When Trish placed the new key in the new lock and opened the old door, what she saw inside bore no resemblance to the home where she spent the first decade and a half of her life. Stepping inside, a bone-numbing chill immediately settled into her bones.
A bit confused, she turned around in the doorway to confirm that the sun was still high in the sky and temperatures were still comfortably in the 70s. It was a gorgeous spring day. How could the inside of the house feel this cold? She briefly wondered if something was off with her internal temperature. She was only five months removed from a tick bite-induced fever. Could she be experiencing a relapse? At this point in her life, she was ready to concede that anything was possible.
Entering the small foyer, Trish was greeted by a battered picture frame on an aging folding table. The photo was one she had not seen for years. Trish and her sister, Chloe, captured at 8 and 4, respectively, and dressed in discount store Christmas finery. Both were smiling like Santa really did exist. In contrast to the nostalgic image, the frame was missing a small chunk of glass and swaddled in black tape that just barely held the broken fragments in place. A cheap Woolworth’s frame had proven to be no match for the rage of one of mother’s companions. It had collided with the TV set one particularly memorable New Year’s Day, a sacrificial offering for a football bet gone sour. After the incident, Trish had fixed the frame as best she could to still Chloe’s tears. It was something of a marvel that, after all these years, it still held together. Trish shook her head to chase the memory. Sadly, he wasn’t even the worse of the men their mother had installed in the house after Trish’s father had erased himself from their lives.
Carefully setting the frame down, Trish found herself shivering again. Right now, she could almost swear she could see her breath. As a child, Chloe insisted there were monsters in the house. Maybe those creatures had stuck around when everyone else had left. Can monsters control temperature, she randomly thought to herself?
A door slammed on the other side of the house, followed by the sound of a familiar squeaky voice. “Trish is that you? I just got back from the store. I’ll be right out.” It amazed her how her sister’s voice had not grown in parallel to the rest of her body. Now entering her late 20s, Chloe still sounded like a refugee from a Saturday morning cartoon. A chipmunk maybe, or a chattering monkey.
Following the sound of her voice, Trish moved towards the kitchen door to greet Chloe. Before she could get there, though, she was sideswiped by a short-haired bundle of energy named Mutt, whose delight in seeing her translated into a series of leaps and spins as he desperately tried to deliver her sticky, slobbery kisses. The force of Mutt’s weight slammed Trish back onto the sofa. It had been awhile since she had been around dogs and their unabashed, unconditional affection. Her most recent romantic partner had refused all her arguments for bringing a dog into their home, alluding to some phantom allergy that never manifested itself. For the first time since entering the house, Trish found warmth in Mutt’s coarse fur and wriggling body. Where there is a dog, she thought, there are no chills.
“Mutt, stop it,” Chloe called out as she entered the living room, tossing a handful of treats to the other side of the room to draw the dog away. Mutt scrambled to retrieve his goodies, as Chloe set a bottle of wine and two glasses down on the coffee table in front of the couch. Bringing Mutt into the long-time dog-free house had been an extreme act of rebellion for the normally compliant Chloe, even if there was no longer anyone to prevent her from doing so. Chloe seemed to be making up for lost childhood moments. Between the photo at the door and the randomly tossed chew toys on the rug, the empty living space almost looked “homey.”
Chloe settled on a folding chair across from the couch, another item she had brought into the house to make it livable as she waited out the last days of probate court deliberations. Trish had rarely seen her sister so at ease. The last time they had shared a bottle of wine, Chloe had spilled more liquid on the table than in the glasses. This time it was Trish who nearly dropped her glass when Chloe chirped, “I’m so glad you could make it, because we finally got an answer from probate this week. No more doubts about it. The place is ours.”
Though not totally unexpected, hearing the words out loud was still shocking. Trish took the glass and gulped down a bit more liquid than she intended. “Wow,” she said after swallowing. “You mean Charlie isn’t fighting us?” Charlie had been the last of Mom’s handpicked husband substitutes and by most standards, he had been the worst. His taunts and casual abuses, like leaving obstacles in the girls' paths and then laughing with too much gusto when they would trip, had been the proverbial straws that broke the camel’s back. At 16 and 12, respectively, both sisters found a way out. Trish rode stellar grades to an early college admission. Chloe found refuge in a neighbor’s house, where its large and happy family had always made sure she had food in her belly and a quiet place to sleep until she was old enough to move out for real. Trish couldn’t believe they were really contemplating moving back. Nobody runs towards the monsters.
