Lovehouse

It had been twenty-four years since she’d last seen it, but the place looked exactly the same. The dark green curtains were still pockmarked with cigarette burns, the floorboards still jutted this way and that like decaying teeth, and the fusty walls were letting out the same moist smells of desperation.

“I could come with you.” Peter had said, holding Philomena by the shoulders the way he always had, as if she were a steering wheel that could crash the car of them if he were to let her go. But she hadn’t wanted that. There are certain roads that need traveling alone, and besides, she didn’t want him to see what she had come for.

Standing in the doorway now, looking straight down the short corridor to her past, Philomena felt the familiar pressure around her ribcage. She sucked in her breath and squeezed her eyes tightly until her vision went blotchy. She slowly walked down the hall and up the back staircase, just as she had done thousands of times. Her legs didn’t quite carry her up the steps like they had in her thirties, but no matter, no one would be home until dusk if her memory served. She could take her time. 

Upstairs, the bedrooms were arranged one after the other on either side of the hall like rotting leaves on a stem. Philomena fought the urge to throw a lit match into every single one of them, but she knew there would be no point to that. She couldn’t destroy The Family with something as flimsy as flames. They’d just take up somewhere else. Still, perhaps it would be a nicer place, for the children.

The room at the very end of the hall had been Philomena’s own room. Like everything else in the old farmhouse, it was as if time hadn’t bothered to touch it. She shuddered, realizing that even the mattress was the very same one she’d slept in all those years ago. She didn’t know who was in charge now, didn’t want to know, but it was clear that comfort and cleanliness weren’t of any value here. Guilt washed over her as she thought about her home with Peter, her king-sized bed with its plush duvet, her palatial washroom, her cleaning lady Gita. Just get what you came for, she thought as she lowered herself to the floor.

She closed her mouth against the urge to gag as she crawled under the bed. The underside of the mattress smelled of urine and mold. She could see mouse droppings peppering the slats of the wood. She ran her hand across the floor, feeling for the gouge in the floorboard, the one she’d felt around for countless times before. Finding it, she hooked her middle fingertip inside and pulled upwards, feeling an ease that wasn’t there a quarter century ago. Dry rot. She reached into her pant pocket and turned on the light of her phone, shining it towards the open slat. Inside were another several dozen mouse droppings, but beneath those she could see the shape of a stained, brown envelope still tied up in its waxy twine. 

Before putting her phone away, Philomena was struck by the sight of her granddaughter Lily on her lock screen. She was only two years old in the picture, smiling her toothy smile at the camera, a smear of avocado across her face. What would she do if someone were keeping Lily in a place like this? 

“Are there other children here?” a small voice said from the secret chambers of her memory. “Oh yes,” her former self replied. “And they are all well taken care of, happy.” She extinguished the thought and shoved the phone back into her pocket, snaking herself backwards with the envelope in hand. Standing up, she felt the need to breathe deeply, to replenish her air, but there was no clean air to be found here, no window. Choiceless, she inhaled more of the room’s thickness. She needed to leave.

Philomena didn’t bother to poke her head into any of the other rooms. She knew some of the Family Members must be the same ones from twenty-four years ago, or at least their children, familiar with the history, the lore. What would they have said knowing she had been there, in their very home, walking past all of their bedrooms? What would they have said if they’d seen her there with their own eyes? 

Reeking of long buried things, Philomena all but threw herself into her car, tossing the envelope onto the passenger seat and jamming her keys into the ignition. She drove off at full speed in a flurry of earthen smoke. Once her adrenaline supply had dwindled and her hands began shaking, she pulled to the side of the road and rested her head on her steering wheel. Tears had always been in short supply for Philomena, but she let her body heave in the way a sobbing body would anyhow. After a time, she looked over at the soiled envelope.

“From what little you’ve told me, you had a hellish upbringing,” Peter had said, “and that can stay with a person for a long time, no matter how old they are.” His eyes had searched her like an arcane text. “If you need to head back there for closure, you should do it.” Philomena had managed a grim smile and nodded. She was used to the lump of secrets her throat held. She had long since learned how to swallow her food around it.

She reached over and grabbed the envelope knowing what she would find when she opened it. Knowing that even the flimsiest of things can have the resilience of a noose if wielded just so. She ripped the side of the envelope, revealing the pages inside. She pulled them out gently, unfolding them. She could see her own cursive hand at the top of the very long list of names. Recruits, it said. Brigitte Maynard, Alessandra Johnston, Ellie Bissette, dozens of others. 

She knew what she had built all that time ago had now transcended the dilapidated skeleton of the farmhouse into a highrise belief system of her own making. She knew why a forgotten child would allow their body to be the canvas for a brutal artist. She was one herself. One of each. She also knew very well what the Family would have said if they had seen her. 

“Mother,” they would have said, in absolute reverence. “You came back for us.”

Philomena thought of all the small hands she had held and led off the main road, down the dirt path to Lovehouse. Back then, she used to count them, each new addition a crowning achievement. “You’re their mother now.” her brother would always say. “They need you to love them.”

She ripped the pages into infinitesimal little pieces and stuffed them back into their envelope. A piece for every name, perhaps. Once the air had ingested the last of their dampness, the pieces would be fit for burning. Her connection to Lovehouse would float up and up in plumes of black smoke. Yes, she thought, a vanishing thing.

When that was done, she would crawl into bed beside Peter. She hoped to sleep more comfortably now knowing no one was coming for her, even if she knew that a plush duvet could never really change the woman beneath it. She would live out her years with Peter, with their children and grandchildren, the memory of who she was barely a smudge on the slate of her. The screams and the cries and the pleading nothing but a faint echo for a lonely crow to fly on; a story for someone else. The deal she and Owen had struck a thing she could no longer be pinned to. He got to keep them, she got to leave. And that was all that mattered.