The Lonely House - Melanie Ifield
The Lonely House by Melanie Ifield was the First Place Winner of the 2022 Murrumbidgee Short Story Competition in the Open Category.
She drops the box with a muffled thump, dust spiralling through air that tastes of neglect and smells like an accumulation of sadness. The hollow in the pit of her stomach clenches as she sneezes.
This box is the last of it. Her entire life wrapped up and stored in individual crates, strewn through the rooms in so much chaos. Everything is parcelled up, so it can be sorted into what is needed and what is not. Much of it, as it turns out, is not. She doesn’t like to dwell, but her mind is a busy place. So many ideas and thoughts; the past and the present and possibly a future, all kaleidoscoping around inside until she feels dizzy. She rests her hand on the box. Inside are her treasures, things too precious to leave behind, now transported hundreds of kilometres south.
A new life, a new house and a new town. There is something refreshing in this, even if her insides quake at the thought of all that needs to be done. The challenge of it all. Only three months ago her best friend tells her she is insane to leave her job, and hand in her rental notice, too. Oh no! The drama! The fear! What will you do, all the way down there in Tasmania, alone, lonely and jobless? She is asked this countless ways and times, as things are packed and sold off. The conversations replay over and over in her mind, as she drags a few more boxes out of the way, giving her floor space.
There is a desk upstairs in what will become the office. The desk is a solid piece of old dark wood and the only furniture she has brought with her. Nothing else really mattered. A bed and a couch, even a TV, can all be acquired here and have been. There will be deliveries throughout the day and the coming week, if the emails she’s been getting are any indication. The loss of her aunt gnaws at her far more than the loss of all the cheap IKEA she had in her last place.
The aunt who took her in and helped raise her, nurturing her through the heartache and terror when her parents died fifteen years ago. Now, those fifteen years seem too quick; too short a period of time with the joy and laughter of someone who was blood. The shared moments every Friday afternoon when she left the office and bought Aunt Edith flowers to brighten up her little house. Sneaking chocolate chip ice cream on the couch even when Edith had proclaimed the house a diet-zone. The simple joy of a life shared and communicated. A life heard. She feels bereft and turns from the memories.
Busyness can take the edge off and she flings herself into the flurry of unpacking, shifting things from one room to another. Assembling the new cheap furniture that arrives throughout the day, deliverymen her only company. Her and the house. Not a bad way to start out, she feels. All this activity in and around the old house might encourage visitors. A small town, she rationalises, should mean someone is keen to see what she plans, surely!
The bones of the house are strong and solid. She pats the banister as she makes her way back upstairs to the tiny first floor landing. Off the landing are three doors. A bathroom, and two rooms either side, making a small, but respectable, second storey. Having this floor so much smaller than the imprint of the ground floor means the roof comes in and pitches at different angles. High windows have led to dramatic points, almost like a witch’s house. It was the silhouette that first brough the place to her attention. A witch’s house! Like a child, she is attracted to the unusual, the garrets, the gabled, the terraced. Anything that could house a princess. Or a witch. Halloween is going to be spectacular. She can’t wait for October, a mere month away.
There is much to do before then, however. Settle in, rip out the floor in the kitchen downstairs, where a flood from the now decapitated dishwasher has allowed damp and rot to ruin the boards. She is happy to put her DIY skills to this test. Edith encouraged her desire to ‘have at things’, a pry-bar and a hammer her favourite tools. The builder she consulted mentioned the house was on pylons and she could effectively destroy the floor, so long as she left those untouched without professional help.
Taking her treasure box into the room upstairs she claims as her bedroom, complete with partially constructed queen bed, a floor board groans under her foot. The first thing would be to learn all the different sounds of her new home.
‘Lonely, but not so quiet, hey?’ She pats the wall. Fancy having so much in common with a house. She steps back and presses down, getting the same moan, and grins. If anyone comes up those stairs, she’ll know. She loves quirky and if it wasn’t for the damp, she would keep the kitchen floor too. The old boards have character, and paint splashes from long ago renovations, making them colourful and characterful. The only colour and joy the old place has. It is a shame they have to go. She hopes that she can find replacement boards she can stain, to give her own special character to this charming place. She still can’t believe it was for sale in a price range she could afford and no one else had snapped it up.
