The third house on the left on Lillian, combined with the beginning of fall, is giving me flashbacks. We closed on my former house in Peekskill ten years ago yesterday.
The third house is new construction. I used to watch the owner stand in the lot, and I fancied that he was imagining what could exist there. Over the winter and spring I watched the construction of a big, beautiful blue home with white shutters, and I hate it.
I have watched them begin to make the house a home. I watched them figure out how to configure the parking of cars – three in a row at the end of the driveway? One in front of the garage? They aren’t parking in the garage. Maybe it’s full of things they have yet to unpack.
I watched them leave the garbage and recycling bins out on the correct days. I still don’t know the correct days, and I’ve been here over a year. If I could, I would tell them that everyone just leaves the bins by the street. We don’t like to clutter up our houses with bins, and there are stone walls and bushes that line the streets. The bins can blend in nicely.
I watched the woman walk the tiny dog in the yard – a “drop-kick dog”, as my dad would say. I want to tell her that the winding, hilly road along the lake is beautiful and the houses all vary, making the neighborhood an amazing walk. But she looks closed up and very ‘80’s and I’m not sure if she’s a stop-to-chat neighbor.
I watched three potted marigolds line up on one side of the steps leading up to the front door. They are on the right side, opposite the garage, which for some reason throws the house off kilter to me. They should be on the left.
I have watched various lights turned on at night, illuminating different areas of the house. Last night the upstairs light was on, with the blinds closed on the window, finally giving the house some sense of privacy. Finally, some sense of a decision being made about the way life was being lived inside the house.
Because I have watched the house begin, but I have not felt it become. And in that way it feels exactly like Kissam to me.
We walked into Kissam with only the blinds on the windows, which is appropriate, as we had no clue what we were starting. I remember the feel of it, the emptiness despite things being put away, the feeling that persisted after months that I was house-sitting, that I was living a life that wasn’t mine.
And in a way I was. Kissam was a place where I hid my sanity and my salvation in crawl spaces and closets, pretending that everything was fine, working on life from hour to hour, not knowing how I would make it through. The house was cold, it was empty. My things were there but I was not. I couldn’t be alone there, but I constantly was, on those “sick days” that I called in to work and spent the day calling everyone I knew seeking a lifeline.
The third house on the left is Kissam. I can see through the bare windows to its skeleton, I can count the bones, I can tell it has no guts. I hope that there are things in the garage that can pull it through, the pictures and the pillows, the curtains, the contentment. I hope they can fill the crawl spaces.
Crowded Hours 