the woman and the house (it's a story, yes. it's long and no i didn't edit it)

PREMISE: Suppose a woman is restoring an old house, prys back the horrid '70's paneling in the parlor and finds a door...where does it lead? what does she find?

STORY:

Alex always said she was crazy. She preferred the word, 'driven'... It was after all the work of your hands, and the labor of your heart. This was suppose to be their project. She even remembered saying, I won't touch this horrible shag carpet without you. He had assured her with promises, promises- and none of them fulfilled. Then one day she came back to their new house with a second heap of supplies from Home Depot and Alex wasn't anywhere. The new puppy that he and Janice had just bought was yapping and whining from behind a bathroom door. She let the puppy out, furious, ready to stalk about the house and have an all out screaming match, until she saw the empty medicine cabinet. She ran outside with the puppy yipping at her heels and saw the garage was empty of his car too. She called his cell and it was turned off.

A few hours later she was wandering through the house with a beer in hand, hating all the faux wood cabinets, the shag, the furniture that weighed a ton, the fermica counters. There was instant regret, and all the past indignities surged upon her until her heart was covered with bitter blights, and wronged moments. She pushed her hand to her chest to massage the ache but it remained. She called his cell phone again and still nothing. How, how could he do the leaving? After all- and how was this the last of the last, past the point of not caring. There was a note for her in the empty parlor, taped to the brown wallpaper- it had tiny orange, yellow and white flowers on it. The parlor was one of the last rooms to be renovated because Janice reasoned, it was the easiest.

Janice stood there, struck. She blinked. The audacity! She tucked her blonde hair behind her ears and then tied it up in a bun. This was too much. There was a momentary reflex, where she felt like running out of the door or screaming. This filled her with shame. Scared,of a small note, a very intimidating note, taped to the wallpaper she hated, written by the man she wanted to strangle. Affectionately, I'm sure.

She opened the note. There wasn't anything else to do, and disgust can only carry you so far in the course of action. The note, well what did it say after all? Does it matter? Some would say that it does. Because in the context of a life there must be a recorded switch- where you went this way, and i went that way- and this is why, these are all things I can no longer love about you. Wedge upon wedge was placed upon Janice and Alex in the course of their four year marriage- from jealousy and potential marital slips, to disrespect, contempt, and the end result was two people who no longer knew each other, who took each other for granted in all the minuet ways that drive you to despair and rage. The note, in effect, said, because these are the words she took to her heart: I don't want to do "this" anymore. I'm tired. I'm lonely. I hurt and you don't care.

There were other words, cliched ones. Ones that simplify things so painfully that you gasp at the vague absurdity of even having written it. How could this sum up: the end. As she stood there, re reading it and reading it again- trying to glean the why and never fully grasping it, she gave up. It wasn't because it was a long note and his arrogance had made him wordy, which it had, but because she knew whatever it was that was breaking inside her was mostly pride and not love. He had actually dared to break the pretense, but it wasn't all was it? Some of it had to be real- this coming together, their dog, this house... but sometimes things bloom most before they die, and she never wanted to think that of their marriage- that this commitment was a lie and not a promise.

Three years later she lived in the same house, with the same wall paper in the parlor:

"Janice, why is this room empty?" says the sage-like Sam.

"It's the last room," says Janice.

"For what? Your dog or what? This is shit. Don't give me that look. I've been dating you for 2 years and I get to say that!"

"You don't get to say whatever you want!"

"What? Just because you don't like it? Great. Great attitude. Look this, this is something-it's screaming symbolism. I get it. Why don't you?"

Needless to say, there was a lot more yelling, but Sam never let the insults dip to low, seemed to know when he was close and never wanted to hurt her. That was the beautiful thing about Sam, and he loved the dog, which she was sure was something she could trust. This time. He called her Jan too, and Janna Banana, and said things that swept her out of herself. Janice could say, that what she had, was something like love. But what she couldn't give up was, when he left, she wandered around the house with a beer to observe all the perfect things about it- like the paint, the design, the gorgeous molding and the antique fixtures...the work of her hand and the labor of her heart, but she avoided the parlor like the plague. Her chest tightened when Sam lured her in there.

So at the most dramatic moment possible, with a storm gathering outside and the lights surging she stepped into the parlor. She thought about what she could do to it, but didn't want to waste the beer. She didn't have to. A piece peeled off the wall on it's own. That made her sad for a minute but the wall underneath was mesmorizing, just because it wasn't brown. She ripped at the paper all over room until she'd chipped 3 nails, spilled her beer, cursed and caused the dog to go barking all over the house twice.

A couple days later she tackled the paneling, and she tugged at the last piece- she yanked really hard. It came loose, along with a portion of the top wall, and took her down with it. She jumped up, pissed off, and examining the cut in her hand from a nail. She stood there staring at a mysterious door set back into the wall, like she stared at the now forgotten note. There was even a brass handle. She looked around for a witness, but there wasn't any. No Sam, no dog. She tried the door, like it might just swing open to something unimaginable but it didn't. She slammed her shoulder against it and laughed when it didn't budge then either. So over the next couple days she set chipping away at it, and didn't think to call Sam or any of her friends, because it was hers, all hers, until it was opened. Finally with a heavy soaking of oil and a few more shoulder jabs the door opened with a loud groan, and a smell that sent her into a sneezing fit. She did a happy dance, that denotes victory to be sure. She grabbed the mag-flashlight and set foot upon a very dusty landing. There were steps. A long series of steps, that led down. This is a silly place for a basement, she thought.

Janice went down the steps, mindful of each creak and sway of the wood steps. And when her eyes had a adjusted she noticed it wasn't as dark as she thought. There was purple light filtering through, and bits of glass skylight overhead at the far end of the room. She swung her flashlight around and saw random tools, a moldy wicker chair and stacks of newspaper, and many little odd bits of shelves and drawers with who knows what they contained.

"That's a hazard," she said, circling the newspaper with her flashlight.

"This is ridiculous," she said, half disappointed it was just a room that led to nowhere, and one that didn't make any sense. She tried another hatch and rolled her eyes when it didn't bust an inch. She stomped back upstairs and went outside to walk around the house. She hadn't quite gotten to the landscaping yet, even though she'd hired people to do the exterior of the house- and overgrown would've been an understatment, even if she could hack her way around the house. It'd been her great aunts.

Janice went back down the stairs one more time and flung open some of the drawers. A few discarded photographs and unreadable paper.

"What a waste."

The words choked her as she said them. Alex had thought that. He'd thought exactly that.

"That's not the point," she yelled back at herself.

And with each stomp back up the stairs, she said, "It doesn't matter, I'll make it livable. It'll be beautiful," until one of the steps gave way and her foot went through.

She managed to extricate herself and crawl back up and into the parlor.

"Okay, I'm gonna need a little help here." She reached in her pocket for her cell and called Sam. When he came he found her lying on the parlor floor.

"Hi," she said.

"Hi," Sam said, "What the hell happened to you? You're bleeding on your beautiful wood floors."

"It doesn't matter," she said, "it's just going to take a little longer than I thought. Can you get me a beer, and maybe some bandaids?"

"Anything," he said.