What stories the walls could tell

If these walls could talk, a closet of bones would fall out like remnants in an ogre’s den. Hearts would shatter like glass assaulted by lead bookends, crushed and pulverized, leaving fragments in floorboards to rise again in anger at their anguish. Witnessing the man tell his wife, a waif creature with chestnut brown hair piled in a messy knot, that his infidelity has robbed her of her security. I felt her rushing pulse as she used me to steady her trembling legs, each ounce of effort she had diverted to making her limbs strong like stone. Her tears falling to soak into the baseboards, silent and desolate.

looked so broken from every corner. I had watched her and him in yesteryears dance, skirts twirling like leaves in an autumn breeze. Their steps languid, unrushed, as hands gently held each other close. The music was a random beat played through stereo speakers as delicate waves caressed the two with sweet care. Other times, the music was internal, a tune only they knew with words or not, I was unsure, but a piece as well-known as any classics to them.

She was destroyed in that moment, and I didn’t know how to help her. I could shelter her belongings and could give security to her boy child, but I had no way to fix this. In that moment, I saw what she knew. Outside of these walls, I had not been a witness to the man sharing himself with another. I did not know she had seen them in the family car, practicing family making activities. All without her. The phone calls she made to the bank and credit card company that I disregarded as normal business, was anything but that. In that moment, I needed my own strength to not falter, a solemn vow to not bow when she herself could not stand.

After that breakdown, the tone shifted to somber moods and bitter salt. Her days were long as I seen her go out the door and crawl standing up through the door each night. Sometimes with the scent of sweat on her clothes, hanging with the aches of her over worked joints. And other times, ripe with the aroma of stale tobacco and cheap beer, vodka; similar to the frat house of college days. All the while, her son dashed in, heading for the closed sanctum of his room, throwing off the dark blue hoodie to reside on the unbroken bed post.

He came in most days and wrote in a little green notebook he took care to hide, music blaring angrily from a single source on his desk. Rarer times, he picked up a controller and booted a game with a hero and a horse, aimlessly running around the mythic lands as he talked to himself in soft whispers. Each word tinged in hurt and confusion as he tried to get a handle on how home no longer lived up to its definition. It was a peace I could not grant.

One night, the woman walked in and saw the son heating pizza rolls in the air fryer. The kitchen an off white with stainless steel appliances sullied with oily fingerprints on the surface. The stove looked untouched as larger meals were not needed, more of a reminder that there was happiness wrought in baking the man’s favorite treats. The times he would hide one behind his back to hand to the little boy giggling as the woman smiled knowingly, pretending to not see the innocent transaction. He stood pensively as the appliance hummed and whirled in action, a harsh filling to the silent space between them.

The woman’s once lush, brown mane was drab and cried for attention. Gone were the carefree times of oil treatments and a glass of wine while relaxing in the recliner. The times where the boy was out at sports practice with the man, giving time for self-care as I gave distant comfort. Setting her purse on the black island top, the keys hitting softly were loud compared to the chilly atmosphere.

His shoulders tensed as her voice reached him, hesitant and unsure, a fragment of what her voice could once command. He shrugged her off as the gadget stopped with a shrill beep, signaling his escape was soon to come. What I did not prepare for was the shattering of the plate, intentionally thrown to the black, granite top. I saw the cold rage in his brilliant blue eyes as he stared at the woman. Her own eyes reflecting the past hurt and humiliation she felt, underlying the fury of the grown boy’s thoughtless actions. Shouts at how she was a sad excuse for a parent, a piss poor bag of flesh with no spine to speak of. Wishes that she wasn't even his mother.

That night, I endured more than my structure had ever weathered and I feared that this was only a start to the madness. Angry sobs came from the woman as the closed door did nothing to muffle the sounds. I felt the window open more than I heard it as he left the premise in the dark of night.

I was patient… or, so I thought I was.

Doors slammed from the entryway, shaking the foundation at the thunderous display. Sheer rage screamed like a Fury from the man that once knew these walls like his own body. She returned the words in kind as she slammed things on surfaces, and they screamed to the heavens. I had not seen the boy in a while, but I was more worried about how they verbally attacked each other, wielding their tongues like lances in a jousting competition in repeat. I watched and words were thrown back and forth like when they used to watch tennis. Words launched over an invisible net back and forth until someone is rendered speechless.

That came when he growled out that he knew she had killed their second child! I sagged, or really, settled as I felt my built-up magnificence wane in the presence of the accusation. The woman’s eyes grew large as her voice trailed off before gaining stuttering traction.

His words quiet as they recounted the observations he seen in that memory set. From the day he noticed her stomach illness and endless state of fatigue. How he noticed her slowly gaining weight and filling out in certain places. How he noticed the small shift to her taste buds as she slowly craved specific things like sliced green apples with peanut butter and raisins. Caught a tiny shift in her scent as it gained a subtle musky sweetness that lingered on her glowing skin.

