Mumma's House

by Ike Hamill

  “Huh,” June said, swallowing her surprised laugh. “I barely cope.”

  “All these people invading your space and you can’t even keep proper tabs on them.”

  “The worst part is seeing their faces,” June said. “The rest of the year, I imagine that they’re judging me. They think I’m turning into my mother. But when I actually have to see it on their faces, it’s almost too much to bear.”

  Kate nodded and then looked down at her hands. She was spinning her wedding band around her finger. She stopped abruptly.

  “Gus has held up so well,” June said. “He has been representing me in that… thing… since he was practically an infant. This is the last year. I’m going to renounce my claim, or whatever you would call it. I’ll walk away before this whole place scars him too much. Just be glad that Millie and Isla will never be called into that, you know?”

  “What makes you say that?” Kate asked.

  June blinked as she examined her sister-in-law.

  “As soon as Uncle Tommy goes, I’m sure everyone will come up with a more sane way to do things,” June said. “This business of an annual roll call, like some high-stakes radio contest to win a Jeep Wrangler, it’s all so absurd. Why would they keep doing it?”

  “From my perspective,” Kate said, putting a hand to her chest, “it’s clear that everyone cares a lot about this place. Even you, if I can be presumptuous. I know you’re serious about moving, but it’s not an easy decision for you. My mother used to always say, if you don’t care about something, it doesn’t have the ability to get you worked up. You care—that’s why you’re worked up.”

  June thought for a second and then had to nod.

  “Deidra and Henry have money. Once Tommy dies, if they can pay off the others and assure everyone that the house will stay in the family, I’m sure that Auggie would take that deal. That’s what I think will happen.”

  “Allison? Travis? You’re sure that they don’t care?”

  “Allison can walk away. She has before. Travis lost his claim years ago. He was in the hospital and didn’t have an heir to send.”

  “Auggie said that there might be a loophole,” Kate said.

  “If anyone could find a loophole, it would be Great Uncle Travis. But the fight in him diminishes each year, you know? Last time I saw him, he didn’t even talk about the house. I think he has given up, even if he won’t admit it. As soon as Deidra and Henry send him legal documents and a check, he will fold.”

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Does it make you sad?” Kate asked. “You’re saying goodbye to a long tradition.”

  “It has been at arm’s length for me for years,” June said. “Making Gus go feels akin to child abuse, you know?”

  “What happens, precisely, at the meeting?” Kate said, lowering her voice to a whisper even though they were alone.

  June shook her head. “I can’t tell you. If any one of us even breathes a word, there are penalties. Just wait a year. When Uncle Tommy dies, and this is over, I’m sure Auggie will tell you all about it.”

  Kate’s shoulders fell with her disappointment.

  “You really think it will be within the year?”

  “Definitely,” June said. “In fact, I wouldn’t be surprised if Uncle Tommy is dead already. Who would there be to inform us? We don’t even have his real address. For all we…”

  June stopped and cocked her ear. Unconsciously, she had been tracking the movement of people in the house. The realization came when she recognized a new set of footsteps from deep in the wing.

  “He’s here,” June said.

  “Who?”

  “Uncle Tommy,” she said. “He’s up in his…”

  June stood up, knocking into Kate’s legs and nearly spilling her from the window seat.

  “Holy shit,” June said, cocking her head. “It’s GUT.”

  “What?”

  “Great Uncle Travis is upstairs. We’re going to have to move Deidra and Henry.”

  # # # #

  “It’s not going to matter,” Jules said.

  The three of them turned as the door squeaked on its hinges. Deidra poked her head into June’s front room.

  “Could you give us one minute?” Auggie asked.

  Deidra mumbled an apology and blushed as she backed out through the door.

  “Even if GUT is here, and I don’t know how you can be so convinced that he is, that man is too old and feeble to put up a fight,” Jules said.

  “I’m only saying that it’s better to be safe than sorry,” Auggie said. “You’ve done this before, June.”

