THE HOUSE THAT MOVED

Some of the open spaces on the long rows of houses were there waiting for something new, some were the scars of things collapsed and gone.  "e house that moved found its way in and out of those holes in the blocks that wound up the hill.  Its windows looked sometimes to the sun breaking under the passing clouds or to the city skyline or at the frustrated suits shoveling o# their cars.  It didn’t linger long in any one spot before moving somewhere else leaving its odd prints in the snow and dirt.  Behind it dropped a trail of all the familiar things once found inside, littering the streets with furniture, photographs, boxes of Christmas decorations.  Until all that was left were the two of them sitting at a kitchen table with nothing to look at but nothing.  He counted tiles on the $oor.  She watched the edge of her %ngernails run across the lip of the table.  "e light from outside sprayed in at odd angles as the house moved, sometimes up the hill deeper into the tight regiments of houses, sometimes down to the green dingy river.

He stood and walked to the sink, letting the water that dripped from the faucet run over his %ngers before slamming his hand down on it.  He found a voice strangely quieter than his %st.  “"is thing never worked.”

“"e noise used to keep me up when we %rst moved here.  I guess I got used to it.”  She moves her head in his direction, pointing her voice towards him but not her eyes.

"e house rumbled beneath them and began to move again.  "ey

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were oblivious, hating and thankful for the silence that broke apart their conversation.  “I could stay until later.”

She shook her head viciously, gave him a quick stare and a smile painfully polite.  “"at doesn’t make any sense.”  A snow squall blew behind him in the window.  "ey had moved again.  "e old slate roof of the abandoned school building on their block could be seen in the distance.  "e closer roo$ines she didn’t recognize.  “Does it?”

“No.  Not really.  I left the address, in case-”“I saw.  Good.  In case.”“I’ll come by tomorrow.  "ere are some things I couldn’t %t.  Say

one?”“One’s %ne.  I’ll be at work.” On the wall in the far corner of the kitchen, just next to the

refrigerator was a large crack where the plaster had peeled.  Water continually seeped in.  She noticed it when they %rst saw the place, a long %nger of discolored paint, stained from the outside weather, creeping down the wall.  First he tried to seal it but the water came through anyway, turning the putty a %lthy yellow and cracking it further.  "en she tried three successive colors, each one darker than the last, to conceal it.  "ree attempts failed.  So she painted the wall a bright red.  He came home and saw her, wearing splatter like warpaint, slashing at the wall with a roller, going over it again and again, putting seven coats of paint on the wall.  "en she watched it all night long.  She sat on the kitchen table with her knees crossed staring, daring the crack to come back.  "e next morning he came to the kitchen for breakfast, saw her crying and saw the crack in the wall.  He couldn’t help but

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laugh.  She stared at him angrily while his back was turned and in one %nal %t of rage she swiped the still bleeding roller down the back of his T-shirt while he was getting a drink of water.  He turned to her, shocked, as her face went from fury to disbelief before melting into apologetic laughter.  So he took his shirt o# and he used a thumbtack from the drawer no one ever cleaned to hang it over the crack, the smeared red paint facing them both.  It was her newest piece of art, he said and was glad it was hanging in their home and not another of those poorly lit galleries she always found.  She thought how she loved his sense of humor as she spent the next three weeks looking for a replacement shirt.  Each time the house moved to a new spot, the crack widened.  "e shirt that hung all that time fell unnoticed to the ground.

From where she sat she saw the shadows of the houses around them stretch and yawn across his back coloring away all the little things about him she knew.  For hours that morning they had walked around a hanging silence with a strange ugly sounding conversation until %nally the house began to shift underneath them.  "ey were unsure, by the afternoon, who wanted it to go %rst but that was academic now.  "ey did notice the shaking walls initially but that soon disappeared into the background.  "ey could hear the last of their things make soft impressions made in the dirt and snow, the house throwing things away while they looked at how they weren’t really looking at each other.  "ey knew their things were going, those little useless items that had parts of her story and parts of his together, knew they should miss them, should try to stop the house from throwing them aside but the things themselves started to look a little too unfamiliar, some too sharp to grab at.  Even her hair, which had started that morning thin and light had

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turned long and brown while they spoke or didn’t speak.  Each tense and laden syllable they dropped gave the house one more thing to throw away.

She stood to put her cup of co#ee in the sink, felt him looking at her hair.  He hadn’t moved from his spot at the counter and they were close.  She heard him thinking.  “I feel like I’ve seen you here before.  In this exact spot.  What do they call that?”

He said nothing though, of course, he knew. It might be the last thing he said to her and he didn’t want it to be that.  He wanted something memorable.  Everything had the feel of heat and transition as he walked past her long hair, which still smelled the same, to the doorway opposite.  "ere was a little blue bag he nudged from his path.  “Okay.”

"en there was a lurch.  "e house came to a standstill launching everything left inside from its place- a small plant in a ceramic pot he bought her once when she was sick tumbled, a picture fell o# the wall and the shattered glass left a slice in the print she knew he wanted.  "e cup she had perched near the sink tumbled backward.  "ey watched it drop for each ticking minute until it shattered an hour later on the tiles, splitting into jagged teeth that caught the remaining sunlight and glowed white, veined with co#ee stains.  Neither one of them moved, though, still watching it.  It was now almost evening.

He pointed to the $oor.  “Don’t cut your feet.”“I won’t.”“I’ll get the broom.”“No.  "at’s okay.”  She moved closer to him, raising her long hair

like a curtain against the kitchen.  She thought about touching his coat, she

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hadn’t seen him take it from the closet. He put his hand against the wall, his %ngers bumping along clumps

of paint badly applied by a previous tenant.  “Okay.”She looked at him then.  "ere was so much in his face that she

knew.  “Okay.”He picked up his bag and moved quickly to the front door.  She

didn’t look at it once it had shut.   Outside, the house had settled in a vacant spot on a quiet unfamiliar street.  "e faces of the houses that surrounded it were all di#erent, the cars that lined the street were unknown.  "ere was a sharp metal whine as a train stopped nearby.  He wasn’t sure where he was, if it was even the same city or where his tightly packed car was.  He didn’t look around him long before he began to walk, it was late.  Everything sounded real, felt real.  "e air made him cold.  Car exhaust, coarse and nauseating, hung around him.  He had no direction to go because he had so sense of origin.  He walked out of a house he didn’t know onto a sidewalk he didn’t know looking at things he didn’t know.  "e house that moved was even a di#erent color.  Not that he noticed that until he was a block away and turned to look at it only, as he rationalized, to get some better idea of where he was.  He made a random left turn and lost sight of the house, walking into a gripping feeling like the cold.  He paid no attention to the prints the house had made on its journey or the things that used to belong to him that he passed, now discarded on the snow and street.  He felt like he had forgotten something.

J.A. Curcione

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