A House of Many Rooms

A short story
by Janice D. Soderling

I remember once approaching it from a long path, and it seemed to front on a large body of water.

It is cunningly built, full of architectural surprises. There are turrets, and sliding doors with hidden staircases, endless corridors, whole new walls that descend like theater backdrops, and many rooms, in some of which I encounter women I know or have known, in others, strangers. These women are sometimes busy with tasks, or stand silently lost in thought; they seldom acknowledge my presence. They may be eating breakfast, sweeping the floor, or quarrelling, their faces tied in little knots of hate or despair.

One is perhaps sewing on buttons, squinting to thread the needle, closing her sewing box with a decisive little bang. Another is lying with closed eyes in an old-fashioned, footed bathtub, humming a song I have heard before, somewhere, a long time ago. That one there is listening to someone talk on the telephone; she is crying, smearing her mascara.

This one peeks furtively from behind a curtain; her eyes are frightened; a child hangs in her skirts. That one leans into a mirror, layering on thick red lipstick, very carefully, as if it mattered. Each is doing one of the hundreds of things we women do daily, some of us, somewhere. At times one of them may turn to me and make a remark about what is going on at that particular moment, off-handedly, in the way one explains to a visitor that a member of the family has had a headache all morning. I have seen myself there, to my surprise, as when idly glancing through a friend’s photograph album, I come upon a snapshot of myself I had never seen before.

Some of the rooms are shuttered, dimly lit, with dustcovers drawn over the furniture. There may be a piano with note sheets in disarray, or a vase of withered flowers on a coffee table, or a book lying face down beside an unlit lamp, or a phonograph needle scratching patiently at the end of a record. The small-paned windows open out onto a lawn of lush green grass, or sometimes, to an asphalted inner courtyard.

In some rooms, I feel a strong sense of contentment. I hurriedly bypass the doors of others, afraid to go inside; I don’t know why. Although I can avoid going into some rooms, at times I find myself where I didn’t choose to be, and at other times, I suddenly am no longer in a room where I wanted to stay.

This is a strange place, where it is difficult to distinguish between the real and the non-real, between a journey and a map, between knowing and believing, between truth and lies.

This house has many rooms. In some of them I meet shadow-women who like me are nameless. In a warm kitchen, there is a woman who never existed, rosy-cheeked and overweight, leaning into the good smells steaming from pots and pans. Snow is falling outside. Her children are in other rooms nearby; one plays at her feet. She has many children, always a new baby. Sometimes I have felt her waddling around in my thin body when I dump the sour cream into the stroganoff, when I pull crusty loaves of bread from the oven, when I’ve strutted with my belly big with child.

In a different room, I have watched a shadow-woman who calls herself a poet, who lives among piles of books, sleeps till past noon, sits up all night reading in a disorderly world of unmade beds, unwashed dishes, and unswept floors. Sometimes she laughs wildly. Sometimes she rocks back and forth crying silently. Always she looks directly at me. Perhaps she is not completely sane. But I would like to imitate her, to catch on page after page, the rhymes and rhythms that surprise me when I haven’t time to write them down.

In an elegant dining room, where long white candles burn in silver candleholders, where fresh flowers always stand in crystal vases, a perfumed woman in black silk sits, alone. This shadow-woman is witty but cold, sensuous but aloof. She is a cannibal devouring herself, claiming that we are all unloved, unlovable, and unloving. She is vain. Arrogant. Destructive. I am afraid of her.

Sometimes the house is overrun by a pack of women. They all break into a room and run amok, like frenzied ghosts that will not be laid to rest. Then they coalesce and disappear, taking with them everything in the room. When I stand there surrounded by four bare walls, in a room devoid of furniture and curtains and rugs, I wonder if maybe I, too, have disappeared, and I am afraid to raise my hand to look at it, because it might not be there.

I seem to be the only one who knows that the house belongs to me. Certainly none of the women I see there, nor the occasional man, seem to have any sense of trespassing; indeed as I said, they are usually not even aware of my presence.

It gives me the most terrible feeling of not existing, as if I could draw my finger across a dusty tabletop and never leave a mark.

People meet. People part. On an infinite number of intersections, reality expands itself and dissolves when its force is spent, like rings from a stone thrown into the water. Each ring marks a reality; each reality represents a truth. For what is truth, if not a given moment in a given reality. That which may be a lie for one is someone else’s truth.

A faucet drips. A clock ticks. A motor hums. A shadow falls silently across a threshold. Did you hear the slap, the thud?

A door closes and a curtain is drawn.

Far away, in the future or the past, in another time, in another room, a woman whispers the name of her lover. They speak in low, gentle voices; he laughs softly and so does she.

A newspaper rustles as its pages are turned. There is the sound of a cup being set down on a saucer. A spoon stirring until the sugar dissolves. Outside the window, a bird is singing its heart out to mark its territory: mine, mine, mine. There is the brief, piercing cry of a woman on the edge of an orgasm. There is the sound of a heart breaking.

I listen to learn my name.

My house has many rooms.

Copyright 2007 by Janice D. Soderling