  “No, Auggie,” June said. She warded them back with her hands and then folded her arms across her chest. “No. I’m not going any deeper into this house than this room. If you don’t hold any respect for tradition, then move the damn ceremony right here. I’ll attend.”

  “You know we can’t do that,” Auggie said. “And please don’t try to pretend that it’s tradition that keeps you out of the dining room.”

  “What would it be?” she asked, her eyebrows arched into a challenge.

  “It’s fear,” Auggie said. “It’s okay. Mumma was afraid and you’re afraid. It’s nothing to be ashamed of, as long as you acknowledge your fear and you don’t let it stop you from living your life, right?”

  “Shut the fuck up, Auggie,” June said. She turned away from him. Gus was somewhere deep in the house, playing with his cousins, but her eyes still went to the stairs. He would learn to cuss eventually, that’s not what she was worried about. June didn’t want Gus to see her fly off the handle like that. She wanted him to remember that patience was a choice. Sometimes, it was a difficult choice. It took copious amounts of energy to keep one’s self-control. She didn’t want Gus to think that it was okay to let anger take over.

  “This is stupid,” Jules said. “Nobody has even seen Travis. If he’s here, then we can have this conversation. Otherwise, we’re wasting our time on this argument.”

  They looked at Auggie. Regardless of whether or not he was being reasonable, he remained somewhat in charge.

  “Let’s go find out,” he said.

  “No,” Jules said. “I’ll go. You two stay here and get on the same page.”

  Jules headed for the stairs and then took them two at a time.

  “It’s always the same with him,” Auggie said. “When he comes here, he always pretends that he has evolved since we saw him last. Then, by the time he has been here a few hours, he’s right back to the old Jules.”

  “It happens to you, too,” June said. “You pretend to be a perfect dad, but you still act like you can bully people into doing what you want.”

  That took the fight out of him. She saw the energy drain from Auggie’s muscles as he leaned into the wall. He cradled his face with his hands and then pushed his hair back as he sighed.

  “Listen,” he started.

  “Save it.”

  “Come on,” Auggie said. He put out his hands to beg. “You’re such a strong person. I know I’ve told you that a million times. I couldn’t do what you’ve done here. Despite everything, you’re here, holding down the fort while the rest of us can only bolster enough strength to return once a year. Even Mumma couldn’t have done that.”

  “She did, though.”

  “No, you’re wrong. Mumma had lots and lots of help. She always had at least two or three other people around, plus all of us kids. And, still, the pressure killed her before she turned fifty.”

  June was only half listening. Most of her attention was focused on tracking Jules’s footsteps as he searched upstairs. He started with Uncle Travis’s room, but that was silly. Everyone would have seen and heard Travis if the man had returned to his old bedroom. No, Travis was lurking deeper in the house. Maybe he was staying hidden until the ceremony. Maybe he was conserving his energy to put up the fight that Auggie expected out of him. June didn’t care. Regardless of what happened, she wasn’t going to put herself and Gus at risk just be
cause Auggie wanted to argue about who had a right to attend the ceremony. Auggie should realize that it didn’t matter in the end. Travis was old as hell and he would be out of the running soon, regardless of whether or not he was disqualified from the inheritance.

  “Listen,” Auggie said again, “we only get one shot at this, okay? You’ve told me that this is your last year, and I respect that. You’ve already shown a tremendous amount of stamina to make it this long. But, given that it’s your last year, do one more thing for yourself and for your son. Make this stand with us and we’ll force a resolution.”

  The idea was enticing. She had already excused herself and started to live with the idea of failure. What if one final sprint could fix that mistake before she really committed to it? Could it be that simple?

  She heard a door close and remembered.

  “You’re forgetting about Uncle Tommy. He’s not dead yet, Auggie. As long as he’s here you’re not going to be able to force shit. You can try to fight, but Uncle Tommy will always win.”

