Welcome Home

            There was talk, then there were papers, then there was more talk, roundabout and direct, and then there was a thicker stack of papers, sharp, empty lines on each page, begging for consummation, and then, later, after about a week, there was a house.

            With her mouth wide open, Mandy stared up at the two-story colonial.

            Her skin cried out for refuge from the August sun, cooking and merciless, and she shuffled into the shade of the neighbor’s sky-scraping pine tree. Though cooler and sight undaunted, she cupped a hand to help pull the visual into her brain, but the information, the massive multi-bedroom, clapboard picture before her proved to be beyond comprehension.

            Along the sidewalk, exactly in the middle, ripping Mandy from her slack-jawed confusion, a young woman with a slicked back ponytail, wearing combination black and blood orange athletic wear, jogged passed her. Holding herself back, Mandy wanted nothing more than to block the woman’s path, point to the house, and say, “Can you fucking believe this?”

            But Mandy never swore; to her, foul language felt rude and tiresome like it belonged undisturbed in bad 1980s standup comedy. And she never bothered strangers, but maybe that’s what homeowners did, what they were capable of doing, feeling so comfortable in their own neighborhood.

            Taking a step back, too close to the house for her liking, Mandy’s sneaker caught one of the lawn sprinklers. Am I in charge of that? she thought, looking down. Who do I call if this breaks, the… sprinkler… repair guy? But maybe homeowners were supposed to have those kind of numbers.

            But! Mandy put both her hands up as if she, with a delicate calm, were stopping traffic; Nathaniel’s name was on the deed.

            She looked at the house again, this time taking a deep breath. Nathaniel’s name was already on delivered spam mail and would be printed on most things in the future. Yes, she had contributed money to this acquisition and would be doing so every month, but Mandy was no homeowner who had to know anything about the house at all because, on paper, she possessed nothing besides her cat Sally Day.

            Gliding back toward the house through the strong, verdant grass, a gentle swishing sound at heel, Mandy giggled at her anxieties, remembering the many times that Nathaniel reminded her of her own freedom: “Honey, I want us to live together and if that’s what you want too then perfect! But if you ever feel like this is too much and you want out, I’ll completely understand. You are under no obligation.”

            And there she was, a free agent, walking up the brick pathway to the front door that was hers to enjoy but someone else’s obligation.

            Outside a window on the first floor, what would be Nathaniel’s office, a flower box full of marigolds shone in the sun and, with a smile, Mandy dipped her head toward them, a few degrees shy of a full-blown curtsy. These components—the brick path and the front door, these living things, the marigolds and the grass—these were her stepchildren and it was her duty to nurture them without acting like a chilly interloper.

            Afraid to look away from the flowers or risk seeming rude, Mandy held her gaze and smiled, blindly reaching for the golden doorknob that was Nathaniel’s full obligation, but before wrapping her hand around it, she could feel a blazing heat emanating from the knob. Her hand flew to the sky and she turned away from the marigolds and the doorknob that almost burned her.

            To reassure herself that it was only a brush with mutilation, Mandy rubbed her hand against her chest and continued rubbing as she walked away from the door. She needed shade, needed to sit, but the sun had moved and the pine tree’s shadow along with it. Off to right side of the house, under the window of a laundry room that, with its tank-like machines, could accommodate the soiled clothing of a husky rugby team, Mandy found a rectangle of shade between two tall, manicured shrubs and, looking like a bachelorette pissing in between a set of dumpsters, she chose to squat because the concrete was as hot as the door knob and the skin of her ass was her obligation.

            The smooth, spotless driveway spread out like a gray sea before her, looking so dry in the midday sun and somehow dirty with a hidden, all-consuming filth.

            Still rubbing her sternum, Mandy squinted and reconsidered what she had been told. People who were slick, people who closed doors to bray and high-five coworkers used the word “obligation;” it was one of those sets of letters designed to look like power was being granted, even bequeathed, but, really, it was a ruse to gut and strip, smoke and mirrors to help line up a neck for subsequent stepping. Mandy knew this; she had seen infomercials, cruised her fair share of used-car lots.

            She stood up and a ripping noise came from her wedges against the concrete. Nathaniel was up to something.

            When his time at the office grew longer into the everyday, ending late every night, images of what he could be doing, what he was actually up to, would light up in Mandy’s mind like floodlights above a prison yard, images ranging from a toothless, wrinkled-sheet affair with his paralegal to a clandestine meth addiction and an appetite for violent pornography leading to a sex worker losing an ear and receiving a fistful of hush money, legal tender despite the blood and tears sprinkled on the bills. But then, when Nathaniel would slide into bed around 1 a.m., Mandy could always sense how hard he was trying not to wake her up, an act of tenderness as he eased his body onto the mattress, lifting the sheets without pulling, his frazzled exhaustion only more palpable with the stale scent of a scuzzy downtown courtroom billowing off of him. And when he would whisper, “I love you, Mandy,” in the dark of their one-bedroom apartment, his final words of the day pushed out before his brain shut down, recharging for another grueling day ahead, Mandy would never answer back but instead silently kiss the air and reach over and run a hand through his hair.

