House of cards

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. It didn’t smell like cigarettes, incense and cologne anymore, but it had the same warmth to it - which felt odd because, while he was there, it wouldn’t take long for her to be intoxicated by an indifference that’d make her whole body shiver, even on the hottest of summers.

The whole house screamed his name with the same ache in her heart, longing for meaning, for ownership, for care. She could see letters of abandonment written on the dusty walls. It was begging to be a shelter, it had been so long since it felt the comfort of being someone’s last destination. Many nights had passed without a sigh of relief upon the sight of it, and it missed being an embrace after a tiresome day.

She didn’t know what came over her to make her want to walk up those stairs again, especially on such a day, she had sworn to never cause herself the crippling uncertainty of what waited for her on the other side of that door another time. She knew it would no longer feel like a hideaway, not when all of her ghosts sought for her through the same corners that once served as protection.

The last time she was there, she had a room full of people looking at her with pity in their eyes. She tried to cry, thought she owed them that much, but her eyes were as dry as her throat. Nothing left to say or feel. Something in the air told her she’d have a lifetime of numbness ahead, and, for the first time since she started understanding her own emotions, she wasn’t scared of the unknown. 

She’s welcomed by the dirty living room when she walked in, and it was almost like she could see him standing tall in the kitchen, waiting for her. Her eyes moved to the furniture, searching for something she could be missing. The couch, although ripped apart and full of exposed wood, was still placed in the middle of the room and it surprised her. She wasn’t aware of how much he’d sold on his last days there or even what her greedy family could have stolen without her permission after he was gone, but it seemed like time had stood still. She joined it for a while, with almost everything else that used to belong to him, knowing that they had only taken what had meaning, leaving her empty-handed.

Then, she looked to her left and saw the familiar door. A snake wrapped around a big anchor was still printed just a few inches above the knob. That’s something her father liked to do, to leave little paintings and scribbles all over the place, he was a very talented artist and treated everything as a composition. 

“hey, Luma!” she heard his voice calling for her from inside of his bedroom. Not bothering to move from her comfortable position on the floor, she simply yelled back.

“Yes, dad”

Ed hated when she did that. If he was calling for her, the only polite way to answer was to meet him and see what he wanted. Slightly angry, he commanded: “I’m asking you to come here”.

She immediately got up and ran to his encounter. He greeted her with a proud smile and pointed his pencil at the wall that faced his bed, “look, I drew you!”

And there it was, covering the biggest wall in his room, her most beloved piece. She was sitting by a waterfall and looking at the scenery, peaceful, still, almost like a mystical being. She wondered if he saw such beauty in her, if she did look like an angel in his eyes. The drawing was fading, much like the memories of him, but it looked just as intriguing. Only after a certain amount of distance from anything that reminded her of his absence could she see that the girl watching over him, wasn’t her - although she did feel just as lifeless and grey without his eyes to admire her.

Maybe he was right and, even though the wavy hair flowing with the wind looked nothing like her straight one, the child who rested alone and secluded around him, was her. Only there to adorn what, he thought, was too ugly to be habitable. Made to be looked at, but never seen. She took a closer look and saw a single tear running down the girl’s face; she understood it. Both Luma and the siren-like creature were remains of his presence and their only purpose was to distract him from his own torments, even if it caused them pain.

Ed had the habit of giving meaning to mundane things, like the tattoo on his right arm that he named after her - he wasn’t aware that she knew he had gotten it way before she was born, and she left it that way because it made her feel loved -, that was probably why he wanted to share the room with her. That being the only way to always have her around and to avoid being even more alone, she’d be family even when she was away. At least, that’s what Luma liked to believe.

“You should come live with me. I’d give you the big room and a desk with a computer and everything, you know… for school stuff”

“Dad, stop!”

“I’m serious. You’ve lived with Anne for most of your life, we could talk to her. You don’t need to stay here forever, just for a year, at least.”

“I don’t know… I have a whole life with mom.”

“You can have a life here, too. I thought you had fun with me.”

She knew her mom would, under no circumstances, agree with that idea, but she couldn’t bear the thought of being yet another thing breaking her father’s heart, so she gave in. “Okay, but only if you ask her”.

