Sinkhole

I don’t know when the crack appeared in our living room floor, but I noticed it as I tidied up on a Tuesday evening. I shoved the coffee table into its rightful spot, its leg landed in a tear in the carpet, a fissure beneath. It wobbled in the unevenness until I repositioned it at an awkward angle.

By Thursday morning, the crack had expanded into a sinkhole. It had already taken our loveseat and an end table, along with my knitting project and a stack of books my husband had set aside for his winter break from teaching. The couch teetered precariously, ready to topple in at any time.

The kids rushed downstairs from their rooms, stepped around the hole on their way to the kitchen, and dropped waffles into the toaster.

“G’morning,” the older one said as he poured a cup of coffee. Sometime in the last year he’d declared sixteen old enough for coffee.

“Morning,” I said.

The younger child, twelve, said nothing because talking to her family was totally cringe.

My husband nearly fell in the sinkhole, groggily crossing the living room to retrieve a phone charger. He took a startled breath, regained his footing, and frowned at the hole. His near mishap caused both kids to look away, their focus shifted entirely to breakfast.

The hole made a sucking sound, like wind blowing through a canyon. From my home office, with the door closed, I barely heard it. Responding to emails, adding data to spreadsheets, and afternoon meetings drowned the noise out entirely. 

On my lunch break, I noticed that our big screen TV had fallen in. I felt a pang of sadness, remembering movie nights. Lounging on our now missing couch. The family dog at our feet waiting for fallen bits of popcorn. 

I checked. The dog’s dish was still full from breakfast. I called her name, but she did not bound in from the back yard or down from one of our bedrooms.

Making dinner that evening required careful footing. Our kitchen floor had begun to fracture. The island between the living room and kitchen was quickly crumbling into the hole. Each time I approached the oven I had to be mindful of my steps, avoiding the chasm forming in front of it. 

“What’s for dinner?” My husband asked, raising his voice over the sucking sound.

“Chicken and veggies.” 

“Sounds good.” He poured himself a glass of water and made his way out of the room, watching the floor as he went.

With dinner in the oven and on the stove, I balanced at the edge of the hole and peeked in. It gave me the same dizzy, stomach drop feeling I got looking down from a tall building or over the railing of a bridge. The edges were earthen, muddy and brown. I’d expected to see our belongings wrecked at the bottom but there was only darkness, too deep to see where anything landed.

We ate without talking much. Our voices were drowned out by the windy sinkhole and our cracking floor. Midway through the meal the fridge tipped to an awkward angle, its fall imminent. Everyone glanced towards it, a look of wariness and embarrassment on the teenagers’ faces.

Our kitchen was mostly gone the next morning. The table and a couple of chairs were all that remained. The kids hurried out to the garage freezer, retrieved breakfast sandwiches. They headed to school early to heat them in a student microwave. Good problem solving, I thought.

“There’s no coffee?” My husband stood at the edge of what was our kitchen, staring where our coffee pot had once been.

“No. Sorry, I think we’re out.” I said. 

“I swear we just bought some.” He shook his head. 

I put earbuds in and played music to drown out the sound as I collected laundry from upstairs. The sinkhole had stolen half of the bottom step, making the work dangerous. I hopped over it several times before it became impossible to navigate with arms full. The second level of our house would be inaccessible soon, so I gathered what I needed and relocated my work to the downstairs guest bedroom.

“I’m sorry for any background noise.” I said to my team during our meeting, muting my mic.

When the kids got home from school that afternoon, what remained of the stairs was rapidly crumbling into the hole. The older, more athletic, of the two used the banister to climb up. He tossed video game controllers, an iPad, and a full backpack down to his sister. I worried they’d fall in, standing so close to the edges. I kept watch without making it too obvious. They’d earned autonomy over the years, both being the kind of kids who only took calculated risks. 

I ordered takeout for dinner and asked them to dust off the formal dining table while I went out to pick it up.

We sat down to eat without my husband. It took me a minute to recall seeing his car in the driveway. “Have you seen your dad?” I asked.

The kids gave each other a sideways look before glancing in the hole. It encroached on our dining room. 

I nodded at them and changed the subject. “Your teacher called to tell me you’re failing Geography.” I said to my son.

“What?” He leaned in, unable to hear over the crash of family photos knocked off a nearby wall.

I couldn’t be certain our beds even existed anymore, and if they did we couldn’t get up the stairs to them. So we pulled sleeping bags and a tent from a high shelf in the garage. We set up camp in the backyard. I smiled at my kids and declared this a Friday Night Adventure, but they were too old for that. They rolled their eyes as they rolled out their sleeping bags. 

My daughter feigned sleep, her eyes shut tight. I didn't see the need for theatrics, lying awake listening to the groans and cracks of our house coming apart, accompanied by the whoosh of the hole. The sound was an airy symphony, changed from the tightness of wind rushing through a canyon. I stared at the nylon wall of our tent, dark grayness all around me. 

My son, always a good sleeper, barely stirred. Even when glass shattered and boards broke, he slept. Eventually I slept too.

The sun rose and shone directly onto the tent, heating it like a greenhouse. The shade our house should have offered no longer existed. I unzipped the door, took a big breath of fresh air. As quietly as possible, I crawled out onto the grass to sit at the edge of the hole. The earth under me shook. A crevice opened. I scooted to the side, and watched as parts of the lawn fell into the darkness below. The sound had become white noise. Constant and barely registering anymore.

From the neighbor’s yard, a bird squawked at me surprisingly loud. I stared at it wondering what the fuss could be. I don’t know how much time passed while I watched that bird. Occasionally I was forced to shift away from the opening hole.

The tent disappeared while my head was turned, my focus elsewhere. Silently, or maybe drowned out by everything else, it slipped into the darkness below.

I plucked a blade of grass from the lawn and tore it apart, staring down at nothingness, waiting to see what might go in next.