            The fantasizing that her life had become a dark-hued network procedural would stop and the fact would sink in with a thud that Nathaniel was taking on more cases so they could buy a house and start the dream, the dream of emptying boxes of dishware while the Beatles on vinyl filled the house, preceding the white dress, ending with the small cabin on the coast and somehow she learns to garden and he learns to love to cook—that dream—the dream she and Nathaniel would manufacture over bagels in her cramped breakfast nook, still in their sweaty nighttime clothes. Then, her mind also turning out the lights, assured of their design, Mandy, using only her fingertips, would make a squiggle of a path down Nathaniel’s sleeping temple, over his earlobe, to place an entire hand on his neck, feeling the heat and dry skin mixed in with the stubble.

            A rumble at her feet tipped Mandy off to what then pulled up in front of the house—the moving truck. The roar of the engine died and, with two clunks, the delivery men closed their respective doors and touched the ground, one headed for the front door and the other moving toward the back of the truck.

            Mandy rubbed her tongue against the back of her teeth; the sense of something rotten returned like lice on a young scalp.

            She was a second-grade teacher; she could handle obligation and coordinating and organizing and responsibility. Every day of the week, parents left their vulnerable children, ready to dole out their wide-eyed, easily-won trust despite developing-but-weak bones and immune systems, and those kids always left her classroom with something new learned, a smile, and the cheery thrill of what was in store for them the next day in Ms. Mandy Letting’s bright, warm classroom, the walls plastered with art projects and aspirational posters and the animal of the month (currently the tree frog, aplastodiscus lutzorum). An entire classroom, the walls, the bodies; a one-bedroom apartment, Mandy’s name on the lease; a hoard of evidence that made her overqualified for the position of homeowner, a resumé that would make any other partner salivate and do whatever possible to lock her down, but no. For some uncertain reason, Nathaniel did not need Mandy, he merely accepted her, a nominal fee on a long-distance call, so why was he stringing her along?

            When the face, the front man of the two movers, transferred from the sidewalk to the brick path, he nodded in a sort of jerking thrust up toward the second story windows, more specifically in the direction of the bedroom where Nathaniel just happened to be doing measurements. And even out of her line of vision, Mandy could imagine her boyfriend standing at one side of the bedroom window, half-hidden, nodding back at his henchman and staring down at his developing empire.

            Her rubbing hand fell from her chest to her stomach and, taking in soft, deep breaths, Mandy stifled her intense urge to vomit as this man swaggered up to her foster home (her prison?), interested only in payment, caring nothing for the helpless woman he was sending up the river. The stomach pains quieted and, standing straighter, Mandy understood she had to stand up for herself, had to devise a plan of her own to get out of what Nathaniel and these cronies had up their sleeves because, despite his hard work and gooey promises and warm neck, there was a reason thick pens were kept from her hand. There was a reason her signature meant nothing.

            Perhaps Mandy was the warm-up before the big show, with its cascading white train and monumental flower arrangements, featuring a newer, prettier model, an emaciated live-in doe who Nathaniel believed could handle obligation and would look perfect leering in red on a Christmas card. Or Mandy was a pawn in an insurance scam, just a spine to be found broken and twisted in a wet heap at the bottom of some stairs, a tragic but lucrative end. Soon their stuff would be dumped around the house then placed and organized and the waiting game would start until Nathaniel hit his intended bullseye.

            “Wait!” Mandy cried, running, rounding to the front of the house, and soon her eyes met those of the mover, his expression one of confusion, his hand an inch away from the doorknob just as hers was minutes ago. Was he mocking her or was this a display of his casual relationship with Nathaniel?

            “Just let yourself in and get it done,” she could imagine her boyfriend dictating into a phone.

            Back in the sun, Mandy felt the moisture in her bangs, heavy with sweat, and she tittered to soften her appearance until she remembered who she was dealing with and the mission she was up against.

            “I mean, help!” she said, her face falling into an expression of loose panic, reaching the front door. “There’s someone, my, um, grandmother’s inside and she needs an ambulance and I need you guys to move your truck! Now!”

            The man glanced over to where Mandy had come from, questioning her motives without revealing his true loyalties.

            He started to speak, “Oh, miss, I’m an EMT. Maybe–”

            “No! I mean,” Mandy rubbed her eyes, “My, um, grandmother is old, she won’t let anyone just touch her. You’d need one of those….” She gestured to her neck as if she were wiping away crawling insects.

            “…A stethoscope?” The man’s tone was flat, filled with incredulity.

