BEANSTALK and other shorts

Housey

She’d always wanted a room that wasn’t a room. A room that served no housely function. A room with a deep ochre carpet, plush and watery to step into, and oriental poofs and pillows and bean bag chairs and wind-chimes – lots of glass and bamboo wind-chimes hanging from the ceiling, plinking gently in the breeze from a low, open window. She would just sit in this room, and listen, and think. She would do nothing else.

The room had a closet and the closet was empty. No agendas. No surprises.

Actually, she wanted a house like this. Every room was open, airy, light-filled and freshly aired. No room was for actual use, other than to enjoy. One had tatami mats and shoji screens. One had masks on the wall, a burnished wood floor, and nothing else. One held a potbellied black stove squatting on bricks, firing up till the red gingham curtains shimmered with heat. There was a room with blue tile and a frog pond. A room with brilliant Eastern billows of cloth hanging from every rafter.

Nothing was on shelves or in drawers or leaning in corners. All was space. Transparent, that’s it – the house was transparent, in the way she wanted her government to be transparent. She wanted a house like this, in addition to the real one. She would walk through it every day. There was no music there, never any other people, no neighbors. A house filled with silence and space.

No. That wasn’t it. Actually, she wanted a life like that.

Instead, she was plagued by mounds of receipts from Taco Bell, cupboards full of wrapping supplies, five crystal punch bowls, and three closets of clothes. Not to mention the bills. She was convinced that they bred in the dark at the bottom of the drawers, so that every time she opened the desk there were new baby bills winking up at her. Bills for things and things and things. Where did they come from, when all she wanted was a limpid blue frog pond?

She heard herself speaking these objects into being. Saying, “Honey, we need some new software,” or “I would love to have an espresso machine like that.” They appeared. They brought with them boxes, warranties, cleaning instructions, websites with pdf files on how to repair, squishy foam peanuts and styrofoam dividers and plastic wrap and another place to find on the counter. She was drowning. She couldn’t breathe.

She dreamed at night that the clothes left the wardrobe and opened the front door to polyester friends. They were having a party and she was not invited. Soon, they would roll her into a corner like an old rug, so she would take up less space. Eventually she would end in the giveaway bin.

She looked forward to this. She wanted to be carted away.