I recalled how she seemed ethereal, like there was a celestial glow cast on her. Her sepia waves were lush and voluminous as they swung and bounces in the high ponytail she wore. Her eyes, though sporting the deep blues and worn violets of fatigue, were bright and joyous as liquid luck poured from the ceilings and bathed her on gold. I was so happy to see her normal self looking so radiant, gleaming like polished silver in sparkling daylight.

The man continued, falling into his own memories as if they were showing on a projector and he holding the clicker, advancing the presentation with avid description. He saw how after one day, she came back and was subdue, quiet and lost in thought. His rich baritone cracking as he mentioned watching her throw up in the basement bathroom; her returning with minty breath and no mention of illness. Noticed how the glow receded from her skin like the tide lowering with the lunar cycle. How her newly enhanced curves returned, and her clothes draped her as the once had; with extra room and space to move.

I saw how she closed her mouth and tear began anew as he continued.

He showed thrust his phone in her face. The image that of a email from the doctor showing what side effects were normal after an abortion, a contact number if there any questions and a referral to a grief counselling therapist. Pure shock painted me in the fading sunlight as dusk approached. It seemed so different from where I was, watching as of their lives were a picture show. Yet, her voice cut through his words like a beacon, calling eyes and ears to see the truth and listen to her side.

“You didn’t see the first email and you didn’t look at the date did you?” He looked confused as she too, pulled out her phone thumbing across the screen in calculated swipes. I was fascinated to hear what she was going to say. The accusations plentiful, but I wondered what she could’ve had that would explain her potential actions.

She showed him a grainy picture of a blob, all given in shades of black and white. She talked about how she returned from her appointment and planned to go shopping. How she was going to stop by his office to see him and get an idea what she was going to cook for dinner that night. When she arrived, she saw through the crack in his office door a woman. She was buxom with long, straight, blonde hair, curvy in the ways that started wars and she was leaning across the man’s desk.

The woman spoke of how she must’ve been mistaken and taking the scene out of context. I did not have the same feelings on the matter.

Before her next appointment, she had been planning to tell in a surprise. There was a baker that was making her a small cake shaped like an oven. A small bread loaf pan hidden in the cut out with a viewing pane made of melted sugar; a play for words relating to a pregnancy. She spoke of how at one appointment, there was no heartbeat. No sound of a strong life growing cocooned safely inside. The doctor had urged her to deliver the lifeless child for her own health’s sake. The news provided so fast as she sat there in shock, not processing the diagnosis given.

The call where she tried to pay the baker for her services but was refused in light of the heartbreaking news. It was the same day she had seen him wrapped in a passionate embrace with the same blonde woman from before. Her hair bouncing with her actions as she saw them in the man's car parked in a more secluded and less traveled part of the lot. The day she lost their baby girl was the very same day her security as his wife was challenged by a rivaling female. It was his turn to look shocked and abashed.

To learn that the person you once held so close and gave your affections to, dealt with such a indescribable pain, alone…

They both sagged against various walls and surfaces in the living room. Words sinking in and memories painting a full picture of betrayal, heartache and sorrow, time pressed on unyielding as it ticked away. He took cautious steps to her and grabbed her fiercely as he sobbed, broken as she felt with long passed apologies. She in turn cried in anguish as the wounds ripped themselves open. The tears shed seemed to soak in like salt, burning and oddly purifying.

I had not seen or heard of their son since the night before and I was wondering where the missing puzzle piece was. His room silent when there should've been music pumping through the paint, drywall, and plaster walls of this home.

A small green notebook sat half curled on the cocktail table; unassuming and innocuous as I peered curiously.

“We have to plan the service. We have to… we have to get him an outfit for his burial.” Words that chilled the very air, spoken in a whisper as she shook her head in disbelief at the harsh reality.

The son was dead. The little boy that played superheroes with the man, pretending the woman needed him to save her? The same little boy that helped sweep cobwebs from my corners and excitedly helped restore my paint to a semi-gloss finish? The angry teen boy that sat, self-isolated in his room, muttering to himself… was gone?

From various generations moving in and out of these doors, I saw many things. Families started, families ended, families blended, so many variations of the same. But my existence had never been tarnished by the loss of life. I took pride in not having that type of pain in me, but it has happened not once. It has happened twice now, and I was powerless to change any parts of these painful actions. These egregious offences to their fragile lives, torn asunder by their actions and lack of communication.

As night fell high in the cloudless sky, I saw two people that once danced on the old, polished oak floors, sit in absolute silence. Watched as the musical tune between them play as a cacophony, disruptive and paradoxical to the peacefully calm evening.

If these walls could talk, they would tell a story that was untold till now. Shed light on such a dark stain and even try and change the hands of time. I would try and change the hurts the woman endured and maybe, just maybe atone for the two innocent lives lost in this unfair story.