Heavenly Bodies

Whole House Gone to Hell

23 Whole House Gone to Hell The mother who will not come down from her bed. Television flickering across channels at odd hours: the late movie, the news show at dawn, the all-night mystery station. Milk gone sour in the refrigerator, the daughter stumbling out of the backseat of a car, hair in her eyes, her skirt wrinkled up at her hips. The son sneaking out of the house to close a deal. No one talks on the phone without shutting the door. The rooms smell of smoke, yellow rot of nicotine. The phlegmy cough. The father sunk in his chair, growing hair from his arms and his hands. The police, the ambulance, the pizza delivery. The stretcher just clearing the turn of the stair. Doctors’ phone numbers taped to the refrigerator. People begin to address each other obliquely, directing pointed remarks to the dog. Blood spattered behind the sink not washed away. Parents meet children in the kitchen at 2 a.m. and neither asks what the other is doing, and no conversation is begun. Pills dropped on the carpet, pink and blue among knots of lint behind the dresser. The gun in the box on the floor of the closet, biding its time. The knife in the drawer beside the stove, biding its time. The cars in the garage asleep 24 with their eyes open, biding their time. Their engines ticking. Smell of coffee burned on the stove, someone coughing behind a door. The clock’s red light blinking beside the bed. Seconal, Nembutal, Amytal, Percodan, Demerol, Valium, Thorazine. Time is extinct and the moment is always. Sleep gapes and opens like a fish’s mouth, but no one sleeps. A man is kicking trashcans down a driveway, howling against their clang and peal. It is 1967, late in the empire of America. Years pass, and it is always this time. We wait, listening for the silence after things stop falling. ...