It has a feeling of emptiness that goes beyond the fact that no one has lived here for a year or two. It feels hollowed out, and the silences are heavy and thorough. A place that aches to be seen and appreciated. When she first saw the house, its aloneness echoed in her bones. The stark white walls, the unloved pale carpet in all the living spaces that she will replace in time, and the dim lighting that needs refurbishing and downlights to soften and highlight.
Her bright cheerful pillows are stacked down stairs awaiting the new lilac coloured couch due to arrive any hour today. The bare walls will be adorned with the scenic paintings her aunt splashed on canvas, wild cottage gardens with sprays of colour so vivid she can almost smell the flowers. She has a feeling deep within, that she can fill this house up with life and love and colours, and somehow…somehow they will both benefit.
She tips her treasures out onto the bed, not caring that the mattress cover squeaks in protest. It protects from the dust and chaos of the box. A few trinkets, an old diary, photos and old letters.
She picks up one letter and sniffs it. Ever so faintly she can smell hyacinth, Edith’s favourite bulb, crushed between the pages for scent and a ‘touch of femininity, as you and those work boots really don’t say “come and get me boys”’. She smiles at the image of Edith rolling her eyes.
Dear Lettuce,
When you get this, I shall be gone and my lawyer will be giving you the house, as per my wishes in that dreadfully formal document called the Last Will and Testament, blah blah. I know it won’t get you much in today’s market, but it should be enough to start a new life, one where you get the chance to fulfil your dreams as a writer, or even Reno Queen. God, I hope not the latter. I should never have encouraged you. Did I ever mention to you the conversation I had with the plumber? He said you were scarily efficient and really didn’t need him to help with the sink at all. Darling, I want you to be happy and to find a future that includes love, if possible. I know that you don’t do the damseling, but a little less builder’s tea and a little more jasmine tea wouldn’t go astray, if you see what I mean. Though, what do I know? My darling Fred left me years ago and I could never bring myself to replace him with anyone. If you can’t find someone who can handle how ‘efficient and competent’ you are, sod them, eh? Oh, I can’t even begin to see how your future will pan out and I so badly wished to, my dear Lettuce. I can see my lawyer raising an eyebrow over how I’ve addressed the envelope this letter will rest in. TO LETTUCE. Oh dear, now I shall have to try to keep a straight face. He’s such a fuddy-duddy. Nicknames aren’t a part of his vocab, I fear.
Darling, you were right all along. So go to Tasmania, find your father’s family if you can and see what can be done to mend those fences. My sister should have encouraged that many years ago, before time built a wall between them and us. Whatever he did or didn’t do, they can’t find fault with you, his only child. So, make them pay attention. As you know, I’ve never been able to get you the attention you deserved from them, but you now know what town the matriarch settled in and I am not here to keep you in Canberra anymore. Go, and be free. Find what family you can and build a life. Don’t forget all of the life lessons I’ve tried so hard to teach you…well, not too soon, anyway! Now that time is short, I think of all the things I didn’t get to tell you or show you and there are so many regrets. Do everything you can, while you can, dear. Life is so fleeting! One lesson we should have paid more attention to when we lost your darling parents.
I have loved having you with me. I sometimes felt so selfish, needing to keep you close, watching for signs of my sister on your dear face, and then laughing at myself because you are just so …uniquely you! Your company, your joy for life, no matter how hard it became – you are a gift I gave to me and hoarded to myself, one that I now release into the world! Knock their socks off, love.
All my love and oh, everything, dearest.
Edith.
No one to call her Lettuce, anymore. No one to understand that to a grieving child of ten, finding solace in being given a name so ‘uniquely her’, forged a connection with the giver that only deepened over time. She still hates ‘Letitia’, but introduces herself as Letty, not Lettuce. Let that name die with the adored person who gave it to her.