The conversation took place exactly on the bed frame she was staring at, and she had to run out of the room to stop herself from falling to her knees. It all felt like a mockery as if every tile led her to face the things she’d lost along the years, and the ones she didn’t have the chance to get. She missed even the scent coming from his ashtray, and, despite the fact that, for once, she wasn’t surrounded by smoke, she couldn’t breathe. 

Luma had the habit of giving meaning to mundane things, so she was unable to walk through that hallway and see it simply for what it was, a place she grew up avoiding.

The structure of the house scared her, but was, at the same time, a solace. She wasn’t the only thing he left in pieces. Luma recalled spending afternoons under that roof trying to convince him that he was good enough as he was. Her father was a man who swam in a sea of addictions, the need to be loved being the strongest of them all, and it drowned everyone who tried to hold his hand along with him.

Anne knew how loving someone like him could rip a person apart and tried to warn their daughter about how everything he touched slowly crumbled down. The weak pillars of the place he so badly wanted to make theirs were there to prove that nothing could survive the aftermath of his surge.

The years she asked about him right before bedtime, the birthdays she spent waiting for him to show up to, the times his mood swings would come as tides in still waters and she wondered what she could’ve done to wash the smile on his face away. Nothing was enough to make her understand that he just wasn’t the person he promised he’d be when they first met, right by his sidewalk, and she was too scared to hug him. 

“Baby, I’m going to visit your father tomorrow. Is there anything you want me to give or say to him?”

Four months, that’s how long it had been since she last saw him. During the first three months, no one was allowed to be near him for he was too big of a danger and needed to be kept away from everything that could cause him harm, or anyone he could cause harm to. One night he fell back into old habits and was hospitalized. She wanted to save her sorrow for the next time they had dinner together, she had faith in him and was, probably, the last one who could still hold onto the feeling. But, no matter how much her heart told her that he was strong enough to choose to stay by her side, she knew she’d never get her last apology. 

“No, thanks. I’m too worried to put everything I’m thinking into words”.

“He’s fine, honey. He’ll be home soon, you’ll see”.

It wasn’t that she thought her mom was lying, but Luma knew something no one else did. She spent her whole life believing that Ed’s last whisper came as the insufferable pressure she felt on her chest. Her heart had given up, it knew too. It cried out for him, pleading to be wrong. No, it couldn’t be over. Like the kid who was left forgotten in his bedroom, she was immobile, a waterfall flowing from within her. She’d lost her way home.

All of that reminiscence seemed too much to take in, so she went to the terrace to stable her breathing. The neighborhood looked mesmerizing from up there, at the end of the lights coming from the residences around her, she could see the beach being lit up by the full moon. The view was so beautiful that it reminded her of a much simpler and happier time. Suddenly the house didn’t feel as haunted.

“Happy new year!” his voice could barely be heard through the loud fireworks they sat on the third floor to watch.

“Dad, give me a little bit of champagne, please?”

“Are you crazy? Of course not, you’re too young”

“Mom”, she whimpered, “tell him I can have just a sip”.

“Ed, don’t even think about giving it to her”, Anne warned.

“Please, dad” Luma supplicated, too stubborn to know when to let go. They couldn’t be mad, she got it from both of them.

“Luma, if you don’t stop, we’re gonna go home”.

Ignoring her mom, she looked back at the man who held her in his arms. Her eyes looked like tiny galaxies lived inside of them and the chuckle that left his lips was unavoidable. “Dad… please”, her smile grew and was warm enough to melt him.

“Is there anything you request with a smile on your face that I don’t do with tears in my eyes?”

Luma often felt forgotten. Longing for refuge, for rest, for stability. She walked aimlessly with a hole inside of her, needing somewhere to drop her baggage on. She was tired of being lost, looked at the bricks in front of her, and felt comprehended. She had found what she was looking for as she found her way back into where her worst nightmares took place.

Being recklessly cast away was something she shared with that space, both her and the ceiling once spared him of the harshness of the daylight when all he wanted was to sit in the dark. She didn’t have many pictures of them, a simple Christmas present was the only remembrance of the eleven years he got to watch her from the sidelines. But she had the house, she had the big room she once planned on painting pink, she had the drawing on the walls, she had the only thing he possessed that was strong enough to not collapse.

That’s the closest she’d ever be to him. It wasn’t home yet, but it was a piece of the person she’d love wholeheartedly until the day she’d have a room full of people looking at her with grief in their eyes. And that was all that mattered.