LET’S JUST SAY

So LET’S JUST SAY you move into an old house, a house that seems friendly enough despite the fact that on your first Valentine’s Day there a GLOWING ORB APPEARS in the middle of the night, right over the dresser where you keep framed black-and-white photos of your grandparents, a GLOWING WHITE ORB that your husband sees too, a GLOWING WHITE HOVERING ORB that seems to notice the fact that you and your husband are both about to poo yourselves in your marriage bed, a GLOWING WHITE HOVERING MELON-SIZED ORB that doesn’t want you to mess your nice red flannel sheets, so it vanishes into thin air just as you and your husband are nearing rigor-mortis levels of fear, leaving behind only a sort of ghostly MY BAD residue in its wake.

And for the sake of argument, LET’S JUST SAY that there are a few other weird things about your house, things that tend not to come up in ordinary conversation. Like, oh, LET’S JUST SAY, maybe there’s a STRONG SMELL OF PIPE SMOKE coming from that one room upstairs (the one your smaller daughter occupies, the room that has THAT SPOT in it that neither you nor your husband like to go near or look at). And maybe, LET’S JUST SAY, you’ve seen CLOUDS OF GREENISH GLOWING MIST in your bedroom at night, but only in the month of February.

And then there’s the subject of the WEIRD CREEPY PANTRY with the ANCIENT WOBBLY PINE PLANK you must traverse to get to the shelves in the rear. The ANCIENT WOBBLY PINE PLANK that is flanked by ANCIENT WOBBLY PINE STEPS that lead down into a very DAMP STONE CELLAR with FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND DEAD SPIDERS DANGLING FROM THE PIPES. And of course, there’s that OLD CHICKEN-WIRE DOOR CUPBOARD leaning up against the cellar wall.

Of course, everything from the pine plank to the old cupboard may be something you already have in your house. You may even have A BOX IN YOUR ATTIC THAT YOU HAVE NEVER OPENED BECAUSE YOU REALLY DON’T WANT TO, and you may even have A BOWLING BALL HIDDEN IN THE CRAWLSPACE NEXT TO YOUR TOILET, along with A VINTAGE HOSPITAL BREATHING APPARATUS of some sort or other that was tucked away with the bowling ball.

You’re right, that’s all very run of the mill. Hardly worth mentioning.

So LET’S JUST SAY we never spoke of pine planks and bowling balls and breathing apparati. LET’S JUST SAY that we left off with the February GLOWING GREENISH MIST wafting over your not-yet-asleep form. THE GLOWING GREENISH MIST that your husband insists is just an optical illusion from the glowing alarm clock you got from Restoration Hardware. LET’S JUST SAY you’d like very much to believe him, but myopic or not, you feel like there is more to the story.

February seems, well—like a rough month for your house. The house still feels benevolent, oddly enough, but during February, SOMETHING UNSETTLED YOUR WAY COMES. After five Februarys in this house—this house that you really do love, this house that for most of the year seems to love you—you’re starting to wonder what the heck the back story might be. LET’S JUST SAY.

Because you’re a curious soul. You could be—and probably have been—deemed FLAKY OR A SYNONYM THEREOF. You can’t help it, you didn’t set out in the world trying to be FLAKY OR A SYNONYM THEREOF, you just happen to be awake or around or paying a bit of attention when STUFF HAPPENS.

You heard THOSE FOOTSTEPS down the hallway when you were little (as did your parents), heard them stop in each of your doorways, then turn around and walk straight back through the house, straight to the front door (which shook, then was silent). You heard THAT VOICE in the church when your parents’ Christian folk group, The Lambs and The Sinners, were rehearsing that Friday night up in the choir loft. You believe that your dad watched THAT BASKETBALL GAME on TV the day before it actually happened. Your grandmothers have visited you in your dreams. You saw your grandmother the morning after she dreamed of her friend Rhea and just knew that Rhea had died, even before the call came. Your mother and you used to have the same dreams, scary ones that sometimes came true, including the horrible one about the MIDAIR EXPLOSION that neither of you could figure out at the time.

And then there was the time your grandfather came to visit in August IN THE FORM OF A BIRD. But LET’S JUST SAY that never happened.

LET’S JUST SAY you start to think it might be time to get some answers, so you start asking questions. And all of a sudden…A TREE ANSWERS! YES! A MAGIC TREE!

All the magic Tree knows is that there was THAT ORB and that February feels, um, weird. You’re pretty sure she does not know about the pipe smoke or your grandfather the bird. And she makes you walk around your house—inside and out—and tells you to sit down and relax at 8:30pm on March 30. And LET’S JUST SAY you do, because you do that sort of thing all the time anyway, so what the heck.

And this is what the lovely magic Tree tells you, the next morning:

“The first thing I saw was an older man. You didn’t let me know if there was a place outside where wood used to be cut (or still is?), but that’s where I saw him. Sort of to the side and back a bit. He had a beard, smoked a pipe and sat there a LOT. He didn’t say anything, but he’s there a lot.”

LET’S JUST SAY you yelp and read that out loud to your husband, who yelps too. “SHE SAID A PIPE? SHE COULD SEE THE PIPE? HOLY CRAP!”

LET’S ALL JUST SAY, “Holy crap!” Three times fast!

49 comments April 10th, 2006