  “Maybe not,” Auggie said. “I have a plan. I figured I wouldn’t be able to pull it off until next year or the year after, but that’s only because I didn’t know that GUT was going to be here. He makes all the difference, June.”

  “Why?”

  They both turned at the sound of Jules coming back down the stairs.

  He shook his head as soon as he saw that they were looking at him.

  “I didn’t find Travis, but I did find evidence that he’s here.”

  He held up what was in his hand. Auggie crossed to the stairs and took it from him. He put the cigar up to his nose and inhaled. By the time he lowered it, he was nodding.

  “Yeah. It’s him.”

  “I don’t need confirmation,” June said. “I told you—I heard him. I don’t care if he attends the ceremony or not. I’m done with it, and I have half a mind to keep Gus away from it this year as well.”

  Auggie and Jules both turned to her with their mouths hanging open.

  “Please don’t do that,” Auggie said.

  Chapter 9 : Gus

  “WHY DON’T WE GO ask Cousin Auggie?” Sam asked. “You said that he’s the one who took you to the loft, right?”

  “No,” Gus said. “I mean, yes, he led us to the loft so we could climb up to my mom’s old room, but I’m not going to ask him. If we ask him, he’ll just tell us that we’re not allowed to go there.”

  Millie interjected herself between them. “I can ask him. My dad will tell me.”

  “No,” Gus said. “No. Just give me a second. We can find it.”

  He stepped down into the lower hallway and struck off without waiting to see if they would follow. One way or the other, he was going to find the path that his uncle had used to get to the loft. It couldn’t be that complicated. The shed was only so big. Then again, he had been lost in there before.

  Gus shook his head to send the memory back to the dark corners of his brain. He didn’t want to deal with that creeping, nauseous fear that lingered and waited. That fear spoke with his mom’s voice and it called his name, muffled and echoing from twisting through the halls.

  “This door is open,” Millie said from behind him. “What’s in here?”

  He turned in time to see her pushing open a door into a dim room.

  “Don’t,” Gus said, putting up his hand and shaking his head. “Don’t go anywhere alone, okay. This isn’t a part of the house that you want to get lost in.”

  Sam laughed.

  “What?” Gus asked.

  “You sound so serious,” Sam said. He pitched his voice up to imitate Gus. “Don’t go anywhere alone. This isn’t a part of the house that you want to get lost in.”

  Millie snickered and covered her mouth with her hand.

  “I’m serious,” Gus said.

  “Is there some part of the house that you do want to get lost in?” Sam asked. “Think before you talk, cousin.”

  Gus considered telling them the whole story, just to explain what he had said. He quickly decided against it. Trying to explain would be like trying to explain a nightmare. They would never understand the horror of it until they experienced it for themselves. Words would never be able to convey the desperation that he had felt.

  “Just stay close, okay?” Gus asked. “I think I know how we can get there.”

  As Gus continued down the hall, the others did stay closer to him. Despite Sam’s mocking, he took the warning.

  Sam filled the silence with his wisdom.

  “There’s this kid at my school, Adam, and his father makes maps. He said that kids growing up today are no good at navigating places because we have machines do it all the time for us. When you have a phone, or whatever, telling you to take the next left, you never have to look at a map and imagine yourself in there, lining up what you’re seeing with the lines, you know?”

  Gus took a right after fumbling for the light switch for that part of the hall.

  “We don’t develop the ability to imagine ourselves in a different space, you know? It’s like when you’re flying a drone around—some kids can’t turn the thing in the air and still know which way it’s going to go when they push the stick away.”

  “Huh?” Millie asked.

  “It’s hard to explain,” Sam said. “I could show you, but I didn’t bring a drone with me. Hey! That would have been perfect to get my plane back. We could have been flying drones in the barn this whole time if I had brought one. You don’t have one, do you?”

  When Sam tapped Gus on the shoulder, Gus flinched. He had been staring at the door in front of them while Sam talked.

  “What?” Gus asked.

  “Are we going through there? What’s stopping you? Is it locked?”

