The Empty House My Son Found

The little things I had been ignoring

There was a notice from the bank I had shoved in a kitchen drawer back in the spring. It said something about a new card issued on my account, and I had frowned at it and thought, I did not ask for a new card, and then the phone rang or the kettle went and I told myself I would call about it later. I never called.

There was a statement I could not make sense of. My savings had a withdrawal on it I did not remember making, a round number, and when I looked at it my stomach did a small drop, and I told myself I must have forgotten. I must have taken it out for the roof man, or the property tax, or the new water heater. I made an excuse and put it away, because the other explanation was one I could not stand to hold in my hand.

There was a bill that came addressed to me for a credit card I had never opened. I had looked at that envelope for a long time on my porch, and then I had set it on the counter under the fruit bowl and I had not opened it. For three weeks it sat there. I could not tell you why except that some part of me already knew, and knowing would mean facing it, and facing it would mean facing him.

I had been calling that feeling in my stomach fear. I did not want to call it what it was.

The morning after Wade tapped my table, I stopped calling it fear. I opened the drawer. I took out the notice. I took the statement out of the shoebox. I pulled the unopened bill out from under the fruit bowl and I slit it with a butter knife.

And I read.

What the empty house was for

I have to back up, because the same week I read those papers is the week I emptied my house, and people always want to know why I did the dramatic thing before I did the smart thing.

The truth is I did the dramatic thing first because I am human and I was angry, and the smart thing came right on its heels because I am also my mother’s daughter and she did not raise a fool.

The day after the pension conversation, I did not cook. For the first Friday in three years, I set no table. I made no cherry pie.

Instead I made some phone calls. A young man named Dellinger who buys and resells furniture came out with his trailer on Wednesday. I sold the big sofa Wade liked to stretch out on with his boots on. I sold the television Kayla turned on without asking. I sold the two end tables and the matching lamps my mother had given me, which I hated to see go but which I could buy back cheaper in feeling than in dignity. I sold the recliner. I even folded up the ugly-but-cozy afghan Kayla always pulled over her legs, the one she called ugly to my face and then used every single week, and I gave that to the church rummage sale.

By Friday afternoon my living room was bare as a barn. Just carpet and the dents where furniture used to be and the rectangles on the wall where pictures had hung. I left exactly one thing in the whole downstairs. One wooden kitchen chair, set in the middle of the empty kitchen, facing the door.

Then I sat down in it, folded my hands in my lap, and I waited.

I want to be honest about how it felt. It did not feel like winning. It felt like standing in the cold. But it also felt, for the first time in three years, like my house was mine again. An empty house that is yours is worth more than a full house that belongs to somebody who is bleeding you.