Heft - By Liz Moore Page 0,13

hands in front of her.

“Please come in,” I said.

•

When she stepped inside my house a kind of spell was broken. My pulse increased; I felt a tumbling-down inside of me, & then shame. I looked at my surroundings frankly. The girl was still silent. She was standing on her tiptoes slightly, as if she were afraid of fully committing to the job.

“This is it,” I said rather lamely.

She turned toward the piano. She approached it tentatively, placing her feet one in front of the other, heel to toe, a shy awkward walk. She held her arms out slightly from her sides like a gosling. When she reached it she touched the top of it with one finger and left a dark & dustless mark—a gesture that at first seemed rude to me and then simply inquisitive.

I wondered if the place smelled bad. I imagined that to an outsider it would smell like food & dust & stuffiness, the hot oppressed smell of a house that gets no air. I should have opened all the windows, I thought, but it was too late.

I’d done my best to clear up all the food and the containers I had lying around, but I had missed several things that now sprang to my attention. Hiding in the floor-to-ceiling bookshelf was a take-out box with a metal handle. Above & below it were books in disorganized piles. Papers and mugs and little useless things like pennies and straws. Small piles of receipts had somehow found their way onto every available surface; I suppose I put them there whenever a delivery person hands me one. One end of the dining room table was drowning under papers and boxes. Scads of plastic bags hung off the backs of the chairs. Years ago I wrapped several towels around the newel at the base of my staircase for reasons I no longer recall; they have remained there ever since, stiffening with age. Worst of all: the piles of papers that have somehow accumulated at the perimeter of every room. Junk mail & magazines & books; newspapers & napkins & menus that had all somehow become invisible to me in the past decade. Part of the scenery.

So I felt very upset.

“Show me the kitchen,” Yolanda said suddenly.

I pointed the way & I made sure she went first so I could walk behind her and not be seen.

This was a bad moment. I watched the tiny back of her and looked down & realized exactly how I must look, always, to anyone who sees me.

The kitchen was worse. She went through it opening cabinets and drawers—within each of them was a nest of crockery and pots and dishrags and cutlery and bowls—and, though I had done the dishes in preparation for her visit, they were all sitting where I left them to dry by the sink.

“No dishwasher,” said Yolanda.

I shook my head.

At that moment a mouse leapt out of one of the cabinets that Yolanda had left open and ran frantically in circles before darting out of the room. The girl shrieked & launched herself out of its path and then, once it was safely out of sight, clutched her heart and doubled over.

“Whoopsy!” I said, or something bright like that. “Well, there you go!”

“Mr Opp,” said Yolanda, “do you have a mouse problem?”

“No, no, no, no, no,” I said. “I haven’t seen one in years, actually.” (It was a lie.)

“I can’t work with mice,” said the girl.

I felt deeply embarrassed. “I assure you you won’t have to,” I said. This was with more coldness than I had intended, so I added: “Sorry.”

I told her about the rest of the house.

“The top two floors are bedrooms,” I said. (I pictured them. I can always picture them. It has been years since I have seen them. Third floor, two blue bedrooms with chintz curtains. All of them matching. My mother loved the curtains. Second floor, my childhood bedroom, a wooden train set still assembled. Second floor, the good bedroom for guests who never came. O the dust that must be burying them. O the disuse.) “Downstairs we have an office and a library.”

“A library in your house?” asked Yolanda.

“Well—no,” I said. “I just mean that there’s a desk down there, and that’s where we keep all the books.”

“Are you married?” she asked.

I realized then that I had said we: a habit I have never lost.

“No,” I told her, “I’m not married.”

An awkward pause ensued.

“You want me to start now?” she said.

“No,” I