            “Yes! YES! But you have to go, please! Your boss will pay you. I mean, Nathaniel will pay you! I’ll—I’ll pay you, you just need get that truck out of here!”

            A dense silence filled the space between them as Mandy fumbled in her jeans for money and the mover backed away in small steps.

            “We don’t have a warehouse or anything so I’m not sure—”

            “It’s an emergency! You need to leave!” she barked and her wallet hit the ground with a slap.

            Eyes searching, the moving guy nodded without a word and walked back to the truck.

            Mandy snatched her wallet up from the ground and heard the mover call to his partner. She turned away, facing the front door, rejecting their calculating presence and judgmental gazes. Though too far to hear the two men confer, she knew this stick in the spokes meant no money from Nathaniel for a job not yet done, and by the way they slammed their doors, she could tell they were furious.

            But Mandy was relieved and she smoothed out her damp shoulder-length hair, the sweat on her hands only adding to the mess. They would be back, but she, too, would show up for the next fight. She was her only hope. The keys to her old apartment were in someone else’s hands and the money in her bank account would in no way cover a first and last month’s rent and security deposit; fighting was the only option.

            She stared at the menacing golden doorknob and wondered how she could get a number for the moving company, keep the truck from returning, and pay them to take her stuff to a storage unit; maybe Mandy could sleep there. But if it took sleeping on the street and washing herself in gas station bathrooms, a wad of brown paper towels her washcloth, Mandy would do it to escape this trap. If only she could intuit Nathaniel’s true desire to prevent it at all cost.

            Swallowing hard, she felt a familiar heat in her hand just below her belly, the exact kind of heat she felt emanating from the doorknob, and, suddenly, like bursting through a forest onto an open field, her role in his plan was clear: vessel.

            At brunch two months prior, Nathaniel and Mandy had been seated next to a table of three: mother, father, and baby, who stayed quiet most of the meal, but later grew tired of his plastic keys and started screeching. Mandy smiled at the couple, letting them know the noise bothered her little, she was an elementary school teacher for heaven’s sake, but, bill paid, walking back to the car, she leaned into Nathaniel, saying, “Ugh, that baby. Noooo thank you,” then opened the car door with a slick ease, situated, her life cozy, until Nathaniel opened his side of the car, saying, “Really? I thought he was cute,” and closed the door behind him, Mandy ducking down into the car after, pretending that was an okay thing to say.

            This whole ordeal on top of her, she could now see Nathaniel had changed into someone completely different, transformed at some point in the outside world, outside of his world with her, or perhaps this whole time Nathaniel had been shedding layers, piece by piece slowly cluing her in on what he was up to, a countdown to cul-de-sac confinement and the birth of an heir.

            Mandy pulled the soaked cotton of her t-shirt from her armpits, but felt no relief or drying breeze; this was too much—a sow for birthing then sudden death? Tired, she leaned against the impeccably white beam holding up the portico then staggered back as if struck. None of this monstrosity belonged to her, rather it was designed (had Nathaniel had his men build this house?) to bar her in until she bore fruit and, now, Mandy had to get away, before a gritty shingle loosened and dove straight for her skull, before a delivery man under Nathaniel’s spell grabbed hold of her postpartum neck.

            Her eyes stung and her mouth felt like sandpaper, as if her tongue were scraping around a cylinder of cement. Stepping back into the sun, a brick loosened under her foot and Mandy knew her time was running out; her chance of survival, her opportunity to flee back to a life she understood, was dissipating.

            And then the front door opened.

            Mandy gasped and retreated further and there was Nathaniel in the doorway, smiling and then not smiling, acting so good for her, the perfect partner, her wellbeing his biggest concern. In his stockinged feet, he walked toward her.

            “Mandy, sweetheart, are you all right?”

            A familiar rumble rocked the ground and she turned around to see the moving truck pulling up once again.

            Time was nearly up.

            “Yeah, I heard the truck pull away so I called them and they said—”

            His cronies had been in his ear, chattering away about her catching on to what she must stay blind to until procreation, until birth, until the dream was breathing, crying out for its god. Shaking, eyes watering, Mandy ran to Nathaniel and grabbed him by the powder blue shirt.

            Through jagged breaths, she said, “I know what you’re trying to do!”

            Then she released him and bolted toward the van, arms flailing, hoping for rescue and relief.

            “STOP! STOP! HELP ME, PLEASE!”

            The movers, eyes wide, looked down at her in horror from inside the cab of the truck with no moral compass to guide them away from promised riches and toward a woman in crisis.

            Just then the jogger, with the ponytail, in the black and blood orange track suit came into view. Perhaps here was an ally, a hero, and Mandy cut away from the truck toward the woman.

            “CAN YOU FUCKING BELIEVE THIS?!” she cried.

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