Mom,
Please tell me this wallpaper map leads to buried treasure. There’s no key or legend, though, so I’ll likely never find it. I’ve always sucked at reading maps. Other weaknesses: puzzles, riddles, any kind of problem solving. I never tested well! Privately, I suspected I was dumb, but now I recognize it as a will-to-live thing. Death has been a goal like any other, i.e., on my vision board forever, and so I’ve never bothered to learn anything useful, thanks in part to you—no offense.
Although, to be honest, ending my life holds little interest lately. I mean, whatever, it’s winter. Suicide only occurs to me calmly and out of the blue, i.e., never on Christmas, which Sabine and I spent getting drunk at Spring Garden. It’s just a jingle that pops into my head. A few months ago, when the leaves turned and the burning bush in the backyard was engulfed in red and pink flames, I couldn’t stop myself from taking a few pictures, even though I’ve never cared about foliage. The stems, I noticed, were made of cork. In other words, cork is not man-made—it is a kind of tree bark, and I don’t know, should I kill myself this afternoon?
Sometimes I wish I still had our notes. I understand why you burned yours, but why couldn’t you leave mine alone? It’s no wonder I barely remember anything. You didn’t burn the final one, though—that’s on me. You’d think I would’ve kept that safe. You’d think I would’ve placed it, along with my other important documents, in a waterproof envelope of some sort, or perhaps a metal box. Birth certificate, social security card, your suicide note. And yet, I still have concert stubs from the nineties, a few of which I took the trouble to laminate. Still have that dumb rock I found while tripping in the woods, along with a hundred other useless souvenirs. Boxes full of carefully folded notes from people I never really cared about follow me whenever I move. But your last words? Gone, and early on.
Let’s focus on the present. I wonder what you would make of this house. Something tells me you’d hate it. You always seemed afraid of antiques. Is that why you’re not haunting me?
This house is putting me in contact with some of the more elemental aspects of survival: shelter, water, fire. I’ve never considered myself spoiled, but apparently, I’m habituated to such luxuries as insulation, thermostats, and drinking water from the tap. Here I build and maintain fires all day and all night. I de-gas the water before drinking it. If I had that incessant, insatiable impulse to thrive that I see in others, I would move out immediately, or at least find a way to fill the cracks in the walls so that I don’t see my breath at night. Instead, I sleep with a hair dryer. Or I hide in the antechamber. Sometimes I wonder why I left California for this fucked-up frontier house, why I left my comfortable relationship to transcribe other people’s relationships.
Om tells his clients that a romantic partner mirrors how you feel about yourself. Stacy was a skinny mirror. He made me look—and feel—better than I actually looked or felt, which is why breaking his heart has probably given me seven years of bad luck. My other relationships: carnival mirrors, a different kind of distortion.
Big Swiss, on the other hand? We don’t even know each other, and so she doesn’t mirror anything, really, but I wish I saw myself in her. I’ve always thought of myself as a non-wallower, as someone who isn’t particularly prone to self-pity, who’s mastered the （mostly lost） art of sucking it up, but then I wouldn’t be lying around in the antechamber, writing notes to my dead mother, would I? I’d have my shit together by now. I’d be on a clear path toward—
Greta’s phone vibrated. It was Om, texting from a bar, probably.
How’s it goin?
Well, it’s raining in my bedroom. My fire went out. I’m sleeping in a cabinet
Lmao
Are you drunk?
Three beers
Full disclosure: NEM and REP were here to buy weed and I may have told NEM that she reminded me of Jason Bateman
You didn’t
I did
Then what happened?
She invited me to the dog park
Oh ok cool
Is it?
Of course. I want you to have friends. Just don’t tell her you work for me
So, cultivate a friendship based on a lie?
Yeah
Ok!
Did you listen to FEW?
Twice
Intense, right?
Harrowing
You ok?
Is her face… disfigured?
You know I can’t tell you
Do you have another file?
Yes
Give it to me immediately
I’m not at home
I’ll wait
Go to sleep, Greta
Yeah, okay. She closed her eyes, but her lids didn’t feel quite heavy enough. In fact, she felt distinctly that she was being watched. Although there were no windows in the antechamber, quarter-size spiders were embedded in every nook like hidden cameras. One or two looked large enough to jiggle a doorknob. These were called black lace weavers.
“But—have I gone over the stink bug situation?” Sabine had asked weeks ago.
“No,” Greta had said.
Sabine removed her glasses. “The stink bugs are out in the field right now, eating all the apple trees, but when the temperature drops, they come inside.”
“Where?”
“You’ll see,” she said. Their favorite place was the Vermeer Room, as Sabine called the antechamber. “I mean, not all of them will be in there. But… many.”
“Like how many?” Greta asked.
“I mean, not a million, but maybe five hundred thousand? Something like that.”
“Half a million bugs are coming into the house?” Greta said. “This house?”
“Just to hibernate,” Sabine said. “They hide in the closets, mostly, but occasionally you’ll find one on your toothbrush or whatever, and you just shake it off, no big deal. Oh, and make sure you shake out your shoes before you put them on, and your coat and so on. They like to hide in sleeves.”
But Greta didn’t feel watched by stink bugs. They were flying thumbtacks, basically, and she wasn’t crazy. More likely it was just the gap under the door, which was too short for its frame. There was a three-inch clearance between the bottom of the door and the floor, a gap that made her feel exposed, though she loved the door itself—primitive, board and batten, painted pale pink.
Moving forward, it might be necessary to cover the gap with a towel. Or a heavy blanket, like old times. Her childhood bedroom had been its own antechamber, but she’d been hiding from a different kind of weather: her mother’s gloom, so clingy, oppressive, and noxious it could seep into the tiniest crack. Greta had layered the walls with tapestries, the windows with velvet curtains. The gap under the door she’d covered with a heavy blanket. Only then could she relax and be herself. When forced to emerge from her room, she sometimes covered her mouth when her mother spoke to her, or pinched her nostrils. She didn’t like having her skin exposed, or the top of her head, or even her eyeballs, and so she’d worn a hat or hood indoors, even though they lived in Los Angeles. Sunglasses, too, but only at the breakfast table, never at dinner, lest she be accused of drug abuse or insolence. When she was twelve, she asked for a mini-fridge for Christmas. （She didn’t get one.） She asked for a microwave, too. （No dice.） What she wanted, basically, was a studio apartment. By then she was pissing in empty orange juice cartons to avoid running into her mother in the hallway, cartons she hid in her closet and carefully dumped out the window at night.