The House
By Leslie Lindsay
January 15, 2023
January 15, 2023
I'll always remember the way the floors glistened like the setting sun, glimmering as if tiny coins were tossed on the sea of wood. I'll always feel how the steps cradled our feet; how they creaked--the fourth from the bottom. I'll wonder how many shoes and steps those stairs elevated, over the years.
The house, the house, the house.
I'll remember that first day we walked through, our real estate agent trailing behind, the scritchity-scratch of her nylons, the purple hat with the red poppy, her crookedly-applied lipstick. The way you looked over at me, a gleam in your eyes, and said, "I like this house immensely." You did that knee-bend-bounce that tells me you are still part-little boy who wants his way. And although we looked at other houses that day—that month—we always came back to this house. The windows. The floors. The wide expanse of plaster walls.
I'll always remember the way the doorknobs were different, each one a unique shape or material. Cool, smooth gunmetal or a prism of light from a cut-glass knob. For a while, I think of the way those materials are incongruent. One of fragility, the other of durability. The whiteness, the solidarity, the heft. Who opened and shut those doors? Who went in? Who went out? What was revealed, before us?
The house, the house, the house.
It was a singular sound, the way it spoke to us, calling from within. A dazzle of light, a ribbon of breath. We listened. We warmed ourselves in the sunbeams, tilted our faces to the sky, made dreams…come true.
We let the curtains billow in the wind. The storms, when they came, rattled the windows, darkened the walls. The cake dome shattered in the humidity. Tiny shards, of glass, swept under the rug.
And we kept going. Building and constructing. Dream upon dream.
The house, the house, the house.
I’ll always remember when my grandparents said, “I wonder what it’s like, living in an eighty-year-old house?” I sent them photos, in the mail, tucked in a letter. This is what it’s like, living in an eight-year-old-house, I said in my pictures with no words. Here is what I imagined they saw: art on the walls, a rug at our feet, a television in the corner, and bookcases filled with books and plants. What did I want to amplify? The sound of the wind through the crevices of those windows? The gnarled roots of stalwart trees that took root years and years before ground was broke?
What did I want to tell them? The hushed secrets of newlyweds? The symphony of our conversations of home, of where we’re rooted, the fact that we are some seed of theirs, moving forward, into the next generation in…
The house, the house, the house.
I wanted to ask them what it was like living in a body eighty-years-old. Housed within their skeletons: glistening organs—a heart, a liver, a pair of lungs, their soul, their essence—bones of scaffolding. I wanted to say: you know what it’s like living in a house eighty-years-old, but I didn’t dare.
Again, I thought of the treads of the stairs, the indentations. The way our feet had been cradled, elevated, flattened, and coaxed.
The house, the house, the house.
It swelled in the warmth, blistered in the sun. The trees changed shape and color. Brilliant reds and fire oranges. And then they began to drop. The leaves piled into mounds and minds.
And the house, the house, the house…
Grew cold. A fresh layer of snow. A contraction.
I’ll always remember the call, the day after my birthday, “Grandpa died.”
It was only two words, but resonated like an expansion of something akin to an
entire world exploding into miniature.
I’ll never forget the last time I saw him, in a hospital bed in the ICU. We showed him photos of our wedding. The way we stood, holding hands on the porch of an antebellum home, not the house where we lived—a different one, in a different state—a swirl of white and the breath of sky. And he couldn’t speak for the tubes. In his throat and in his nose. But his eyes—like windows—told me all I’d ever need to know.
The house, the house, the house.
The house, the house, the house.
I'll remember that first day we walked through, our real estate agent trailing behind, the scritchity-scratch of her nylons, the purple hat with the red poppy, her crookedly-applied lipstick. The way you looked over at me, a gleam in your eyes, and said, "I like this house immensely." You did that knee-bend-bounce that tells me you are still part-little boy who wants his way. And although we looked at other houses that day—that month—we always came back to this house. The windows. The floors. The wide expanse of plaster walls.
I'll always remember the way the doorknobs were different, each one a unique shape or material. Cool, smooth gunmetal or a prism of light from a cut-glass knob. For a while, I think of the way those materials are incongruent. One of fragility, the other of durability. The whiteness, the solidarity, the heft. Who opened and shut those doors? Who went in? Who went out? What was revealed, before us?
The house, the house, the house.
It was a singular sound, the way it spoke to us, calling from within. A dazzle of light, a ribbon of breath. We listened. We warmed ourselves in the sunbeams, tilted our faces to the sky, made dreams…come true.
We let the curtains billow in the wind. The storms, when they came, rattled the windows, darkened the walls. The cake dome shattered in the humidity. Tiny shards, of glass, swept under the rug.
And we kept going. Building and constructing. Dream upon dream.
The house, the house, the house.
I’ll always remember when my grandparents said, “I wonder what it’s like, living in an eighty-year-old house?” I sent them photos, in the mail, tucked in a letter. This is what it’s like, living in an eight-year-old-house, I said in my pictures with no words. Here is what I imagined they saw: art on the walls, a rug at our feet, a television in the corner, and bookcases filled with books and plants. What did I want to amplify? The sound of the wind through the crevices of those windows? The gnarled roots of stalwart trees that took root years and years before ground was broke?
What did I want to tell them? The hushed secrets of newlyweds? The symphony of our conversations of home, of where we’re rooted, the fact that we are some seed of theirs, moving forward, into the next generation in…
The house, the house, the house.
I wanted to ask them what it was like living in a body eighty-years-old. Housed within their skeletons: glistening organs—a heart, a liver, a pair of lungs, their soul, their essence—bones of scaffolding. I wanted to say: you know what it’s like living in a house eighty-years-old, but I didn’t dare.
Again, I thought of the treads of the stairs, the indentations. The way our feet had been cradled, elevated, flattened, and coaxed.
The house, the house, the house.
It swelled in the warmth, blistered in the sun. The trees changed shape and color. Brilliant reds and fire oranges. And then they began to drop. The leaves piled into mounds and minds.
And the house, the house, the house…
Grew cold. A fresh layer of snow. A contraction.
I’ll always remember the call, the day after my birthday, “Grandpa died.”
It was only two words, but resonated like an expansion of something akin to an
entire world exploding into miniature.
I’ll never forget the last time I saw him, in a hospital bed in the ICU. We showed him photos of our wedding. The way we stood, holding hands on the porch of an antebellum home, not the house where we lived—a different one, in a different state—a swirl of white and the breath of sky. And he couldn’t speak for the tubes. In his throat and in his nose. But his eyes—like windows—told me all I’d ever need to know.
The house, the house, the house.
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Leslie Lindsay's writing has been featured in The Millions, SEPIA, The Rumpus, DIAGRAM, Hippocampus Magazine, MER Literary, Autofocus, The Smart Set, Brevity, The Florida Review, Levitate, ANMLY, the tiny journal, The Cincinnati Review, Essay Daily, Mutha Magazine, Ruminate’s The Waking, Visual Verse, Manifest-Station, Pithead Chapel, Cleaver Magazine, Motherwell, with forthcoming work in ELJ Editions, On the Seawall, and CRAFT Literary.
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Her work was nominated for Best American Short Stories She resides in Greater Chicago and is at work on a memoir excavating her mother’s madness through fragments. She is a former Mayo Clinic child/adolescent psychiatric R.N. and can be found @leslielindsay1 on Twitter and Instagram where she shares thoughtful explorations and musings on literature, art, design, and nature.