Letty pushes all her treasures back into the box, except for a framed photo of her family. Mother, Father, Aunt Edith and herself, a broad excited ten-year-old grin minus two bottom teeth, taken just days before the accident that shatters her world. She forces her mind elsewhere. Those are old wounds and she has plenty of new ones to mentally flagellate herself with, thank you very much.
She walks back down to where she has made a pile of tools in the main living room. There is no need to begin today. The house is settling around her with creaks and groans as the heat of the day softens and cools. The sun has set on the horizon and the last of the deliverymen has taken the cardboard boxes for the entertainment unit away with him, which is a generous gesture she can’t remember anyone offering back in Canberra. A benefit of a small town, she thinks.
Some things are stacked neatly in the second room upstairs, awaiting the new floor but she has put the couch and coffee table up in this room. The boxed entertainment unit and television can wait until the next day. Enough already. She is tired, heart sore, and more than a bit lonely, here where no one knows her.
It is time for a glass of crisp white wine, a good book and possibly some takeaway. She pulls the local telephone book out from a cupboard built into the wall. She doesn’t know enough about the town to Google anything in particular and for some reason the idea of doing this old school appeals.
The phone book is well used, dog-eared and ripped on some pages. She goes to the end, where the Yellow Pages are attached and thumbs through to ‘restaurants’. There are four in town and several cafes and well-known takeaway places. Two of the restaurants are heavily underlined. She wonders: are they underlined because they are good or because they are to be avoided? She decides it must mean they are decent, as surely the way to avoid them would be to strike the line through them, not underneath.
She phones one that says it does home delivery and orders chicken Pad Thai, curry puffs and the Thai sauce. That will be forty minutes. She could walk there and back in that time! But she can’t be bothered, and this way she can have a bath and shed a day’s worth of dust, memories and sweat before dinner arrives.
Putting a timer on, she climbs into the bath even as it fills up. The glass of wine balances precariously on the porcelain edge, moisture condensing, making it slippery. Head back, she stares at the ceiling, pondering the move and what is left to do. The house echoes the emptiness in her heart, though her head is full of noise and the house echoes this too, with odd ticks and crunches going on as the hot water pipes gurgle upstairs to the bath.
Was she really as insane as her friend mentioned? It was okay for Sally; she had a huge family, around so much she often complained that Letty could take a few home with her and she’d never notice their loss. But they were close and Letty always felt, deep inside, that old pinch of the eternal outsider. A borrowed family couldn’t fill the hole. She wonders, now, if the family she has come to find will do that, or if this will just cause more pain. If was a big thing, to move and buy in a place where she doesn’t know if she will be accepted.
Family or not, she rationalises, she could settle here. Make this a proper home. She could afford her dreams here. The blog was starting to really gain traction; a home décor company had reached out to do some product placement on her site and she had a new project. The kitchen would be perfect to blog about, as would the idea of a novel she’d been playing with. Now, she could let rip, as Edith would say, allowing her imagination to take her where it willed.
She would fill this tired, sad house with noise and laughter and new people. Bright colours, shelves that hold the strange and unusual, overflowing with books and the sound of music.
‘Neither one of us deserve the silence of neglect. We both need -’ Does a house need? She shrugs, setting the water surging and lapping around her body. She can anthropomorphise a house if she wants to. It is her house and if it needed as much love as she thinks it does, well, maybe they have a lot more in common than noticeable on face value.
Her mind switches gears and suddenly she sits up, water going everywhere, but she doesn’t care.
Grabbing a towel and drying herself while trying to walk, stumbling through to her bedroom, she pulls on her robe and opens her laptop.
New idea.
She opens a ‘series’ blog post.
This will be a fresh start. For her and the house.
She types the heading, her fingers flying, the silence and emptiness settling around her like a cloak. A lonely woman in a lonely house, about to make both come alive.
The cursor blinks up at her and she clicks enter, giving the heading space.
‘My house as a metaphor’
Today, I moved into my new home. The loneliest, saddest, most beautiful witch’s house you have ever seen…
She leaves spaces for photos and keeps going while the muse grips her imagination.
