Nights

Besides my own, only one other family has ever lived in my house. I don’t know much about the previous family, except that there were seven of them under this roof; the mother, the father, and five sons. I know they built this house and I know that the sons were very tall, as our doorknobs and cabinets and closet shelves are all set rather high. I know that when they moved out of this house, they left behind a stout little shot-glass decorated with some kitschy 1970’s cartoon drawing of a man angling his arm just right as he gets ready to hurl a glob of muck at another man while saying, “Here’s mud in your eye!” I know we kept that strange little glass in the medicine cabinet above the kitchen sink for over twenty years before it finally broke. I know that I am the one who broke it (I knocked it off the shelf in the middle of the night when I was looking for some asprin). It crashed into the sink, clanking and cracking against smooth blue porcelain. Scattered all along the edge of the dark drain, tiny bits of glass glinted in a slim beam of bleak, fluorescent light shining down from the bulb situated above the shiny metal faucet. (I never did find the asprin, just took my headache back to bed and stared at my ceiling while a dull ache pounded behind my eyes.)

And I know this: the son who owned the glass that I broke was a serious alcoholic, and one night after he had swallowed too many shots, he got into his car and drove himself off a cliff.

I also know that my room used to be his room.

Now, his walls are my walls. His shelves, my shelves. I walk on his floors, I open his closets. At three in the morning, when that familiar, dull ache behind my eyes starts its routine thudding, I stare at his ceiling. I have no idea what he looked like, I have never seen a photograph of his face. Yet our eyes have glimpsed so many of the same views. The same door frames; the same windowsills: sometimes lined with books or photographs or loose coins, sometimes bare and empty; the same light switches and electrical outlets; the same window panes edged in frost during the winter, streaked with rain during the fall, baked in dust during the summer; the same patch of sky behind the tree branches that hover above the window, crooked limbs splintering the early morning sunlight that leaks over the horizon and trickles out across the flat Eastern plains, swaying leaves floating in front of wispy pink sunrises breaking the night into day. Everything the same. My eyes see what his eyes saw, though our eyes were open in different decades.

Now, his walls are my walls. Sometimes, when insomnia strikes and I find myself awake in the middle of the night, I stare up at his ceiling. I put my hand on his wall beside my bed, beneath the windowsill. And I wonder about him, in the same way that I wonder about everyone. Everyone who walks with their shoulders stooped, carrying their secret, cumbersome burdens that they try to drink away or starve away or purge away. He must have been a very sad man. Of course, I can’t be certain about this because I never knew him, but there is a faint sadness that still lingers in this room. I can feel it in my fingertips when I place my hand on the walls, as though the boards are haunted, not by his ghost, but by his residual sorrow. Then again, maybe it’s just me. Maybe I am haunting my own walls and this sadness within the boards did not belong to him at all. Maybe this sorrow emanates from me—belongs to me—and me alone.

Who haunts these walls?

Awake at three in the morning, I put my hand against the haunted wall beneath the windowsill and I wonder about him. What were you drinking away? I wonder about his hands on the steering wheel that night he drove himself off a cliff.

What did you do? When your car was freefalling down that cliff, crashing through the darkness, what did you do? Did you grip the wheel and hold on tight? Did you just let go? Did you let your hands fall to your knees? Did you, in midair, change your mind and try to yank the wheel straight again? What did you do?

What do you do? Your car is tumbling down a steep cliff. What do you do? Where are your hands? Gripping the wheel, trying to steer yourself straight again, or on your knees letting everything go? Do you release your fingertips from the machine and give in to the plunge? Or do you hold on? Where are your hands?

With my hand on a haunted wall at three in the morning, I look at his ceiling and I wonder about him.

What did your eyes see just before you slipped off the edge?

Maybe he saw a black horizon rimmed with stars; little sparkling points of light flickering along the edge of a dark sky.

I imagine him closing his eyes. In the end, this is all you can do. Close your eyes and hold your breath.

He closes his eyes and remembers the stars. I close my eyes and remember the shards of his broken shot-glass scattered along the edge of a dark drain at the bottom of my kitchen sink. Little translucent slivers gleaming in synthetic fluorescent light.

He closes his eyes and waits for the ground. I close my eyes and wait for sleep. He holds his breath. I hold my breath.

Until the stars evaporate and everything goes black.