“Oh, he made quite a bit of noise at first,” Chloe responded. “When the marshals came by to evict him, he was cursing up a storm. But, a few minutes later, he meekly walked away. Mutt peed in his shoes as a parting gift.” Trish smiled again. Maybe coming home had been good for Chloe.
“Anyway, Charlie had no claim. He never married Mom, thank God, and they hadn’t even lived together long enough to be common law. But, the attorney said the most important thing is that Mom never changed her will. She wanted us to have this house.”
Trish took another sip of wine, this one more measured. Wasn’t that just so like Mom, wanting us to have this place? Mom clearly never understood irony.
Surprised by her sister’s silence, Chloe gently asked, “Are you having second thoughts? No, Trish, please. Don’t back out on me now.” She added, with a bitter edge in her voice, “It’s rightfully ours. We earned it.”
Trish nodded her head in agreement. Taking possession of the house where they had never been a priority would offer at least partial reimbursement for a childhood of long nights with no dinner and little sleep. For too many years, Trish and Chloe had been forced to find comfort in their own ingenuity and imagination. Blanket forts built over the couch helped dampen the adult noises coming from the bedroom down the hall, while a cultivated friendship with one of the school lunch ladies had kept them fed.
With the house now in their hands, a flood of painful snapshots from the past raced through Trish’s mind. She recalled that these scenes of childhood had dominated her dreams when the fever raged a few months back. Three days of scattered hallucinations and fitful sleep, culminating in one last chill had snapped her back to her sweat-soaked bed. As she had been pulled back to reality, Trish recalled a moment of complete clarity. But, her epiphany had been swallowed up by the vast tapestry of those fever dreams, and was indistinguishable from other fanciful figments. Now, in the possibly monster-induced chill of her childhood home, and with her sister watching with increasing concern, the epiphany returned. What she had figured out in that murky soup of memory and nightmare was that no happiness would ever be possible for them in this space. They had to find a different path.
“Trish, please talk to me,” Chloe pleaded, as she moved to the other side of Trish on the couch and began shaking her. Trish was so deep in reverie that for a few seconds she was unaware of Chloe’s presence. Opening her eyes, Trish stared at Chloe’s panicked face and quickly wrapped her arms around her sister. Time seemed to turn backwards as she began rocking Chloe ever so slightly, and making the little soothing noises that had comforted them both on many a dark and cold night. “Husha, husha, Chloe Lowey,” she murmured, speaking so softly and so quickly that the words ran into each other, becoming the aural equivalent of sugar dissolving into tea. It was the white noise of their childhood and it amazed Trish how easily it came back to her. In turn, almost unconsciously, Chloe responded, “Monsters, monsters, go away, find some other place to play.” It was a mantra Trish had taught her to repel the things—real and imagined—that went bump in their nights.
After a few minutes, Trish said, in a soft but firm voice, “Yes, there are monsters here, and sometimes, you must give the monsters their due and move on. But, that doesn’t mean we do it for free. We’re big girls now. This house can make a life possible for us. And, maybe the monsters will die when we’re no longer here to feed them. It might even become a nice place for other little girls if we let it go.
“Don’t worry,” Trish added in a voice that was suddenly light and hopeful. “We don’t need this place to be together. With what we can get from selling the house, we can go anywhere we want. Remember that one summer when Mom took us to Maine? We played for hours on the rocks by the water’s edge. You called yourself Queen of the Rock People, and I was your Lord Defender. We’ve wanted to get back to that place since you were about six. Maybe we could go there.”
As if he had been summoned, Mutt jumped on the couch and rested his head on Trish’s lap. Chloe reached across to stroke Mutt’s head. Trish began humming an old song, a tune she vaguely remembered hearing on the radio before the monsters took hold of the house. The familiar melody seemed to declare that somewhere there was warmth, and music, and cozy homes with fluffy pillows and fresh laundry and the soothing weight of friendly dogs. Trish picked up her wine glass and took a sip. Without a shadow of a doubt, she knew they would find their way there.
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