The effort and consideration that went into each small detail are palpable: the stain of the golden wood floors, the mismatched doorknobs and lamps collected by my father over the years, the copper piping that clings to the beams, exposed along with the interior of the roof. The walls dividing the rooms are truncated, reaching just about halfway to the ceiling. When guests come over, they run the sink in the bathroom for privacy.
My father loves to talk about the house and how he built it. Growing up, I loved to listen, following him from room to room as he recited tales attached to its features: the full-length mirror in my bedroom that he installed for his girlfriend, a ballerina, before he met my mother; the tiny ceramic jar in the dining room that my grandfather found in the rubble of Hiroshima （“Careful, it’s probably still radioactive”）; the painting in my parents’ bedroom fixed to the wall with a hinge that opened to reveal a hidden TV （“I just don’t like the look of TVs”）。 Guests trip on the uneven steps that lead from the double doors （“They were Jimmy Cagney’s”） to the entrance to my father’s studio. “You know,” my mother says, partly embarrassed, partly proud, “it’s an artist’s house.”
My father and the house were bound together. He was the architect, the groundskeeper, the historian, the author of the fairytale. Though my mother and I lived there, too, it was unmistakably his.
On many days while I was growing up, the house felt glorious; it would fill with my father’s excitement over a new painting he was working on, or with my mother’s joyous preparation for a visit from friends. They both enjoyed tending to the house, and at times like these, it thrived, sparkled. Sunlight appeared in places usually cast in shadow. My parents would flirt, referencing scenes from Woody Allen films they both loved and recounting stories of living in communist Poland when my mother was teaching there on a Fulbright. In the early evenings, they’d drink wine while my father blasted the Band and Van Morrison. Those nights I often woke up to the rhythmic sound of my parents having sex.
More frequently, I woke to the sound of their arguments. My father would slam the front door so forcefully the whole house shook. The rooms （if you could call them that） couldn’t contain my parents’ energy, much less their fighting. I was sucked into their screaming matches, positioned between them, at times literally, as they hurled cutting insults and accusations I could only partly comprehend. In an attempt at privacy, I’d close the door to my room and get down on the floor to play with imaginary friends and stuffed animals. But I could still feel the waves of tension wash over me. I’d sink like a rock dropping to the bottom of an aquarium, perfectly still. I could hear my parents’ thoughts even when the house was silent. When the house was silent, it felt the loudest.
I knew that my parents had been on again, off again for years before my mother became pregnant with me and they decided to get married. I understood that even before I was born my existence was the essential glue of their relationship. After every such explosion, which usually ended with one of them leaving, the other would turn to me to plead their case or to air their grievances. I’d listen, performing my role dutifully, feeling a queasiness that would stay with me for days.
I remember sitting at the kitchen table, a glass of juice in front of me, as my mother organized printouts of exchanges between my father and various women （ex-students, former lovers, some random woman he met on a plane） that she’d found by breaking into his email.
“Is he crossing a line?” she asked.
Lines were never clear between us. The house didn’t help: it was a place with no boundaries. Children who grow up in homes like mine, just them and their parents with no separation, physically or emotionally, become experts in a very particular type of seeing. We learn to see things that are hidden, and things that aren’t there at all. We become particularly sensitive to the moods and emotions of others. We are nimble and excellent at shape-shifting. We oscillate between feeling special and feeling alone. We feel simultaneously capable of both saving and destroying those we love.
On some nights, I’d stare up at the underbelly of the roof and be unable to soothe my uneasy mind to sleep. I’d lie in bed, restless and sweaty, my thoughts racing. Eventually I’d call over the stunted wall between my room and my parents’， at first quietly and then louder and louder, hearing the sound of my voice travel along the underbelly of the roof.
“Mom … Mom? Mommy!”
I’d wait, fretful and curled up until she’d come into my bed. “Do you have the woozies?” she’d ask, as hot tears streamed down my face. I’d nod and clutch at her.