, would go crazy at the thought of losing the only good things left in his life and come home to burn down the creaky little farmhouse at 1147 Black Walnut Way with him and his long-suffering wife inside. Investigators would note that he was on camera filling a gas can at the Gas & Snacks just hours before the fire. He would perish, but his wife and the family's beloved dog, Cookie, would miraculously make it out almost unscathed.

He just had to fall asleep first.

***

Are you okay?

Still unblinking, she nodded her head. She wasn't surprised to hear me speak; she knew I would not abandon her in this dark moment.

The smell of gasoline permeated the still night.

Diana's mouth was was dry as she spoke to me out loud for the first time in years.

“I'm – I'm sorry.”

But I was old, and tired.

Oh, don't be.

Diana nodded again, biting back tears as she stood and walked across my buckled gray boards to do what needed to be done.

Goodbye, Cookie.

The big yellow dog's tail thumped against the worn floorboards.

Diana? Promise me one thing.

She paused, match in one hand, matchbook in the other, cigarette dangling from her parched lips.

Don't start that again.

“Last one,” she whispered, sadly and with great love, as she lit her cigarette and tossed the burning match across my threshold, where I had welcomed her almost a decade ago, on a bright, dry August day.