  Sam’s eyes went back to the old knob. It wouldn’t be locked. It was one of the glass doorknobs that had a flowery metal plate with no hole for a key. Those kind of doors were never locked unless it was with a slide bolt from the other side. And who would be on the other side to slide the bolt?

  “Maybe we should wait,” Gus said. “You could bring your drone next time and we could use that to get the plane, like you said.”

  Sam was already shaking his head before Gus finished. “That won’t work. The drone has a camera. We could see the plane, but how are we going to get it?”

  “I thought you said that…” Gus started. Sam reached by him and turned the knob.

  The door creaked open.

  # # # #

  Gus felt unsettled and a little dizzy as he looked down the hall.

  It wasn’t really spooky at all. There was plenty of light from the three windows equally spaced down the right wall. The tipsy-turvy feeling in Gus’s stomach came from the windows. They had to be looking out at the north side of the house, and that didn’t make any sense at all.

  “It’s wrong,” Gus whispered.

  “What’s is?” Sam asked. He moved around Gus and walked down to the first window.

  Millie followed Sam and joined him at the window. They were pressing their hands against glass, trying to melt the snow that stuck to the other side of the panes. Millie laughed and pulled her hand back, shaking warmth back into her fingers before she stuffed her hand back in her glove.

  “It’s freezing in here,” she said.

  “You should probably close that door,” Sam said, pointing to Gus. “We don’t heat our dining room in the winter and my dad gets peeved when we leave the door open. He says that it makes a draft.”

  Gus nodded but didn’t move to close the door. He had no intention of doing that. Instead, he took one careful step towards his cousins. They seemed to be fine even though the hallway they were walking down didn’t make any sense at all. Gus’s sense of balance was still twisting as it fought to put order to what he was seeing. They had been moving north, he was sure of it. On their trip to the barn, they had struck down a corridor that headed west and then taken a right turn. How could this hall have windows that looked north? Somewhere along the wa
y, his sense of direction had completely failed him.

  Millie’s handprint on the window was still fading as Gus looked through. The snow was accumulating fast—big, complex flakes that would pile high compared to the small sandy snow that they usually got this time of year. It definitely looked like the north side of the house. There was a small border of clear space between the shed and the start of the woods. Gus pressed his face close to the cold pane. The wind rattled the glass, warning him back with its icy breath.

  “Is this the way to the loft?” Sam asked. He was already on his way to finding out.

  “Yeah,” Gus croaked. It was just a guess, but it was an educated guess. They had to run out of shed soon. The door at the end must lead to the barn.

  “Yeah, because this wall used to be the outside wall of the barn, right?” Millie asked as she caught up to Sam.

  “Yeah,” Gus said. She was right. The barn had, at one time, been clad with cedar shingles. Instead of horsehair plaster, this wall still had the old shingles from when the shed was built against the barn. “Be careful. Some of the…”

  Sam opened the door and Gus didn’t need to finish his warning. There were a couple of doors that opened to nothing. The loft floor had been removed in places so some doors opened to an empty space. This wasn’t one of them.

  Sam tested a foot on the boards before he committed his weight to them. Millie simply walked in. Her head was tilted back as she looked around.

  “It hardly looks like the same place,” she said.

  Sam strolled towards the edge of the loft. They had left the lights on downstairs. Holding a post, Sam leaned out over the edge, looking down to the dirt floor below.

  “So, if we were down there…” Sam said, pointing.

  Gus stepped out to the loft and the door started to inch shut behind him. His senses barely registered it. Once again, he felt the world shifting around him as he tried to make sense of the geometry of the barn from this new angle. This wasn’t the loft he had hoped to find, and they weren’t on the side of the barn that made sense. Somehow, they were on a lower level from the loft that Uncle Auggie had taken him to. There had to be a ladder or stairs somewhere that would take them up another flight. And, even stranger, it appeared that they had entered the barn from the west side. There wasn’t even a shed on that side of the barn.