Fault After Fault

This house is always empty, apart from the noises. Pencil scratching on paper. The whir of an ancient computer. The faint noise of music leaking through earbuds that look like they’ve been through a World War. This place with four bedrooms, two baths, and a patio is a mansion because it could never be a home. I live, cry, sleep, and eat in this house but it is too minimalistic to ever feel like a home. I fall asleep every night on a bed that is too large for my body and in a room with ceilings that have me craning my head backward to see. However, I sleep with a blanket too small to cover my legs. The walls are smothered by layers of paint and adorned with paintings and pictures. Small, meaningless sentiment stains my soul. Blank space is the enemy. It kills me to see something so blissfully ignored. What good is something left plain? Mom had always said that dwellings are the window into a soul. What does that say about me?

My brothers were always at sports practice. Their football boots and tennis rackets were shoved into any available corner, half-heartedly wrestled into their respective places. My tennis racket hangs alone on the wall, untouched since I set it down. No one will touch that orange racket. I will never hold that racket again. It wastes away, strings tired from use, grip worn into the hand of the 12-year-old little girl with a gleam in her eye. What use is something if it doesn’t work anymore? I walk by that racket and think: That racket has to go. But I can never bring myself to touch it, too scared to realize how large and rough and uneven my hands are, too terrified to see how much different I am from the 12-year-old girl who swung that racket like the earth spun just for her.

There’s a piano in my room. Not a grand piano. A spinet piano. I remember researching it and begging my parents to buy it for me. If I couldn’t get a grand piano, this was close enough. Was it a phony piano? Yes, and no. It was bought cheap and damaged. It isn’t the fault of the piano for being broken, but the fault of the pianist. I was the new pianist, and that fault fell on me. The tune was far off. The string tension was all wrong. I could never figure out how to correct it. I peeled back the cover to unveil delicate strings. I quickly shut it, heart pounding at the thought of further breaking them. My parents were so proud of me as I played melodies and songs, unaware of the unease that struck my heartstrings every time I played a chord. It is madness to live in a world where I realize my wrongs and that there is no way to fix them. I am the one who has to suffer with the realization that this piano will never sing the way it used to. No matter how much I coax and play, this piano will only whisper in its former beauty. This piano is cracked in four places and broken in twenty others, and I am the only one to notice or care.

I still read the magazines that show up on the front porch. I can never catch the person who drops them off. I cannot find the delivery person to explain that they should just skip this house. Instead, I stumble to the porch, gather the papers, and slink back inside. On the couch, I pour over the magazines on nature and science and wonder if I could have written one of those articles. If I had the potential to be a bright little genius with my oversized safety goggles and lab coat that came down to my toes. What would I have written about? Robots and drones? Butterflies and silk? I will never know. I could have been the elusive delivery person, sneakily dropping papers on people’s porches while humming a tune that no one would ever understand.

The stench of loneliness follows me everywhere. I walk into the kitchen to cook for one. I come out to the backyard with two glasses, a bottle of wine, and a plate of reheated pasta. I set everything down and gaze out at the meticulously maintained garden. I then slowly pour out two glasses of wine: One for myself, the other for me. The outdoor speaker crackles, faint, battered music mixing into my wine. I sigh. I am left with two empty glasses, a shattered bottle of wine, and now cold pasta. The bugs aren’t chirping anymore. The music has stopped. I can’t remember switching it on. Or off.

I’ve convinced myself that there is nothing abnormal about this house except for myself. This depression I linger in, kicking my toes into the spray of sadness. Nothing is normal about this. I am a remnant of myself, of the 12-year-old girl, mourning in my childhood house while my family frays apart. Who am I to hold everyone together when I cannot even hold myself upright?

This house is a mansion because nobody lives in it. There are too many unused rooms, too many echoes and muffled footsteps. The windows are closed by 6:00 P.M. The lights are off by 10:00 P.M. Force of habit, I muse. If I listen hard enough, Dad yells at me to shut the blinds. The moment I head downstairs to hunt down the voice, it’s gone. The creepiest thing? The darkness. It envelops me as soon as I flick the lights off. I stand alone by the stairs with a bowl of half-developed thoughts and all my irrational fears. Mom and Dad aren’t in the master bedroom anymore. My brothers are long gone, chasing after glory. I’m left behind, with the piano rotting away in my room, the tennis racket, and the walls I’m too scared to face.